From Diana to Dionne to Tammy Faye, three iconic gay allies got the tributes they deserve at TIFF

Queeries is a weekly column by CBC Arts producer Peter Knegt that queries LGBTQ art, culture and/or identity through a personal lens.

For gay men, there has arguably never been a time when it was more important to have famous straight allies speaking out for us than the peak of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and 1990s. And there were few who did so as passionately and significantly as Dionne Warwick, Tammy Faye and Diana, Princess of Wales — all gay icons in their own right, and all of whom just so happen to be the subjects of some of the most talked-about films at this year's Toronto International Film Festival: Dave Wooley and David Heilbroner's documentary Dionne Warwick: Don't Make Me Over, Michael Showalter's biopic The Eyes of Tammy Faye and Pablo Larraín's self-proclaimed "fable based on a true tragedy" Spencer.

Though each film is wildly different in how they go about narrativizing each woman's story, they all do have one thing in common: they pay tribute and give truth to the often-misrepresented and mistreated women at their core. These are women who each deserve considerable credit for their LGBTQ activism and how they rose to the occasion to bring awareness and attention to the AIDS crisis when the vast majority of mainstream society was ignoring it (or worse, cheering it on).

The only surviving of the three, Dionne Warwick was very much alive and well at TIFF, receiving a special tribute award, taking over the festival's Twitter account and finally getting to meet the man whose series she became obsessed with during lockdown. She is rather obviously not the tragic figure that Diana and Tammy Faye are, and her documentary Don't Make Me Over is essentially a tribute to her extraordinary contributions to both music and Black and LGBTQ activism. I honestly had not been aware of the full extent of this until I saw the film — not only did she bring together Elton John, Stevie Wonder and Gladys Knight for the 1985 AIDS charity single "That's What Friends Are For" (which would raise $3 million for AIDS research), but she also became the U.S. Ambassador of Health focused on ending AIDS and literally made then-President Ronald Reagan say "AIDS" out loud for one of the first times. (As Reagan was honouring Warwick, saying how proud he was of the work she was doing, she asked, "And what am I working on, President Reagan, that makes you so proud of me?" After he stammering a bit, he replied, "AIDS." Warwick then told him pointedly, "Oh, you can say that, can't you?")

"Being the person that I am, I wanted to know what's going on, so I took the time to find out," Warwick says of when she first heard of AIDS. "That's the humanity side of being a human being — caring about others. I went to my peers and said: 'We've got to do something about this.'" 

While Warwick was quickly able to assemble those peers to help her raise awareness of AIDS, the women known in the 1980s as Tammy Faye Bakker (she would become Tammy Faye Messner) was basically peerless in her community when it came to AIDS. Portrayed spectacularly by Jessica Chastain in The Eyes of Tammy Faye, the film — a fairly conventional biopic — shows how, against the wishes of her husband Jim Bakker and essentially everyone else around her, Tammy would regularly discuss AIDS and homosexuality on televangelist programs.

One instance in particular is shown in the film, when Chastain's Tammy has an emotional interview with Steven Pieters (played by Randy Havens). Based on a real 1985 interview (which you can watch on YouTube), it shows Tammy discussing Pieters's coming out, his AIDS diagnosis and the death of his partner. She then tearfully turns to the audience and says: "How sad that we as Christians, who are to be the salt of the earth, we who are supposed to be able to love everyone, are afraid so badly of an AIDS patient that we will not go up and put our arm around them and tell them that we care?"

Tammy Faye's willingness to even just discuss AIDS, let alone humanize it, was unheard of on Christian television, and she continued to do so until her and her husband's hugely successful PTL (Praise The Lord) Television Network collapsed in scandal in 1989 (which the film shows had little to do with Tammy herself). Jim Bakker would subsequently go to prison, and Tammy Faye became shunned by the Christian community and became a joke in the media up until her death from cancer in 2007. The Eyes of Tammy Faye (and the RuPaul-narrated documentary of the same name that the feature is based on) offers redemption for a woman who did more for LGBTQ people than pretty much any famous Christian personality ever has. 

Offering redemption of a much bolder variety is Spencer. An imagining of an extremely tumultuous Christmas in the life of Diana, Princess of Wales (played by Kristen Stewart in a genuinely mind-blowing performance), the film perhaps digs deeper into the truth of Diana's existence more than any other work has, despite being essentially fiction. Highly camp and intensely cinematic, it's a portrait of Diana's disintegration at the hands of both the Royal family and the perils of celebrity. 

Although Spencer does not touch on Diana's LGBTQ activism and work to bring awareness to AIDS, this is something almost everyone already knows about. As the most famous of these three women (and arguably the most famous person of the last century), few are unaware of the extensive work Diana did with AIDS patients in the 1980s and 1990s, and how unafraid she was to very publicly make physical contact with them. The Queen did not support this, suggesting to her that she get involved with something "more pleasant."

"HIV does not make people dangerous to know," Diana famously said. "You can shake their hands and give them a hug. Heaven knows they need it. What's more, you can share their homes, their workplaces, and their playgrounds and toys." These words, and all the work she did, genuinely transformed public perceptions about AIDS. Spencer in no way reflects that — it's just not that kind of biopic. But was it does do is give a masterful glimpse into the misery Diana — truly the ultimate gay icon — faced as she was doing so much good for the world.

Having these films find their way out into the world this fall (Tammy Faye is in theatres today and Spencer will be released November 5th, while Don't Make Me Over has yet to announce a wide-release date) makes for a welcome reminder of how three truly iconic women pushed back against so much to try and make our society a better place, particularly for LGBTQ folks. They each deserve to be celebrated for that — and these films just made that a little easier for us all to do.