Poor kid reminds me of Marjoe Gortner, child evangelist, faith healer and soprano saxophone player at age 4: a good-looking boy like Ram, with that rare kind of personal magnetism that bowls people over. Made a ton of money for his unscrupulous parents, and then he got adolescent and got to thinking about the meaning of his life, and he freaked & ran. Picked up by the proverbial rich older woman looking for the usual, who gave him some love & affection and a pretty good education. In 1972, in the depth of Nixon-dom and the Vietnam War, this remarkable young man turned his shady past into a great documentary film,
Marjoe: he went back on the gospel trail again to show the tent show, faith healing business from the inside.
"When I was traveling (as a minister), I'd see someone who wanted to get saved in one of my meetings, and he was so open and bubbly in his desire to get the Holy Ghost. It was wonderful and very fresh, but four years later I'd return and that person might be a hard-nosed intolerant Christian because he had Christ. That's when the danger comes in. People want an experience. They want to feel good, and their lives can be helped by it. But then as you start moving into the operation of the thing, you get into controlling people and power and money."
"I don't have any power. And neither do any of these other guys. Hundreds of people were healed at my crusades, but I know damn well it was nothing I was doing."
"Tongues is something you learn [...] It is a releasing that you teach yourself. You are told by your peers, the church and the Bible -- if you accept it literally -- that the Holy Ghost spake in another tongue; and you become convinced that it is the ultimate expression of the spirit flowing through you. The first time maybe you'll just go dut-dut-dut-dut and that's about all that will get out. Then you'll hear other people and the next night you may go dut-dut-dut-UM-dut-dut-DEET-dut-dut and it gets a little better. The next think you know, it's elahandosatelayeekcondelemosandreyaseya ... and it's a new language you've got down."
Marjoe wanted to be a movie star. He got good parts in some bad films in the '70s, then the Religious Right emerged in the '80s and his career pretty much died. So we'll never have that great remake of
Elmer Gantry we should have had. But
Marjoe is back in print and it's still worth watching, although he could have done so much more.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068924/
Someone even posted it on YouTube, if you can stand watching video in a tiny box:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKln1sQXvmo
Today Marjoe is an old man in California raising funds for charities, still bowling people over with his personal magnetism, still the hardest working man in fund-raising.
To young Mr. Ram I would say good luck kid, break a leg, and if anyone ever offers you a part in
The Food of the Gods, better go back to the jungle.
