Scientology - a very brief mention of George

From down with tyranny

Scientology-- Joke's-On-You-Cult Or Dangerous Criminal Conspiracy?

A winner of an Emmy (for thirtysomething), a Golden Globe (for Crash) and three Oscars (for Million Dollar Baby, Crash, and Letters From Iwo Jima, Haggis is an A-list screenwriter, director and producer. He was also an active member of the Scientology Cult for 35 years, leaving as an Operating Thetan VII (which costs between $300,000 and half a million dollars in "donations"-- a lot more than Lord Boustany paid for his fake title), because of an argument involving the cult's refusal to take a position against California's homophobic Proposition 8.

Tuesday he told the Washington Post in regard to the insidious nature of the cult that "These people have long memories. My bet is that, within two years, you're going to read something about me in a scandal that looks like it has nothing to do with the church." And that brings us to the must-read new issue of The New Yorker, which broke the story about the acrimonious parting on the ways between Haggis and the powerful and dangerous cult that dominates Hollywood far more than the Catholic Church dominates the rest of L.A.

In L.A. you could drive around some areas and get the idea the Scientology Cult is as powerful here as Mormons are in Salt Lake City. I mean it. And they have a unique way of penetrating the entertainment business here. They put up open calls for actors to be in ads or films and then they badge them into joining the cult to get ahead in the Biz. But Haggis isn't from L.A. originally but from London, Ontario. He was on his way to a record store one day when a Scientology recruiter accosted him on the street.

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In 1955, a year after the church’s founding, an affiliated publication urged Scientologists to cultivate celebrities: “It is obvious what would happen to Scientology if prime communicators benefitting from it would mention it.”

At the end of the sixties, the church established its first Celebrity Centre, in Hollywood. (There are now satellites in Paris, Vienna, Düsseldorf, Munich, Florence, London, New York, Las Vegas, and Nashville.)

Over the next decade, Scientology became a potent force in Hollywood. In many respects, Haggis was typical of the recruits from that era, at least among those in the entertainment business. Many of them were young and had quit school in order to follow their dreams, but they were also smart and ambitious. The actress Kirstie Alley, for example, left the University of Kansas in 1970, during her sophomore year, to get married. Scientology, she says, helped her lose her craving for cocaine. “Without Scientology, I would be dead,” she has said.

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Many Hollywood actors were drawn into the church by a friend or by reading Dianetics; a surprising number of them, though, came through the Beverly Hills Playhouse. For decades, the resident acting coach there was Milton Katselas, and he taught hundreds of future stars, including Ted Danson, Michelle Pfeiffer, and George Clooney.

“Most of Hollywood went through that class,” Anne Archer told me. In 1974, two years after her son Tommy Davis was born, she began studying with Katselas. She was a young mother in a dissolving marriage, coming off a television series (Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice) that had been cancelled after one season. Katselas had a transformative effect. She recalled discussions “about life, people, and behavior,” and said that Katselas “said some things in class that were really smart.” Some of the other students told her that Katselas was a Scientologist, so she began the Life Repair program at the Celebrity Centre. “I went two or three times a week, probably for a couple of weeks,” she said. “I remember walking out of the building and walking down the street toward my car and I felt like my feet were not touching the ground. And I said to myself, ‘My God, this is the happiest I’ve ever been in my entire life. I’ve finally found something that works.’ ”

She added, “Life didn’t seem so hard anymore. I was back in the driver’s seat.”