Published by: World Tibet Network News Wednesday - May 14, 1997

Newsweek, 19 May 1997

If you have yet to see a movie about Tibet, just wait. Martin Scorsese's

"Kundun," the life story of the Dalai Lama, will preview this week at the

Cannes Film Festival, followed by a big Tibetan feast. Jean-Jacques

Annaud's "Seven Years in Tibet" opens in the fall, staring Brad Pitt as the

Dalai Lama's onetime mentor, Austrian explorer Heinrich Harrer. Meanwhile,

producers and screenwriters are developing at least five other Tibet

scripts: on the CIA in Tibet, the abominable snowman in Tibet, terror in

Tibet, passion in Tibet, youthful dreams smashed in Tibet. There is a host

of documentaries also in the works, including two about "Buh-Jews," or Jews

who discover Buddhism. "It's as though everybody who carries a camera wants

to make a movie on Tibet," says Tenzing Chhodak, director of the Tibet

found.

With more than seven movies now in the works on Tibet, the embattled land

is Hollywood's favorite theme and Trendiest cause

By Tony Emerson and Carla Power

Tibet's big moment in the Hollywood spotlight is upon us. It's been 50

years since Tinseltown first embraced a mythical Tibet Frank Capra's 1937

film version of "Lost Horizon"-the James Hilton novel about a high

Himalayan paradise called Shangri-La-portrayed a land of everlasting youth,

where musicians whiled away eternity playing Rameau on harpsichords. From

then on, Westerners would confuse the real Tibet with the myth. When China

occupied the country in 1950, the myth was transformed into a Western

cause. The once tranquil never never land, where gentle devotees prayed

amid snowcapped peaks, became the underdog paradise fighting communist

dictatorship. It was a living fable made for the movies-with gorgeous

mountain settings and a dramatic central figure swathed in flowing robes,

the Dalai Lama.

It's no surprise that Hollywood's obsession with Tibet is finally peaking

now, at a time when China, cast as the bad guy in this tale, has become a

major worry in the West. After all, Russian villains are pass=B4e. Fear of a

rising China translates readily into sympathy for Tibet, which is not only

Hollywood" top theme of 1997, but its charitable cause du jour. And the

Dalai Lama, chased out of Tibet by the Chinese in 1959, has be-come

filmdom's favorite exile. "The tale of the Dalai Lama and the struggle of

the Tibetan people is the kind of story that captures the imagination in

Hollywood," says Denise Di Novi, whose production company is working on a

movie called "Buddha From Brooklyn." "It's a very epic, tragic and

ultimately inspiring story."

The flood of Tibet scripts also follows, or perhaps exploits, the rising

interest in Buddhism in both Hollywood and beyond. Spiritual-study groups

and sanghas-communities of Buddhist believers-are springing up around the

United States, often led by exiled Tibetan lamas. Buddhist meditation

techniques are now routine salves for Western-style stress; subscription

rates for the American Buddhist magazine Tricycle have doubled in the last

four years. Peter Gabriel recently signed the angel-voiced Tibetan Yunchen

Lhamo to his Real World label.

Tibet is hip, and Buddhism is trendy, so Tibetan Buddhism is extra-cool.

Particularly in Hollywood. On the set of "Seven Years," Brad Pitt spoke to

NEWSWEEK's Jeff Giles in his trailer, which was decorated with Tibetan rugs

and pillows and nicknamed "the Opium Den." In a case of life meeting art,

Pitt filmed the scene of Tibet's 1950 surrender to China alongside

emotional Tibetan cast and crew members. His description of the rauoous

action captures the drama that makes Tibet so alluring to Hollywood. "Oh,

my God," recalled Pitt. "Couldn't believe it. And then they shot this scene

where they're saying, 'Give the Dalai Lama the power!' Everybody goes into

this chant, and ft was like something was going down and God was shining

through the clouds. It was heavy."

Hollywood is pursuing tales of down-trodden Tibet almost as aggressively as

China is working to shoot them down. Beijing would not allow any filming

inside Tibet, so Annaud shot "Seven Days" in Argentina, and Scorsese shot

"Kundun" in Morocco. Last November, Beijing even warned Disney, the

financial muscle behind "Kundun," that any movie favorable to the Dalai

Lama would jeopardize Disney plans for theme parks and movies in the

Chinese market. Disney refined to hack out of the project, and Beijing

appeared to retreat from its threats. But the "Kundun" controversy scared

off other production companies. The action film "Dixie Cups," in which

actor-producer Steven Seagal plays a CIA agent aiding Tibetan rebels during

the 60s, has been delayed for more than a year by concerns about China's

reaction. "Everybody just said we can't do this," says Seagal, who insists

his film will still go ahead. "Most of the studios in town are very afraid

of China. They want to make deals on theme parks. They're more interested

in business than they are in spiritual matters."

Perhaps, but few of the Tibet films now in the works will please China. In

the independent American production of "The Wind Horse," a Tibetan pop

singer faces a crisis of conscience after the Chinese imprison and torture

her cousin, a Buddhist nun. This fall IMAX, which makes giant 3-D movies,

will release a film about Mount Everest, in which a Tibetan explorer

reaches the top and dramatically unfurls the Tibetan flag banned by China.

Merchant Ivory Productions, famous for its 19th-century period pieces, has

bought a script about two young Americans witnessing the Chinese crackdown

in Tibet in the late 1980s. The writer, Blake Kerr, describes this

political action drama as "a combination of 'The Killing Fields' and

'Midnight Express'"-in other words, Cambodian terror meets Turkish

persecution.

China can't stop all these films, so it is countering with its own Tibet

movie, in which the real oppressors are the British. "Bed River Valley" is

a love story set during the brief 1904 British invasion of Tibet, which

followed the Dalai Lama's failure to answer letters from the British

viceroy. Director Feng Xiao Ning went to great lengths to re-create the

brutality of British troops, who massacred hundreds before pulling out of

Tibet. Three busloads of People's Liberation Army soldiers were brought in

to play Tibetan troops and stage explosions for the battle scenes. But

=46eng's efforts only prompted a new escalation of Beijing's angry debate

with Tibet's friends in the West. Before hacking away from the story last

week, the Tibet Information Network in London was reporting that Feng

recreated the British attack on a 12th-century monastery by blowing up

another ancient monastery nearby.

China s heavy-handed tactics have helped make Tibet Hollywood's most

popular underdog. After the row over Beijing's threats against Disney,

celebrities from Alec Baldwin to Barbra Streisand wrote President Clinton,

urging him to pressure China on human rights in Tibet. Fashion designers

Anna Sui, Todd Oldnam and Marc Jacobs are selling clothes with FREEDOM FOR

TIBET tags, urging customers to boycott Chinese goods. In recent years

actors Richard Gere and Harrison Ford have testified to the Senate Foreign

Relations Committee, urging more active American diplomacy, in support of

the Dalai Lama.

His Holiness welcomes the glamorous backers. Exiled in Dharamsala, India,

the Dalai Lama spends about half his time campaigning for Tibetan autonomy

from China. He has struck a particularly rich vein of sympathy in Los

Angeles. Last fall the Dalai Lama attended a Beverly Hills fund-raiser put

only Ford and his wife, Melissa Mathison Ford, author of "Kundun." "It's

been necessary for His Holiness to find support where he can," says writer

Orville Schell, who is working on a book about Tibet and the West. "Since

he doesn't have embassies, and he has no political power, he has to seek

other kinds. Hollywood is a kind of country of its own, and he's

established a kind of embassy there."

The Dalai Lama has more than a lobby in Hollywood. He has followers.

Perhaps the most devoted is Gere. Since his emotional plea for Tibet at the

1993 Academy Awards, Gere has not been invited to speak at the Oscar

ceremonies again. But scores of film stars, including Goldie Hawn, Willem

Dafoe, Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan have dabbled in Buddhist and Tibetan

culture.

Why? Columbia University's Robert Thurman, America's highest-profile

Buddhist Buddhism Is scholar and father of actress Uma Thurman, knows a

fair bit about the buzz in both Hollywood and Tibet. His theory is that

Buddhist methods for analyzing the "sense of self" namely, meditation and

self-examination, have parallels in Method acting. Director Oliver Stone,

who has studied with Tibetan lamas, says it's an ego thing. He cites the

realms of Buddhist teaching, including god, demigod, human, hungry ghost

and hell. "Hollywood is living in the top two realms," says Stone. "Stars

are always being worshiped and loved and chased alter. If you're not a god,

then you're a demigod."

The risk for the God King of Tibet is that mixing too intimately with

high-flying celebrities will blur the line between himself and them. Colby

College Asian-studies expert Lee Feigon says Westerners already have a

tendency to view Tibet as a sort of "Star Wars" saga of good and evil. In

this scheme, the Dalai Lama plays the real-life alter ego to the movie's

wise and beneficent Obi-Wan Kenobi. To Tibetans, however, the Dalai Lama is

the most recent in a long line of reincarnated god kings. At home, some

have questioned the dignity of His Holiness's posing for paparazzi

alongside action stars like Seagal and sex symbols like Sharon Stone. (To

say nothing of benefits where bands like Rage Against the Ma-chine raise

hinds for Buddhist nuns.) Where does Hollywood publicity end and parody

begin? "Superman" producer Ilya Salkind is planning a horror movie with

what he assures will be a "very unique" romance between an American

anthropologist and the abominable snowman in Tibet.

The Dalai Lama has weighed the risks, and dismissed them. "I don't pay much

attention to what people might say" of hobnobbing in Hollywood, he told

NEWSWEEK. But he also made it clear that he had pondered the downside. "I

feel happy that all these films are being made, because we need more

awareness of Tibet," he said. "Take, for example, a film like 'Little

Buddha' [by director Bernardo Bertolucci]. From a Buddhist perspective, an

ordinary human being taking the role of Buddha-that's impossible. But from

another angle, this way of showing the Buddha can bring some idea of the

basic story of Buddha and his thought to millions of people."

It's not only Hollywood story- tellers who are drawn to Buddha's tale.

Documentary director Laurel Chiten is currently editing "a modern~day

'Wirard of Oz' story" about skeptical Jew discovering Buddhism. That's not

to be confused with Di Novi's "Buddha From Brooklyn," a "dramady" based on

the life of Jetsunma, a Jewish-Italian girl in New York who discovers she

is a tulku-a reincarnation of a 17th-century saint-and goes on to finance

her Maryland monastery with the proceeds of a hair-conditioning cap she

invents and sells on TV commercials. "We've become saturated with confusion

and materialism," says the real-life Jetsunma, who favors big hair and

lipstick. "We're looking for something pure."

Tibet has held a strong allure for the spiritually adrift at least since

the late 1930s mania for "Lost Horizon." Back then, the image spun by

Hilton of a pure and peaceful Shangri-La provided "everything Europeans

missed in the menace of pre-Hitlerian Europe," says Schell. Eventually, he

adds, Tibet became "more of a geist than an actual place." Now, China's

market reforms are bringing everything from video parlors to pornography

and alcohol into Shangri-La. But Hollywood still clings to the old Tibet.

Both "Kundun" and "Seven Years in Tibet" painstakingly attempt to

reconstruct the look of Tibet before the occupation. Now that the West is

coming to terms with China's rise as a major power, its reverence for the

mysteries of the East is in search of a new idol - some would say false

idol. "China has always taken on mythical significance in American minds as

a spiritual force, where people haven't bought into materialism," says

=46eigon. "Now that the Chinese have, we can transfer that [mythical] image

to Tibet"

Some smarter celebs are aware that Hollywood's embrace could smother Tibet,

not save it "If the truth gets tangled up with a bunch of hokey perceptions

about celebrities, it's going to turn a lot of people off," says Adam Yauch

of the Beastie Boys band, whose Milarepa Fund organizes Tibet benefits and

boycotts. The director of the Washington-based International Campaign for

Tibet, John Ackerly, recalls Harrison Ford's telling him that he wanted to

help the cause but didn't want to become a poster boy for Tibet. Yet the

spotlight is always drawn to celebrity. After a benefit concert for Tibet

at Carnegie Hall this winter, journalists hollered questions about Tibet to

music stars including Patti Smith and Michael Stipe. Behind the celebrities

sat ruby- and saffron-robed Tibetan monks, who had chanted during the

benefit. Nobody seemed particularly interested in asking the monks

questions about Tibet-and they were the ones most qualified to answer.

That's how these sensations work. In the end, Hollywood's new Tibet chic

will tell us more about Hollywood than about Tibet And when filmdom is done

with Tibet, a new sea-son will usher in a new pet cause.

With TONY CLIFTON in Dharamsala Brad Pitt: Star Trekking