JoinUsTheMovie.com

The movie follows four families as they enter Wellspring Retreat and Resource Center, their treatment and their struggle to return to a “normal” life after being trapped in the insidious grip of a destructive high control Christian Fundamentalist Cult.

The following is a statement by the film maker about the JoinUs Movie…

How JOIN US began:
I became interested in the subject of mind control after making DIG! As I observed the
charismatic leader of The Brian Jonestown Massacre, Anton Newcombe, attract 50 to 100
members to his band. For years I watched as the devotees gave everything they had and then
burned out. Some went on to have successful bands, but most faded into obscurity, or joined the
real world of adults after a period of recovery. I began to suspect mind control was part of Anton’s
mystique. The subject of mind control took on broader and darker implication with the results of
recent elections where seemingly diabolical but perhaps brilliant campaigns caused large voting
blocs to cast their ballots against their own best interests on many issues. Why did so many
people seem to lose sight of the facts? Was this mind control at work on a national level? The
combination of these things lit my fire to find out what was really going on in America. The
population of churches post 9/11 had reached an all time high as well, which made me think that
perhaps people were desperate to find a program to live by, someone to follow, or a group
identity while being willing to turn in the imperative to question at the door.
We contacted cult experts and centers of study and treatment of brainwashing to try and find a
way into a story we could follow over time. Time, to me, provides the greatest narrative. What I do
is driven by following the serendipity of people’s lives as they unfold, and then uncovering the real
beats to the story in the editing process. Every person’s life story is ultimately fascinating for one
reason or another, (it’s all in the story telling), and in this case we were lucky enough to find a
group of people who were just beginning the process of awakening from the spell they’d been
under and who allowed us to dive deep into their hearts and minds.
Wellspring Retreat, the only accredited cult treatment center in the world, has a two-week, live-in
program which essentially de-programs people emerging from destructive groups. Their
recidivism rate is less than 1%. Wellspring’s program is based on the studies of Dr. Robert J.
Lifton, an Air Force psychiatrist who studied prisoners of war in China in the 50’s and uncovered
8 techniques of mind control. If 6 of the 8 techniques are active in a group, it is considered
destructive and defined as a cult. Liz Shaw and Dr. Paul Martin ran the program at the time. Liz
called us one day in April, 2005 and told us that four families were leaving a church in South
Carolina they believed could be a cult and were expected to arrive at Wellspring in the next two
days. She said they were willing to be filmed. She also told us that the cult leader and his wife
had been to Wellspring for treatment but had left part way through the program. She couldn’t tell
us any more than that. Jared, Vasco and I decided to throw our credit cards down and fly out
there to meet these families.
We arrived having no idea what to expect. I thought perhaps we’d find people in robes, or people
who all dressed the same, or had funny hair- I had no idea. Nightfall came and with that the
families arrived: Two SUVs and a BMW pulled into this remote center and out of the cars poured
tired families, with children ranging from 3 to 9 years of age. They looked like us, they drove nice
cars and they seemed like they could be our next-door neighbors. They were talking fast and
unloading information that most people would hide forever, much less say straight to strangers
with cameras. I was blown away.
Our first days of shooting were easily 20 hours long. I was shocked by the level of intimacy we
reached almost instantly with people who had clearly felt duped and misled when they had
trusted before. The hardest challenge the families were facing was overcoming their guilt and
confusion for having let their children be brutally beaten so they would make it to heaven. It was
this challenge that quickly made us realize that the children and the effect of this group on the
children, would be a large focus of this film. We were at Wellspring for Mother’s Day, ironically,
and as I was a new mother myself, with my then two year old son in tow, the tales of child abuse
hit me especially hard. I could not conceive of how this treatment center could ever get the
mothers of the group to trust their maternal instincts again after having been the instrument of the
Pastor in beating their own children mercilessly. I knew that every cell in my body was
programmed to protect my child at all costs. How had they been convinced to let this happen to
their children?
Ultimately, no matter how resilient children are said to be, we could not believe that the damage
done to them at the Mountain Rock Church in South Carolina could ever be undone.
The Story:
We never thought we’d be working on this film for two years, but then one never knows what they
are getting into with a documentary about something that is active and unfolding. We filmed at the
treatment center during those two weeks and again when more people from Mountain Rock
Church came for treatment. We followed these families home and continued with them as they
tried to find a normal life, to find and trust their own instincts again and to make a solid case
against their former Pastor. The legal process was difficult to capture because the Anderson
prosecutor and police would only meet with us off camera.
In Anderson, we also spent a lot of time capturing the perspective of the Pastor and his wife, who
are fascinating characters. We found a man and woman in them who truly believed in what they
had done and were going to continue to do in “healing people through the Book of Acts” and
helping people “in both spiritual and natural things.” They felt they had been abandoned by their
church family and wronged themselves, even though they had clearly broken major laws and
damaged lives along the way.
We discovered that the Pastor himself had been abused as a child and therefore believed
wholeheartedly in his program of discipline. In fact, he was his own best example since, as he
proclaimed, he was as close to perfect as Jesus. He believed he had nothing to fear because “the
laws of the land come after God’s laws.”
The Process:
In spending extensive hours with both the recovering cult members and the Pastor and his wife,
we experienced black and white, turning to grey. At the end of the first two weeks we spent at
Wellspring Retreat, we felt it was clear that the Pastor and his wife were monsters who had
knowingly beaten children, further damaging these people by controlling their lives and exploiting
them financially. However, as we spent time with Pastor and Mrs. Melz and more time with the
church members themselves, we realized that sometimes people can come to believe that what
they’re doing is right, willfully denying the harm they are causing.
This applied to both the cult leaders and their devotees. Our own understanding of personal
ownership for one’s own actions was challenged by coming to know and love our subjects. At one
point, one of the mothers, Tonya, turned to look at my son, Joaquim and said, “Gosh, he’s so
beautiful, he’s the fist child I’ve ever met who hasn’t been beaten.” The cult issue is a very
complicated one and even to the end, we struggled to present a film which does not condemn,
does not reprimand, that does not hand the audience a clear answer but instead implores the
audience to think for themselves. The film is told in two parts as it organically unfolds: A black and
white picture of the Pastor is formed in our imaginations as we listen to the stories told about him
at the treatment center; in the 2nd half of the picture, we travel to South Carolina and meet the
Pastor and his wife, while seeing deeper into the lives of our subjects. We find it harder and
harder to judge and hopefully notice the judgment itself.
The editing process was very difficult and lasted over a year and a half. Tim Rush and I edited
hundreds of scenes separately, and then jumped onto the same AVID to cut the movie down from
well over 12 hours to the 100 minutes it is now. During this time, Vasco Nunes and I returned to
South Carolina to film with our subjects periodically for a week here and a week there. I wrote the
voiceover for Joaquin Sullivan to read in early February ‘07. As with DIG! the addition of
voiceover to be delivered by a character in the film was a last minute move and a key component
to the efficacy of the finished piece. I like having one of the film’s subjects to tell the story and tie
up any loose ends because I fell it doesn’t break the bubble of the world you are exploring. To
me, the best films take you on a journey and you don’t get off the ride until it’s over. I chose
Joaquin to do the voiceover firstly because he is from California and therefore doesn’t have a
southern accent. It was imperative to prevent people from saying to themselves, “Oh, this is a film
about a bunch of people from “the Bible belt” … this could never happen to me.” Joaquin was
also chosen because he broke up the cult after he was excommunicated from Mountain Rock
Church and his wife was made to divorce him. They have since remarried and have had another
child. Joaquin is considered to be the “anti-Christ” by the Pastor especially as he pursues
Raimond Melz, legally to this day.
We shot and edited in phases, hunting and gathering, as I like to do. Our biggest challenge was
balancing the intellectual information the piece needed to relay to forge an understanding of the
subject matter and its ramifications, with the emotion and aesthetic feeling that is obviously
essential to create and protect. It was a delicate dance made more difficult by our familiarity with
the material. We lost perspective repeatedly, regained it, went right, left and up and down. Finally,
we arrived at the movie you’re watching. We are grateful to everyone who worked tirelessly at
Interloper Films and especially to our documentary subjects who bring to this day.
Budget:
Budgeting a film like this is nearly impossible because you never know what’s going to happen
next. Before filming, we made attempts to find outside financing and were close to making a deal
but it was slow to happen.
Then the call came from Wellspring and we jumped on it. As soon as we got back, we realized
that the complicated and delicate nature of this subject matter, which we felt was incredibly rich in
substance but still unfolding, could possibly be more effectively told if it was an independently
funded project. We had gained the trust of our subjects and felt the responsibility to be at liberty
to tell the real story, without having to answer to any political restrictions. We ended up financing
the film ourselves, much in the way DIG! was made which though it ups the stakes, gave us a
sense of freedom to tell it like it is.