EST and The Forum in popular culture
Werner Erhard and his courses have been referenced in popular culture in various forms of fictional media including literature, film, television and theatre.
Diana Ross and Joel Schumacher, who had both taken the est training, incorporated Werner Erhard's teachings into the 1978 musical film, The Wiz.
The third and fourth season of the FX series The Americans contains a story line in which several recurring characters attend the est Training in or near Washington, DC.
[4] In Pressure Points, a 2001 novel by Larry Brooks, one of the book's protagonists asserts that the programs developed by Werner Erhard, William Penn Patrick, and Alexander Everett all came from the same source.
"[10] After the film's release, Bert Convy appeared on The Tonight Show and discussed his experiences when he attended an est training seminar in preparation for his role as Frederick Bismark.
During actual filming on Semi-Tough, Convy received a late-night phone call from actress Valerie Harper, known in Hollywood as a devoted student of Werner Erhard.
"[7] The film's producer Rob Cohen noted that: "before I knew it, the movie was becoming an est-ian fable full of est buzzwords about knowing who you are and sharing and all that.
"[7] In the 1979 film Manhattan, Woody Allen's character Isaac Davis says of his first wife, "She was a kindergarten teacher, then she got into drugs and moved to San Francisco.
Circle of Power, also known as Mystique, Brainwash and The Naked Weekend, is a 1981 film, co-produced by Gary Mehlman, Anthony Quinn and Jeffrey White, and based on the non-fiction book The Pit: A Group Encounter Defiled.
[11] Heavyweights, a 1995 comedy film, portrays a fat camp for kids that is taken over by fitness guru Tony Perkis, played by Ben Stiller.
"[17] Fight Club film producer Ross Grayson Bell believes that his "creative synchronicity" with writer Palahniuk was due to their shared experience of attending The Forum.
[14] In the 1999 film Magnolia, Tom Cruise played a motivational guru named Frank T.J. Mackey, who was the author of a self-help book called Seduce and Destroy.
The Frank T.J. Mackey character in the film has been likened to: "a sort of pop-TV blend of Werner Erhard and Bob Guccione, strutting around a stage with cocksure arrogance, indoctrinating his acolytes in the arts of machismo and seduction".
[20] In a 1982 article in the journal Theory & Society, Lewis & Clark College sociology professor Robert Goldman compared and contrasted Letterman's "Ellsworth" character and his training program to that of Werner Erhard.
In the end of the segment of the episode parodying est, Mork wins out over the Ellsworth philosophy by instead calling to mind universal humanistic moral values.
Actress Alice Krige portrays "Alma" the seminar leader of "The Plan" - who uses jargon related to the "blueprint" for building a house in order to convey concepts about self-improvement.
During the following day of "The Plan", the seminar leader gives the group a new assignment: to go outside to ready banks of phones, and call their family members to inform them of specifically how they wish to "renovate their homes" together.
"[25] The third and fourth season of the FX series The Americans contains a story line in which several recurring characters attend the est Training in or near Washington, DC.
[30] The play is an immersive performance piece[31] where audience members sit in a circle and wear audio headsets, through which they listen to the charismatic leader's voice and sound effects.
[30] Robert Avila of the San Francisco Bay Guardian called The Group: "in-your-face comedy in a droll send-up of est-like self-actualization programs," and a spoof of "recent incarnations" including The Secret and Landmark Forum.
[34] D'Souza also reviewed the play positively, writing: " Writer-director Robert Quillen Camp slyly pokes fun at reducing the human experience to one-size-fits-all platitudes and besmirching belief systems with "cash-only" workshops.
"[34] Pat Craig wrote in Contra Costa Times: "After a lifetime of enduring various human potential programs, from the chanted mantras of transcendental meditation to the institutionalized loathing of est, 'The Group' seems a bit tame for satire to a veteran of the high-profit mind games.
