by Shep Gordon
Just before it started, Rinchen said to me, “There’s only one rule. You cannot have any expectations that you or anybody with you will meet or interface with His Holiness in any way. If you have that expectation, please don’t do this.”
Now the first morning arrives. I have one of my elaborate productions planned for His Holiness’s first breakfast. As usual, I’m being a neurotic producer, obsessing over every detail. I’m up at two thirty and start getting everyone else up. It’s pitch black out. We pile everything and everyone into our vehicles and start driving through the dark toward Wood Valley, when I look down and see I’m wearing no pants. I was obsessing so hard I’d forgotten to get dressed. I threw the car in reverse—and backed it right into the light pole outside the house, knocking it down. That killed all the lights in the house, and the electric-flush toilet. Not how I’d visualized the start of the day.
Finally we get to Wood Valley and set up two trays with His Holiness’s breakfast, with the gardenia petals in the napkin and the special plates and everything. Even the trays were special. I’d had a local artist make me them out of koa wood. Then Rinchen said to me, “Shep, would you bring His Holiness’s breakfast up to him?”
I was stunned. Cindy and I, wearing our kitchen whites, with white hospital masks covering our mouths, as chefs and food handlers do in many Asian cultures, carried the trays up. She stood outside his room while I took the first tray in, nervous as I’ve ever been. His Holiness was brushing his teeth in the mirror, with a big smile on his face. He called out, “Hello!”
“Your Holiness,” I muttered humbly, “I have your breakfast for you.”
“Oh good good good,” he said, brushing away. Then he paused and sniffed the air, looking at me in the mirror.
“Yak tea?”
“Yes, Your Holiness.”
I was so proud. All that work, months of research and preparation, attention to every detail, culminating in this first moment.
And then he said, “Oh, that’s why I leave Tibet!”
He laughed his infectious, childlike laugh. I had to laugh, too. It was an excellent example of the way he can cut through all pretense, all preciousness, and reduce things to their simplest. I think he sensed how nervous I was and pulled me through it with that one line. That’s why he is who he is.
The whole rest of the weekend was magical. I have a photo of me bringing his food up the steps of the center that first day, and another of me after I served him the food, sitting on a couch with him. What a moment that was. He said, “Come, come. We take a picture.” And then, as we both smiled at the camera, he reached out his hand and took mine. I look at this picture and think, Oh my God, Little Shep from Oceanside sitting with the Dalai Lama—holding his hand. Can anything top that?
That weekend was a huge amount of work. We had planned to feed about twenty people. It turned out that we were supposed to feed more like two hundred—everyone in his retinue, everyone who’d come to the Dharma Center to hear him, the cops on hand, everyone. That was fine with us, but we didn’t have enough dishwashers, kitchen help, people to clean up. Feeding two hundred people requires a whole different scale of organization than feeding twenty. We asked for volunteers from the stage after His Holiness spoke. One really small Hawaiian woman and her equally petite teenage daughter volunteered right away. The two of them washed dishes almost nonstop for three days. Joyously, never a word of complaint, washing dish after pot after plate.
At the end of the weekend, Rinchen said to me, “His Holiness was so happy with everything that he wants to thank all your staff personally. He wants to do that the last thing before he leaves. Can you line them up so you’ll be the last people he sees on his way to the car? That’s what he’d like.”
The little woman cried, “Oh, I can’t be here! I so wanted to meet him, but I have to go.” When I asked her why, she said, “Oh, there’s a firemen’s strike on Kauai.”
I said, “So?”
“I’m the mayor,” she said.
She was Maryanne Kusaka, who was in office in Kauai County from 1994 to 2002. That’s the sort of thing I love about Hawaii. Where else in the country would you see a mayor wash a dish, let alone three days’ worth of them, smiling and happy the whole time?
Maybe there’s something about His Holiness that inspires that sort of dedication to serve. But for myself, in all my dealings with him since that first weekend, I’ve never been able to tell if it emanates from him, or if it’s me, bringing my expectations to it. It’s not like we’ve had much personal interaction. We’ve actually spoken very little. I know that when I sit in an audience hearing him speak it’s beautiful what comes over the crowd. But it’s not the same as being in a small room with him. To me, that always feels like it did that very first time I met him backstage with Sharon—that feeling that I’ve been cleansed, like I just took a shower. It’s not as if he dispenses words of wisdom. It’s just being in his presence, looking at his face, looking at the way he looks at people. This is not something he’s ever said, but I believe that when he looks at anything or anyone, he sees a miracle first, then sees the person or object. And it’s impossible not to be compassionate toward everything and everyone if you see that miracle in them.
Maybe that’s just me projecting something onto him, but I know it works, and it works for millions of people. I think all of us, even the toughest, look for some light out there that answers some question we have. He seems to hold that light. He seems so happy, even with the unbelievable weight on his shoulders. Meeting Vergé, sensing the peace and satisfaction he derived from learning the path to a life that was so beautiful and fulfilling, the way he cut through life so elegantly, maybe prepared me for this somewhat. But with His Holiness there’s that other dimension, that feeling when I leave his presence like I’ve just stepped out from the most amazing waterfall. Perhaps it’s something like going to church and being forgiven your sins.
I continued to cook for him. After the Big Island I got to go to Trinidad with him. We flew on the same plane. I don’t think His Holiness quite knew who I was yet. I got up at one point and walked down the aisle past him, and he did give me a big hello. When I went by him again, I could tell that Rinchen had sort of told him who I was, because he said, “The flowers dropping out of the napkins! So beautiful!”
Our first stop after landing in Trinidad was a reception for him at a theater, attended by a small group of the top government and embassy people on the island. Backstage before he was to give them a speech he looked at me and said, “Oh, you cook for me on Big Island.”
“Yes, Your Holiness. Thank you. It was such an honor.”
“And now you cook for me in Trinidad?”
“Yes.”
“So,” he said, his eyes twinkling, “you only cook on islands?”
Another zinger.
He went out then to speak to the assembled. Interestingly, they were all dressed in the traditional garb of their homes, some in African robes, some in Native American clothes, and so on. I later learned that in Trinidad all the different ethnicities get along, but they have never blended. Now His Holiness looked around at all these different types of dress and said, “Oh, sorry. Must be wrong room. This is costume party?”
The assembled dignitaries looked kind of startled. Then His Holiness looked down at his own Tibetan robes and said, “Oh perfect. I’m good for costume party.”
Nobody outside that very small segment of Trinidadian society seemed to care that he was there. There was no Dharma Center, no Buddhist community on the island. His public speech was at a football stadium that was almost empty. The producer in me was upset, so after he went to sleep the first night I asked his people, “What are we doing here? There are no people, no donations. Why did His Holiness come?”
“Remember the lady you sat next to in the stadium?” they said to me. “She sat next to him at a wedding in India. She asked if he would visit her country and he said yes, so we’re here.”
That filled me with such adm
iration. He did what he said he was going to do because he said he was going to do it. After my years dealing with Hollywood, where basically nobody’s word is as good as his bond and everyone will say or do anything out of self-interest, this had a powerful impact on me. Maybe it reminded me of my father, an honorable man who kept his word. It’s how I’ve always tried to live and conduct business, and why I never wanted written contracts. Once an artist and I gave each other our word, I felt that was all I needed.
At the same time, I never allowed my artists to provide any services for anyone else without contracts. It was my fiduciary responsibility to them. So if any of my artists chose to screw me, that was my problem, and if anyone else chose to screw my artists, that was also my problem!
In retrospect, I probably should have signed contracts with my artists. I was always looking ahead to their future, but never to my own. Because I made sure that my artists had strong contracts with their record companies, they’ve received royalties through their lifetimes. But when my handshake relationships with my artists ended, so did my income, whereas most managers continue to earn a percentage of their artists’ royalties in perpetuity. It was in a way very naïve of me to arrange things that way, even though it gave me a sense of inner strength. There’s integrity, and then there’s stupidity.
After Trinidad I followed His Holiness to New York City. I had a very good friend, Raymond Bickson, who was the general manager of the Mark Hotel on the Upper East Side. He graciously allowed His Holiness to stay there without charge. In New York the Secret Service detachment assigned to guard His Holiness came more to the forefront of the retinue than they had been before. They were not happy with his going to private homes or eating from private kitchens. They wanted tighter control of his every move. So I was phased out as someone who cooked for him. But I transitioned to sitting on the board of the Tibet Fund.
I also got the bed the Dalai Lama slept on at the Mark and shipped it to Maui. I still sleep in that bed every night I’m home. Thank you, thank you.
One of the amazing things about His Holiness is that somehow he’s always aware of everything going on around him—everything. He just comprehends it all. It can make things unpredictable for his Secret Service team.
One day, when His Holiness was going to appear at a benefit in Century City in L.A., George Clinton of Parliament-Funkadelic called me and asked if I could get him in.
“Sure, George, but you’re in Detroit.”
“I’ll get there, if you can get me a seat.”
At the event, His Holiness sat on a high dais receiving one California dignitary at a time—the mayor, the governor. The Secret Service stood all around. An hour into it, a door in the back flew open and George swept in in full P-Funk regalia, including rainbow dreadlocks down to his ankles. He looked as bizarre as it’s possible for a human being to look.
“Can I meet His Holiness?”
“We’ll try, George.”
As I led George toward the dais, the Secret Service men went into war mode. They grabbed us both roughly. There was no way they were going to let this crazy-looking man near the Dalai Lama.
But then His Holiness stood. He walked over to us, smiling, and gave George a big hug. Then he took him by the hand and had him sit next to him for a while on the dais. He had instantly comprehended everything, and knew that George was no threat.
Another time, I arranged to bring His Holiness to Maui. I was very excited. This time it was all on me. We didn’t have the infrastructure, so I had to invent everything, down to the backstage passes. Two weeks before the event, I brought in ten of my best people from the mainland. We got maybe two or three hours of sleep a night, on my office floor.
In the midst of this I got a letter from a man in Honolulu whose nine-year-old granddaughter was dying. They’d been to every doctor and there was no hope for a cure; they didn’t have the resources anyway. He believed that if His Holiness would just touch his granddaughter, she would be saved. I got so excited. Now I know why I’m doing this. Thank you.
I shared the letter with everybody and we all cried. I called Rinchen in New York and told him the story. Rinchen was no longer His Holiness’s emissary; he passed my request to the man who had replaced him, and he said no, His Holiness could not meet her. He was too busy, he already had a lot of audiences, etc.
I knew they had to be very, very cautious about personal requests like this. What if it was a scam? But I believed in the grandfather’s letter. It was so compelling and so heartwarming and pure. And I knew he was a man of very few resources, a local farmer desperate for a miracle. So once again, I didn’t get mad, I accomplished my goal. I had the man and his granddaughter flown in, gave them backstage passes, and got them to the stage steps.
The event worked out beautifully, the largest gathering in the history of Maui, twelve thousand people. As we were escorting His Holiness up to the stage, without anyone saying a word to him about the girl, he went right to her, out of thirty people waiting at the foot of the steps, and lifted her up in his arms. He kissed and hugged her, then gently placed her in her grandfather’s arms. It gave me goose bumps. I was convinced he’d known—he’d seen it or felt it in her. That’s what he does.
Four years later I got a letter from the grandfather that a miracle had happened and his granddaughter lived. Now, it could have been that she wasn’t that sick in the first place. But I choose to believe it was a miracle, and the fact that the little girl lived was all part of His Holiness’s true karma on earth.
17
IN 1991, I GOT A PHONE CALL FROM FAT FRANKIE SCINLARO that Mia’s car had been hit by a bus as she was pulling into her own driveway. She had finally been doing well, and now she was dead.
It stopped me in my tracks. It seemed so wrong that someone so beautiful and sweet would have her life ended so early like that. I thought about not having gone to see her, and maybe for the first time in my life, I felt I had really fucked up, that I didn’t do the right thing. That life was getting too fast and I was losing sight of what was really important. That had been important, but I didn’t take the time then to stop my life and try to help her. It weighed very heavily on me; it wasn’t the way I liked to think about myself. It wasn’t who I thought I was.
I asked Frankie to go to the funeral with me. We drove up to the cemetery in a black limousine, which I shouldn’t have done. Worse, I was wearing my current “Hollywood Manager” outfit: silk suit, dark glasses, long ponytail. It only hit me how inappropriate I looked when I got there. Winona waved to me. We hadn’t seen each other in years. I knew she was living with her mom and grandmother and working in their basement hair salon. She was cradling a little baby girl.
“This is Keira,” she said.
“Who’s Keira?”
“Mia’s child.”
“You’re kidding me. Mia had a baby?”
“No,” she said. “She had four.” She pointed out the other three: Monique, nine; Chase, six; and three-year-old Amber holding her grandmother’s hand.
“Where’s the father?”
“We don’t know where they are.”
“Well, who’s going to take care of them?”
“We’ve given Keira to a foster home. I’m not sure what we’ll do about the others.”
I nodded and let that sink in. Afterward, while we were driving from the funeral home to Winona’s mother’s house, I smoked a joint and tried to think about all this. As gratifying as my career and my success were, I still felt there was something missing. I was surrounded by stars and celebrities, by rich and beautiful and powerful people, but at the end of the day I usually went home or to my hotel room alone. I had always loved kids. I had thought about having a family of my own, but had never met the right person to do that with, and frankly wasn’t sure that I was the right person for that, either. Maybe the universe was presenting an opportunity here.
I looked out at Newark as we drove to the family home. It looked poor, beat, and dangerous, like one big ghetto. When
we arrived at the house, crack dealers were hanging around out front. I was actually scared to get out of the car. Nobody wanted to be in Newark. They were stuck there. By the time we reached the front door I was thinking, I can’t leave these kids here. They can’t grow up in this. I have to do something.
Without thinking about it any deeper than that, I took Winona aside and said, “Listen, I don’t know if I have emotional strength, but I have plenty of resources. I can support all of you. If you’re prepared to give up your life for the next eighteen years and raise all these kids, I’ll pay for everything you need. Just don’t count on me emotionally.”
That caught her off guard, to put it mildly. She said, “Well, let me talk to my mother about it.”
She did, and came back and said yes.
I said, “Can you get Keira back from the foster family?”
“I think so. They already pierced her ears and put in diamond studs. But I think they’ll give her back.”
“Okay. I’ll go find a house.”
That was all it took. We didn’t have endless discussions about the particulars of what I was proposing. I didn’t do a lot of soul-searching. I just did what I always do: I got to work making things happen. The next day, I got a real estate agent who found a house in rural Monroe, New York, maybe sixty miles north of Newark. Winona and I drove up a few days later. It was a beautiful Tudor house, with a big backyard rolling up into a mountain, and five nice bedrooms—one for Winona, one for grandmother Teri, three for the kids. A good school was practically next door.
I bought it and they all moved in. They lived there about a year. I was really busy then, working in L.A. and traveling back and forth from Maui. And I was a little scared, emotionally, to open up. I hadn’t really been emotionally engaged my whole life, since I was a kid hiding out in my bedroom. What kind of relationship were Winona and I supposed to have now? And what about the kids? I didn’t know anything about them. How would they feel about this awkward stranger hanging around? For the first year or so I kept my distance and just sent money.