Behind the scenes of “I Am Not Your Guru”
Filmmaker Joe Berlinger talks about fate, honesty and his own transformationHundreds of thousands of people have attended Tony Robbins programs, but there’s an event that only takes place once a year in the States, where 2,500 people from all over the world come to Florida to experience one of his most intimate and intensive seminars – Date with Destiny.
It’s six days of total immersion, and the people who take that journey discover who they are, what drives them and their ultimate purpose. In short, this is the place where they deal with the hard stuff. And with thousands of people in a room, digging into their pasts, envisioning their future, you name it – you can imagine how emotionally charged the room gets, and how personal of an experience Date with Destiny is.
So it’s not hard to understand why Tony never allowed cameras in to document the event. But that all changed when he met acclaimed documentary filmmaker, Joe Berlinger, who would go on to make the Tony Robbins Netflix movie that became a sensation.
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Who is Joe Berlinger?
Joe Berlinger is a documentary filmmaker known for investigative films like the Paradise Lost trilogy about the West Memphis Three, exposing cracks in the criminal justice system, and “Crude,” which is about pollution in the Amazon from giant oil companies. Joe Berlinger documentaries, for the most part, have been geared toward taking us into the issues of the world that are often obscured by media or politics, and uncovering disturbing truths.
But Joe didn’t start out as a filmmaker. He was a language major in college, and his only goal after graduation was to live in Europe and get paid to speak German. His work in client services at an international advertising agency brought him to a TV commercial shoot – and “That’s when the lights, camera, action caught my attention.”
For those of you familiar with Joe’s body of work, you may be surprised that he would have pursued a subject like Date with Destiny in the first place. And you may be especially curious as to why he felt so strongly that he pressed Tony for years to agree to it.
