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HBO has released the trailer and key art for the film Bring Me Beauty: Cult Modela weird, stranger-than-fiction docu-series premiering June 1 at 9pm on HBO and Max.
Directed by Chris Smith (fire, Strike!), the series follows Hoyt Richards — one of the premier male models of the 1980s — who at the age of 16 meets an attractive Manhattan socialite on Nantucket Beach and is drawn to his spiritual group, the Eternal Values.
The guru at its centre, Frederic von Merers, took advantage of the glamorous world of 1980s New York to recruit models and young professionals with a seductive New Age blend of astrology, Eastern philosophy and self-improvement teachings – while enmeshing them in a web of fabrication and exploitation.
As the series unfolds, Richards recounts living an increasingly contradictory double life: a paid model, traveling by plane by day, sleeping on a mat in the von Merers’ Manhattan apartment at night, financing the group and recruiting new followers.
Von Merers, who claimed to be an alien being “entering” from the planet Arcturus, convinced worshipers to buy expensive “healing” gemstones in order to survive a coming global catastrophe — and relied on public television to spread his gospel to a wider audience.
Former members also describe how the group’s early focus on abstinence gradually gave way to sexual coercion, all unfolding in the shadow of the AIDS crisis.
It was fellow model Fabio Lanzoni who eventually greeted Richards when he finally broke free.
Hollywood Reporter I spoke with director Chris Smith and Richards ahead of the premiere, which will be around the air date. Subsequent episodes debut on Mondays: Chapter Two, “The Antichrist Tapes,” on June 8, and Chapter Three, “Mind Games,” on June 15.
