‘We Can Afford to be Moral’

Just before the hour is up, the man sitting in the chair says an astonishing thing. He says: “Read my book. That’s who I really am.”

This is astonishing because the man speaking is not a novelist or a memoirist. He is Richard Gere, and the book he is speaking of is a book of photographs. Photographs he has taken of Tibetans. With a few landscapes and Mongols thrown in. It is a gorgeous book, called “Pilgrim.” The photos, sepia-warm, appear singly on rich, heavy cream-colored paper--matte, not shiny--bound by cloth covers, maroon embossed with gold.

But there is little to actually read, few words certainly for the distillation of a life. There is a foreword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, an introduction by Gere and a poem by Patti Smith. An unusual triumvirate, speaking each to the plight of the people of Tibet--occupied by the Chinese since 1949--and to the salvation found in faith and work and the teachings of Buddhism. Toward the end of his introduction, Gere writes: “In the Buddhist view, the greatest ignorance is believing the world exists in the way it appears to exist . . . we do exist but in a relative way, not in an absolute way. The closer you look, the more we recede. We can’t be found.”

For anyone wondering how someone can practice Buddhism and still be an A-list celebrity; how someone can study under the Dalai Lama and then make a movie with Bruce Willis; how someone, OK, let’s be specific, how Richard Gere can spend weeks meditating in India, then get on a plane to L.A. and the next day do Oprah without having a nervous breakdown or at least developing a serious facial tic, this may be as close to an answer as there is. We do exist, but in a relative way.

“This is my life,” is the in-person answer, complete with shrug and disarming smile. “This is what I do. I remember when I was 29 and I had just gotten back to New York from filming ‘Yanks,’ and I walked out onto Third Avenue and there were three of my movies playing. My name everywhere. And I thought ‘things are never going to be the same again.’ ”

Except they have been. Since then. Gere has remained in the pantheon of American actors who give Good Performance. He was up--”American Gigolo,” “An Officer and a Gentleman”; he was down--”Intersection,” “Mr. Jones”; he was banned--from China and the Oscars for making one too many “Free Tibet” speeches--and it didn’t really matter. Richard Gere is Richard Gere.

And at a certain point, many men will say to their wives something like this: “A woman at work told me I look like Richard Gere. Do you think I look like Richard Gere?” Even if the only thing they have in common with Richard Gere is bipedalism. This is the man men want women to think they look like. This is the man many women want to look at.

Now, at 48, he’s got the book and two movies--”Red Corner” and “The Jackal”--and his name, and face, are everywhere. You can’t get from La Brea to Fairfax without seeing a billboard for “Red Corner,” which you know is a serious film because the photo is black and white and Gere has a bruise on his cheek. (It opened with an estimated $8.3 million last weekend, failing to dislodge “I Know What You Did Last Summer” from the No. 1 spot.)

It’s been a busy year, and this is a busy weekend. On Friday, a show of “Pilgrim” opened at Fahey Klein gallery on La Brea. In a room large and spare, Gere himself was invisible, his presence marked instead by an undulating clot of fans who moved with him like iron shavings around a magnet. Hundreds of people bought the book (the proceeds from which go to the Gere Foundation, dedicated to promoting awareness of Tibet), then stood in a perpetually regenerating line to have him autograph it.

“They’re shelling out 81 bucks just to get near him for 10 seconds,” remarked one cynical, and bookless, woman coolly watching a girl in a lime green slip dress slit open the plastic cover of her copy with her Visa card.

And they, the signature-seeking supplicants, weren’t content with getting near him; many wanted to touch him, place a hand on his, ruffle his hair even, as if he were a statue guaranteeing fertility, or a holy site. And he allowed it, which was odd and endearing, even from a distance.

The rest of the weekend is devoted to press for “Red Corner.” There is the obligatory junket at the Four Seasons--two days of publicity hell, journalists from all over the world fiddling with their tape recorders and asking, as Gere has put it, “b.s. questions” to which he gives “b.s. answers.” But even if all the questions, and answers, were scintillating, this is not a fun way to spend a weekend. When you’re led down a hallway and ushered into a hotel room that another journalist has just exited, when you greet this man, who smiles for the 7,548th time today and tries to look like it doesn’t hurt, it’s difficult not to feel a bit unseemly.

“Is this the last one?” he asks his publicist hopefully. She nods. “Good,” he says, adding gamely, “let’s make it the best yet.”

7,549.

He wanders out onto the balcony and leans against the rail, looking down at the sulky fog that still clutches the late afternoon, as if praying for strength. Then he sits down and starts talking about Oprah. He did indeed get off the plane from India and go straight to the studio.

“I had never seen the show,” he says, “but I talked to Julia Roberts and she said it would be fine, they’d just yell and scream. And they did. But then it got really serious. These women asked serious questions about China and meditation and life. This one woman stood up and thanked me for making ‘Red Corner.’ She was Chinese and she was crying. Her family is still in Shanghai. I went up and held her hand, and she had so much rage. She kept saying, ‘The bastards. The bastards.’ ”

See, he really wants to talk about the movie. Well, this movie. He doesn’t have much to say about “The Jackal,” which is about a super-terrorist (Bruce Willis) unleashed on the U.S. who Gere and Sidney Portier must stop. He hasn’t seen it yet, he says, and doesn’t hold out too much hope, or so it would seem.

“That was not a heart project for me,” he says. “ ‘Red Corner’ was. [“The Jackal”] is a big thriller, but there’s no. . . .”

Agenda? Politics? Workable script? Actually, the two films have a surprising number of similarities. In both: Gere is, for a certain amount of time, in prison. He is then aided by a strong female character who eventually learns to trust him, all evidence to the contrary. There is a fair amount of treachery among high-ranking officials, a relatively large amount of time spent on rooftops and Gere gets knocked around quite a bit.

But much more in “Red Corner,” during which likable American lawyer Jack Moore (Gere) is quickly framed for the brutal murder of a young woman. He is then thrust into the Chinese judicial system that operates under the dictum that you are guilty until proven innocent, and no one’s listening anyway. Moore refuses to confess in exchange for leniency, despite the admonition of his appointed lawyer Yuelin (Bai Ling) that to do so means death. Moore eventually convinces Yuelin of his innocence, which she sets out to prove at her own peril.

Essentially, it’s a story of love and trust and doing the right thing. It is also a big poke in the eye for the Chinese government. Which is the whole point. In fact, it’s release date coincided with the arrival of Chinese President Jiang Zemin in Washington at the end of October. Gere claims, previous reports to the contrary, that this was accidental.

“We were going to release it maybe next February. Then Frank Mancuso decided to open on Halloween. I didn’t like it,” he says, “but I trust Frank. I had forgotten the president was coming. When I remembered I thought, OK, let’s really do it.”

Maybe it’s his eyes--shoe-button brown--that make it difficult to doubt his version of events. Yes, of course, that’s what must have happened. Pure coincidence. Maybe this is what those other men want to be able to do, to project this kind of sincerity. Never mind that on the Wednesday of Jiang’s visit, Gere was speaking at a protest rally in Washington’s Lafayette Park, that that evening he hosted a “stateless” dinner to coincide with the president’s official fete. He said he had forgotten Jiang was coming.

Not that Gere denies his reasons for doing the film in the first place.

“I’ve been trying to find a film to do about Tibet for years,” he says. “But I never found anything good enough. ‘Red Corner’ was originally written about the Soviet Union. Then someone thought of setting it in China. When I saw it, I did something I have never done before. I called Frank [Mancuso] and volunteered. I said, ‘I’m in.’ ”

It is not a subtle film. With the exception of Yuelin, the Chinese come off as a corrupt, thuggish lot, who’d murder you as soon as look at you. But then Gere doesn’t have much nice to say about the Chinese government.

“The state of any society is mirrored in the state of its judicial system. In a communist state, it is used as a weapon by the military,” he says. “Their power is based on silence--people are afraid to speak their mind. In China they are afraid to speak at all. Tiananmen Square was not about anger, it was about simply speaking out for the first time.”

Richard Gere speaks earnestly, urgently, as though the discovery of oppression in communist China is a revelation, breaking news. He passes that urgency along, though his voice is low and he sits very still.

“When Clinton was campaigning, he made it clear that we were going to be tough in China. By extending most favored nation status, he cruelly and unilaterally destroyed the human rights movement there. The people there were devastated. Now they’re either dead or in jail, or gone.”

What Gere wants is quite simple: the U.S. should stop doing business with China until China cleans up its act. “We’re in good shape--we have low unemployment, low inflation--we can afford to be moral.”

It’s this kind of talk that got him banned from China--which means he is no longer able to visit his beloved Tibet--and from the Academy Awards, which means . . . what?

“Nobody likes me,” he says, laughing. “I guess I could go [to the Oscars] if I hired my bodyguards, but it’s not something I mourn, I must say.” He pauses, starts again, gets serious. “Actually, I think it means I’ve been effective. I have more weight because I’m older now, because I have access to the press, because I’ve been saying the same things for so long.”

Listening to him, it’s easy to believe that these are the things that are really important to him, that the money and fame are incidental. His smile is so open and quick, he seems so genuine that it’s easy to forget that although he is an activist, he is mostly an actor. That this is an hour in the Four Seasons. That in the hospitality suite a few doors down, his publicist is watching the clock, while her slim-suited assistants huddle on the couch giving each other the Cosmo “Are You Doable?” quiz. That this is a controlled environment and he is the one in control. That we do exist, but in a relative way.

Gere says he hasn’t seen “Seven Years in Tibet,” but he plans to. He did see Scorsese’s “Kundun,” which he says is “one of the best movies I’ve seen in my life. Thirty seconds into it, I started crying. When it was over, I said to Marty, tears still running down my face, ‘Marty, I don’t know if it’s just because these are my people . . . ‘ but he said other people were crying too.”

That’s a tough sentence to get around, what with the “Marty,” right next to “my people.” This is the man, after all, who married Cindy Crawford, only to run a full-page ad in the Times of London proclaiming their heterosexuality and devotion for each other, hours, it seemed, before they split up. Does he feel Tibetan? He nods, gazing across the room, through the window. Would he rather be there than here?

“When I am there,” he says. “I am very happy.” His gaze lengthens and something flickers within the handsome face. A certainty, a belief. “The Tibetans radiate. They literally send out light. His Holiness generates love and compassion to every human being. He has committed himself to that. I haven’t made that leap yet,” he laughs, smiles some more and the flickering is gone again. “I haven’t given up self-aspiration. I still love making movies.”

After this round, however, he plans to take a vacation, have some quiet time, maybe work on another book.

“The career stuff is so small,” he says. “In ‘Red Corner’ we took everything away from [my character], even sunlight. What is a man in this state? I have talked to a lot of people who spent a lot of time in prison, almost to a person they said it was the best years of their lives--they were able to work on themselves, on their anger and forgiveness, they came out rock solid and pure white. Nothing we do will ever be that important. The important thing is the amount of love you generate.”

There is a bit of the zealot in Richard Gere. You gotta give him credit. That he can say these things, sitting in a hotel room, the center of a swarm all about ensuring that a movie makes money. Certainly he means them. It is clear from the look in his face, from the way he breathes. Is this what he has that people want? The reason for the outstretched hands, the hopeful comparisons? Is it real? He is an actor after all. Does it matter?

At the end of the introduction to “Pilgrim,” Gere writes that “these are not really Tibetans, these are photographs of Tibetans or rather they are photographs of my feelings for and about Tibetans.”

This is not Richard Gere. This is a moment of Richard Gere. The closer you look, the more he recedes.