Paul Haggis vs. the Church of Scientology

TheShou · Feb 15, 2011

Magic In The Night said:

Anybody here anything about fallout from this? I thought it would be a bigger deal.
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Isn't Los Angeles planning on building a football stadium? Perfect place for the Scientologists to bury Haggis and Wright's bodies.

LongTimeListener · Feb 15, 2011

I saw a Scientology.org commercial last night, it was from my DVR so it was either Desperate Housewives or How I Met Your Mother ... the people looked very very happy and you never would have known it was anything about spirituality, it could just as well have been a Viagra commercial.

friend of the friendless · Feb 16, 2011

Sirs, Madames,

Way back I read his memoir In the New World and it was a fun read, nothing as dense and research-driven as his later stuff. Funny career curve: You wouldn't guess that the Looming Tower/Haggis writer would even be inclined to read the memoir, never mind write it.

YHS, etc

TigerVols · Feb 16, 2011

Some follow-up reporting:

http://www.theawl.com/2011/02/meet-the-heroes-of-early-scientology-reporting%E2%80%94plus-a-visit-to-the-celebrity-centre

(And within that link you'll find a link to the groundbreaking LAT series about the Sci-tos.)

(BTW, there's a huge, glowing, Scientology Today add looking back at me from right below the box in which I type. Creepy.)

YankeeFan · Dec 15, 2014

Rolling Stone's Janet Reitman has a new book out, Inside Scientology:

When Hubbard died in 1986, his leadership role was taken over by a less flamboyant figure, David Miscavige, who had been a Scientologist since the age of 8. He followed the founder’s plans, especially his “celebrity strategy,” conceived in 1955. Hubbard’s initial hopes were to lure admired people like Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso and Edward R. Murrow into his church. But this ambition shrank, by Miscavige’s time, to recruiting show business personalities. The big catches here were John Travolta and Cruise, on whom Miscavige danced continual attendance, in a tactic the church called “admiration bombing.” A glitzy Celebrity Centre was built for any new catches, and less-known figures proved useful. Nancy Cartright, the voice of Bart Simpson, gave the church $10 million in just one of her years of devout service.

Reitman, a contributing editor at Rolling Stone who spent five years trying to pierce the walls Scientologists put up against outsiders, gives us the most complete picture of Scientology so far. She seems, now, uncertain of its future. But its continued existence, given its weird aspects, is its main claim to religion’s power. It is something of a miracle.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/books/review/inside-scientology-and-render-unto-rome-book-review.html?pagewanted=all
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Holy crap! Nancy Cartright gave them $10 million in one year!

http://www.amazon.com/Inside-Scientology-Americas-Secretive-Religion/dp/0618883029

HC · Jul 24, 2011

You can't lose convincing people in the arts that they don't deserve what they have.

Evil ... Thy name is Orville Redenbacher!! · Dec 15, 2014

YankeeFan said:

Rolling Stone's Janet Reitman has a new book out, Inside Scientology:

When Hubbard died in 1986, his leadership role was taken over by a less flamboyant figure, David Miscavige, who had been a Scientologist since the age of 8. He followed the founders plans, especially his celebrity strategy, conceived in 1955. Hubbards initial hopes were to lure admired people like Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso and Edward R. Murrow into his church. But this ambition shrank, by Miscaviges time, to recruiting show business personalities. The big catches here were John Travolta and Cruise, on whom Miscavige danced continual attendance, in a tactic the church called admiration bombing. A glitzy Celebrity Centre was built for any new catches, and less-known figures proved useful. Nancy Cartright, the voice of Bart Simpson, gave the church $10 million in just one of her years of devout service.

Reitman, a contributing editor at Rolling Stone who spent five years trying to pierce the walls Scientologists put up against outsiders, gives us the most complete picture of Scientology so far. She seems, now, uncertain of its future. But its continued existence, given its weird aspects, is its main claim to religions power. It is something of a miracle.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/books/review/inside-scientology-and-render-unto-rome-book-review.html?pagewanted=all
Click to expand...

Holy crap! Nancy Cartright gave them $10 million in one year!

http://www.amazon.com/Inside-Scientology-Americas-Secretive-Religion/dp/0618883029
Click to expand...

Is Cartwright still a practicing member?

Shit. I wish I had the people skills to form a cult.

Ben_Hecht · Dec 15, 2014

Evil ... Thy name is Orville Redenbacher!! said:

YankeeFan said:

Rolling Stone's Janet Reitman has a new book out, Inside Scientology:

When Hubbard died in 1986, his leadership role was taken over by a less flamboyant figure, David Miscavige, who had been a Scientologist since the age of 8. He followed the founders plans, especially his celebrity strategy, conceived in 1955. Hubbards initial hopes were to lure admired people like Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso and Edward R. Murrow into his church. But this ambition shrank, by Miscaviges time, to recruiting show business personalities. The big catches here were John Travolta and Cruise, on whom Miscavige danced continual attendance, in a tactic the church called admiration bombing. A glitzy Celebrity Centre was built for any new catches, and less-known figures proved useful. Nancy Cartright, the voice of Bart Simpson, gave the church $10 million in just one of her years of devout service.

Reitman, a contributing editor at Rolling Stone who spent five years trying to pierce the walls Scientologists put up against outsiders, gives us the most complete picture of Scientology so far. She seems, now, uncertain of its future. But its continued existence, given its weird aspects, is its main claim to religions power. It is something of a miracle.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/books/review/inside-scientology-and-render-unto-rome-book-review.html?pagewanted=all
Click to expand...

Holy crap! Nancy Cartright gave them $10 million in one year!

http://www.amazon.com/Inside-Scientology-Americas-Secretive-Religion/dp/0618883029
Click to expand...

Is Cartwright still a practicing member?
Click to expand...

Certain she is, as The Simpsons continues to pull all punches regarding this particular freak show.

Double J · Jul 26, 2011

That's why I love "South Park." No sacred cows there, as Isaac Hayes finally learned.

YankeeFan · Jan 3, 2013

Lawrence Wright is back on the subject of Scientology:

The writer Lawrence Wright doesn’t seem at all the sort of person you’d find in public wearing a black cowboy shirt emblazoned with big white buffalos. He’s shy, soft-spoken, a little professorial. But as if he didn’t have enough to do, besides working on three plays simultaneously and getting ready to publish a new book in two weeks, Mr. Wright has been taking piano lessons with Floyd Domino, the two-time Grammy winner, and on a recent Saturday, in his buffalo shirt, he played in a concert at the Victory Grill here with the band WhoDo. Mr. Wright was at the keyboard, and sang solo on “Sixty-Minute Man” and the Count Basie tune “She’s Funny That Way.” Not bad for a bookworm.

“I decided a while ago that I would only do things that are really important or really fun,” Mr. Wright said. “This is really fun.”

More fun, probably, than dealing with lawyers. His new book, “Going Clear: Scientology, Celebrity, and the Prison of Belief” (Knopf) is about the famously litigious Church of Scientology, and he said he has received innumerable threatening letters from lawyers representing the church or some of the celebrities who belong to it. (Transworld, Mr. Wright’s British publisher, recently canceled its plans to publish “Going Clear,” though a spokeswoman insisted that the decision was not made in response to threats from the church.)

The book, which recounts the history of Scientology through the interwoven stories of key figures like L. Ron Hubbard, the religion’s founder, and celebrity Scientologists like John Travolta and Tom Cruise, claims among other things that the church has virtually imprisoned some of its members, threatening blackmail if they try to leave, and that its current leader, David Miscavige, has physically abused some of his underlings. The book won’t do anything to enhance the image of Scientology, already diminished by Janet Reitman’s 2011 book, “Inside Scientology: The History of the World’s Most Secretive Religion.”

In a statement, Karin Pouw, a Scientology spokeswoman, said Mr. Wright and his publisher refused to provide a copy of the book in advance and “showed little interest in receiving input” from the church. “The portions you cite from the book are preposterous lies,” she said, adding that “the allegation about Mr. Miscavige is false and defamatory.”

But Mr. Wright insists that he did not set out to write an exposé. “Why would I bother to do that?” he said. “Scientology is probably the most stigmatized religion in America already. But I’m fascinated by it and by what drives people to Scientology, especially given its image.”

He added: “There are many countries where you can only believe more or you can believe less. But in the United States we have this incredible smorgasbord, and it really interests me why people are drawn to one faith rather than another, especially to a system of belief that to an outsider seems absurd or dangerous.”

Mr. Wright, whose previous book, “The Looming Tower:” Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11,” won the Pulitzer Prize in 2007, is no stranger to writing about secretive organizations. In the case of Scientology, he said, he had been looking for what he calls a “donkey” — a character strong and sympathetic enough to carry a complicated story. “I don’t mean it in a disparaging way,” he explained. “A donkey is a very useful beast of burden.” In 2010 he finally found one in Paul Haggis, the winner of back-to-back Oscars for “Million Dollar Baby,” which he wrote, and “Crash,” which he wrote and directed, who defected from Scientology in 2009, after 34 years in the church, during which he rose to one of its highest ranks.

In 2011 Mr. Wright published a profile of Mr. Haggis in The New Yorker, and in the course of the fact-checking process Tommy Davis, the international spokesman for Scientology, did Mr. Wright an unwitting favor. He showed up in The New Yorker offices with four lawyers and 47 white binders full of material about the church.

“I suppose the idea was to drown me in information,” Mr. Wright recalled, “but it was like trying to pour water on a fish. I looked on those binders with a feeling of absolute joy.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/03/books/scientology-fascinates-the-author-lawrence-wright.html?hp
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Magic In The Night · Feb 1, 2013

I'm beginning to feel like an expert on Scientology. I read the Wright article, the Reitman book and now the new Wright book. Jesus these people are creepy but it's fascinating stuff nonetheless. I'm always amazed that smart people can get caught up in these things.

Football_Bat · Feb 2, 2013

I got chatted up by a Scientologist the last time I was in the Southland. Holy crap. He wanted to throw hands with my buddy next to me who threw out the J-bomb.

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Paul Haggis vs. the Church of Scientology

TheShou New Member

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