Richard Gere on Making a Movie About His Longtime Mentor and “Favorite Uncle,” the Dalai Lama

The relevance of this film is, these things that we’re talking about, the negative emotions, the self-cherishing, the tribal stuff, there's nothing innately there that makes us a Democrat, a Republican, a human being, an animal. These are all mental states that can come and go, and we can control that kind of thing. They're just labels on basic consciousness, basic awareness. His Holiness is focusing on what is the basic thing of who we are, and, to him, we are kind, generous, and compassionate. And our society says the opposite, that this is a dog-eat-dog world, which leads us down into a wormhole of where we are right now, where nobody trusts each other, everyone hates each other and is angry and afraid all the time. But that is a hallucination on who we are, which is kindness, compassion and love. These kinds of gooey things seem silly, but they're actually profound as to who we are as individuals and who we can become as a society and a culture.

In the opening of the film, the Dalai Lama speaks about how this will not be an easy century, and he’s definitely right about that so far. He talks about all the fear, anger and hatred out there. Do you feel like this film and the Dalai Lama’s message is arriving at a time where it’s needed more than ever?

When the directors brought the film to me, they were still figuring out exactly what it was, and we were approaching the Dalai Lama's 90th birthday, and I thought that this could be the centerpiece of celebrating His Holiness. And it does. You see the life and history of an extraordinary person. In the meantime, the world has fallen off a cliff — everywhere. I travel a lot, and it's not just in the U.S. People are living in a dissonant, crazy reality. So I think the film is actually functioning as medicine, as a corrective of, “Okay, time out. Let's look at who we are right now. How did we get here? How can we stop this? And imagine the positive universe, which is closer to the truth of who we are and who we can become as a world.”

After watching the film, it’s hard not to want to aspire to the vision that he sees, one of peace, happiness and compassion. It kind of puts the onus on all of us to do what we individually can.

You’re completely responsible for your experience of the world. And the beginning point of changing the world is changing yourself and doing the work. His Holiness is 90 years old and he still gets up at 3:30 in the morning to do hours of practice before he meets people and has his functioning world. And he's the Dalai Lama! For us, we find it hard to have five minutes where we can go and do something, and we think we're holy. His Holiness is optimistic but also committed. This is his life. This is authentically who he is. He's here to help everyone; even who I would call “the bad guys” are saved in his universe. From his point of view, they're consumed by an illness whose root is self-cherishing, and it's led them to ignorance, to behave and think and do things in the world the way they behave right now. But you can remove the illness and then you have that basic human being who is that loving, kind child who wants to be held.

The Dalai Lama is this larger-than-life figure, but, as someone who knows him as well as you do, what might surprise people about him as an actual real human being?

When we re-edited the film, we looked at all the raw footage, and there was this wonderful stuff where His Holiness was just coming into the room for the interview. He's 90 years old, so they were helping him sit, and he had his glasses and he didn't know where he was supposed to go. They had cut that out before, and I said, “No, this is so human.” We would all be like, “Okay, what am I supposed to do? What do you want from me?” So we left all that in.