“Let’s give the devil a black eye,” says Jim, as the phones start ringing. In 1979 the investigations into misuse of funds begin and they try to turn it into an on-air pledge opp. The pledges rolled in, financing fancy houses and luxury lifestyles for the Bakkers and their family.
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The PTL (Praise The Lord) TV network, “broadcasting 24 hours a day until the second coming of Christ”, with its late-night talk show (Little Richard and Ronald Reagan were guests) and Heritage theme park in South Carolina – the first Christian water park, surely something the world was longing for - reached 20 million viewers world-wide. “I’m in the business of healing people.”īut it would have been nice to have more details about how the immensely successful Bakker empire slid into corruption. “We’re all just people made out of the same old dirt,” she tells the men in her oddly Sarah Palin-like accent. Falwell is a snake in the grass, with a creepy hissing delivery. She refuses to sit with the other wives at a big-wig lunch and instead plonks herself down, baby in tow, with the men, and makes no bones about dismissing the crusade waged by the Reverends Pat Robertson (Gabriel Olds) and Jerry Falwell (Vincent D’Onofrio) against the American liberal agenda. In the most memorable scene, she gives a powerful, empathy-filled satellite interview in 1985 with Steve Pieters (Randy Havens), a gay pastor and activist and “an AIDS patient,” as she puts it, establishing her as an LGBTQ icon. It’s her genuine humanity and tolerance in the rigidly homophobic world of televangelism that attracted Chastain to Tammy’s story. God does not want us to be poor, she agrees, batting her famous eyelashes, and forgives him when their car is repossessed after he fails to make the payments. They meet at bible college in Minneapolis in 1960 and Jim’s prosperity gospel is right up Tammy’s street. It’s interesting, though, to see Jim and Tammy at the start of their itinerant evangelism. And montages speed up time, leaving no room for reflection. But we never get far beneath the layers of make-up, the over-the-top costumes and the Betty Boop voice, not to mention the cutesy puppets that sparked Tammy Faye’s success (pull in the kids and the parents will follow, was her motto). It’s all a bit insubstantial, shallow and predictable, often verging on SNL-esque parody, though Chastain portrays the giggling Tammy Faye with a huge amount of vim and vigour and Garfield does a creditable turn as nattily clad, boyish Jim. Why, you may ask, another one now? This biopic, directed by Michael Showalter ( The Big Sick Search Party Wet Hot American Summer) starring Jessica Chastain as Tammy Faye – she was inspired by the original, bought the rights to Tammy Faye's life and immersed herself in all things Tammy for seven years – with Andrew Garfield as Jim, doesn’t adequately answer that question.