Glaube und Währung - Dr. Gene Scott, Fernsehprediger

Live TV at it's best…

I just had the opportunity to watch a print of this and I can't recommend it enough…a really fascinating documentary. It starts of so farcical that you wonder what Herzog's motives are in making this short film. However, we soon discover that this larger than life TV evangelist is not quite the pillar of towering strength that he portrays to his devoted audience (which as he reminds them, has grown well into it's 1000's).

What I found so fascinating about Dr Eugene Scott and his live telethon style broadcasts wasn't the usual reactionary opinions (although he had his share; homosexuals, women's rights etc). It was the surreal, completely unbelievable set-up of his television broadcasts. If you tried to make the most over the top parody of a TV evangelist possible, the result would still be nowhere near as ridiculous and captivating television as Scott's broadcasts. I've spent my share of time in America, seen many TV evangelists, but none of them have ever come close to Eugene Scott.

From the over the top set dressing, to his in house singing duo, to the old ladies manning the telephones (all major credit cards accepted) the whole broadcast really is quite astounding. The highlight though is Scott himself. Herzog shows us some quite extraordinary moments of television captured live by his small on-set crew. At one point the Dr grumbles ‘I will not be defeated tonight... (pause) not one more word until that thousand comes in'. At which point the presenter crosses his arms and just glares into the live camera refusing to speak until his requests for donations are met with.

With the Dr in full swing, resistance seems futile. Soon Scott is reporting on the incoming donations, all of which are in there hundreds, many thousands of dollars. However, it's just as well ‘It's not about the money!' as Scott screams at one point when again his requests to meet a larger target of a quarter of a million dollars are not met. Even when Scott's financial desires have been satisfied he still feels the need to insult his audience for not parting with their ‘few hundred miserable dollars' earlier.

The strength of this documentary though is in Herzog's one on one interviews with Scott, carried out on his estate or in the back of his stretched limo. Herzog's candid questioning shows an altogether different side to the TV persona his viewers were only allowed to whiteness. I've read that since Herzog's film, the FCC shut down Scott in the early 80's. I would suggest searching the Internet for Dr Scott. He seems to have embraced the Internet in order to continue his teachings.

God's Angry Man (1980)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Werner Herzog documentary about teleangelist Gene Scott who came under fire by the FCC in the late 1970s. Scott is certainly a strange character and Herzog does a good job at showing how much power this guy had over his viewers and he's also honest in showing why the FCC and others would come after him. The only somewhat annoying thing really isn't the films's fault but in the interview clips Scott will be speaking in English and then Herzog will narrate, in German, just what he said and this goes on throughout the documentary.

(FYI if you decide to check this out, it's filmed in English but Herzog talks over and translates in German, not a distraction per-say but it would be interesting to see a version with it in English only, but alas this is all that's available on Tubi).

This is impactful because Herzog understands how to talk to his subject and to make someone who might usually be on his guard or just putting on another 'face' for the media as the firebrand he created for his show to be natural and therefore be... vulnerable, to an extent. It's hard to ever feel sorry for this sort of prototype of countless grifters and shysters fleecing money from the most gullible, but the entire surreal atmosphere of what this man is surrounded by in his studio, and how that contrasts (or is connected to) what he tells Herzog as his dissatisfaction with how his life has gone - sometimes in a TMI sort of way - makes one understand him completely, and you end the documentary with a far more complex portrait than would come about on any news program (even 60 Minutes, indeed).

I was engrossed in the light spectacle of those painfully white-bread Christian singers, and for all of Dr. Scott's bragadoccio and eventually rage against his supporters not sending enough money, compared to what we have today he is almost quaint. He's a classic firebrand of a demagogue, but he knows it and the self conscious understanding humanizes him (on the other hand, maybe 45 minutes is the limit to what one can fake of what he has to say, Herzog doesn't get too deep into what may be more xenophobic beliefs, and that's fine, the information about his *70* lawsuits against him is enough).

Suffice to say the F. C. C. Monkey Band set piece raised my rating a half a star. Herzog did not even have to set anything up, one of his great confoundingly surreal set pieces was someone else's unironic doing.

Dr. Gene Scott, was a televangelist who daily broadcast marathon length live broadcasts demanding donations to his church. In this film we see parts of his performance, which includes him ranting at his audience and even refusing to speak until sufficient money is donated. We also see him count the huge sums that evidently and quite amazingly were donated by unknown disciples.

Taking into account that the subject matter is very interesting coupled with the fact that it is directed by Werner Herzog, this has to be considered a bit disappointing. Herzog has made several films, both fact and fiction alike, featuring central characters who are so very far removed from societal norms to the point of being isolated in life. Scott is another character very much in this vein, yet this film never makes as much impact as it should. In fairness, it's not helped much by Herzog constantly translating into German over the top of the English dialogue. Obviously this must have been on account of this being targeted at a television audience in Germany, yet it is still very distracting and it is unfortunate that subtitles were not simply used for non-English speakers. Anyhow, Herzog interviews Scott behind the scenes and he is an altogether different character in this context; full of doubts and fears, unlike his TV persona who is black and white in his opinions and sure of his position. Also of note, we are exposed to several musical numbers by Scott's in house band The Statesman. These are very strange religious songs, sung along to heroically horrendous music and performed by unusual scarily upbeat men. These songs were interesting in their utter bizarreness.

For a long time I was slightly disappointed with this documentary. I've had a semi-perverse fascination with Scott for many years, his degree from Stanford rather than from a bible mill, a somewhat scholarly approach to his subject on occasion which set him apart from his "peers" who merely disgusted me, and his lack of shame at appearing as a lunatic on the airwaves which set him apart much further from those who pose as the "status quo" keepers of morality and decency for average folks. This movie failed entirely to portray this essential difference. But it did capture what I now recognize as a very common underlying element to all of Herzog's movies I've seen, a character of mythic dimensions. Scott's quixotic nature to do battle with the FCC puts him on par with Aguirre or Fitzcaraldo. A living individual going all the way, taking it as far as he can, like the guy in "Grizzly Man." Herzog does something more deftly than any other director, create updated mythology for our era, and a portrait of a televangelist, even if it misses part of its subject is a very worthy part of this mythology.