Last night I watched The Eyes of Tammy Faye, a documentary about the weird and troubled life of the former TV evangelist. It was a very sympathetic portrait. Tammy Faye comes across as a guileless victim of circumstance and evildoers, and, like all documentaries and biographies, that portrayal included bending over backward to instruct me how influential and important the subject is. Maybe so. In this instance it was the Bakker's achievment in broadcasting and Tammy Faye's all-embracing brand of Christianity. By "all-embracing" this particular film means "she liked gays okay."
Jerry Falwell is the villain of the piece and comes off looking like a treacherous crook. No, really! But it should be remembered that in the film the most damning testimony comes from Tammy Faye and from Roe Messner, Jim's friend and the guy who built their Jesus theme park, Heritage, USA. According to them Falwell was a snake. But later in the film we learn that Tammy married Messner after divorcing Bakker... and still later we learn Messner is in the pokey for bankruptcy fraud. In the end they're all a bunch of liars and who the heck knows.
As a documentary it was fair at best, nothing to write home about. It had annoying breaks in it -- featuring hand puppets with grating voices. Speaking of puppets, one of the best parts has Tammy Faye pitching her ideas for a TV show to the guy who created COPS and STUDS. He was polite in the way he told her he had no use for her notions, one of which was a TV show where she visited Alzheimer's patients to talk to them about their lives. The producer, a skinny Asian guy, rolled his eyes and groaned out loud at that one.
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