The Eyes of Tammy Faye

Among the mushrooming industry of feature-length biopics and straight-to-streaming shows based on public celebrities and entrepreneurs, The Eyes of Tammy Faye—both the 2000 documentary and the 2021 biopic—stand out for centering the narrative on a complex and unforgettable female protagonist: televangelist, singer, activist, and cultural icon of the 1980s Tammy Faye Bakker (later, Messner). The two same-titled films are linked by the pair who wrote, directed, and produced the first film and have production credits in the second: Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, producing partners of RuPaul's Drag Race (2009–). Despite that connection, shared title, and identical central character, the films are noticeably different in quality and tone. The first Eyes of Tammy Faye is an endearingly campy 2000 documentary featuring extensive interviews with Tammy Faye Bakker Messner herself. It is rich with original footage from Jim Bakker and Tammy Faye Bakker's meteoric rise as founders of a series of religious broadcasting networks, followed by their equally meteoric downward spiral through adultery, fraud, divorce, and bankruptcy. It also follows her efforts at a late-career return to being a Christian entertainer. The second Eyes of Tammy Faye is an award-winning 2021 feature film directed by Michael Showalter, for which Jessica Chastain in the title role earned an Academy Award for Best Actress. Showalter's 2021 film echoes the 2000 documentary in many places but also freely departs from it into well-trodden biopic tropes about troubled celebrities on the brink of personal disaster

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