william shatner fighting jesus in heaven
2006-02-10

I know everyone is waiting with bated breath to hear about my ninja encounter with David Brooks. But I�m not going to tell you about that. I�m going to tell you about Marjoe, the best documentary about child preachers/�Circus of the Stars� performers ever.

Our subject Marjoe was different from your usual tent preacher in that he�d been spreading the gospel since the ripe old age of 4. You get to see him marrying a couple (he hardly comes up to the groom�s thigh) and doing a sermon while sporting a miniature tux. For a while he dropped out of the revival circuit, but he needed cash, so what�s an ex-child preacher to do? Go back and have a documentary made about him, that�s what.

The film cuts back and forth between a bunch of attractive hippies and the people at the revival meetings, most of whom are older and are missing a few teeth. Marjoe goes through his schtick about three or four times in different tents and auditoriums � once at a black church (the meetings were more integrated than I thought they�d be, then again it�s not like I�m a regular churchgoer so I probably don�t know any better). The fun part comes when he �heals� people with a touch, causing them to faint and chatter in tongues. Marjoe himself is pretty inoffensive, obviously getting off on his control over the crowd, but wishing he didn�t have to say all that mean stuff about hellfire and sin in order to give the crowd a good time. Of course the real focus is the money � one preacher even testifies about how God helped him at the Cadillac dealership! � and Marjoe gets to count fat wads of cash. In no way is this a literary metaphor, these are actual wads, my friend. I would totally be a tent preacher if I wasn�t a small, morbidly shy Jewish woman.

Tragically, there�s no �where are they now� segment on the DVD, so I had to do some looking around to find out What Happened Next. Turns out that Marjoe, who during the film says that he modeled some of his tricks after Mick Jagger, eventually dropped the revival circuit for more rewarding affairs, such as Circus of the Stars #12 with hosts Merv Griffin and Delta Burke! He was also on �Fantasy Island� and �T.J. Hooker.� Now he sponsors charity golf tournaments, which I suppose takes some mysterious force of charisma.

Bonus: lots and lots of church music, including the awesome �I�ve Got Confidence� which is just chock full of syllables bursting to get free to God (I think this phenomenon is called enjambment, although I was never very up on my poetry terms). Sung and accompanied (on ukeleles) by the Holland Sisters.