Burt's Buzz

Burt Shavitz—bearded icon of the Burt's Bees personal-care products empire—is profiled in this documentary that was produced by actress/author/filmmaker Isabella Rosselini and directed by Jody Shapiro. Not a corporate promo for lip balm or soap, Burt's Buzz is a character study of one offbeat American and his uneasy-easygoing acceptance of fame as a recognizable product label à la Betty Crocker or Aunt Jemima. Like the slacker hero “the Dude” in The Big Lebowski, Burt seems to placidly accept his role, touring Taiwan in celebrity splendor, but returning home to his dog in his isolated Maine home (which boasts a wood-burning fireplace but no TV). The septuagenarian Shavitz was a promising New York City photojournalist in the 1960s before he relocated to Maine and adopted an austere off-the-grid existence, teaching himself beekeeping from antique handbooks and subsisting off his homemade-honey sales. The real force behind Burt's Bees was his former Maine neighbor (and, possibly, the love-gone-sour of Burt's life), Roxanne Quimby, who marketed Burt and his image until she was able to sell the company in a fantastically lucrative deal. Although leveraged out of business operations under murky and scandalous circumstances, Burt is still the figurehead, and he displays no (obvious) bitterness over the yuppie millions and super-rich affluence that he might have had. Recommended. (C. Cassady)