Follow the filmmaking quest of Pentacostal Pastor Richard Gazowsky, above center, in Audience of One.

In 1994, at age 40, Pentecostal Pastor Richard Gazowsky saw his first movie. Later that year he had a vision from God who, Gazowsky says, told him to start a film company.

Although he had never been behind a camera before, Gazowsky began to write a script with his wife, getting thousands of dollars in contributions from his flock to begin production on Gravity, The Shadow of Joseph. For his “$50-million epic,” a spin on the Biblical story of Joseph and the coat of many colors, he added futuristic touches, turning it into something he described as Star Wars Meets The Ten Commandments.

Over several years, documentary filmmaker Michael Jacobs followed Gazowsky in his quest, getting remarkable behind-the-scenes access that results in frank footage in the funny-sad Audience of One. It’s a story of one man’s delusions of grandeur and his ability to manipulate hundreds of other people into joining him on his crazy odyssey.

Disaster is written all over the project from the start: the oddball costumes created for the film, the clunky sets built in the parking lot of Gazowsky’s San Francisco church, the street people he signs on as actors, the ill-conceived and drastically unprepared five-day trip to an Italian village to shoot scenes for the movie where timing is everything and nothing goes right.

Despite problems that grow into a tidal wave of calamities and red ink, Gazowsky perseveres with a never-say-die assurance. Even as the San Francisco City Council votes on whether to pull the plug on the city-owned film studio whose rent is nearly three months in arrears, he’s off to a Las Vegas convention of expensive new film gadgetry, assuring the salesmen that he has a $50 million financial deal with German investors.

Whenever something goes drastically haywire, such as an overhead camera that mangles the film during the Italian shoot, Gazowsky brings his flock together in a circle for a prayer session. Sometimes those prayers seem to be answered, for a moment anyhow. Gazowsky is sure everything will turn out right because he’s making his film for an “audience of one” — God — and he knows in his heart that God will pull him through. When told that there won’t be enough time to accomplish all he wants in five days of filming in Italy, he says, “What needs to get done, God will make time for it to get done.” But his mother, who founded his Pentecostal church and passed it on to him when she turned 65, is not so sure. She describes her son as “sweet, gentle and naïve.”

So he may seem to people who watch Audience of One, viewing it as sort of a train wreck in the making. The professionals he has hired for the film, who eventually find themselves working for no pay, can see the catastrophe ahead, from the actor who complains that he’s getting no direction for his character to the cinematographer who is stymied by camera breakdowns, burned-out motors and no backup plans. The crew finally gets the camera to work, resurrected after three days, Gazowsky tells his flock, like Jesus . .  . though it doesn’t work for long.

Audience of One is a fascinating look at how one man’s faith remains unshaken and how he cons others into following his blurred vision, even as the truth presents a very different picture. At the end of the film, even as things look bleakest, Gazowsky stands in front of his flock promising better days ahead: a slate of 47 films a year, a Christian theme park, ownership of eight television networks, construction of 27 resort cities around the world, even the colonization of a distant planet. To outsiders, Gazowsky may seem to have gone around the final bend. But to his followers, they pray and speak in tongues, roll around on the floor and dance uncontrollably. This is something you don’t see every day.

Audience of One will be screened at 7 p.m. tomorrow at the Newport Art Museum and at 12:15 p.m. Friday at the Jane Pickens Theater as part of the Newport International Film Festival. Tickets are $10 and are on sale at the festival box office, 42 Spring St. (401) 846-4830 or online at www.newportfilmfestival.com.

mjanuson@projo.com