The brotherly-love ex-gov

He could have been president of the United States. He had big dreams, big ideas - and a likability factor that was almost preternatural.

Instead, Jim McGreevey became the butt of jokes on late-night TV when he stepped down as New Jersey's governor in 2004, admitting he is a homosexual and accused by a male adviser, Golan Cipel, of sexual harassment.

Fascinated by his public meltdown, journalist and filmmaker Alexandra Pelosi went in search of McGreevey in 2009 and found a newly revitalized man who has reinvented himself - he'd say he finally has found himself - as an openly gay prison counselor and would-be priest.

Pelosi tells McGreevey's story in her eighth HBO documentary, the insightful, eminently watchable Fall to Grace, which premieres Thursday at 8 p.m.

Pelosi, 42, whose mother is House of Representatives minority leader Nancy Pelosi, shot the 47-minute doc guerrilla-style and on the sly as she followed McGreevey living his daily life. She didn't tell her subject she intended to use the footage for a film until much later. (While McGreevey warmed to the idea, his long-term partner, money manager Mark O'Donnell, refused to sign a waiver and doesn't appear in the film.)

Fall to Grace opens with a cleverly edited montage that chronicles what McGreevey calls the "first act" of his life, which took him from Georgetown and Harvard to the mayor's office in Woodbridge Township to the state senate and finally, in 2001, to Drumthwacket.

Then came the "train wreck," as McGreevey calls the scandal, which reached a crescendo on Aug. 12, 2004, when the governor made a stunning admission on live TV. "One has to look deeply into the mirror of one's soul and decide one's unique truth," he said. "My truth is that I am a gay American."

Things became uglier still when McGreevey's second wife, Dina Matos, sued him for divorce, demanding $600,000 in compensation for losing her social rank as New Jersey's first lady.

Matos claimed she was duped into the marriage. McGreevey maintained the marriage was a mutually agreed-upon contrivance in aid of his public life.

"What was worse - having to be heterosexual or being a politician?" Pelosi asks him. McGreevey, who has a daughter with each of his two ex-wives, ponders the question, unable to answer.

McGreevey seems happy, comfortable, and energetic on-screen. Sporting close-cropped gray hair, he has replaced the smart, slick suits with tweed jackets and jeans. He's avuncular, forever hugging folks around him - McGreevey is an inveterate hugger.

He describes the existential crisis he faced when he found himself stripped of his position and all its trappings - the mansion, the limos, the helicopters, the fawning aides. His next move was the standard PR hat trick pulled off by disgraced public figures and Hollywood stars. He checked into a luxury rehab in Arizona; he published a tell-all memoir, The Confession; and he went on Oprah.

McGreevey an addict?

He wasn't hooked on drugs or alcohol, he says. "My addiction is being central in the world," he writes in his book, " . . . being accepted and adored in the way celebrities are adored - by strangers, in abundance."

In a scene that feels a little too much like a talk-show segment, McGreevey says his therapist at rehab taught him to confront his "inner child." He wrote letters to his 7-year-old self, the boy terrified people in the playground would find out he was different.

McGreevey eventually turned his back on his newfound celebrity. Fans at book events fed the same narcissism that ruined his life in politics, he says in the film.

He decided to turn to religion but faced a colossal impediment: Born into a Catholic family, he was taught early that being gay is evil. "The church [taught] that 365 days a year, everyone has the right to redemption," he says in the film. "Except gays."

McGreevey, who had entertained entering the priesthood since he was a child, enrolled at the Episcopal Church's General Theological Seminary in Manhattan, where he earned a master of divinity degree. (Denied ordination as an Episcopal priest in 2011, he may yet earn that title.)

McGreevey also has a job as a counselor to female prisoners at the Hudson County Correctional Center in Kearny. Pelosi spends a great deal of screen time showing McGreevey with the inmates, who seem to adore him. He talks to them of grace, of forgiveness, of second chances.

And he sticks with them after they leave prison through the Integrity House rehab center near the prison, helping the ex-cons find housing and jobs.

Pelosi, whose films specialize in what she calls "broken men," presents a story that's breezy and uplifting - if you're a McGreevey fan. Her film oversimplifies his story, ignoring altogether the more salient aspects of the 2004 scandal. As has been reported extensively, McGreevey lost his political credibility not because he came out as a gay man, but for allegedly using his political influence, and public funds, to install his lover, an Israeli citizen, in a national security post.

Pelosi also leaves out any interviews with McGreevey's family or friends, focusing only on his work. Given its shortcomings, the film does manage to make a moving argument that everyone deserves a second chance. As McGreevey puts it, "No one should be defined by the nadir of their existence."