On Monday I saw a very interesting film called Join Us at the LA Film Festival. It's a documentary by Ondi Timoner (pronounced tih-MOE-ner as Jonesy found out on the Jukebox Jury Friday), the director of the fabulous Dig! — the movie about the Brian Jonestown Massacre and the Dandy Warhols (whose keyboard player got nekkid for this very website!). This time instead of rock and roll Timoner turned her cameras on a religious cult in South Carolina. Timoner said she was interested in doing a film about mind control after witnessing the megalomaniac tactics practiced by BJM leader Anton Newcombe to keep his band mates in line. (An aside; Whenever I play a BJM record at home my wife asks if it’s me, so much alike are the styles of BJM and my old psych band Dimentia 13)

According to the movie, the new brand of cult is not a giant international organization like the Moonies or Scientology. What's more common these days is little cults you never hear about in rural areas. They operate totally under the radar. There’s virtually no control over any organization that declares itself a religious group, and in America pretty much anyone can do that. Unless the cult members all kill themselves like in Jonestown or Heaven’s Gate, or kill other people like Aum Shinrikyo in Japan, you never get to hear about them.

The film follows the fall of one such mini-cult, a fire and brimstone Christian church led by a charismatic German immigrant named Raimund Melz. In intimate interviews with former and current members of Melz’s cult and even Melz himself, we get to hear how a once rather benign little country church was gradually transformed into something pretty scary and potentially dangerous.

I learned from my experience making my own documentary movie, Cleveland’s Screaming (which is playing July 25th at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood, get your tickets here), it helps if even a factual documentary has a conventional storyline with a hero and a villain. The hero of Join Us is the one brave soul who escaped the cult and taught his brethren inside what an insidious organization they were participating in, eventually succeeding in pretty much toppling the church. They continue to operate, but the Mountain Rock Church is a mere shadow of its former self — though the film alleges that Melz made over five million dollars from his followers. The villains of the piece are cult-leader Melz and his wife.

But when I watched the film I ended up having a lot more sympathy, or at least empathy, with Raimund Melz than I did with his enraged former flock. As the leader of a cult of my own, I can see his side of the story more clearly than I can the side of the supposed heroes of the film. I'm sitting there thinking, how can I get my followers to buy me a fleet of sports cars and build me a whole subdivision full of houses for free which I can then rent back to them at inflated prices? How come I gotta pay my own money to rent out the Hill Street Center for retreats and Zazen classes and take a huge loss on the thing every month when only five people show up? What's up with that? Shit, maybe I should charge $185 a session and hypnotize everyone into thinking they've been enlightened by the end of the day ...

NO! NO!! NO!!!!! I am joking. J-o-k-i-n-g. OK? But seriously, I really do see Melz's side of the story more clearly than his followers' side. But let me get to that in a bit.

The former members of the Mountain Rock Church want Pastor Melz to pay dearly for the awful things he made them do. The film follows their efforts to mount a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against their former leader. They’re shown talking about how they want Melz to die most painfully. One former member says he hopes they manage to land Melz in jail because otherwise he might kill the man he once believed so holy himself.

But as I watched I kept thinking about what their actual allegations were. Melz is accused of scheming to get his flock to build all those houses, which God then apparently asks them — through Melz, naturally — to give to the pastor so the church (i.e. Melz) can make money off of them. The pastor is also accused of enjoining his parishioners to beat their children bloody for any act of rebelliousness. Melz himself is supposed to have demonstrated the proper way to administer punishment and to have on occasion beaten the kids himself. But by and large the really heinous punishment was meted out not by the pastor, but by the hands of the parents.

Look, kids. Here’s the deal. If you do something you are responsible for that action. No matter who told you to do it — even if it was God himself. The law of cause and effect does not give you any easy outs. I don’t care what Great Holy Man or Great Holy Book tells you there are special exemptions or what jury lets you off the hook. You are still fully responsible, under any circumstances, throughout all of space and time, forever and ever world without end, Amen.

I don’t have a whole lot of sympathy for people who want to defer responsibility for the stuff they did no matter what kind of duress they were under when it happened. I know it’s not easy to just say no to what everyone around you demands you do. But sometimes that’s what you gotta do. That is the thing that this film's hero does that makes him truly heroic. He gets the fuck out. But it's also important to know not to get into such situations to begin with.

Which brings up another thing. Unlike what the former members of Melz’s church seem to want us to believe, the followers of cults are never simply innocent little creatures who get duped by big, bad, dirty, greedy guys because the poor doe-eyed little darlings didn’t know any better. They are people who desperately want to get duped.

Man, I can feel it from some of folks who come and see me or write me e-mails sometimes. I don’t get a lot of this kind of thing. I think I usually scare these kinds of folks away, thank God. But every so often I hear from folks who are seriously searching for someone exactly like Raimund Melz, or like Charles Manson, or bin Laden, or Hitler. What’s kinda scary is knowing that the really bad cases won't stop till they find either a true megalomaniac or at least some poor sap they can turn into the corrupt leader they so desire. I can see it in the questions some people ask me, how their deepest desire is to have someone tell them what to do, what to feel, what to think. Some of the truly sad cases even want me — of all people — to be the Great Master who will guide them to the Promised Land without their having to do any of the work it takes to get there.

I can feel their intense disappointment when I refuse to be that guy. And it’s tough sometimes. There are occasions when I feel really bad about it. Like, if only I could be that guy and make them happy... But I know where that road leads and I refuse to take it. Often these folks can be extraordinarily skilled manipulators, knowing exactly which of their master’s buttons to push in order to get him to tell them God said to do the bad things they secretly desire to do. Some decent people in my business who find themselves under that kind of pressure just run away and refuse to deal with followers of any kind. There’s a story about Kobun Chino, my first Zen teacher’s teacher, being confronted by a guy who desperately wanted him to be his guru. Kobun excused himself and then escaped out the bathroom window. I can totally relate to that. There is powerful pressure for any leader of any religious type organization to be Big Daddy or Big Mommy to the congregation.

The reason for this is pretty elementary. As someone in the movie points out, humans have the longest period of dependence of any animal we know of. Unlike most creatures who become fully independent of their parents in months, if not weeks or even days or hours, we can spend decades under mommy and daddy’s wings. Some of us never learn how to live on our own and spend the rest of our lives searching for new Mommies and new Daddies to give us candy when we do something good and smack our butts when we’re bad. And while they’re at it they can wipe those butts and give us free room and board too. We’ll do anything to make our new Mommies and Daddies think we’re good little boys and girls.

Which is not to absolve the various nasty cult leaders of responsibility for what people do under their direction. Of course they are responsible! But a cult leader never works as a solo act. You can’t be a cult leader without a cult to lead. Solo cult leaders, they're just crazy people yelling on street corners that everyone ignores.

I suspect that Timoner might understand all this. But I also suspect that in order to get the ex-members to the Mountain Rock Church to speak on camera, she had to give weight to their side of the story. Plus Melz comes off really badly when he is given a chance to speak.

At the Q&A after the film Timoner talked about how ordinary everyone in the church was and how she felt like she could just as easily have joined a cult as they did. Anyone could, she said. Too true. I know I was ripe for cult-ivation in my younger days, and I've written about this in my first book Hardcore Zen. Watch yourself out there, friends!

Still, I’ve watched and read a lot about cults of various religions. Most of the stuff I’ve seen does address the issue of how cult followers are ultimately responsible for what they do when carrying out the orders they’re given. But it’s hard for me to come up with even one book or movie that addresses the issue of how the rank-and-file members of any given cult actually contribute to making their “evil” leaders what they become. It’s not just a top down process of one guy, or group of guys, giving orders and a bunch of otherwise nice people carrying them out. They’re not distinct entities at all, but a kind of group organism in which each member contributes pretty much equally.

In any case, I do highly recommend the film. It’s a very good flick about a very important subject. When my cult gets really nasty, I hope Timoner makes a movie about us too!

Brad Warner is the author of Hardcore Zen and Sit Down and Shut Up!. He maintains a blog about Buddhist stuff. If you're in Southern California and you want to try some Zazen for yourself, he has a group that meets every Saturday in Santa Monica.

On Wednesday July 25th, 2007, his movie CLEVELAND'S SCREAMING! will have its world premier at the EGYPTIAN THEATER in Hollywood. So mark your calendars! Get your tickets here



Plus, the very first record by his old hardcore band 0DFx (Zero Defex) has just been released by Get Revenge Records. Get yours today!