Marjoe / Thoth
by Sarah Kernochan, Howard Smith
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DVD details
Actor: Marjoe Gortner, S.K. Thoth, Sarah KernochanDirector: Howard Smith, Sarah Kernochan
Brand: New Video
Producer: Sarah Kernochan
Cinematographer: David Myers
Cinematographer: Don Lenzer
Cinematographer: Ed Lynch
Cinematographer: Jason Summers
Cinematographer: Kate Fix
Cinematographer: Kenneth Van Sickle
Cinematographer: Matthew Deetsch
Cinematographer: Mead Hunt
Cinematographer: Michael Shea
Cinematographer: Richard Pearce
Cinematographer: Thomas Reichman
Producer: Howard Smith
Producer: Curt Johnson
Producer: Lynn Appelle
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Unknown; English (Original Language), Unknown
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 128 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-01-31
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: New Video Group
Product features:
- Thisic Academy Award winner is a remarkable behind-the-scenes expose of Marjoe Gortner, an evangelist child prodigy who grew up to expose himself as a fraud. 2-disc set includes the Oscar-winning film THOTH. MARJOE: The Academy-AwardŽ-winning MARJOE is the ferocious and extraordinary chronicle of a firebrand evangelical preacher who wholeheartedly and humorously exposes himself as a fra
DVD Reviews of Marjoe / Thoth
DVD Review: Thought provoking if not comprehensive
Summary: 4 Stars
When I was little I always enjoyed it when I saw Marjoe Gortner act in whatever television show or movie I would catch him in. He had a lot charisma. Not only was he dynamic in his acting he had a very distinctive voice that was both commanding and endearing. Back then I didn't know he honed his talents along the Bible Belt as a child preacher. Now that I am older and have read the biographies I can see where all of that charisma came from. This documentary gives us a taste of what Marjoe was going through in his early adult life when he decided that he didn't like the path he took. Instead of just walking away he decided to expose this double-life to the world in what ended up being an Academy Award willing documentary.
Now as far as documentaries formats go this one is as dry as they come. In other words what you get is essentially raw footage with no serious editing of the content. There is no voice-over narration explaining what you see except for maybe the footage of his child years, and even then what are you are getting is an interview with Marjoe dubbed over the footage.In one way this makes the documentary a pure and untouched resource. On the other hand it does leave some footage left to interpretation by the viewer. I'm not saying that's a bad thing by any stretch. Just want all of you to know what you are getting into.
The beauty of this documentary is that you get footage from both on the pulpit and backstage. Marjoe explains how he was raised and how he sees himself as a pastor. It's interesting to hear how he never really thought of God when he's preaching and how it was all trained by his parents. It's also interesting the ultimate message he says he is trying to portray: You don't need a spiritual figurehead to experience God. Unfortunately that message was brief and drowned out by the rest of the experiences in Marjoe, but keep it in mind when watching.
The purity of the footage can also be a potential issue with the documentary. Mainly in that most of the footage is Marjoe preaching in various churches and tent revivals in his final tour. After a while the footage feels like it's getting drawn out as you see much of the same thing over and over. I will admit it's not quite as bad as I make it sound, but I do know my wife fell asleep halfway through and her exact words were, "it was getting boring seeing the same thing over and over". Still running at around an hour and forty-five minutes it's not such a long thing to watch. So take that as you will.
Now this documentary has been out of print and practically missing until the negatives were found in 2002. The resulting transfer is great. This isn't one of those instances where you get a DVD with crappy 3rd or 4th generation theater film or a VHS transfer. The images are as crisp and clear as you can get from a documentary in the early 70's. Visually it's actually much better than I thought it would be knowing I'm seeing a restoration from the source negatives. Maybe the upscaling from my player has something to do with that, but even then this is a very clean transfer. Audio is about as good as you can get, which means it's clear with very little distortion that likely came from the source microphones to begin with. All in all I would be hard pressed to think you can get a better copy.
The DVD doesn't have that much in the way of extras. There is a brief biography of the directors, but nothing on Marjoe's contributions to the film. No little bios of any other crew members either. Kind of a shame since that wouldn't have taken much work aside from research to add them in and the space on disk would be negligible. You also get an exhaustive list of documentaries from the company that include a synopsis and some even have a trailer you can watch. No setup menu that I recall. No other languages but English and no subtitles.
Marjoe is a really good documentary that delves into the seedy side of evangelism that is still alive and well today (word of advise, when a preacher tells you miracles and blessings will happen to you IF you give him money walk away... God doesn't work that way). Doesn't matter if you're an atheist looking for more ammo or a believer who isn't afraid to see what can be wrong with religion; this is a good documentary with a great restoration and well worth a look.
Description of Marjoe / Thoth
The Academy-AwardŽ-winning MARJOE is the ferocious and extraordinary chronicle of a firebrand evangelical preacher who wholeheartedly and humorously exposes himself as a fraud. An evangelist prodigy at the age of four, the film captures an adult Marjoe as he recounts how he discovered the seductions of the 60s counterculture and dropped out of preaching, only to return later, using his swaggering bravado, to woo Pentecostal audiences out of their offerings. Directors Howard Smith and Sarah Kernochan follow Marjoe as he embarks on his "farewell to the faith tour," revealing the secrets of religious hucksterism. MARJOE is both a fiery baptism in the cynical waters of faith healing and evangelical fervor and a fascinating profile of a man who went from hellfire to hellraising. DVD Features: Filmmaker Biographies; Interactive Menus; Scene Selection. In the OscarŽ-winning THOTH, director Sarah Kernochan turns to another wonderfully unique personality, a fantastic character who performs one-man operas in a strange language on the streets of New York to amused, befuddled, and awed audiences. DVD Features: THOTH?s Complete Opera; Filmmaker BiographiesThere's more to Marjoe than the exposure of an evangelical fraud. Directed by Howard Smith and Sarah Kernochan, this OscarŽ-winning 1972 documentary operates on a number of levels as it follows Marjoe Gortner, a fire-and-brimstone preacher who had been raised, since becoming an ordained minister at the age of 4, to preach the Gospel to a large flock of believers. It didn't matter that young Marjoe was himself a non-believer, or that he would eventually trade his Bible-belt revival tours for the hedonistic pleasures of the 1960s counterculture. What we witness in Marjoe is the power of charisma, and the sheer vitality of a born showman whose fervor--regardless of its falseness--had a profound effect on Christians all around the country, to the extent that Marjoe Gortner achieved a kind of spiritual celebrity by the time he exposed himself as a phony in the early 1970s. Smith and Kernochan capture Gortner's essence with such candor that he emerges as an amiable narcissist, betraying his own selfishness and self-loathing yet honest enough to confess the "business" of harvesting cash donations from his Pentecostal audiences. Gortner succeeded in using this film to launch a modest career in movies (including a role in the 1974 disaster hit Earthquake), and his deceptive preaching was just another form of acting. In exposing himself as a fraud, Gortner deliberately drew attention to himself in the pursuit of celebrity. Ironically, he also succeeded in boosting the faith of his followers, and by acknowledging this, Marjoe adds yet another intriguing facet of truth to its subject.
It makes perfect sense that Marjoe has been paired in this DVD set with Thoth, Sarah Kernochan's OscarŽ-winning 2001 documentary short (40 minutes) profile of S.K. Thoth, a street performer whose persona, like Marjoe Gortner's, is entirely fictional yet genuinely compelling. The former Stephen Kaufman (his father was Jewish, his mother African American) struggled with his ethnic and sexual identity, and Thoth shows how he reinvented himself, renamed after an Egyptian high priest, and developed a one-man opera based entirely on "The Festad," a fantasy world, with its own made-up language, that he's created as a youthful refuge from the racism he endured as a biracial youth in the '60s. A self-described "blessed creature" with a unifying message, the androgynous Thoth (whose gold loincloth costume suggests a hybrid of male/female and ancient Egyptian identities) fascinates his audiences of tourists and Central Park regulars, some regarding him as a charlatan while others accept his ruse a celebration of pan-cultural humanity. Thoth may seem like a New Age phony or simply a loser to some viewers (he barely makes a living, and is largely supported by his mother), but his life, like Kernochan's film, is a fascinating quest for multiple layers of truth. --Jeff Shannon
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