NEW YORK — Ted Haggard liked and trusted Alexandra Pelosi. The once-powerful evangelical leader had become friendly with the HBO filmmaker when she was making a documentary about evangelicals in 2005, even taking Pelosi and her husband camping at one point and teaching them how to shoot rifles.
So when Pelosi called Haggard after he was ousted from his church following a gay sex scandal, he was delighted to hear from her. She visited frequently, often filming the disgraced pastor with her hand-held camera, footage she said she wouldn't use unless he was comfortable with it.
Haggard was less than thrilled a year later when Pelosi told him she had made a movie about his exile.
"We were enjoying our privacy," he said. "As the months were passing, we were increasingly able to go to Wal-Mart without being watched. So I told Alexandra that we were not going to be comfortable with it and that I was not happy because I thought she had violated her word."
Pelosi initially shelved the movie. But she was unrepentant about making it.
"As a friend, I wanted to tell his side of the story," she said. "I thought the media had done a disservice to Ted. Am I a vulture, am I a buzzard for showing up at his house and exploiting our friendship? I think anyone who invites Alexandra Pelosi from HBO to their house with a video camera should assume it will end up on HBO."
"The Trials of Ted Haggard," which premieres Thursday on HBO, is the product of both fortuitous coincidence and the kind of guerrilla filmmaking that marks Pelosi's work. Her best-known documentary, "Journeys With George," resulted from personal footage she took as she covered George W. Bush's 2000 presidential campaign as a producer for NBC. As with Haggard, Bush was taken aback to find his musings stitched together into a film.
It's an approach that may make traditionalists cringe, but the filmmaker, daughter of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), stands behind her technique.
"I would rather beg for forgiveness than ask for permission," she said. "Because asking for permission, everyone is going to be on. That's why, even if people don't like Ted in this movie, you have to feel sorry for him, because he was genuine."
The 45-minute film offers an intimate if fragmentary look at Haggard's attempt to recover from the sex scandal that drove him from his Colorado Springs, Colo., church in 2006. His contrition takes on new resonance with allegations made this week by a former parishioner, who said Haggard performed a sex act in front of him when Haggard was still a pastor.
