The Eyes of Tammy Faye

Director Michael Showalter, screenwriter Abe Sylvia, and producer/star Jessica Chastain adapt Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato’s documentary The Eyes of Tammy Faye (2000) into the kind of fictionalized biographical drama that normally serves as little more than a showcase for actors made up to look like the real-life folks they play. Even when this type of picture is made with an A-list cast and released in theaters, it’s hard for any of them not to feel like a “TV movie.” The disparaging connotation of that term comes from the exploitation aspects of movies made for the small screen in the 1970s—even though, despite their low production values, ‘70s TV movies were often quite good. Biopics like The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1971), Babe (1975), Sybil (1976), and Elvis (1979) were far more than mere showcases for actors. And TV movies like Brian's Song (1970), Duel (9171) and Friendly Fire (1979) proved talented directors could do amazing things on the small screen. But in the era of prestige television, the TV movie has come to mean an awkwardly star-studded and blandly directed fictionalization of events that are so current the ink doesn’t even seem dry on the headlines that inspire them—think of the HBO films Recount (2008), Too Big to Fail (2011), and Paterno (2018).

The Eyes of Tammy Faye certainly succumbs to many of the clichés and formulas of the traditional TV docudrama, but it succeeds far better than most at bringing a fresh perspective to a true story rather than simply recreating events that audiences already know. Part of the reason for this success must be that the subjects, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, are as old a story as the TV movie itself. But the main reason their story avoids the usual pitfalls of a Hollywood biopic treatment is that they were such extreme and exaggerated caricatures in real life that any fictionalized telling of their story (outside of SNL skits) almost has to downplay their eccentricities rather than double down on them.

Jim and Tammy Faye were students at a Minneapolis Bible college who fell in love, got married, became itinerant evangelists, worked at Pat Robertson's fledgling Christian Broadcasting Network and went on to become the biggest televangelists in the height of the fundamentalist Christian broadcasting phenomena. By the time they had their own religious television network and Christian theme park, Jim Bakker was under investigation by the FCC for allegedly misusing funds raised on the air and was later accused of rape by church secretary Jessica Hahn. He was also the subject of homosexual allegations from many of his staffers. Tammy Faye became a national joke in the 1980s due to her comically high voice, tolerance of her husband’s philandering, and addiction to both pills and cosmetics. But she was also championed as one of the few mainstream evangelists to talk about people suffering from HIV/AIDS in a sympathetic way. She became an advocate for LGBT folks at the height of the AIDS epidemic when most of her Christian cronies branded gay people as lepers and most of her pals in government would not even utter the term AIDS.

There’s a lot to cram into a 126-minute film but Sylvia and Showalter do a fine job. Even the expected “defining moments of childhood” scenes that plague this genre, work well here. The early sequences of young Tammy Faye (played by Chandler Head) growing up in smalltown ’50s Minnesota under the harsh rule of her judgmental, self-interested mother (Cherry Jones bringing nuance to what could have been a one-dimensional role) don’t feel like ubiquitous beats included only to explain how Tammy Faye became Tammy Faye. This early section just plays like the compelling story it is.

Once Chastain takes over the role, she never lets go. Her Oscar-worthy performance shines through Tammy Faye’s clownish face-paint to present this caricature as a human being. She’s not quite on par with John Hurt in The Elephant Man, but much like that performance, she invites the viewer to see past the make-up and experience the feelings of the person inside. 

Andrew Garfield also shines as Jim Bakker. His re-creations of the smiling, simpering, TV charlatan are spot on, but it’s the domestic scenes of the Bakkers at home that set this film apart from the typical biopic. We see their TV personas are not merely an act they put on for the cameras and we come to understand how each aspect of their lives infuses all others. We watch them transform into their own creations and, in turn, become the sinners they claim to want to save.   

While The Eyes of Tammy Faye certainly paints its titular character sympathetically, it doesn’t shy away from how horrible and criminal so much of the world she inhabited and abetted was. Showalter’s film doesn’t answer a lot of the questions it raises. Tammy Faye’s views on, and knowledge of, the details of the various controversies that surrounded her remain somewhat enigmatic. But the film’s inability (or unwillingness) to dig too deeply past its subject’s stated beliefs feels oddly appropriate in the case of a woman whose faith enabled such self-denial. 

I often find it difficult to believe people Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker even existed, let alone that they had such massive influence over so many millions of individuals. But the comical aspects of their fraudulent, money-grubbing form of Christianity is quaint and cozy compared to what it has wrought. So, like many successful contemporary films, this movie ends up as a work of nostalgia. Watching it, we long to return to a time of innocence, when we could laugh at the monsters our culture created. The film shows us a time when the lies, hypocrisy, and hubris of brazen charlatans brought them down as opposed to making them stronger.