Faithspotting The Eyes of Tammy Faye

Intro: I'm Kenny Dickson and I'm Mike Hatch, welcome to Faith Spotting.

Audio Clip: Yeah, God told me he wants me to have what Pat has. But if you keep acting like that, if you keep talking to follow all that way, I'm not gonna ever get their God's been talking to me to your gym. And he said that I got to speak up. So here goes, you can't leave me at home, all alone feeling unloved and useless. And he said that I belong on tv just as much as you do and that I should, I should sing and I should be funny and I should talk about real things for grownups, just you know, just the way you do. And he says, I'm not going to tell people who's going to help Jim with the business of healing people.

Mike: There's a clip from the Eyes of Tammy Faye by the time you're listening to this, it is in theaters. I'm mike Hatch, I'm Kenny Dickson and this is Faith Spotting. So, okay, before we get into our usual Siskel and Ebert so tell us a little bit about the movie.

Kenny: Yes, this is the story of Tammy Faye Bakker and it is based on the documentary of the same name. Eyes of Tammy Faye and it stars Jessica Chastain as Tammy Faye Bakker. She's also the producer and the champion in this project for over a decade. Uh Andrew Garfield stars as Jim Bakker Cherry jones costars or has a supporting role as Tammy Faye's mother and Vincent Donofrio who stars as Jerry Falwell Sr the prominent minister of that time, it is very much just a story of that time and of Tammy Faye.

Kenny: It is also though trying to to highlight some of the aspects of her that were buried, shall we say or forgotten what I thoroughly enjoyed it. Yeah, it is a film that that really uh and and hopefully we're scheduled to have an interview here after the end of our time together with the director. And one of the things that I was curious about is just the fine line between showing the film and it is has comedic elements. It is very much a comedy, you laugh throughout most of it uh and showing them in their true life, which in many ways was a caricature of of life, but yet not letting that dominate the character slash person arc of Tammy Faye. And the things that uh Jessica wanted to bring forth in making the film, it was really a narrow line that they that they had to tread, I thought, and I think they did it well.

Mike: One of the things that I did last week when Kenny and I got together, we were just doing another podcast is I showed him an old Saturday night live video that had Jan Hooks in it as Tammy Faye Bakker. And I think Rick Moranis was Jim Baker and it was a complete and total caricature, which this movie could have been like you said if that line, you know, wasn't set for Jessica Chastain.

Kenny: But still just it would have been easy to to lose control of the project and allow the project narrative and in the laughs. Uh and director Michael Showalter is known for his comedy writing,

Mike: definitely

Kenny: directing and everything. I'm really surprised they didn't do that and uh it really is is a big achievement I think.

Mike: Yeah, I totally agree with you. Going down the list here. First of all, I'm with you. I totally enjoyed the movie. I thought it was incredibly well done. It was very interesting. It was very entertaining. Uh it was cool for me, even though I know a lot of it was dramatic and just written in to fill in the blanks of what I had heard in and out really throughout my childhood my you know, teenage years about Tammy Faye and Jim knowing what I knew about them. But especially with Jessica Chastain bringing out the humanity in Tammy Faye Bakker. The one scene that really hit me that I'm sure you'll probably agree with was when she had an interview with a gentleman. He had AIDS. And it was a very serious scene. It was a very heartfelt scene.

Audio Clip: What happened when you told your mom and dad that you were feeling this way. Well, my mother cried, huh? And my father held my hand

and told me that I was his son no matter what. Uh thank God you know, thank God for a mom and dad who will stand with a young person. I think that's so important because no matter what happens to a young person in their lives there's still your boy, there's still your girl, no matter what happens in their life. And I think it's very important that we as mom and dad loved her anything. And that's the way with Jesus, Jesus loves us through anything, Jesus loves me. Just the Jesus loves the way that I love. And have you found it to be true that people want to stay away and that they're afraid to be in the same room as you and breathe the same air that you breathe, yes Timmy and how sad is that? And we as Christians who are supposed to love everyone are afraid so badly if it aids patients that we will not go up to them, I put her arm around him, tell him that we care.

Mike: I'm not gonna lie there a lot of times that I sit there and I watch a tv show or watch a movie and I go yep that is the clip that they're going to show at the Emmys or that's the clip that they're going to show at the Academy Awards and for me that scene was definitely one that as I'm sure she's going to be nominated for an Academy award, I'll put down money for that. I really do believe she will be, that could be a clip that they would show, you know, she could possibly win the award. That's my thought. But the rest of it again was just as good. Andrew Garfield, I thought was very good. Not as strong as Jessica Chastain, in my opinion. Still thought he was pretty good. But I think Jessica really stole the show for me.

Kenny: She did. But Tammy stole the show from Jim. I mean, there would be very true. Jim Bakker has to an extent, but but it was all Tammy Faye she she overshadowed him, shadowed, uh also and if you do some looking, so he (Andrew) was while he was doing that, his mother was dying. And so even as they were wrapping his mother ended up dying and the, and he left the uh to go be with her for some time, I was very impressed. I'm always impressed with him. He's one of those that I don't really think about him until I see it in a movie. Then I get excited and I go see it and I'm always happy And you know, he had said that he didn't want to be the caricature villain, you know, that that ties the heroin to the railroad tracks and twitches his moustache and he didn't. And and so that was his one caveat when Jessica um approached him and um, and she said no, she wants him to be, you know, his full character.

Mike: And I do believe that that did happen when you watch this movie, you will see both of these living breathing human beings. One of them is still alive. Jim Bakker, Tammy Faye has passed away, but you see them through these characters. It's a very entertaining movie. And there's a lot to it, there's a lot to talk about with this movie. There's a lot to see. There's a lot to learn and it's completely and totally worth your time. And just like Kenny was saying, I'm really hoping that our interview with Michael Showalter will come through because I'm excited not only talk to him about this movie, Eyes of Tammy Faye, but also the work that he's done with The Big Sick. That was that's one of my favorite comedies about a year or two ago.

Kenny: Part of things that you know, if We do have time to me that that film mirrors this one in a lot of ways and that he's working with the star who has a very, very vested interest and you know, you know what's it like doing that and they're both humorous and and that's as well. So the genesis of this came about when Jessica Chastain was doing the Press tour for zero Dark 30 and she was heading bound about of insomnia and she was up watching and she saw the documentary on Late at night

Mike: It is an excellent documentary by the way.

Kenny: Yeah, yeah, very good. And so then she became interested. So it shows sometimes, you know, you can get good things when you say late at night uh watch watching the documentary for me. One of the lynch linchpin if not the linchpin character is her mother who begins in the beginning of the film. She it shows Tammy Faye as a child and she is going to a Pentecostal church. She's looking in the window and there's the Pentecostal preacher preaching as you can imagine they do. And she's kept outside because she was a child from her first marriage, from her mom's first marriage and she had been banished from the church until the church found out that she could play the piano and they needed a piano player. So they let the mother come back but they wouldn't let the daughter come back and she's 8 9. You know, she's young because she reminded them of that she was divorced.

Audio Clip: Saved if you let me come in with you, God loves me. Like you're supposed to. There's reasons you can't be seen in church and town? Is it because everyone thinks you're a harlot?

Kenny: Here you have this girl wanting to come give her life to Christ, wanting to, to experience what she's literally looking through a window and watching others experience, and yet she's on the other side of the window. And finally she just by her determination that will come through later and you see she, she has no fear of confronting people, especially jerry fault.

Mike: I was gonna say that was another great scene.

Kenny: And so she comes in and she gives her life, she receives Communion and she begins speaking in tongues and the mother, acted by Cherry Woods, is  to get her out. And she has been slain by the spirit, and that is term, literally, now all of a sudden because she's demonstrated that she is the living embodiment and proof that the spirit is in that church. So, you know, in one minute she's banished. And now, well, because she's ecstatic and pees on herself, because she's so into that, then now she's one of us now we can let you know it's a pivotal scene.

Kenny: And then I guess before that one scene when she had first come to the church and she and her mother is saying, well, if you come in, they're gonna kick us out and then your brothers and sisters, their souls are gonna rot in hell all because you didn't stay where you're supposed to, it was putting that it's every evil caricature of that type of uh faith where there is no grace and there's only judgment. But yet at the end of the film, she is the one who is urging Tammy Faye, you're blinded, you're, you're you're going down a path following Jim who was obsessed with money, obsessed with, you know, the the original prosperity gospel.

Kenny:I mean, you know, we look at the other ones today from Houston and some other places, they had their genesis there because it was all that and the fancy houses and all of that. And, and so it's her mother who on the one hand at the beginning was this voice that was antithetical to faith is now the one that's calling out the antithesis that the others, you know? So it's a wonderful, like, like I say, it's a linchpin character.

Mike: Absolutely, I totally agree with you,

Kenny: A couple of quotes that, you know, and Jessica's offered, I think that they're important. She says “we weren't looking to make fun of anybody or do anything but tell an essential truth about their dynamic Jim and Tammy Faye the universality of their story and how we can all get lost and follow the wrong God and how beautiful it is to to be humbled.”

Kenny: There's always that temptation, as we will slide into the faith talk, that we can get lost and and we can, you know, our God is in our stomach as scripture says where it's not God, but somehow something inside of us that were worshipping, you know, either our our ego or station in life for creature comforts, something like that. That's certainly what they fell into.

Mike: It was something to see at the end when the fall did happen, how humbled she was. You know, she wasn't living in a beautiful mansion, she was living in an apartment complex, driving an old Honda visiting her at the time I guess ex-husband in jail or she was in the process of getting a divorce. So it was something that there was a lot of humbleness going on right there. But another one of the scenes that I really enjoyed when she came back from, you know, whatever she was doing, running errands or whatever was her seeing a couple of guys making fun of her over in an apartment, in the area of the apartment complex and almost anybody else would have put their head down and just in shame and walked inside, but instead she decided to go over and introduce herself to the guys and hopefully make friends with them.

Kenny: You know that you could say that's her naivety maybe. Yeah, yeah, and in that and in others because it's just a part of, of really who we’re supposed to be again, as Christian are, instead of you know, yelling at them or gesturing to them or ignoring them, you try to engage them in conversation, you tried to, to get to know them and more importantly, let them get to know you. And again, that's what, and we've talked about that in several films, that's what we are are called to do. And it's interesting, I'm really have been surprised pleasantly and and just the depth of, of faith and theology that that Jessica and Andrew have have demonstrated.

Kenny: So when they were preparing for this part, they went and visited the churches in the area where Heritage usa was that was where jim and Tammy Faye built their, their empire.

Mike: That would crumble.

Kenny: And you know, they went there wondering. will we be recognized, will be thrown out and this and that? And and it seemed like to an extent and uh they, the community, welcomed them and I think wanted them to perhaps know the story but, but the fact that they were willing to put themselves in that place, I think says a lot and it really just shows the commitment. And Jessica Chastain is becoming known for this of, of really showing and choosing projects that, that that highlight people in different ways, especially women.

Mike: And I was gonna say that my other favorite part that she was in that you just mentioned a few minutes ago Zero Dark 30. I mean that's the one that you could tell that she put her heart and soul into. And you saw it come across on the screen obviously very, very different stories. But you still see that same, I guess the word that comes to mind is commitment to her character. And it comes through off the screen and on the screen which I believe bleed into each other.

Kenny: And even when you look back The Help now a lot of people look for help and and they, I don't really do it, look at it and I don't see it as white savior complex, but even in that story at the time, it was about the empowerment, not only of of the people of color in rural southern United States during the sixties and fifties, but also the women who are outside of even, you know, white women who were, and her character in particular, who was, who was in that film, she was sort of dirty white trash in that and yet she was excluded, she was on the margins. So really she seems to have a fondness for, and a commitment to telling the stories of people who are marginalized and, and the fact that Andrew sort of bought into that, um, I think is important. He talks about, and again in this article of that, that I have, he talks about the pervading religion right now is prosperity. And talking about the timeliness of this right now, we're living in a time where prosperity is, you know, what we seem to and he likens it to, and he calls them the uh, they're the first social media people, They are pre-Kardashian Kardashian's I think is the line he used and where, where everything draws attention to us. So it's not just prosperity of money, which is that, but its prosperity of attention, its prosperity of notoriety, certainly those are even or more fleeting. But he said, you know, in this article, he talked about, he says, “look at the mega churches now it's alive and well, it's all prosperity doctrine. I am enough if I have this, and in reality finally concludes it was painful, inhabiting the space of total dependence on something that is undependable in calling it God.” And that just that just hits spot on to our, you know, to challenge as well as an indictment to two persons of faith. That's one of the faith issues.

Kenny: The others, you know, that that came out is really just remind, it's a reminder that we are all sinful as Paul teaches in Romans: were all sinful and and fall short of the glory of God. So, you know, you see Jim and Tammy Faye and I, you may have, I have, I'll say Just tremendous theological differences, and 98% of what they did is offensive, not only to me, but more importantly from my point of view to Christ.

Kenny: The whole prosperity thing, the whole “I'm blessed, I'm blessed” singing. But yet there is a part of her that is of God's call, and her risking failure, and her not uh substituting convenience uh and swallowing what she really thought about people who are gay and how we shouldn't criticize them, how we shouldn't, you know, how we should love them and how they are,

Mike: which is pretty rebellious.

Kenny: at the time was very rebellious, especially when you're when you're in a room with Jerry Falwell. Exactly, and Pat Robertson. I didn't realize, little Segway, I didn't realize that Bakker was the one who started the 700 Club portion of CBN, that Robertson, Robertson stole and he still, he still has it. So to bring up those things in question.

Audio Clip: People are people, whether or not they're gay or not, and you know, God doesn't make dirt. I think God doesn't make bad things. God is my witness. I made a pledge to continue to expose descends in this country. The bible explicitly forbids homosexuality. There's no gray area. Mm Well, you know, I, I I don't think of them as homosexuals. I just think of them as other human beings that I love. You know, we're all just people made out of the same old dirt and God didn't make any junk.

Mike: My wife's father always used to say, God does not make mistakes.

Kenny: Yeah, that's true. That's true. So to have that. And then to, to continue that even in the midst of the success. You know, it's one thing to say, it's sort of maybe when you're trying to come up and it's sort of out of being new at the game. But then when you have the empire and you know what's funding that empire and you know that you have people that would love to get their hands on that empire and will use anything to try to tear you down to come through. In a present in the interview you were talking about with the with the person who has AIDS talking about his homosexuality and talking about him in a redeeming way and that in a way in which you know, God loves him, very sympathetic way. Here is very sympathetic way and the air they were breathing, financial, theological and everything. Uh just really speaks a great deal of her. So, you know, even though, you know, we all we all have blind spots into how we're not living in as Christians were not being the disciple, God would like this to be we have moments where we drop we have blind spots to the ways in which we are not. So this film reminds us not universal. There are some people, I'm sure that that really don't have that redemption part, but most of the people that we may disagree with just very intently yet there still can be some of that uh that they are seeking the other obviously is the conflation of the gospel and the whole prosperity thing that's now nothing new back then, It was. But this idea that that that God wants us to be wealthy, that God wants us to be rich of things in material wealth. And that if we're faithful enough, God will give us that when there's no teaching of that of Christ in that, I mean, and it's the exact opposite. Uh and God expects us to be faithful. God expects us to be willing to suffer. God wants us, you know, to to really do the opposite of that, how the church in many parts of the church with a big c and people of faith um have just reversed the actual teachings of Jesus to, to make it to where prosperity is a is something to be desired in a sign of, of God's blessing is something we need to to be reminded of. And certainly this film talks about that definitely also then sort of the cousin of that uh is the conflation of the gospel and national identity and now those two have become one. So God wants us to be rich and God loves us because we're Americans are loyalty is to America and America is God and God is America all that nonsense, which is and again itself and difficult to uh the teachings of Christ.

Kenny: Then the last part just to me and we've we've talked about it, I think in some just the guts it took for Jessica to follow and, and to spend a decade of her life trying to get this project moving and filmed and financed and written and all of that and shot and then taking on and being the project and she, she talks about she had times when she was fearful that she was just gonna say this was a horrendous mistake and she was going to be laughed, you know, and that she was gonna, is gonna bring nothing but humiliation, but yet to have the faith to follow what she, in my words, I would call a calling and you know, to persevere. And as Paul says, also to run the race and putting together a film. It's, even with somebody with her standing, you would think all she wants to make this film and snaps her fingers and it happens that that's not it.

Mike: It's got a lot of moving parts.

Kenny: Yeah, and just in in an industry where if you make a mistake, you're in a lot of ways like Tammy Faye, you put yourself out there and it doesn't work, then you know, you might be, you know, you can do that once

Mike: And you’re out of the business quite literally.

Kenny: maybe twice,

Mike: And so it takes a lot to bring you back.

Kenny: Yeah, it does, it does. She had a passion. She wants, she had a story that that she thinks needed to be told. She plugged on through and she didn't allow the doubts, the fears that that we would all have, to keep her from doing that. Her performance is out there. You can't do that performance halfway. In fact, I read something that, that she thinks, or there may be a possibility that all the prosthetics and all the heavy makeup may have damaged her skin, uh, somewhat, maybe permanently. It's quite an achievement.

Mike: I think one thing I noticed to going back to the makeup and the very beginning of the movie, you remember when we saw a really extreme close up of Jessica Chastain, obviously playing Tammy Faye Bakker later in her life, almost the clownish sort of look that she had with all of the makeup. And then obviously Jessica Chastain with the prosthetics, it brought me back to, I don't know if you ever saw the Joan Rivers documentary, but it was very much the same thing. We saw Joan Rivers without makeup and you're going, oh my goodness, look at it without makeup. So it just sort of reminded me of that because the person that was doing Tammy Faye's makeup in this movie said, well, hey, you know, do I need to do something with your life? So no, no, that's that's permanently done. That was that was tattoo, you want to take off the foundation, you can't do that because it's permanently like that. So it reminded me of that, but in a very different way. So I thought that was pretty interesting.

Audio Clip: One a little help with the foundation remover? Oh no, that's it, that be out there, permanently lying. Oh, my eyes are permanently lined and my eyebrows are permanently on. So there's not a whole lot you can do my goodness, I didn't know have you never done pictures without those islands, nope, and I never will because that's my trademark and you know, if I take that away then it's not me and no one's gonna want to look at me without my trademark. So I hold on to that even if we soften him up kept no, you can do anything you want. But my eyelashes state right? Where they are. That's really you owe Yeah, this is who I am.

Mike: Yeah. So in a way she was naked by putting on her makeup.

Kenny: That's right. Exactly. It was not a pretty look. No, it wasn't.

Mike: And that was that was referred to in the in the movie and you know, one where Jim baker, you know through a friend of his uh but that's another whole story that, you know, we didn't talk about. But another friend of his that they while she was listening in uh started making fun of her almost looking like a clown because of all of the makeup. Yeah, I think that yeah, the friend who was his his assistant and could be more well,

Kenny: Not pretty sure.

Mike: No doubt, but he said, oh you're people are gonna start thinking you look like Tammy Faye. And then her husband laughed and you know, and I guess she was expecting him to defend her and all that and he laughed at it.  

Kenny: And even continued it. Falwell, when he was trying to grab their power in their 20 million daily viewers used her again. It's it's not something, you know, she she had some definite blind spots and I think that she heard, I knew people.

I had a friend of mine whose grandmother sent in X number of dollars a week heritage and thought they were doing, I don't condone that by any means. But there was a part to her that she was faithfully trying to follow what she believed God wanted.

Mike: It seemed like an actually a good person. So again, Kenny and I had the opportunity to sit down with director Michael Showalter and he was director of The Big Sick. He wrote and produced, which I loved. Wet Hot American Summer. So you go really that into a potential Academy Award nominee. But yeah, we were excited to sit down with him.

Interview with Director Michael Showalter

Mike: So here we are with Michael Showalter and Kenny and I.

Kenny: Hi, Michel. thank you for letting us be a part of this big day for you.

Michael: Well, thank you. Thank you for having me.

Kenny: Congratulations on a great film.

Michael: Thank you. Thank you so much.

Mike: Hello, Michael, I'm Michael Michael. Lots of Michael's going on here. We both loved the movie. We just recorded our podcast for it. We're going to link this interview to it. But we both really, really enjoyed. Oh good.

Michael: That means so much to me. Thank you so much.

Mike: I'm so glad to hear that Kenny, did you want to start with some questions?

Kenny A couple of things that we talked about that I brought up, I was really fascinated and impressed that you were able to keep the sort of the, I called it the character arc in the life arc of tammy that Jessica really wanted to bring forth throughout the film and it didn't get overcome with the humor and the other things. But this passion she had for serving others and for her sympathy for gay and lesbian issues and folks, I was just very impressed that you were able to protect that character. Was that a challenge?

Michael Showalter: I wouldn't say it was a challenge. I mean, it was very much the movie that we wanted to make, you know, it was very much what we wanted it to be. There's a kind of fine line between showing someone as a character and a caricature, but there was none of that with Jessica. I mean, it was just the entire approach going in. We knew we wanted to make this movie about this character and treat her with humanity and not in any way to make fun of her or do a send up of her, make it, you know, where we're laughing at her or anything like that. We know none of us at any point were interested in doing that version of this story. We wanted to try to peel back the layers of what we know her to be, which is this caricature. So it's sort of like we all know that part, but what's beneath the surface and in a way that's the very beginning of the movie where we meet her, You know, the makeup person is saying, can we take your makeup off? And she says, no, it's tattooed onto my face. And then the makeup person says, so that's really you. And she goes, yep, this is who I am, but it's not who she is, it's not who he is, there's so much more there. And so the whole experiment of the movie or the whole journey of the story is to try to get the audience and to get all of us to see her for more than just the surface and that's kind of a lesson.

Mike: Hopefully that or the, or the takeaway for me is to try to look at things a little bit deeper than what's just on the surface. I Was telling Kenny when we were doing the podcast. It reminded me a little bit, I don't know if you saw the Joan Rivers documentary that she did. That was very much a part of the beginning of it was her totally without makeup and then we saw her putting on the makeup. So I thought it was kind of cool that you guys did in a different way. I thought that was really neat.

Kenny: The other part that I was really impressed in was Sherry Jones portrayal of Tammy's mother and how this was very much a linchpin character, In the beginning she was what maybe pushed her into Tammy Faye, into some of the, the thoughts and beliefs she had. And then at the, at the other end she was sort of a moderating influence. And to me it was just an astounding performance of a very well written and directed character.

Michael: It's a complicated character because she's, she's kind of the voice of reason in a sense, in a lot of ways, Tammy wants just wants love and acceptance of her mother and her is in her whole life is kind of a journey for that love and acceptance. We learned in the beginning of the movie that she's rejected from the church because she's the child of divorced parents. And so she's not even allowed in church and her mother is, you know, saying, you know, if you come into church then we're all going to get kicked out. So the other family members are allowed because her brothers and sisters are half brothers and sisters. But she also is there as just sort of a voice of reason saying, don't get into deep or, or you know, you'll lose your way.

Michael: Absolutely thanks guys. Thanks a lot. Take care, take care.

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