Filmland Jitters Over Jerky Video

NY Post--Page Six, December 1999

SOME nervous Hollywood movers and shakers have been caught on videotape frolicking naked, beating drums, leaping up and down and shouting, "I'm a Jerk!"

They are all pillars of the Hollywood community who took $600 weekend male-bonding seminars organized by A. Justin Sterling, founder of the Sterling Institute of Relationship.

Sterling's teachings say that men are natural jerks and should learn to accept and embrace their jerkiness. Ideally, men are combinations of Clint Eastwood, Mahatma Gandhi and Curly from the Three Stooges. Deep down, according to Sterling, women don't want men to be sensitive to their needs. They want the Tommy Lee they first fell in love with, not the Alan Alda he's been nagged into becoming.

Sterling is a 57-year-old Armenian whose real name is Arthur Kasarjian. Many of the ideas for his seminars seem to come from EST, popular in the '70s. Five years ago Warner Books published Sterling's book, "What Really Works With Men," which was ridiculed by several critics.

Even so, his seminars, in New York, Oakland, Los Angeles, Toronto and Worcester, Mass., have been growing in popularity in recent months.

The grand finale of each weekend comes when the 150 participants get naked and frolic in a large indoor space. The nude ritual, taped by up to four broadcast-quality video cameras, is supposed to function as a substitute for a "rite of passage" from childhood to adulthood.

Cult expert Rick Ross told PAGE SIX that he had been contacted by a number of prominent Hollywood figures who regretted taking part in Sterling Institute seminars.

"I can't name them because they have asked for confidentiality," said Ross. "They are prominent people in their community and in the entertainment business."

Another source said that a number of Sterling's adherents work for Time Warner and its subsidiaries.

One thing that is worrying the Hollywood types is that Sterling has been coming under increasing media scrutiny. WNBC's Michele Marsh produced an expose on Sterling's neanderthal philosophy earlier this year. Stephen Yafa wrote a profile of Sterling in December's Details, and Jeanette Walls warned of the naked rituals in her MSNBC.com column.

The fear is that the heightened media interest may increase the likelihood that the embarrassing tapes will become public.