“Spanky” Taylor:
Backpedalling Before Your Very Eyes
Watch Spanky Taylor’s tear-jerker “escape” tale at the center of Alex Gibney’s HBO film unravel before your eyes when she suddenly gives it a rewrite. Confronted in a TV interview with a video of her ex-husband, Norman, unmasking her melodramatic story spun to Gibney that their daughter was kept in horrid conditions, Taylor suddenly backpedals. As it turns out, their daughter actually was well cared for by a very competent care giver just as Norman said. His story was ignored by Gibney and HBO when he wrote them and traveled to New York to see them before the film aired. What’s more, Spanky Taylor doesn’t dispute Norman’s detailed debunking of her claim that she breathlessly “escaped” the Church in a car. As it turns out, the phantom “escape” involved not showing up for work one day. So never mind that one either. Finally, Spanky Taylor reveals on camera another fact Alex Gibney intentionally hid from viewers — she stopped working for the Church 37 years ago (as in the late 1970s.) Now the truth comes out to replace the propaganda — Alex Gibney dusted her off to make it seem like she was still relevant to advance his bigoted agenda.