Tony Robbins: I Am Not Your Guru
Christopher Buck: I’ve actually seen it. It’s pretty–it’s also another awesome film.
Joe Berlinger: Yeah. So, that film kind of turned the genre on its head. And I think because of some of the themes in it, Tony gravitated towards it. And so, we met socially, and when he heard I made the film, we struck up a conversation. And, truthfully, I didn’t know Tony Robbins, I only knew the most basic kind of almost clichés about Tony. I didn’t even know he did live seminars. And we had an amazing conversation, and he’s incredibly charismatic, and I think Tony sensed I had some issues going on in my life at the time, which I did have.
But, we’re having a conversation with him basically, thought I’d get something out of “Date With Destiny,” something I never heard of. Even the title to me sounded, like, really cheesy and why would I ever do this? But, something about Tony, just convinced me to give it a whirl. I’m an extremely busy person who juggles lots of projects and a bit of a workaholic. And the idea that I would take six days out of my life, and do something that I normally wouldn’t do, meaning I’m not a seminar guy. I was surprised.
As I was getting on the airplane, I was kind of surprised that I was doing this, and obviously, I felt something pulling me there. And Tony encouraging me to go and inviting me to go, someone who I had just met. At the time, I just felt myself being pulled to go, even though I had a tremendous amount of skepticism as I was stepping on the plane. And I really didn’t know what I was getting myself into.
Again, I was very unfamiliar with Tony Robbins, never had been to a seminar, and just decided to go for it. And they switched the location in 2014 to Boca Raton, Florida, which they’re now but, in 2012, these events, and in prior years, the events take place in Palm Springs, California.
So, for a busy New Yorker to get on a plane and take six days out of his life and fly across the country and– I was surprised I was doing it, both from a practical standpoint because I’m busy and could I really take six days? And from an emotional, spiritual standpoint, I just didn’t think I was that kind of a person. Hey, I was being invited, he was generously offering me to go there as his guest, and I thought that was generous, and I said, okay, maybe I’ll do it.
So, on the first break, on the first day, like, two or three hours into it, I ran for the exits. All of my red flags were going off. Obviously, something was touching me deeply. I didn’t know if something was touching me deeply. I just felt really uncomfortable because it was just sharing feelings with strangers, the hugs, the music, the dancing, but most importantly, the deep probing into your psyche, it just didn’t feel like something that I was comfortable doing.
And so, I fled from the room, and I called my wife, and I said, this was a mistake, and I got to get the hell out of here. I don’t think I can take six days with this. But, how do I not offend Tony Robbins because I was an invited guest and I didn’t want to offend the guy.
And so, my wife, thank God, said why don’t you stick it out another day before you make your decision? So, I stuck it out for another day. And on day two, there was this amazing guided memory exercise. You see it in the film where you’re taken back to your earliest memory and Tony Robbins challenges you to remember something about that memory that you think you don’t remember; So, in other words, the memory before the earliest memory as a way of liberating you from the chains of that incident and it was profoundly moving.
It’s about 40 minutes in the seminar as opposed to the three minutes that you see it in the film. Obviously, in a film, you have to condense and cut time. But, at the actual seminar, you have 2,500 people closing their eyes. I would tell you that if you told me before I experienced that would I ever do something like that, I would’ve told you cynically no way. But, I did it.
He guided me back to my childhood. Not just me, 2,500 people in the room. I found it be a profoundly moving experience. I opened my eyes in a flood of tears. I’m somebody who doesn’t cry easily? And I found myself deeply moved and a weight had lifted, and I thought to myself, oh, well, on the surface this may seem like it’s not for me, but maybe actually, it is. And I decided to stay. I stuck it out for the six days. I found it to be extremely transformational for me, opened my eyes to a whole new way of thinking about my life and my connection to other people. And I called Tony up afterward and thanked him for the gift of the experience and told him I wanted to make a film about it. That the spirit that is in that room, the camaraderie, the breaking down of walls, there are people in that room who just like in any group of people, I wouldn’t necessarily in other circumstances connect with socially or feel like I had anything in common with those people, I just found the spirit in that room, the breaking down of barriers between people, people from all walks of life, connecting and caring about one another.
I just thought I wanted to share that experience with people and create a film that allows people to access that experience if they wanted. I’m sure a lot of people will go into this film very cynically and come out the other side very cynically because that’s the way some people are. And I think there’ll be people who are very open to this and find it to be a very positive experience. But, I’m interested in the people in the middle who were like me, who aren’t so cynical that that they can’t allow the experience to happen, but don’t really know what they’re going to think. And then experience the film in a way that allows them to experience at least for two hours, it’s not my goal to have everyone run out and sign up for Tony Robbins’ seminar.
But, if this film can be a vehicle for people to kind of think about their own lives for two hours and have it be more fulfilled and how to be more connected to other people, that was really the simple goal of this film, which is not how the documentary is often used. Documentary today has very much become about, investigating the latest negative social ill and I’ve made lots of those films. Documentaries have become very much kind of take down pieces about problems in society and uncovering corruption. And again, I’m not criticizing that kind of filmmaking; I’ve done it myself. That’s what I cut my teeth on.
I wanted to use documentary in a different, to have people think about their lives to be inspirational, hopefully, and to share those elements of Tony that I found to be the most compelling for me and to share that with other people.
