The face of Burt, a bushy-bearded visage that adorns every tin of Burt’s Bees lip balm, is almost as famous as the lip balm itself. The instantly recognizable packages hint at Burt’s Bees origin as the work of one disheveled hippy with a bee farm, but Burt’s Buzz, a documentary about the company’s founder, does its best to dispel the idea that Burt had anything to do with his own success. While it’s true that Burt’s Bees was founded by a bee-farmer named Burt. Jody Shapiro’s documentary reveals that very little separates Burt himself from the thousands of hippies (or yuppies) making their own hygiene products for local businesses.
Burt Shavitz himself is a New Yorker who had a career as a photojournalist in the Big Apple before deciding in the 1960s that he would move upstate to live off the land. Eventually, he landed in rural Maine, where he began making honey. But Burt’s Bees’ growth–from one hippy selling his own honey on the side of the road to the $925 million empire purchased by The Clorox Company in 2007–reached its height after Burt was pushed out of the company. Today, he travels the world as a spokesman for the company. The charm of the film is found in scenes of this curmudgeonly hermitted old man (he still lives in rural Maine, without heating) awkwardly faring with the lifestyle (four star hotel rooms, chirpy young publicists, speaking engagements, etc.) of a public figure
Burt’s Buzz will screen at 3:45pm at the Isabel Bader Theatre on Sunday, September 8. It will also screen at the Bloor Hot Docs Theatre at 9:00am on the following Monday and at 12:00pm on the following Friday.
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Alan Jones writes about film for Toronto Standard. You can follow him on Twitter at @alanjonesxxxv.
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