In 2002 TV news
producer Alexandra Pelosi's private video diary on
George W. Bush's 2000 presidential campaign
trail became HBO's documentary Journeys With
George, which would win an Emmy. In 2004 she
followed up with Diary of a Political Tourist,
which profiled the Democratic presidential candidates'
campaign trails. On January 25 HBO will premiere her most
recent documentary, Friends of God: A Road Trip
With Alexandra Pelosi . This time around Pelosi, a blue-state
Democrat (and the daughter of House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi), spent more than a year traveling across the country
interviewing evangelicals from TV minister Joel
Osteen to creationist educators to former National
Association of Evangelicals president Ted Haggard.
Just days after Pelosi completed Friends of
God, Haggard stepped down from his position over
allegations of crystal meth use and sexual trysts with
a male prostitute. The Advocate talked to Pelosi
earlier in January about making Friends With
God, her relationship with Haggard, and what she
learned about evangelicals.
There have been a lot of documentaries about Christian
fundamentalists, including the recent feature Jesus
Camp. What's different about your film
that other films haven't already discussed?
Mine is much more mainstream. JÂ esus Camp was about a very small portion, a very
small sect. The Pentecostal movement is small. I went to 16
states and spent two years talking to people. I
didn't stay with one family for a year.
Don't make it sound like I'm disparaging other
people's work, because it is so hard to make
anything. I don't want it to look like I'm
being critical of what they did. It's really
important to support one another. I tried to make a
big cross section of the 50 or 80 million evangelicals
there are in this nation. We don't know how many
there are; there's been debate among the
pollsters. But if that's true, it would include
the liberal evangelicals, the Mel Whites, and the Dan
Wallaces. I didn't really focus on the liberal
evangelicals, which could be about 20%. The problem
with the evangelicals is they have a bit of an identity
crisis. They like to escalate their numbers, to talk about
how many of them there are, but then they like people
to say, "Oh, the Christian [Wrestling
Federation], they don't count, they're
fringy." Or "Oh, the evangelicals who
care about poverty and the environment, they don't
count." The highest number we've gotten is 80
million, and that's the number out of Jerry
Falwell's mouth.
Now back to the
answer to your question: I try not to be like Chicken
Little, "the sky is falling." A lot of New York liberal
Democrats who go to the megachurches come back talking
about how scary they are, and I never say that. I have
nothing but admiration for these people and respect
for them. I don't think they are dangerous or trying
to take over the country like a lot of people think
they are. Maybe they're trying, but I
don't think they could. I'm not afraid of
them, as most New York liberals would be.
But you're also not some gay kid living in Texas.
If you were a lesbian living in a small town, do
you think you'd feel the same way?
No, I think they cause pain to the gay community, and
you can't ignore that. That's why I
included [out evangelical] Mel White in the movie. I
was trying not to make it a polemic. Everyone I know knows
what we think, and I was trying not to include what we
think. We know what we think of them, and it's
not a secret. They don't talk about the war, and
they don't talk about the environment. And they
don't talk about gay rights--well,
obviously they talk about gays. So I tried to let them talk
about and understand where they are coming from, and of
course they are coming from the Bible. Everything
comes from a Bible.
You were raised in a Catholic home in a fairly religious
family. Did that make it easier for you in making
this film and getting to know your subject? Or if
you're not a fundamentalist, it doesn't
matter what you are?
It doesn't matter what you are. If
you're not a fundamentalist, you're
going to burn, so it doesn't matter. The thing about
growing up in a religious household is, I went to
Catholic school, and everyone in my family went to
Catholic school, and we were raised on the Bible, and
there was a lot of church in our lives, but we were never
told gay was wrong, or abortion was wrong, or
evolution was wrong, so you can still be raised on the
Bible and walk into the Bible Belt and talk to evangelical
Christians, and they are speaking another language. They
interpret the Bible in a different language. The way
they interpret the Bible is different from the way I
interpret the Bible.
You're a straight gal from San Francisco. Did your
gaydar go off when you were around Ted Haggard at all?
I love that question, because everyone says "How
could you not know?" He was foreign to me. They
all were to me. I don't know Christian
evangelicals, so this is what they were. Maybe someone would
have said, "God, they seem really gay."
To me it was all new, so I didn't know what to
call it. He had five children and a wife! Maybe that
doesn't shock you, but he really had pretty
good credentials. A wife and five kids--that
usually means they are heterosexual.
Watching some of the scenes of Ted Haggard, where he
talks to young men in his congregation, it is
almost painful.
There's a community of a lot of young
men. He was a father figure, so he related to a lot of
young boys from broken homes. That is just what was
explained to me, as the culture of his megachurch.
But in your documentary Haggard talks to some of them
about how great their heterosexual sex lives are.
It was unsettling to watch.
Did I believe that all of the men in their
church had sex with their wives every day? Maybe not.
That's why I included [that scene], because
this is who they say they are. Not one friend of mine would
tell me they have sex every day. That was unusual. But
guess what? Being in a megachurch was unusual.
What's been the reaction from the evangelical
Christians about your film?
If this movie had aired before Ted
Haggard's fall, they would have loved this
movie, and shown it in their churches, and been proud to
make it to secular television in prime time. But since
the fall of Ted Haggard, they are very embarrassed by
him. The only complaints [about] Pastor Ted
[were] "He fell from grace--can't you edit him
out before this airs on television?" Now members of
the religious organizations are saying Pastor Ted was
weird, and I say he did speak for 30 million
evangelicals. I spent a lot of time with him. He explained
everything to me...how they can crash the Capitol
switchboard. He explained their power. He was my
leading man. I went to Texas with him, I went to Arizona
with him on his Promise Keepers tour. He came to New
York and we hung out together. I saw a lot of Pastor
Ted.
What was he like as a person?
He was a really nice guy. You asked, "Did
you know something about him?" Here is what I
would say: Living in New York, my caricature of the
religious right is they are these Holy Roller Jesus freaks.
Meeting Pastor Ted, he changed my impression.
That's why I stuck with him. He was reasonable.
We talked about gay marriage. He said, "I think the
gays should be lobbying for civil unions, because
that's more doable." He wasn't a
hater. And I know everyone likes to talk about how he was a
hypocrite, but I think Stephen Colbert said it best
[originally about Mark Foley]: Ted Haggard is not a
hypocrite--he didn't try and gay-marry
anyone. He knows homosexuality; he preached from the pulpit
that homosexuality is a sin. That's what he
believes because that's in the Bible. Now, he
did it...that doesn't mean he didn't know
it was a sin. He was really reasonable. He was
younger, and he seemed to be this new generation of
evangelical. His church is full of these cool kids.
Is he a real loss to the evangelicals? Was he unique in
that community?
He had an open-door policy. He let all media
into his church. People say, "Why did you spend so
much time with him?" A lot of times, if someone makes
a piece of television, you make the movie you can make with
the access you get. Pastor Ted took me everywhere.
[Megachurch pastor and best-selling author] Rick
Warren didn't take me on tour with him. If
evangelicals have any complaints about the movie, I have to
say to them, "You should have given me better access."
He wanted to show off his brand of evangelical. If
this had aired before [his] fall, I would have been at
a huge opening premiere night at [Haggard's former
congregation] New Life Church.
Is it harder to make a movie now that your mother is so
politically prominent?
I don't know yet, since I haven't
made anything new.
Are people boiling this film down to "This is
something her mother believes" or "This has
implications in Congress"?
No. My mother doesn't take legislative
tips from me. When she's trying to figure out
how to run the House, she doesn't call me. Or vice
versa. I've been making television for 12
years. And she's been running the House
for...12 days? I've been doing this a long time.
I made movies about politics that were completely
apolitical. My first movie was well-received by the
Republicans. It was probably better received by
Republicans than Democrats. I tried not to put my views in
this. I don't put my opinions in there.
Were you really on the road alone a lot?
Yeah. The kind of things I make, I make with a
handheld camera that you could buy at any Circuit
City. I had a small handheld camera. I don't
have lights, or a microphone, or camera crews. I rent a car,
pack a bag, and drive through the Bible Belt with a
camera. Last night we had the Washington, D.C.,
premiere of the movie. When I was watching it on the
big screen, I thought, I was a woman, alone, in the
South, sleeping in truck stops. I'm driving
down the freeway while filming. Every time you see a
billboard, I had to pull over and get the shot. It
hurts my stomach now, thinking about it.
Any plans for what you will do next?
I have an 8-week-old baby now. So all I have to
look forward to is dirty diapers.
Friends of God: A Road Trip With Alexandra
Pelosi airs on HBO, Thursday, January 25, at 9 p.m./8
p.m. Central.