“You go into it as a business, and you work it as a business.”

Drake’s rating: I’m gonna need a bigger bucket

Drake’s review: If you had “Drake reviews a documentary about an evangelical preacher” on your Mutant Bingo Card, it’s your lucky day! Collect your winnings at the door and get them into a lead-lined box as soon as possible, while everyone else scratches their heads and wonders what just happened.

Honestly, I hadn’t planned on reviewing Marjoe. However, I was working on a review for an American International Pictures flick called Bobbie Jo and the Outlaw (yes, the one with Lynda Carter), and I realized that I was going into the weeds a bit in trying to explain just who Marjoe Gortner was, and where he came from… and it occurred to me that the a simpler tack to take would be to simply review his “origin story.”

And that’s what Marjoe essentially is.

So way back in 1948, a child preacher started appearing in revival shows. This led to no small amount of national fame as the boy at a mere four years old was performing marriage ceremonies as well as sermons. Named Marjoe (after Mary and Joseph), he is seen at the beginning of the movie in old newsreel footage, effortlessly performing a lengthy address with the unbridled energy of youth. It’s an impressive performance, made all the more so by Marjoe’s adolescence.

Cut to some 20-odd years later, and a now-adult Marjoe Gortner once again lays down his spiel. This time, however, he’s doing it for the benefit of a team of documentary filmmakers who are making a movie about Gortner, who has had a somewhat tumultuous few decades. Back when the teenage preacher was much less of a hot property, his father ran off with all of the money the boy had made the family — an amount Marjoe estimates at nearly $3 million. Shortly thereafter, he leaves the evangelical life behind, but several years later he goes back to it, solely as a means to make money. By the time the movie is being shot, he’s on his way out, permanently. The movie itself is going to make sure he’s not welcome in a revival tent any time soon.

Marjoe is a revealing look inside evangelism, as Marjoe Gortner discloses the tricks used by the preachers to keep their audience engaged, enthralled, and eager to open their wallets up come donation time. He lets the documentary team in on the secrets behind the shows, such as how they fake speaking in tongues, and reveals to them that he was never a believer, despite his youthful exuberance.

He learned it all from parents, and was coached for long hours every day to put on a perfect show. He didn’t get to go outside and play, instead memorizing sermons at his mother’s knee. And if he grew tired and his young mind wandered? She would hold a pillow over his head and, in his words, “smother me a little.” Or she would hold him under water.

It’s horrifying stuff that the young Marjoe endured, and amazing that, even when making the film, he stays upbeat and positive. He laughs about much of it, seemingly relieved just to tell someone about his life and trauma, and unburden himself of his troubled past. He enjoys the shows and the crowd’s energy, but he’d rather be a rock star. Hey, who wouldn’t?

Scenes of various revival shows are intercut with Marjoe talking to the filmmakers. He performs “faith healing,” and sells simple handkerchiefs as miracle cures. Then he retreats back to his hotel with a paper bag full of money, dividing up the bills into stacks by denomination, and talks about how much heavier the bag was in the old days. It feels like nothing so much as a street dealer counting his take for the day.

Another show simply uses a large bucket to collect the cash as attendees gibber and collapse in the aisles. At dinner, a fellow preacher tells Marjoe about the new property he recently bought. It’s some 800 acres, which is a lot of buckets.

Marjoe stresses the importance of how this is all run as a business, and without that mindset you won’t go far. But he’s grown tired of lying and wants another life for himself. He succeeds, of course, becoming an actor and co-starring in movies like Earthquake and Starcrash, but that’s all in an uncertain future at the time of Marjoe. Here, he’s just a young man looking to rip the band-aid off of his troubled past and finally live his own life. And just maybe collect a paycheck that he doesn’t have to carry home in a paper bag.

Intermission!

• Marjoe won the Academy Award for Best Documentary in 1972, the first of two for documentarian Sarah Kernochan, who won her second award three decades later for Thoth.
• Criminally, Marjoe Gortner was never even nominated for his role in Starcrash.
• This was actually thought to be a lost film, until the original negatives were found and it was restored.