Werner Herzog takes a limo ride into the heart of evangelical darkness in “God’s Angry Man”
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Watch This offers movie recommendations inspired by new releases, premieres, current events, or occasionally just our own inscrutable whims. This week: With Werner Herzog’s Fireball: Visitors From Darker Worlds hitting Apple TV+, we’re highlighting some of the iconic director’s best documentaries.
“God’s Angry Man” (1981)
With their tacky suits and blatant hypocrisy, televangelists are easy targets for parody. Even Werner Herzog, that great stone-faced chronicler of existential despair, can’t resist taking a couple potshots in his 1981 short film “God’s Angry Man.” The film profiles Dr. Gene Scott, the Los Angeles-based TV preacher who became a media lightning rod in the late ’70s and early ’80s—thanks in part to his late-night time slot, which drew, as Scott calls them, “night people” to watch his program, The Festival Of Faith, presumably while smoking the devil’s lettuce. Scott was being investigated by the IRS and the Federal Communications Commission when Herzog filmed this 43-minute documentary for German TV. Both agencies took a pointed interest in where the hundreds of thousands of dollars Scott claimed to raise every week were going, exactly—charges that Scott answered with nonsensical ranting and an “FCC Monkey Band” composed of wind-up chimps.
The federal government holding a TV preacher to account seems downright quaint in our current era, when the proliferation of the so-called prosperity gospel has made the line between con man and holy man thinner than ever. And although he was a regional oddity compared to big-name TV preachers like Jim Bakker, Jerry Falwell, and Billy Graham, Scott was, for all his eccentricities, part of the emergence of evangelical Christianity on the national political stage. With that came the rise of old-time religion as big business, a theme that Herzog deftly (and sometimes sarcastically) explores throughout the film. In one segment, Scott describes, while sitting in the back of a limousine, the many subsidiaries of his church like he’s the CEO of a multinational corporation; in another, he sits in petulant silence while the cameras roll, refusing to preach another word until another $1,000 in donations comes in. All the while, he talks in a hushed, even tone that seems to contradict the film’s title. But an intensity burns behind his narrowed eyes, and eventually, he erupts on live TV, first screaming at viewers to donate, then exploding with anger that they didn’t cough up the cash sooner. Let the circus begin.
Scott doesn’t appear to have a guiding ideology except for the almighty dollar. In fact, we don’t hear his beliefs on much of anything in the film, except for how unfairly persecuted he is. But simply condemning him would be too easy for a filmmaker like Herzog. This is the director of Fitzcarraldo, after all, and Scott is an example of one of Herzog’s most enduring fascinations: the larger-than-life visionary tormented by his own quixotic genius. At first, Scott is on even when he’s off camera, bloviating about the media and spiritual warfare and all the persecution he’s faced for preaching God’s word. But over time, he relaxes and trusts Herzog a little bit more, confiding that his greatest dream is to just pack up one day and disappear. “I’m too good to be really bad, and too bad to be really good,” he confesses, in that low, intimidating tone. By the end, one might conclude that Scott is either a sociopath cynically raking in tax-free bucks off of the backs of the poor or an intellectual and biblical scholar who’s been forced into a state of permanent fundraising by other peoples’ debts.
Which one you decide to believe is up to you, as “God’s Angry Man” is filmed in classic fly-on-the-wall vérité style. Herzog fixes his camera in long, wide shots observing Scott at work, contrasting them with close-ups of him at home in suspiciously luxurious surroundings. (Scott insists it all belongs to the church, and it probably does, for tax reasons.) Herzog seems especially tickled by Scott’s painfully square backup band, The Statesmen, cutting between their kitschy renditions of revival hymns and Scott reading out donation amounts in a steady monotone. He even gives the musicians the last word, cutting away from Scott throwing a Jolly Chimp toy on the floor of his studio to a singer—his wide eyes bulging out of his deep sockets—performing a slowed-down rendition of the 1979 country single “Rusty Old Halo.”
The song is about the belief that, to quote Matthew 19:24, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” Considering we just watched Scott spend a good portion of the documentary begging for money (and, when that doesn’t work, berating them into it), the irony is obvious. Or perhaps it’s emblematic of the purgatory in which Scott finds himself trapped. This contradiction is never resolved in “God’s Angry Man,” nor can we ever be sure if Scott’s confessions are true. The man behind the stiff hair and polyester suit remains a mystery, a myth, a cipher—which, of course, makes him a classic Herzogian figure.
Availability: “God’s Angry Man” is currently streaming on YouTube.
7 Comments
Herzog seems perfect to take on a Trump documentary.
I realize Herzog has made too many documentaries for all of them to be covered, but I’ll take the end of this week to recommend Land of Silence and Darkness. It’s just an incredible movie that captures the lives of people who are both deaf and blind, which is such a different way of life to end up in when you’re without two major senses.Some of them learn to live with their circumstances, others just disappear into themselves. The movie is quite cathartic.
I love Cave of Forgotten Dreams and Little Dieter Needs to Fly. I was less taken with Incident at Loch Ness, which wasn’t a real documentary exactly anyway
I watched Land of Silence and Darkness and found it to be one of the most existentially scary movies I’ve ever seen. Just fundamentally shook me.
I have sold, installed, and serviced home satellite systems since 1984. Back when they consisted of 10 and 12 foot dishes that tracked the satellite arc from east to west, Doc Gene was a lighthouse of sorts for satellite system installers. Tuning a dish to track that arc, aiming at six foot targets 26,000 miles in the sky, was a painstaking process, and when we needed a landmark, a place to start, Doc Gene was always there. He had a transponder on satellite Westar 5 which ran his programs, live or recorded, 24/7/365. When you were tuning a dish, he was always there. He was an often talked about individual among satellite industry people. His services were something to see. It was usually just him, sitting on a stage, or scribbling furiously on a whiteboard, always cajoling his audience to send in more cash. He was fascinating to watch sometimes. I remember him screaming at his callers “You ten dollar people get off my phones, let those thousand dollar people get through!” and sometimes, if he didn’t feel that money was flowing in fast enough, he would walk off stage, and the broadcast might be just his empty chair for days at a time. It was totally crazy. The guy was entertaining. I can’t vouch for him being educational or anything, I never paid that much attention. Over the years, I bumped into a couple of people who had dealings with him, and they all had strong opinions about the guy.
I will say one thing in his favor: In the era of Jim Baker and so many other pseudo-religiopimps promising their viewers that god would make them rich if they sent in all their money first, I did see enough of Doc Gene’s shows to notice that while he definitely taught his own interpretation of the bible, I don’t remember him ever condemning any person, or group (except the FCC) and I never, ever, heard him promise the audience one single thing for their money except that if they sent him enough, he would be back on the air teaching the next day. He did have that bit of integrity.
The Reagan eighties serve as a high-water mark of stupidity and greed in my mind, and, although I was a teen in the nineties, a lot of the contempt for televangelists got through to me in a lot of the pop culture I consumed. There’s that scene in “Repo Man” for example. But what I noticed is that a lot of criticisms couldn’t decide whether to hate the televangelists themselves, who stole from people that were often, well, not-rich and intellectually defenseless in a new information age, or the people who donated money to them. There was a lot of contempt for people who could let themselves be fooled by acts that were transparently bad and obviously crooked. Watching old PTL material, it really is hard to feel sorry for anyone.
I often think of that when I consider MAGA fans, as Trump’s one of the most obviously self-centered, mendacious, greedy people in the United States but millions of people seem to bend their thought process into knots in order to justify voting for him or flat-out adoring him. (We’ll leave the argument that he actually addressed the arguments that the Republican base cared about — globalization and immigration — aside for a moment.) I am American, but live overseas, so I don’t have to deal with any MAGA types, thank God, but even from a distance I can’t feel much more than contempt for people who’d get taken by an obviously incoherent and horribly self-centered asshole with hair implants and a fake tan. Frustration’s one thing, but I’m not too sure any adult of normal intelligence can justify pulling the lever for Trump. I always think of those people you see in old televangelist vidoes who seem to be falling over themselves to see who can believe the most ridiculous nonsense. Trump essentially emerged from a different part of that same media environment, and I think that really shaped his thinking. (He seems to think it’s always 1987 in Black America, for example.) But he whole fucking this is so sordid. Maybe I should be forgiving, but then I remember Jim Bakker doing things his schtick on stage or selling buckets of gloop to end-timers and I think “maybe not.” Most countries do, as they say, get the leaders they deserve. And maybe, the spirit of healing aside, people who basically beg to be taken advantage of don’t deserve all that much sympathy. Am I the asshole here, or are they?
Mom: “Put it on a plate, son. You’ll enjoy it more.Otto: “Couldn’t enjoy it any more, mom. Mmm, mmm, mmm. This is swell”