How models were drawn into the Eternal Values cult

Documentary filmmaker Chris Smith, whose credits include American Movie and recent Netflix profiles of Jim Carrey, Andy Kaufman, Devo, Wham! and the Fyre festival, has made an HBO miniseries, Bring Me the Beauties, about the rise and fall of Eternal Values, a group started in the 1980s by Frederick von Mierers that largely consisted of models.

Smith met Hoyt Richards, sometimes called the first male supermodel and a former member, on another project; Richards became the backbone of the series, giving hours of interviews. Not everyone featured shares the same view of von Mierers or agrees that the group was a cult, and Smith says it took years of patient relationship‑building to persuade people to speak on camera.

The series mixes woo‑woo, new‑age details typical of the 1980s with darker accounts about efforts to control members after von Mierers’ death in the 1990s.

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