This week I screened “The Eyes of Tammy Faye.”
(Well I also wasted six dollars at Redbox on the most recent James Bond movie and I’m heated. What a bloated carcass of a movie.)
As a kid I wasn’t supposed to watch the Christian Broadcasting Network, which aired the PTL show. Tammy Faye and Jim Bakker were charismatic Christians who spread a positive God-is-love message (we Baptists knew him as God-is-vengeance) and sang Jesus-lite songs like, “We Are Blest” to loud, rollicking accompaniment tracks.
Both the Bakkers’ and my dad’s religious empires ended in scandal so I guess the score is tied there.
But the movie is enjoyable. Jessica Chastain finds the honest, childlike enthusiasm of Tammy Faye and Vincent D’Onofrio gives Jerry Falwell a ponderous, smirkingly evil spin. It also gets a lot right about what these slick televangelists offered back in the 1980. Prosperity Gospel, sure, but also a message of love and acceptance, at a time when the Reagans and the Moral Majority were busy alienating and shaming.
It makes me want to re-watch the 2000 documentary of the same name.
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