Not Your Guru

“I gave him his first big speech, by the way,” says Tony Robbins. “He came [to a Robbins event] and thought that he was going to speak to 100 people: We had 10,000 people, and he just about fell over. Then he got addicted to large crowds...

Donald is a complex character,” Robbins says. “Some people are driven by certainty. They get freaked out if you change anything. Some people live for variety. They just want surprise. Some people live to love, some people live to grow, some live for contribution, and some people live to be significant. Donald’s entire life is built around significance. He’s learned that the way to be significant is to dominate. Most of his conflicts come because he has to have the last word. It’s served him in some areas, and it clearly doesn’t in others.”

Robbins smiles and says, “He’s not going to get coached by me. Donald doesn’t take coaching from anybody.”

~ "Robbins has met with, consulted, or advised international leaders including Nelson Mandela, Mikhail Gorbachev, Margaret Thatcher, Francois Mitterrand, Princess Diana, and Mother Teresa. He has consulted members of two royal families, members of the U.S. Congress, the U.S. Army, the U.S. Marines and three U.S. Presidents, including Bill Clinton. Robbins has had the unique opportunity to identify patterns and model the underlying strategies generating consistent results for some of the most successful individuals in the world.

In 2006, he was invited to speak at the prestigious Technology, Entertainment and Design (TED) Conference, attended by the world’s most influential thinkers and leaders, including the founders of Google and Vice President Al Gore. Toastmasters International recognized Robbins as one of the world’s greatest speakers, awarding him the Golden Gavel Award, its most prestigious honor. One of the most sought-after speakers in the world, more than three million people from over 80 countries have attended Anthony Robbins’ live seminars or speaking engagements." ~ tonyrobbins.com

"In “Tony Robbins: I Am Not Your Guru,” an immersive look at his 2014 seminar in Boca Raton, Fla., so much is lobbed that this almost fawning documentary plays at times like a horror movie. There is something almost vampiric about this public siphoning of hurt, from the self-loathing of a suicidal young man to the devastating anguish of a woman who survived a childhood of sex slavery. Is she on the road to being healed, we wonder, or has she just exchanged one possible cult for another?

“I’m gonna show you what to do to reshape yourself,” Mr. Robbins tells the young man, and more than 2,000 pairs of ears prick up. This is what they have come from all over the world, and paid almost $5,000, to learn; and like a carefully honed combination of Elmer Gantry, Dr. Phil and David Copperfield (when Mr. Robbins yanks back the curtain, it’s your deepest psychological wound that’s revealed), their host will not disappoint.

Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for the film’s director, Joe Berlinger, who attended the seminar in 2012 and, according to the publicity notes, wanted to share that “life-changing” experience. To do so, he allowed Mr. Robbins to supply the film’s initial financing and gave him the option of canceling at any point before the end of the seminar. (Any footage already shot could be used by Mr. Robbins for coaching.) And though Mr. Berlinger had final cut, it’s hard to find a single moment here that would be out of place in a promotional video.

For a director whose previous work — like the magnificent “Paradise Lost” trilogy (1996, 2000 and 2011) — has been more focused on social injustices than on mental swamps, this uncritical hands-off stance is quite a departure. It’s also a missed opportunity to analyze his subject’s charismatic technique, a galvanic blend of psychoanalysis, EST, primal therapy, meditation and calisthenics that confers a peacocking dominance on the speaker and summons a near-religious devotion from his audience." ~ nytimes.com