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Of God, mom and country

The filmmaking daughter of the speaker of the House gets an up-close look at the evangelical movement.

By PAUL FARHI
Published January 25, 2007

WASHINGTON

A documentary filmmaker from a prominent Democratic family set out for deepest Red State America to document the culture and politics of conservative evangelical Christians. Her benefactor is HBO, a network known in some evangelical circles as "Hell's Box Office."

But anyone expecting smug condescension and glib-lib superiority from Alexandra Pelosi - yes, of that Pelosi family - might find something surprising in her new film, debuting tonight on the cable channel (See box on Page 4E for details). With a hand-held camera as constant companion, Pelosi spent the better part of a year bouncing around such places as Pigeon Forge, Tenn., to capture glimpses of the 50-million-(or so)-strong evangelical movement.

What Pelosi found was both mundane and familiar (Jerry Falwell, megachurches, antiabortion rallies) but also something uniquely, wackily American. Friends of God: A Road Trip With Alexandra Pelosi rambles through a kaleidoscopic landscape of drive-through churches, truck-stop ministries and a Christian-themed miniature golf course with its own tomb of Jesus. For good measure, there are also skateboarding Christian punk kids and an evangelical pro-wrestling circuit with a character named "Jesus Freak."

Pelosi even befriended the Rev. Ted Haggard, a leading evangelical who was disgraced in November after a male prostitute accused him of paying for sex and buying illegal drugs. Pelosi includes extensive pre-scandal footage of her encounters with Haggard (including a flesh-crawling passage in which he asks two of his congregants about their sex lives), all of which gives Friends of God an unexpectedly ironic, even poignant twist.

Oh, THAT Pelosi

There's another big backstory here, too, of course: Alexandra, 36, is the youngest of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's five children. Just as Alexandra was finishing her film, her mom became the highest-ranking woman to hold political office. Some of the evangelicals Alexandra encountered while filming Friends of God, in fact, protested at the California congresswoman's church on the day she was sworn in.

Having a powerful and famous mother never was a factor in her reporting, says the younger Pelosi, because few of her subjects knew, or perhaps cared, who Nancy Pelosi is (even Falwell never made the connection until he was told during the filming). What's more, Alexandra contends, her mother wasn't all that famous or powerful at the time; her elevation to speaker occurred after the midterm elections, and long after the completion of filming.

"It was a lot harder walking up to the front door and saying to people, 'I'm from HBO' than saying my last name," she says. "Most of the people couldn't get over the fact that I was from New York. Plus, you know, I talk fast and look like someone who belongs in New York. I don't think anyone even heard my last name."

Instead, she says, people were more eager to hear about her relationship with Christ.

"It was almost like a hazing ritual," Pelosi says. "I was saved several times a day. They would ask me what I thought about this or that aspect of Jesus. It was a very uncomfortable conversation. In my family, growing up, it was okay to talk about politics, obviously, but we weren't that casual about religion."

Pelosi is a lifelong Catholic, educated at the ritzy Convent of the Sacred Heart High School in San Francisco and Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Neither evangelism nor conservative politics figured much in her upbringing. "In my family, we have a hundred years of Catholic school experience, and none of us ever heard that homosexuality was a sin," she says. "At my school, the nuns taught us about evolution."

Her first road trip

Pelosi got enough politics after signing on as a producer at NBC News. In 1999 the network sent her to Austin, Texas, to follow the budding presidential campaign of Gov. George W. Bush. During frequent lulls on the campaign trail, Pelosi whipped out a digital minicamera and shot 100 hours of the man who would be president.

Pelosi edited the homemade footage into her first documentary, 2002's Journeys With George, which proved to be a startling look at Bush. Pelosi's 79-minute film captured the candidate at his most casual - chewing with his mouth open, winking at reporters, bowling fruit down the aisle of a press bus, calling the filmmaker "baby."

Journeys was nominated for six Emmys and won one for nonfiction editing. Pelosi's followup effort for HBO, Diary of a Political Tourist, about the 2004 Democratic candidates, offered fewer revealing moments despite "hundreds and hundreds" of hours of taping.

After making that film and writing a book about the '04 race, Sneaking Into the Flying Circus, Pelosi didn't relish the prospect of another campaign. She had gotten married (to Dutch journalist Michiel Vos) and was thinking about other things.

The result is Friends of God. Pelosi began filming during her honeymoon and finished editing shortly before the birth of her first child, Paul, on Nov. 13.

The "road trip" part of the film's title isn't just fanciful. Pelosi traveled to 16 states to make the documentary, and found expressions of faith just about everywhere along the way: on billboards, license plates, signboards and vehicles.

Pelosi frets that her background will influence the reaction to Friends, in both good and bad ways. But she hopes that it will "start a conversation" about the role that evangelicals play in the culture and how the secular media ignore or demean them.

A differing viewpoint

Larry Poland, one of the few evangelicals who has seen the film, says it "got beneath the surface" of the televangelist stereotype. He calls it "a fascinating and entertaining" piece.

But Poland, whose firm advises film and TV producers about the portrayal of Christians, says that Friends has a few problems.

"She's got a lot of people who are clearly the fringe people of the evangelical community," he says. "Most of the evangelicals in this country are pretty straight-arrow types. They're gracious, mom-'n'-apple pie types who care about their families and their kids.

"I know HBO isn't the Learning Channel or PBS, but some of these people are just bizarre. . . . Bottom line, it's not a piece we would have done."

For her part, Pelosi says she came away with new respect and renewed skepticism about her subject.

"I've never been 100 percent sure about anything," she says, "but because they have the Bible, they're 100 percent sure. . . . That's the difference between me and them.

"They're so sure they've got all the answers, they've stopped asking the questions."

PREVIEW

Friends of God

Subtitled A Road Trip With Alexandra Pelosi, it debuts at 9 tonight on HBO.

[Last modified January 25, 2007, 06:21:41]