Lake Jocassee below 300 feet of water. Mount Carmel Baptist Church Cemetery was a setting for a scene in the film "Deliverance" (1972), starring Burt Reynolds and Jon Voight, produced before the lake was flooded. The site is now covered by 130 feet of water in the lake. A confluence of four rivers supplies Lake Jocassee's water. The farthest west of the rivers, the Whitewater River, flows southeast until it meets the northwest corner of Lake Jocassee. The Thompson River flows due south until it too reaches the lake in the northwest corner. The Horsepasture River feeds the lake from the northeast
Jon Voight teamed up with Russian writer and director Andrei Konchalovsky to play the role of escaped con Manny Manheim in "Runaway Train". The script was based on a story by Akira Kurosawa, and paired Voight with Eric Roberts as a fellow escapee. Voight received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor and won the Golden Globe's award for Best Actor. Roberts was also honored for his performance, receiving an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Voight followed up this and other performances with a role in the 1986 film, "Desert Bloom", and reportedly experienced a "spiritual awakening" toward the end