Guru Movies

Hi All—the deadline for my book has been moved back, and there's still tons and tons of writing to do, but I can now proceed at it in a more relaxed state, but not too relaxed as I have much to cover and I'm such a slow writer, but I so love the slowness of writing, alternately losing myself in brainstorming and precision.  As part of my research I've been seeing guru-themed movies.  This summer I saw Crazy Wisdom:  The Life and Times of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, which, despite it surface flutters of appearing provocative, was basically one long spin-doctored advertisement for Shambhala.  I have no gripes against spin-doctored advertisements for Shambhala, but I do take issue at having to pay to see one.  This movie should be shown for free as part of a recruitment process.  My therapist, who's practiced Zen for 30 years, felt the same way about it.  But, in the teeny women's room of the Roxie Theater, one of the multitude of aging bourgeois spiritual types was wearing these great leather sneakers, and she told me what brand they were, so now I'm wearing them as I type this.  The CTR-woman told me they were very expensive, but worth it.

A couple of weeks ago, Kevin and I went to see Kumaré, the feature-length documentary about the Indian-American guy from New Jersey who decided to become a guru named Kumaré to explore issues around spirituality and belief.  I found myself quite swept up in the movie, partially because impersonator/director Bikram Gandhi is so cute and charismatic.  He has star quality oozing from his pores.  Kevin and I went to the late show at the Roxie, and the crowd leaving the first show looked exactly like the aging bourgeois spiritual audience I sat among at Crazy Wisdom.  Gandhi eventually comes up with a philosophy he can believe in—that we all carry a guru within us and therefore we don't need external gurus.  He uses this idea to convince himself that he's doing good through his deception of his loyal followers.  That afternoon I watched online interviews with him and the film's producer in which they appeared quite sympathetic, and by time the movie ended, I'd totally bought their schtick. 

Kevin wanted to take a picture of the film's producer, who did a Q&A after the movie.  The producer was this totally paranoid guy who acted like we were stalking him, which was funny considering we'd just watched a movie about luring in the unsuspecting, and this guy seemed to suspect everybody.  Kevin said, can I take your picture, and the guy said why, and Kevin said for Facebook, and the guy said, suspiciously, what Facebook?  Kevin said his personal Facebook page, and he finally agreed, but since the light was so dark, Kevin said he'd get him later in the lobby.  Even before Kevin freaked him out, I told the guy that I was writing a book about cults and I so resonated with what they were saying in the movie, and again, the vibe that I was this crazy stalker.  When the guy exited to the lobby, he skirted past us.  Kevin nabbed him outside as the guy nervously tried to ignore him.  He's an idiot, as Kevin's really good at portraits, and some of his photos are going to be shown in the near future at White Columns.  Spending nearly all of your time in the bubble of a writing/arts scene, as Kevin and I do, it's odd to be in a situation where you're not known.  Kevin and I must project a much creepier front than we realize.  So, instead of the producer, I've included a photo Kevin took of Molly, one of the duped followers, who couldn't have been sweeter.  I suppose the duped are always sweeter than the dupers.

This week, on a DVD from Netflix we watched The Guru, a 2002 romantic comedy starring Jimi Mistry and Heather Graham.  Jimi Mistry as a fake guru is just as cute as Bikram Gandhi is in Kumaré, but not nearly as charismatic, probably because Mistry's character never believes what he preaches—until the end when he tells his betrayed number one follower, Marisa Tomei, that she would be fine because really what had changed her was not him, but her guru within.  Kevin and I turned to one another, our jaws dropped, and Kevin said it first, exactly what I was thinking:  This is the same movie as Kumaré!  That Mistry's guru slept with Tomei is just considered okay, not really addressed—Guruji's cavalier attitude towards the power dynamics of his involvement with Tomei's cardboard heiress character is perhaps the only genuine moment in the film.  In a couple of interviews online, Bikram Gandhi is asked if he got involved with any of his students, and he said something like the morals of fake gurus are stricter than those of real gurus, implying no, he didn't.

I allowed myself to love Kumaré as a character.  Like his followers, I squelched his contradictions, his narcissism, his smarmy exploitations, so seduced I was by the focused sexiness of his yogic goodness.  But after seeing The Guru, my attitude towards Kumaré shifted and I feel kind of dirty having been sucked into believing.