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dan ruffTHE APOSTATEPaul Haggis vs. the Church of Scientology.
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Terry Rittern August 19, 2009, Tommy Davis, the chief spokesperson for the Church of Scientology International, received a letter from the film director and screenwriter Paul Haggis.
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Simon WoodThe Apostate http://nyr.kr/h9lkLQ Paul Haggis vs. the Church of Scientology (The New Yorker)
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05 Mar 11
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In the editing room, Haggis felt the need for a cigarette, so we walked outside. He is ashamed of this habit, especially given that, in 2003, while directing “Crash,” he had a heart attack. After Haggis had emergency surgery, his doctor told him that it would be four or five months before he could work again: “It would be too much strain on your heart.” He replied, “Let me ask you how much stress you think I might be under as I’m sitting at home while another director is finishing my fucking film!” The doctor relented, but demanded that a nurse be on the set to monitor Haggis’s vital signs. Since then, Haggis has tried repeatedly to quit smoking. He had stopped before shooting “The Next Three Days,” but Russell Crowe was smoking, and that did him in. “There’s always a good excuse,” he admitted. Before his heart attack, he said, “I thought I was invincible.” He added, “I still do.”
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Like the courses at the Playhouse, Scientology offered actors a method that they could apply to both their lives and their careers.
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David S. Touretzky, a computer-science professor at Carnegie Mellon University, has done extensive research on Scientology. (He is not a defector.) He estimates that the coursework alone now costs nearly three hundred thousand dollars, and, with the additional auditing and contributions expected of upper-level members, the cumulative cost of the coursework may exceed half a million dollars. (The church says that there are no fixed fees, adding, “Donations requested for ‘courses’ at Church of Scientology begin at $50 and could never possibly reach the amount suggested.”)
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When Haggis first turned to Scientology, he considered himself an atheist. Scientology seemed to him less a religion than a set of useful principles for living. He mentioned the ARC Triangle; “ARC” stands for “Affinity, Reality, and Communication.” Affinity, in this formulation, means the emotional response that partners have toward each other; reality is the area of common agreement. Together, these contribute to the flow of communication. “The three parts together equal understanding,” Haggis said. “If you’re having a disagreement with someone, your affinity drops quickly. Your mutual reality is shattered. Your communication becomes more halted. You begin to talk over each other. There’s less and less understanding. But all you need to do is to raise one part of the triangle and you increase the others as well. I still use that.”
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In 1933, Hubbard married Margaret Grubb, whom he called Polly;
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He credited the church for improving his relationship with Gettas. “Instead of fighting (we did a lot of that before Scientology philosophy) we now talk things out, listen to each other and apply Scientology technology to our problems.”
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When the divorce became final, in 1997, Haggis and Gettas were ordered by the court to undergo psychological evaluations—a procedure abhorred by Scientologists. The court then determined that Haggis should have full custody of the children.
His daughters were resentful. They had lived their entire lives with their mother. “I didn’t even know why he wanted us,” Lauren says. “I didn’t really know him.”
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“I’m very proud of Alissa for not talking to me,” Haggis told me, his eyes welling with tears. “Think what that takes.” It was the only time, in our many conversations, that he displayed such emotion.
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The Church of Scientology had recently gained tax-exempt status as a religious institution, making donations, as well as the cost of auditing, tax-deductible. (Church members had lodged more than two thousand lawsuits against the Internal Revenue Service, ensnaring the agency in litigation. As part of the settlement, the church agreed to drop its legal campaign.)
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The practice of disconnection is not unique to Scientology. The Amish, for example, cut themselves off from apostates, including their own children; some Orthodox Jewish communities do the same.
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The St. Petersburg Times noted that Miscavige played Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” on a boom box as the church leaders fought over the chairs, punching each other and, in one case, ripping a chair apart.
Tom De Vocht, one of the participants, says that the event lasted until four in the morning: “It got more and more physical as the number of chairs went down.” Many of the participants had long been cut off from their families. They had no money, no credit cards, no telephones. According to De Vocht, many lacked a driver’s license or a passport. Few had any savings or employment prospects. As people fell out of the game, Miscavige had airplane reservations made for them. He said that buses were going to be leaving at six in the morning. The powerlessness of everyone else in the room was nakedly clear.
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In 2009, the Headleys filed their suits, which maintained that the working conditions at the Gold Base violated labor and human-trafficking laws. The church responded that the Headleys were ministers who had voluntarily submitted to the rigors of their calling, and that the First Amendment protected Scientology’s religious practices. The court agreed with this argument and dismissed the Headleys’ complaints, awarding the church forty thousand dollars in litigation costs.
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The law prohibits the head of a tax-exempt organization from enjoying unusual perks or compensation; it’s called inurement.
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Timoteo GibbonsHow filmmaker Paul Haggis got his start w/bonus Scientology exposé: http://cot.ag/eUwhox
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14 Feb 11
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Many Sea Org volunteers find themselves with no viable options for adulthood. If they try to leave, the church presents them with a “freeloader tab” for all the coursework and counselling they have received; the bill can amount to more than a hundred thousand dollars. Payment is required in order to leave in good standing. “Many of them actually pay it,” Haggis said. “They leave, they’re ashamed of what they’ve done, they’ve got no money, no job history, they’re lost, they just disappear.” In what seemed like a very unguarded comment, he said, “I would gladly take down the church for that one thing.”
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Scientology will solve the source of the problem.
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“Psychiatry: An Industry of Death,” which argues that psychiatry contributed to the rise of Nazism and apartheid.
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13 Feb 11
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12 Feb 11
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, 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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Dan O'LearyA long (took me 3 hours to read) but great article on Paul Haggis and the Church of Scientology. http://j.mp/fWgSmz
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11 Feb 11
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10 Feb 11
Javier ArbonaReading THE Scientology article. Starting to feel like EVERY Hollywood movie is part of a huge brainwash program. http://is.gd/g8IBzG
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Hermione GIt's a long read, but a goodun. Screenwriter/director Paul Haggis realises his religion of 35yrs is a dirty cult. http://nyr.kr/gOT8Xx
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09 Feb 11
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08 Feb 11
camryl9...for the first time, [Haggis] had explored outside perspectives on Scientology. ...he felt “dumbstruck and horrified,” adding, “Tommy, if only a fraction of these accusations are true, we are talking about serious, indefensible human and civil-rights vi
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Haggis grasped a cylindrical electrode in each hand; when he first joined Scientology, the electrodes were empty soup cans.
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07 Feb 11
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ken ."In the late seventies, the O.T. material was still quite secret. There was no Google, and Scientology’s confidential scriptures had not yet circulated, let alone been produced in court or parodied on “South Park.” “You were told that this information, if released, would cause serious damage to people,”
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dave sgonechinaDavis explained, “Anyone who saw ‘J.F.K.’ remembers a scene on the Mall where Kevin Costner’s character goes and meets with a man named Mr. X, who’s played by Donald Sutherland.” In the film, Mr. X is an embittered intelligence agent who explains that the Kennedy assassination was actually a coup staged by the military-industrial complex. In real life, Davis said, Mr. X was Colonel Leroy Fletcher Prouty, who had worked in the Office of Special Operations. (Oliver Stone, who directed “J.F.K.,” says that Mr. X was a composite character, based in part on Prouty.) In the eighties, Prouty worked as a consultant for Scientology.
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