In the new documentary “Burt’s Buzz,” Burt Shavitz, a founder of the cosmetics company Burt’s Bees, reveals himself to be the ultimate homebody.

“A good day is when no one shows up and you don’t have to go anywhere,” he tells the camera, looking exactly like the drawing of the bearded old hippie that adorns the packages of lip balm and other natural beauty products. Another piece of hermit wisdom: “I’m less interested in the inside of whatever it is I own than on the outside of what it sits on.” Or, as he reiterates later, “Land is everything.”

The film traces Mr. Shavitz’s unlikely rise to cultural icon and, like its subject, is full of surprises. For instance, he worked for years as a photojournalist in New York City before moving to Maine and becoming a beekeeper. Also, he no longer has equity in the company that bears his name, having sold his portion shortly before Burt’s Bees was sold for hundreds of millions of dollars. (The company compensates him for the use of his image and employs him to be a brand ambassador, a living mascot.)

No matter. Mr. Shavitz, 79, maintains that he had “no desire to be an upper mobile rising yuppie,” and his living situation proves it: For decades he’s been in a string of modest houses, including his current one, in northern Maine, with no running hot water. He heats by wood stove. His companions are dogs.