In HBO docuseries Bring Me the Beauties, a lesser-known, image-obsessed cult from the 80s is put under the spotlight
Documentary film-maker Chris Smith made the seminal 1999 film American Movie, about an indie director’s struggle to complete a horror film, which he hopes will then finance the completion of his dream project. More recently, he’s profiled well-known subjects in projects for Netflix about Jim Carrey and Andy Kaufman, the bands Devo and Wham!, and the disastrous Fyre festival, among others. His new HBO miniseries Bring Me the Beauties is similarly connected to popular culture, but through a story with far less immediately available background material: the rise and fall of Eternal Values, a cult started in the 80s by the eccentric Frederick von Mierers, consisting largely of models.
“What was odd about this story,” Smith said, “is that there was very little about it online.” He met Hoyt Richards, sometimes referred to as the first male supermodel and a former Eternal Values member, on another project, “and as we started talking, hours went by”, Smith said. “It was one of those situations where I just became more and more curious about his life.” Richards became the backbone of the series, sitting for many hours of interviews, but wasn’t sure if Smith and his collaborators would be able to coax anyone else into participation. As seen in the series, not everyone’s account of their experience with Von Mierers is the same; not everyone is even convinced they were involved with a cult in the first place.
