Hollywood’s biggest challenge with marketing on the internet may not have anything to do with piracy, rather the assumption that if someone is airing a complaint about a forthcoming movie, the studio must be behind that message.

Rajan Zed, president of the Universal Society of Hinduism, surfaced at the beginning of March with a demand that The Love Guru get screened to Hindu leaders and organizations prior to its public release. Zed caught wind of the advance promotion for the film — starring Mike Myers as a guru recruited for a Toronto Maple Leafs player to win his wife back from the Los Angeles Kings player she left him for – and wondered if Hinduism was getting a raw deal.

Turns out that Zed wasn’t on the Paramount Pictures payroll, just emboldened by the fact that he read the first-ever Hindu prayer to open a session of the US Senate last year, reflecting his reputation as a Hindu chaplain in Reno, Nevada. His media credentials include regular participation in an “On Faith” panel at washingtonpost.com. Doesn’t he have holier concerns than a character probably inspired by Billy Van’s “The Maharishi” on The Hilarious House of Frightenstein?

The offer of a pre-screening was extended by the studio to Zed, who fired off another press release last week — this time getting on the Associated Press wire with a report that likened this apparently sincere concern to that of the citizens of Kazakhstan after the release of Borat. A mantra named for Mariska Hargitay, a page on MySpace listing the main character’s profession as “guru/life guide/bikini inspector” and what the AP called “impossible yoga poses that would require elastic limbs” seemed like tactics to get people to notice the joke.

While the story got picked up as syndicated space-filler around the planet — including the Toronto Star — the star of The Love Guru kept himself unavailable for comment. E! Online helpfully reminded how Myers dressed up as a Hindu deity for a David LaChappelle photo shoot in the 1999 Hollywood issue of Vanity Fair, resulting in the magazine issuing an apology to readers for any offense.

Zed stepped it up yet another notch yesterday — his third press release in a month — expressing his appreciation for getting an early look at the movie, due out June 20, but still “worried about its apparent degrading of the institution of gurus.” This time, his message had backing from India, and his own backyard.

Probably confident that his PR missives have made enough of a statement, Zed brushed off requests for a phone interview, although the other multi-faith names attached to his latest statement turn out to be real. They all apparently know of Zed’s credible reputation and were willing to lend their names to express support.

“Gurus don’t exist to fix your love life,” elaborates Vidya Chaitanya, the director of the Sivanada Yoga Vedanta Center in Los Angeles. “The definition of a guru is someone who removes darkness and helps people overcome their spiritual ignorance. From what I could tell this movie will only help to spread ignorance.”

Chaitanya likens this to running a genuine yoga school where she’s challenged to explain to prospective customers that it’s about more than just the positions on a mat. But she admits to not being too tuned into Hollywood sensibilities, having only worked in Los Angeles for three months, via the UK and Australia. How can a goofy homage to Deepak Chopra possibly be worth an extraneous exhaling?

“The nature of the human mind is that we are all drawn to false impressions,” she says. “And anything that comes through the human eye is capable of producing that result. We need to correct wrong impressions wherever they originate from.”

Right Reverend Gene Savoy Jr., the head bishop of the International Community of Christ in Reno, claims he isn’t a killjoy. He liked the Austin Powers movies for their debt to James Bond, and knows Myers wanted to create a similar salute to Peter Sellers in The Party — but also believes in considering the bigger picture.

“It’s important to be careful not to shame and embarrass people who have different beliefs than you,” says Savoy. “Those who don’t share in the Judeo-Christian views have a hard enough time getting taken seriously in this country.”

Can’t the market decide what is too tasteless? “Possibly. There’s a big enough population base of Indo-Americans that, if they are offended, might have an impact on the box office. I just see the envelope getting pushed further and further, where faith is being used as an exploitative tool for comedic purposes.

“So, you can either remain silent, or you can crusade to get your views heard.”

Certainly, when filming The Love Guru in Toronto last year with co-stars Jessica Alba, Justin Timberlake and Verne Troyer, the last thing Myers imagined was his film getting compared to Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. Not that Rajan Zed was so much comparing storylines as citing it as a previous example of a studio arranging advance screenings for clergy and others worried about its message. Fears were overcome when Gibson's film was deemed too tedious to provoke an Inquistiion.

Then what could Rabbi Jonathan Freirich, of Temple Bat Yam in South Lake Tahoe, possibly be worried about? Like the others, he figures that if Rajan Zed is troubled by the potential implications, the advance concern is worth considering.  

“Honestly, based on what I saw of the clips online, I was laughing out loud,” says Freirich. “But to paint the practices of a billion Hindus with such a broad swath without applying the right amount of sensitivity strikes me as potentially careless.

“Mike Myers doesn’t appear to be approaching this from a minority perspective, and that’s a big difference. Whereas when Mel Brooks in Blazing Saddles has a black man pointing a gun to his own neck, saying ‘The next man makes a move, the nigger gets it,’ that was a challenge to the audience’s sense of reasonableness.

"I don’t have a problem with wondering out loud if Mike Myers might have crossed the line. You wouldn’t get far in Hollywood trying to sell a screenplay that made fun of the finer points of the Jewish religion if you weren’t Jewish, right?”

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