 In publicity for the television film, Kirk Douglas told reporters:  "We went into the transcript of the real trial and found a lot more  stuff (that is) much more dramatic, and much more pertinent to  whats happening today. At the time this actually took place, you  didnt have all of todays TV evangelists. Theres no doubt that  there is a tremendous and strong fundamentalist force in this  country today, and we wanted to present this fairly, in dramatic  terms."