Word: gortner
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...fortune that his parents kept from him, was doomed at 28 to a freakish sort of fame. That's the way ex-Evangelist Marjoe Gortner told it in the movie about his life, Marjoe. His father, Vernon Gortner, 69, disagrees. "I heard constantly from him before the movie broke," he said, but when the elder Gortner saw the film, "it was all I could do to choke back tears. Now he's told so many untruths he's afraid to face me. There never was such a sum. If it was money I was after...
MARJOE IS AN UNDENIABLY slick and engrossing film unfortunately, it is a movie that focuses on the wrong subject. An expose of the "big time" evangelical preaching racket, this documentary has been conceived as a public act of repentance for former revivalist Marjoe Gortner. It serves almost entirely as a showcase for its egotistical protagonist and never confronts a more important topic--the lives and motivations of the people caught up in his religious revivals. As a result the audience is subjected to a frustratingly inarticulate exercise which is nevertheless provocative and revealing in spite of itself...
...told the nature of their infection. Similarly, for the purposes of his documentary. Marjoe continued to victimize unsuspecting people for a year. While the element of good in his work must be considered, there is no doubt that the revivals brought in many thousands of dollars unjustly. Even if Gortner didn't share in the cash (he does not tell us), a number of his unwitting con men colleagues did. Furthermore, there is no evidence that the profits from this movie are going, in any way to undo the exploitation Marjoe purports to expose...
...think of a time that I ever believed in God or thought it was a miracle of God that I preached," says the voice-over in a new documentary film called Marjoe. "I just knew I could do it well." More's the pity. The narrator, Marjoe Gortner, has been a foot-hopping, finger-jabbing, Jesus-peddling evangelist for more than half of his 28 years, starting at the tough age of 3½. At four, the curly-coiffed, dandied-up moppet stirred up headlines and a legal ruckus by marrying a young sailor and his girl...