And we believe that whatever that conclusion may be, it's valid. The story challenges people to engage with the material, think and come to their own conclusions. This story is a mirror of sorts it reflects your own prejudices, fears and concerns, and everyone seems to think that they're walking away with the right answer-everyone wants to feel like they're on the right side. The greatest value of WWC was how each viewer's reaction to it says something about them, instead of the characters themselves.ĬW: People have been calling it a Rorschach test. There seemed to be some sense of disillusionment that when things got hard, Bhagwan tended to leave. Then, they went to America to do it all over again build a $125 million utopian commune for him and when things got hard there, he took a plane to Charlotte, North Carolina. For example, former and current sanyasins believed they were building something in the Pune ashram, before one day, they saw Bhagwan get into a Rolls-Royce and leave for America-it was really hard for them. MW: Maybe there are even more damning indictments against Bhagwan than the criminal actions. The truth is that only Bhagwan and Sheela truly know who was ordering what to happen. Other sanyasins feel these women completely tarnished the godman and he'll forever be associated with the criminal acts they created. They had a kind of feminist awakening wanting their own path and identity and not just to be under him anymore. Sheela and Jane Stork (Ma Shanti B) feel like they dedicated their lives to this man-they'd helped build his empire, bought him Rolls-Royces (Osho had upward of 90 of them), and got him glamour and glory-but as soon as shit hit the fan, he completely threw them under the bus. We tried to eliminate our own point of view, because we wanted to give our characters the opportunity to have their say. She felt she was the person to grow his empire.
I like power.” She's good at these things and knows her strengths. Everyone's there for enlightenment and Sheela's being very honest, saying, “That's not for me. What was Sheela and Osho's relationship like?ĬW: What we found most amusing was that she had no interest in spirituality and meditation-it kind of made me laugh. I thought it was really interesting moment where you see how we become the people that we are, and it was an integral part of Sheela's history. She experienced something difficult very early on in life, and it was in the wake of that devastating moment that Bhagwan, someone she was already devoted to, asked for complete devotion to his cause. The death of her first husband Chinmaya was really the first time that sees past the biochemical terrorist. The first thing that surprised us was that though she's elderly, she's also very hip-she's a fine artist, she paints, listens to great music and has good taste in art and politics. So we didn't quite know what we were walking into. We had also talked to Oregon government officials who were of the opinion that “Sheela was pure evil”. We had seen her eviscerate broadcast journalist Ted Koppel and Phil Donahue, of The Phil Donahue Show fame-so naturally, as interviewers, we were nervous.
Wild wild country osho archive#
MW: When we digitised the archive footage, Sheela jumped off the screen-she was feisty, confrontational, provocative and didn't take shit from anyone. Did your perceptions about Sheela evolve during the shoot? We wanted to see how they got there and the justifications they had. What we wanted to explore was how this peace-loving group-ostensibly interested in yoga, meditation and building a utopian ideal-became responsible for the largest biochemical attack in US history and for political assassination attempts against government officials.
But we weren't interested in a typical true crime documentary. When we started conceptualising the story, the crimes and criminality were well-known, and people had pled guilty to it.
Maclain Way: And we sincerely felt that, too.