To audiences, it would have been a lame joke in a forgettable John Candy comedy. To the Church of Scientology, it meant war.
In 1991’s “Delirious,” actress Emma Samms mentions to her brother that Candy’s character has a strange power over her. “Do you think he’s a Scientologist?” the brother replies.
As soon as the filmmakers began showing a rough cut of the film, someone in the church’s extensive network of spies tipped off headquarters about the gag. The producer and director began receiving letters and phone calls from others in the industry saying that the joke was offensive and asking that it be cut.
Soon, the communications became more sinister. Lawsuits were threatened. Director Tom Mankiewicz’s house was broken into, his personal effects rifled, Premiere magazine reported. The filmmakers eventually caved and cut the line.
For decades, Scientology has been one of the most powerful forces in Hollywood, wielding behind-the-scenes clout that includes changing scripts, killing projects, recruiting actors and, perhaps most crucial of all, finding Tom Cruise a wife.
This may well be remembered as the year that Scientology’s grip on Hollywood began slipping. In terms of disastrous public relations, the organization’s past year was probably only rivaled by that of Prince Harry’s crown jewels.
After years of dishy stories and high-profile defections, the dam burst when Katie Holmes dumped Cruise under cover of darkness, bringing waves of negative news about the church and its most famous adherent.
This weekend marks another salvo against Scientology from its formerly ironclad LA stronghold, as writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson releases “The Master.”
The movie is about a 1950s self-help guru and con-man (Philip Seymour Hoffman) who Anderson says was inspired by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. Both are former science fiction writers who founded programs steeped in extra-terrestrial gobbledygook that purport to improve followers’ lives through confessional sessions employing a device similar to a lie detector.
Anderson, who worked with Cruise in 1999’s “Magnolia,” says he screened “The Master” for the actor as a courtesy, but the fact that he even made the movie at all seems to signal a shift.
“The greatest indication [of Scientology’s waning power in Hollywood] is that Paul Thomas Anderson is putting that movie out. He wouldn’t have even thought about that 10 years ago,” says Marty Rathbun, a former top official in the Church of Scientology, who left in 2004. “What’s changed is Tom Cruise’s meltdown on Oprah, Tom Cruise’s meltdown with Matt Lauer, Tom Cruise’s meltdown with Katie Holmes. They’ve brought it upon themselves. They’ve become an acceptable joke.”
“Paul Thomas Anderson did a very courageous thing: He made a movie. He’s the first to break through and actually do it,” says one longtime producer who asked for anonymity because of Scientology’s reputation for harassing critics. “There are Scientologists in all sorts of places. You never know. They could be agents or actors. Tom Cruise has a lot of people who like him and don’t want to go up against him.”
Since its early days — the seminal text “Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health” by L. Ron Hubbard was published in 1950, the church officially launched in 1954 — Scientology has made recruiting those in the arts, especially celebrities, a priority. The church operates several “celebrity centres” across the world, including one in an Upper East Side brownstone, and famous faces are thought to be a powerful outreach tool.
In 1955, Hubbard launched Project Celebrity, drafting a wish list of Hollywood elite the church should recruit, including Orson Welles, Walt Disney, Jimmy Stewart and Greta Garbo. A 1955 article from the church’s newsletter, Ability, asked followers to choose someone in the public eye to target for recruiting. “Having been awarded one of these celebrities, it will be up to you to learn what you can about your quarry and then put yourself at every hand across his or her path,” the magazine said.
Today, Kirstie Alley, John Travolta, Elisabeth Moss, Anne Archer, Juliette Lewis, Nancy Cartwright of “The Simpsons” and Giovanni Ribisi are reportedly members. So are dozens of others, including producers, writers and people like late acting coach, Milton Katselas, who steered many of his famous pupils to the church.
“I’ve lost count of the number of people I’ve spoken to — former Scientologists — who have said to me, ‘I joined because I thought, if it is good enough for Tom Cruise, if it is good enough for John Travolta, then it is good enough for me,’ ” Cruise biographer Andrew Morton has said.
In years past, the church ran ads in Hollywood trade magazines, targeting actors with a cryptic pitch: “Want to make it in the industry? Learn Human Communications Secrets in the Success Through Communications Course.”
“In the 1990s until as recently as a few years ago, everyone who had any profile in the movie industry had been invited to at least one, but more likely several, ‘networking’ events overseen by Scientologists,” says one prominent screenwriter. “A lot of us went, as there was a likelihood that you might get to meet Tom Cruise or Paul Haggis or other eminent people who could really help further your career.”
Scientology members charged with rounding up celebrities were taught specific techniques, says Nancy Many, a former high-ranking Scientologist and author of “My Billion Year Contract.” (One successful female recruiter, Many says, took to sleeping with them at her own initiative.)
Recruitment began subtly. The target would be invited by a friend to a party or one of the many events at the Celebrity Centre, like a poetry night. Then he would be guided to a conversation with a senior church member who would try and draw out personal details of the celebrity’s life, especially his troubles.
“One problem a celebrity had was that those around him couldn’t see the person, they’d just see the celebrity,” Many says. “I’d say, ‘That’s a real issue. I can really understand that.’ Then I’d share a personal experience. It’s about empathy. That’s part of the sales training in Scientology.”
Introductory classes would then be suggested. Many says the church then tried to separate recruits from so-called “supressives,” which could include family, friends and business associates, in order to gain control.
The Church of Scientology says it does not assign members to recruit celebs, and it dismisses the claims of former members as the gripings of a “Posse of Lunatics” who were “kicked out of the church years ago and have been spreading false tales.”
Rathbun, however, is very specific about how that church knew so much about what was happening in Hollywood. He says it maintains a database called the Power of Communication Lines that contains thousands of names of powerful people in politics and entertainment, along with their connections to Scientology members. Like a creepy game of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. “It was enormous,” Rathbun adds, “like something from the CIA.”
When the church got wind of something negative in a script — say, an anti-Scientology joke in a sit-com — higher-ups would scour the database for any connection to someone working on the show or movie. A meeting would be set up, and pressure applied.
The church says it does not have such a database, nor does it meddle in the affairs of feature films. But one producer recalls the church threatening lawsuits when he began working on a film about Rick Ross, a prominent deprogrammer who is a vocal critic of Scientology. He shut down the production rather than fight a pricy church lawsuit.
In another case, Rathbun says he managed to get a meeting with ABC’s head of standards back in the 1990s to discuss an episode of the Richard Lewis sitcom “Anything But Love” that was to have Lewis recruited by a Scientology-like group.
“You don’t go in threatening anyone,” Rathbun says of the ABC meeting. “I just made the case from a religious discrimination argument. We’d always name-drop John Travolta and Tom Cruise, and say, ‘You’re attacking their religion,’ and so on.”
The script was changed.
Now, Scientologists are reportedly flooding the Weinstein Co., distributor of “The Master,” with angry letters, e-mails and phone calls. The studio appears to be ignoring them, signs of another shift in Hollywood’s attitude toward Scientology.
“There have been rumors about the tactics that the church uses to stop people from leaving, and many of us got wind of how Nicole Kidman had been treated when she and Tom divorced,” the screenwriter says. “Recent events, such as the alleged ‘auditioning’ for a wife, have consolidated in many people’s minds that Scientology is something they don’t want anything to do with. Membership once made you interesting and unique. Now [it’s] almost an admission of naiveté or gullibility.”
Rathbun says Scientology leader David Miscavige’s obsession with A-listers has been part of its undoing. “This celebrity business has utterly backfired,” says Rathbun. “The biggest negative you can have is to say, ‘Hey, man, lemme tell you about Scientology, that thing Tom Cruise is involved with.’ ”
Rathbun estimates that church membership has dropped by half since 1990, when it stood at 45,000. The church doesn’t release hard membership data but claims 8 million followers worldwide. In 2008, the US Census Bureau put the number of self-identified American Scientologists at 25,000.
The church has of late been rocked by several public defections, such as “Crash” director Paul Haggis and “Californication” actor Jason Beghe, who posted a YouTube video slamming the faith.
Longtime follower Lisa Marie Presley also appears to have left. Her new album contains lyrics that seem to renounce the church. On “You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet,” she sings, “I’m a bit transgressive and suppressive, as well.”
The defections are surprising, considering how close the church and Hollywood community have been. But if there’s one thing celebrities give Scientology that’s more important than influence, it’s money.
“I know some celebrities who work with a certain financial manager,” Many says. “The manager is a Scientologist. [He is] in direct communication with a Scientology salesperson called a registrar, and the manager will let the registrar know, ‘They’re getting a big check for this much. They can afford to give you 25 percent of it.’ ”
So the quest for new celebrity members goes on. Rathbun says the church was recently desperate to recruit David Beckham, going as far as to invite him to the international headquarters and spent $40,000 to build him a soccer field, in case he wanted to work out.
The church says it never targeted Beckham, and that the fields were part of a sports complex for all members. Either way, Beckham never showed. “He got the willies, I guess,” Rathbun says.
After the Travolta massage scandal, the Cruise divorce, the Paul Haggis testimony and now “The Master,” it seems like many more are starting to feel the same way.