Jody Shapiro’s bracing documentary on Burt Shavitz, the reclusive Jewish hippie who co-founded the Burt’s Bees personal care empire in the backwoods of Maine 30 years ago, paints a vivid portrait of a loner, curmudgeon and reluctant entrepreneur whose rags-to-riches story is a template of the possibilities of American capitalism.
Burt’s Buzz, which opens in Toronto on Friday, June 13 at the Tiff Bell Lightbox, takes a viewer on a ride from the suburbs of Long Island, where Shavitz was raised in a middle-class family, to rural New York and Maine, where he stumbled upon his mission in life.
Before we’re taken there on a voyage of discovery, Shapiro transports us to Taipei airport in Taiwan. Arriving there on a promotion tour, he’s greeted like a rock star by young admirers.
Backtracking six months, the film catches up with Shavitz in Dexter, Maine, where he lives in a converted turkey coop without electricity or running water. As he prepares for a promotional trip to Minneapolis, he says, “My life has been evolutionary rather than revolutionary.”
True enough.
An outcast in high school in Great Neck, New York, Shavitz spent two years in the army before decamping in Manhattan to become a street photographer. After working for a Jewish weekly, he began freelancing for The New York Times and Time magazine. A restless soul, he moved to upstate New York, living simply and surviving on odd jobs. “I was a high-class hobo,” says Shavitz, who was 76 years old when this movie was shot.
Drifting into bee keeping by accident thanks to a neighbour, he sold honey on the side of roads and broke even. “I realized I didn’t need another job,” he recalls.
By chance, he met a person who changed his life completely — single mother Roxanne Quimby, who turned his modest business into a thriving concern. Using Shavitz’s stocks of beeswax, Quimby made a variety of earth-friendly organic products ranging from candles and soap to lip balm and bath crystals, selling them in attractive packages at country fairs.
“My bees were the company,” he says.
Due to Quimby’s vision and acumen, Burt’s Bees took off, generating surprising profits and leaving Shavitz, a quintessential hayseed, a little befuddled. “No one has accused me of being ambitious,” he says, adding that the company’s corporate image makes him uncomfortable.
“He went from nothing to being a millionaire,” observes his brother. “And isn’t that the American dream?”
Shavitz, however, never aspired to be a wealthy capitalist. Frugal, unassuming, unworldly and eccentric, he was eventually bought out by Quimby for $130,000. She, in turn, earned tens of millions of dollars by selling the company to a private equity firm, which proceeded to sell Burt’s Bees to Clorox for a whopping $930 million.
Quimby’s wily maneuvers angered Shavitz, forcing Quimby to mollify him with a $4 million gift and a position as company spokesman. Shavitz, the spitting image of a 19th century farmer, fulfills his duties perfectly, shyly handing out samples at a Target department store and submitting to fawning interviews in Taiwan.
Of course, Shavitz and Quimby are no longer on speaking terms. “Roxanne really wanted to own me, and nobody will ever own me,” he says defiantly.
When not on tours, Shavitz usually can be found in his cabin in northern Maine, tending to his land, riding his BMW motorcycle around the countryside and enjoying the companionship of what seems to be his only friend, Pasha, his Golden Retriever.
In Burt’s Buzz, Shapiro captures the essence of this curious man in stellar fashion.