The Eyes Have It
FILM: The Eyes of Tammy Faye
DIRECTOR: Randy Barbato and Fenton Bailey
STARRING: Tammy Faye Bakker Messner, RuPaul Charles
GRADE: A-
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TAMMY FAYE BAKKER-MESSNER MAKES A CONVINCING CASE FOR HER INNOCENCE IN THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE.
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In a wonderfully instructive moment in Randy Barbato and Fenton Bailey's The
Eyes of Tammy Faye, the title figure arranges for a makeover in prelude to
new publicity photos. Long past her high-profile days as an evangelical
television star, divorced and remarried, Tammy Faye Bakker-Messner remains
stubbornly hopeful of returning to the limelight. Subsequently, we will witness
her perky but painful visit with an independent TV producer to pitch several
divergent ideas for new shows for her to star in.
But in the makeover scene, those hired to give Tammy Faye a new and
fresh look are astonished when she arrives in full makeup, rather than merely
fresh scrubbed. Deflecting a proposal to dispense with her flamboyant,
mascara-stiffened false eyelashes, Tammy Faye adamantly refuses to change what
she considers her trademark feature. Asked to remove her makeup, Tammy Faye
reveals that her eyebrows and lipstick liner are "permanent;" essentially,
they're tattoos that cannot be altered in any way. Eventually, the
photographer's assistants conclude that making over Tammy Faye Bakker-Messner
is almost impossible; what you see is what you get.
If you were like me and paid at least passing attention to the
fraud trial of Jim Bakker back in the late 1980s, you wavered between an
irritated presumption of his guilt and dismissive contempt for those he
snookered. Jim was a crook, and, like so many of his other followers, Tammy
Faye was a joke. Remarkably, astoundingly, this film successfully calls both
those conclusions into question.
There is no doubt that Tammy Faye is an odd bird. Raised the oldest
of nine children in a lower-middle-class Minnesota home, Tammy Faye met Jim
Bakker in a small Bible college and married him in 1960 when she was only 17
years old. For a time, Jim and Tammy Faye traveled the country as itinerant
evangelists, conducting tent revival meetings wherever they could find a
congregation willing to gather. Eventually, they made the acquaintance of a
little-known man named Pat Robertson, a preacher who dreamed of creating his
own Christian media empire. The Bakkers assisted Robertson in the undertaking
that produced the Christian Broadcast Network (CBN) and became that network's
first big draw, starring in their own inspirational puppet show. Shortly, Jim
proposed a Christian Tonight Show and founded The 700 Club, which
also became a hit with evangelical viewers. After it did so, however, Robertson
took over the host role, and the Bakkers were out of work.
They then helped found the Trinity Broadcast Network (TBN), still
another Christian network, but once again they were forced out by their
partners, this time Paul and Jan Couch (who is sort of Tammy Faye without the
class). Finally, in North Carolina, the Bakkers founded Praise the Lord (PTL),
which by the 1980s became the most powerful Christian network on television.
Resolutely non-denominational, determinedly eschewing the right-wing culture
wars waged by other televangelists, PTL was a sensation, successful enough to
command tens of millions in donations from the faithful, powerful enough to
launch its own satellite and undertake worldwide broadcasting on a
24-hour-a-day basis. The crucial misstep began when Jim got the idea of
building Heritage U.S.A., PTL's own Christian theme park. He did manage to get
it off the ground, and, for a time in the mid-1980s, it appeared fabulously
successful, attracting a number of visitors exceeded only by those to Disney
World and Disneyland. Debt service was incredibly high, however, and PTL turned
into a perpetual fundraiser, with an obviously strained Jim concocting ever
grander schemes for how his followers could give him their money, Tammy Faye at
his side, crying her eyes out about how hard they were working and how much
help ($$$) they needed.
Then in 1985, Charlotte Observer reporter Charles Sheppard
got a tip that PTL had agreed to pay $265,000 to church secretary Jessica Hahn
as a condition for her remaining silent about a one-time sexual encounter she
had with Reverend Jim way back in 1980. Following the trail of that payment
into the complicated finances of PTL and Heritage U.S.A., Sheppard found what
amounted to a pyramid scheme of monumental proportions. Bakker was promising
donors "partnerships" in Heritage U.S.A. that simply could not be honored. The
story broke, charges were filed, the jury ruled, and Jim was sentenced to 45
years in prison (he did six) for fraud, despite the fact that remarkably few of
his "partners" affirmed the complaints against him. While Jim was in prison,
the couple divorced and Tammy Faye married old family friend Roe Messner.
On the few occasions I watched PTL (I could barely bear it even as
something to laugh at derisively) I certainly was contemptuous of the Bakkers'
tawdry "Gospel of Fun" and the obvious vacuity of their feel-good theology. It
was a short step to assume them guilty of conscious perfidy. That's precisely
where The Eyes of Tammy Faye demands that folks like me look again more
closely. The film does not exonerate the Bakkers of tackiness, but it makes a
compelling case for their sincerity. There is a difference, the picture
submits, between ineptitude and crime. Businesses go bankrupt all the time.
Business managers make poor decisions, over-extend and end up broke. Jim Bakker
ended up in prison. Would this have happened, the documentary wonders, had he
and Tammy Faye not been objects of such scorn from the likes of me.
In the Bakkers' defense, The Eyes of Tammy Faye dismisses
charges of greed. The $400,000 they were paid as annual salaries allowed them a
life of luxury to be sure, but no more so than that of their rivals. Pat
Robertson and Jerry Falwell had better taste, perhaps, but they lived just as
well. Moreover, PTL and Tammy Faye in particular opened wide Christian arms to
homosexuals in an era (which has hardly ended) where Robertson, Falwell and
countless less prominent religious leaders have decried homosexuality a "sin"
and an "abomination to God." Tammy Faye's popularity in the gay community no
doubt accounts for drag queen RuPaul Charles' narration, which he delivers
without a hint of distancing irony. In the end, this picture argues that the
Bakkers were patsies. They were always naive. Early in life, they got scammed,
first by Robertson and then the Couches. At the pinnacle of their careers, they
got blindsided by Falwell, who emerges as the unquestioned villain of this
piece.
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CO-DIRECTORS RANDY BARBATO AND FENTON BAILEY LOOK BEYOND PERCEPTIONS OF AND ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT THEIR SUBJECT IN THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE.
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At the height of Jim Bakker's nightmare over financing for Heritage
U.S.A., Falwell hinted he might have to go public about the Jessica Hahn story,
all the while offering to temporarily take the reins of PTL while Jim and Tammy
Faye stepped aside for rest, reflection and recuperation. They never returned.
Falwell orchestrated their firing, subsequently boarded up the theme park and
made off with PTL's satellite. Falwell's public comments about his role in
PTL's demise are shockingly self-righteous, judgmental and lacking in charity:
"God sent me there to bring an abrupt end to the immorality and financial fraud
of this religious soap opera that had become an international embarrassment to
the Christian gospel. In hindsight, we all now realize that PTL had been a
moral cancer on the face of Christianity."
The Eyes of Tammy Faye doesn't answer all the questions it
might. I would have liked to see the filmmakers directly inquire about the
reasons for the Bakkers' divorce and the nature of their relationship today.
(Tammy Faye never speaks ill of her ex-husband.) And strive though it might, I
remain unconvinced that Jim is the utter innocent the documentary would have us
conclude. Journalist Sheppard seems to bear the Bakkers no personal ill will,
but he remains adamant that Jim's oversight of PTL involved at least marginally
criminal ineptitude. Still, he offers a canny comment about Falwell's role in
the Bakkers' demise. Jim and Tammy Faye were definitely "scheming," he says,
but Falwell and his people were "cunning," and "cunning trumps scheming every
time."
Whatever Jim's conscious or neglectful malfeasance, this film is
convincing that Tammy Faye is a victim. She is outrageous but never insincere.
She's a person of some talent, astonishing good humor and inspiring
perseverance. Most important, she's a person with a genuine goodness of heart.
I still wouldn't want to watch Tammy Faye sing or listen to her vapid
declarations about her relationship with God. But seeing the world through her
eyes has opened mine. And I am ashamed for having felt so superior to her, for
judging her guilty of things for which she was almost assuredly innocent, for
thinking about her and her circumstances with such contempt. And I know this
for sure: I would rather stand at her side before the gates of Heaven than to
get in the line for judgment headed by the likes of the sanctimonious Rev. Mr.
Falwell.
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