Puppets & Prayers: THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE

I can’t say I ever watched PTL (Praise the Lord) TV network or The 700 Club, but of course, I remember Jim and Tammy Faye Baker. Televangelists were like the Celebrity Chefs of the early 2000’s, impossible to miss.  And even if the holy rollers weren’t riding high in the 80’s, Tammy Faye would have been hard to ignore with, as she puts it, her trademark eye lashes.  Which the movie doesn’t exactly reveal why or when this began. In Bible College she’s chastised for wearing a regular amount of makeup; she looks reasonably contemporary when she and Jim start doing their puppet show on the Pat Robertson (Gabriel Olds) program.  Then gradually more makeup and more makeup, until she actually overhears Jim and his staff laughing behind her back at her clownish appearance, which must’ve only fueled her desire to take it up a notch because we learn at the beginning of the movie, which takes place not long before her death in 2007, that most of her made up face was surgically permanent!

Director Michael Showalter (The Big Sick)  has the 2000 documentary of the same name by Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato to help navigate him competently enough through this biopic – we see a young Tammy Faye of 10 or 11 being shunned by those in her town, not even welcomed at church because she had a different father then her brothers and sisters; and how she wins over the congregation with a bit of theatrics.  We see her fall for an abundance preaching young minister in Bible college, Jim Baker (Andrew Garfield) who is immediately smitten by the colorful Tammy Faye. Then their rise to the top of the Televangelists heap.  My favorite scene is when Tammy decides she’d rather sit at the table of men all gathered around the most despicable of conservative leaders Jerry Falwell (Vincent D’Onofrio) at a social gathering where the women and the men folk are expected to eat separately.  She not only inserts herself physically, baby in tow, but proceeds to gently chide Falwell in her Minnesota-y cartoon voice, that his hatred of gays goes against Christianity.

Garfield’s performance is very good as Baker when he realizes his desire to run an empire has become overwhelming and you see him rise to a level of panic he tries desperately to tamp down.  But Jessica Chastain (Executive Producer) is ALL IN as Tammy Faye, her ability to find a person under all that makeup, fashion, furs, song and general over-the-top-ness is astounding.  The film is deliberately biased. The point is for the audience to see beyond the scandals and pageantry. Similarly to Margot Robbie in I TONYA, Chastain wants people to appreciate despite what may seem like only tabloid fodder, a deeper life having been lived.