Marjoe

This documentary was a bit of a let down. There was entirly too much video of Marjoe preaching and not enough "dirt" or personal info about Marjoe as a person. It was a financially poor video with minimal substance quality. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone.

I remember seeing Marjoe Gortner on the "Dick Cavett Show" in the '70s. With the Acdemy Award - winning documentary, Marjoe re-invented himself as a "Tommy" - meets - "Jesus Christ Superstar," celebrity with a record contract and a role in the movie-length pilot for the TV series, "Kojak." As quickly as his presence burst on the scene, by the '80s it evaporated. Truth really is stranger than fiction and "Marjoe" is a strange, timeless tale of America's fascination with youth, salvation, money and power.

This movie is about 35 years old, not something released in 2007. Docs have come a long way since this profile

Marjoe Gortner first gained attention at the age of four as a child evangelist. He dropped out of that life in his early teens, but returned in his early twenties, touring the Pentecostal circuit of revival meetings, held in local churches or tents. As he admits in this documentary, he had never believed in God, and he was becoming increasingly unable to stomach what he was doing for a living. He decided to do one last tour, with a film crew in tow, exposing himself as a fraud, and casting considerable doubt on evangelists in general. The film shows him fully in character during the revival meetings, utterly convincing as a hellfire and damnation preacher. In between, he gives candid interviews to the documentary crew, explaining how the evangelism business works, and the kind of tricks it uses to manipulate the congregations. This is still fascinating to watch thirty-six years after it was filmed. Old school tent revivals of the kind we see here may be less common, but this sort of religious hucksterism is alive and well.