Amongst these impressed together with her stand, a few years later, was the actress Jessica Chastain, who gained an Oscar final 12 months for her function as Ms. Bakker in “The Eyes of Tammy Faye,” wherein the interview with Mr. Pieters, portrayed by Randy Havens, was a pivotal scene. (A stage musical, “Tammy Faye,” which opened final 12 months in London, additionally integrated the 1985 interview.)
“That interview was why I wanted to make the film,” Ms. Chastain advised Selection on the film’s New York premiere in 2021. “It was rebellious and courageous and brave and badass. I’m one hundred pc satisfied that there have been folks — conservative Christians watching at house — who realized that they’d judged their relations unlovingly. I’m satisfied that that interview saved households and saved lives.”
If Ms. Bakker defied expectations with that interview, Mr. Pieters lengthy defied AIDS, surviving for many years regardless of repeated well being struggles. He died on July 8 at a hospital in Glendale, Calif., close to Los Angeles. He was 70.
His spokesman, Harlan Boll, stated the trigger was a sepsis an infection.
Mr. Pieters, who had continued his ministry and since 1994 had carried out with the Homosexual Males’s Refrain of Los Angeles, was trying ahead to the publication subsequent 12 months of his ebook, “Love Is Better Than AIDS: A Memoir of Survival, Therapeutic, and Hope.” In it, he stated he was typically requested why he thought he survived AIDS when so many others didn’t.
“Regardless of the motive,” he wrote, “I really feel deeply grateful to be alive. So many homosexual males of my era didn’t get to develop previous. What a privilege to have reached the age of 70, nonetheless dancing with pleasure.”