AMHERST — Actor and humanitarian Richard Gere is perhaps best known for playing characters with dubious morals, like Billy Flynn in “Chicago” or Julian Kay in “American Gigolo.”
But on Wednesday night, he returned to the University of Massachusetts Amherst — his alma mater — to screen a movie that encourages compassion and cooperation for the betterment of humanity.
About 2,000 people filled Frederick C. Tillis Performance Hall for a free screening of the movie “Wisdom of Happiness,” for which Gere was an executive producer.
The movie stars the Dalai Lama speaking about his philosophies on happiness, compassion and building a better world. Among other things, he recalls his childhood and how his mother was a key role model for his compassionate outlook, and he discusses his love of science and how it overlaps with his spiritual beliefs. The Dalai Lama also discusses more difficult topics like Chinese military violence, fleeing into exile in 1959, male chauvinism and climate change.
“Brothers and sisters of this small planet, I want to make clear: we are the same human beings,” the Dalai Lama said.
“This, to me, is a movie about responsibility,” Gere said in a panel after the screening. “It’s not about going to a cave and finding some personal independence, freedom, liberation, Buddhahood. It’s creating the world we want for ourselves and our children and our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren and creating this utopian possibility on this little tiny planet floating through space.”
Gere said it was the largest screening of the movie he’d ever seen.
“A room full of 2,000 strangers. Do you feel like strangers now?” he asked. “No. I don’t either. I feel like we’re brothers and sisters.”
After the screening, radio personality Monte Belmonte, co-host of “The Fabulous 413” on New England Public Media, moderated a panel discussion with Gere; U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern, a staunch supporter of Tibetan independence; and Tencho Gyatso, president of the International Campaign for Tibet and the Dalai Lama’s niece.
Among other topics, the panelists spoke about creating a film with the Dalai Lama; about the International Campaign for Tibet’s goals; about what supporters of Tibetan independence (including Gyatso and McGovern) plan to do during President Xi Jinping’s visit to the U.S. later this month; and about plans for the Dalai Lama’s future death and reincarnation.
Belmonte recalled a time in which McGovern asked if Belmonte could move the date of his annual anti-hunger walk, commonly known as “Monte’s March,” that year.
“He said, ‘Monte, can you move the march from early November to Thanksgiving week? I gotta take Nancy Pelosi to China to advocate for the Tibetan people,’” Belmonte said. “So I said, ‘For you, Nancy Pelosi, and the Tibetan people, yes, let’s move the march. … You can join us!’”
“Let’s be honest — he’s the man,” Gere said, referring to McGovern.
Belmonte asked Gere if his connection to the cause of Tibetan independence had come at a personal cost to his career. Gere said that the movies he makes “don’t go to China anyhow,” but he mentioned a Chinese director who had wanted to work with him, which Gere initially agreed to. He thought it might be a way of bridging the divide between the two countries. That director backed out of having Gere on the project two weeks before shooting was slated to start, Gere said, due to government threats.
Gere spoke passionately about the Chinese Communist Party.
“The [Chinese] Communist Party influence is everywhere,” he said. “There’s no question about it. Everywhere. It’s in this university. It’s everywhere. What they have done systematically in the entertainment business, in academia, in politics, in business, it’s highly manipulative, and we’re trying to make it illegal, what they do, in many cases. But it’s certainly wrong, what they do, and we have to be very aware of it.”
Belmonte also asked about Gere’s time at UMass. He’d grown up in a small town outside of Syracuse, New York, but he was “a mediocre student” in high school, he said. His skill as a gymnast allowed him to get to UMass, where he majored in philosophy.
“So you put Descartes before the pommel horse?” Belmonte joked.
Gere only stayed at UMass for two years before leaving to pursue an acting career, but he lauded professor Doris Abramson – “an extraordinary woman, person, teacher” – and said that the classes he took in theater, film and English at UMass helped get him to where he is now.
“There’s no question about it,” he said.
Gere also cited Amherst Cinema as a formative influence. It was the first place he ever saw foreign films, including those by famed directors Michelangelo Antonioni, Ingmar Bergman and Federico Fellini.
“It was like [a] whole new world opened up for me there. … A whole new universe of possibilities came from a small town, and I do appreciate that, and I hold this institution in a very special place in my heart because of that,” Gere said.
Belmonte’s last question to the panelists was: what gives you hope right now?
Gyatso said the members of the International Campaign for Tibet give her hope. McGovern said the fact that 2,000 people had come out to watch a movie about the Dalai Lama gave him hope, and he appreciated the movie’s focus on positivity.
“I’m in Washington. I’m inundated every day with speeches by people who tell me what they’re against and what we should be against and what’s bad and what’s no good, and I think we need to kind of change the focus of the discussion onto what we’re for,” McGovern said.
Gere drew laughs and applause when he said he appreciated that this was the first screening he’d done with McGovern where McGovern had actually stayed for the entire movie.
“I was amazed, because this guy’s always moving. He’s very kinetic, but he sat there and didn’t move a muscle for an hour and 20 minutes, and I was so happy to see it with him, because we’re definitely on the same page about things,” Gere said.
He also said his youngest sons, who are 6 and 7 years old, give him hope.
“When I look in my kids’ eyes … I see the joy and the love and the compassion in them —that it’s just innate, the way His Holiness talks about. That’s who we are. It gets squashed and it gets messed with and, in some cases, seemingly destroyed, but at root, we are those little children, all of us who lean towards love and happiness,” he said.
“That’s our brotherhood and sisterhood,” Gere continued. “And I believe that. In the 45 years that I’ve spent as a student of His Holiness, the joy that I’ve had in that leads me to believe that it’s really possible to have the world we want and still be wise, compassionate, and naive and childlike at the same time — all of us — and just see the world as a joyous spectacle that is here for every one of us to enjoy.”
For more information about “Wisdom of Happiness,” visit wisdomofhappinessfilm.com.
