WTF is on my Mind?!
Author, Speaker, Whistleblower and award-winning Director Mark Vicente was behind the sleeper hit “What The Bleep Do We Know?!” Several books have been written about the film’s remarkable grassroots marketing campaign, which led to its unprecedented success.
Mark was born in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1965. Taking his first photograph at age four, he quickly discovered his passion for being behind the camera. After attending film and drama school in South Africa, he began working his way up the ranks of the camera department, from Assistant to Operator to Cinematographer. His first big break came as Director of Photography on the musical “SARAFINA,” starring Whoopi Goldberg. In 1992, he set his sights on Hollywood and relocated to Los Angeles to shoot his first studio picture for Disney; “FATHERHOOD,” starring Patrick Swayze and Halle Berry. At the age of 26, he became one of the youngest cinematographers to shoot a big-budget studio picture.
Over the next few decades, he went on to shoot an additional 14 feature films and numerous documentaries, music videos and commercials. Mark soon found there were in him, untold stories he desperately wanted to express as a Director. He was driven by the conviction that tales of greatness, nobility and introspection could be exciting and financially successful.
Perhaps because of the very obvious race and class iniquities in South Africa, he found himself propelled to question certain fundamental assumptions at a very young age. Beliefs about human behavior, cosmology, religion, existentialism and mysticism. Along the way, he stumbled into a few situations where leaders with malignant pathologies (masquerading as saintly philosophers) spoke the talk of self-improvement but did untold damage to their followers... and him.
Looking back, he can now say he has been in at least two cults. His last foray into personal growth and his defection from NXIVM was chronicled in the HBO series “The Vow”. Mark and a few plucky whistleblowers exposed the criminal activities of the organization, resulting in multiple arrests and indictments. He doesn’t consider himself a cult expert, but by his own admission, “I’m an expert in being screwed over, waking up, and knowing how to spot them.” He’s got a pretty salty approach to most things and is fascinated by the myriad patterns in the human psychodynamic that create the best and the worst in civilization.
Join Mark as he unpacks a whole range of topics to do with: Psychology, Consciousness, Morality, Narcissistic Abuse, Spirituality, Cults, Propaganda, Science, Filmmaking, and Philosophy.You never quite know what you’re going to get, as it really does depend on… WTF is on his mind?!
WTF is on my Mind?!
Inst@Guru: Bentinho Massaro - Ivo van Woerden "The Journalist"
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A note before you listen: this episode was recorded before I left for the Netherlands. I just spent seven days there shooting with the Three Amigos, Jacqueline Graham, Keilan McNeil, Jade Alectra and Ivo van Woerden, along with a number of other people who are essential to telling this story. A lot is coming.
But first, this.
Ivo van Woerden is a Dutch journalist who has spent the better part of five years investigating Bentinho Massaro. He interviewed over 60 people. He was publicly called out by Massaro on Instagram before he'd even published a word, his name and handle broadcast to thousands of followers in what felt, as Ivo puts it, genuinely threatening. He kept going anyway.
The result is "In de Greep van de Goeroe," "In the Grip of the Guru," published this week and available now in Dutch. For more information, follow Ivo's Substack - https://ivovanwoerden.substack.com/
In this conversation, Ivo and I cover a lot of ground: how he found Massaro, what Massaro's public callout of him actually felt like, his own undercover experience inside a high-control group, the WhatsApp messages between Massaro and former girlfriend Alison that are as chilling as anything in this story, the psychology of Cory Katuna, and the question that everyone asks and nobody can fully answer: does Bentinho Massaro believe his own mythology?
Ivo is not only a phenomenal journalist. He's become a genuine friend. And the survivors, the people who lived through what this podcast is about, think the world of him. There's a reason for that, and you'll hear it in this conversation.
The book is available now. If you speak Dutch, or know someone who does, go find it.
The views and opinions expressed on WTF is on my Mind?! do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the podcast or Mark Vicente. Any content provided by guests are of their opinion and are not intended to malign any religion, group, club, organization, business individual, anyone or anything.
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