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The Eyes of Tammy Faye packs a wealth of material into its 80 fast-paced minutes, affectionately portraying both Tammy Faye's "fabulousness" and her foibles, including her salad days as a Christian celebrity and her long dark years of the soul. The filmmakers interviewed ex-husband Jim and the couple's children, and the cameras even followed Tammy Faye to the offices of cable's USA Networks, where she unsuccessfully pitched some of her ideas for a new show. "I just love the camera," she says. "It's people. It's someone to talk to."

We also see Tammy Faye leading the choir at her new church home in Palm Desert, California, where she plays an organ donated to the congregation by Frank Sinatra. And we watch as she nervously prepares to sing at her first concert in over a decade—a gala at Oral Roberts University. In one of the film's most touching segments, the cameras follow Tammy Faye back to a deserted Heritage USA, where she busily straightens rust-covered deck chairs and cries over what might have been.

The film doesn't dwell on homosexuality, but it does make the point that Tammy Faye has expressed concern and compassion for homosexuals for nearly 20 years. In the '80s she did a televised interview with a homosexual minister who had AIDS. In 1996 she joined Jim J. Bullock, an openly homosexual comedian, as cohost of a short-lived talk program, The Jim J. & Tammy Faye Show.

"I never thought of him as gay," Tammy Faye says. "I thought of him as another human being I loved."

"Her beliefs are not in favor of homosexuality," Bullock says, "but she gave me the freedom to be who I am."

One brief segment of the documentary shows an informal Jim J. and Tammy Faye reunion. She asks him how he is coping with the loss of his lover, who died of AIDS, as well as his own struggles with being HIV-positive. The two talk honestly and openly about the pain and sorrow in their lives, demonstrating that Tammy Faye transcends the "love-the-sinner-but-hate-the sin" approach that sinners typically find so unsatisfactory.

"I don't label people," chirps Tammy Faye. "God didn't make any junk."

Such good-natured grace is a major reason that The Eyes of Tammy Faye has played to enthusiastic audiences at a number of homosexual film festivals. Homosexual activist Mel White, who is featured in the film, offers this explanation: "I think gay people like Tammy because Tammy likes gay people, and she's one of the only Christians in the world who seems to do so these days."

In a recent interview with The Advocate, Tammy Faye discusses how homosexual people have reciprocated her love. "When my husband [Messner] was in prison and I wasn't getting any Christmas presents, it was the gay community that gathered around me and saw that," she says. "They cared about me more than the Christians cared for me."

At times during The Eyes of Tammy Faye it's not clear whether the filmmakers are canonizing or mocking their subject. They asked her to sing the disco classic "I Will Survive," but she elected instead to close the film by singing, "Don't give up on the brink of a miracle."

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October 2 2000, Vol. 44, No. 11