Bombshell Scientology Film: Alex Gibney on Cruise, Travolta and 'The Prison of Belief'

[onager]

Oh, this oughta be GOOD. Gibney is the guy who made the documentary about one of the worst Catholic abuse scandals - Mea Maxim Culpa. I'm still convinced that film helped Pope Panzer resign - he was directly implicated in the cover-up and that documentary really brought it out.

Bombshell Scientology Film: Alex Gibney on Cruise, Travolta and 'The Prison of Belief'

By Kim Masters - Hollywood Reporter - ?January? ?21?, ?2015

...Gibney’s film, based on Lawrence Wright’s 2013 best-seller "Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison of Belief," is set to become one of the most-talked-about documentaries at the Sundance Film Festival. The exhaustively researched (and lawyered) exploration of the controversial church and its ties to Hollywood is set for a Jan. 25 premiere at the MARC Theater and will air March 16 on HBO after an awards-qualifying theatrical release in New York and Los Angeles.

"Going Clear" is the latest film to emerge from what has become Gibney’s amazingly prolific factory of awards-magnet documentaries. (Having written about Scientology over the years, I should state that I am a talking head in the film.) It features vintage footage of enigmatic church founder L. Ron Hubbard as he builds his empire as well as rare sequences shot inside Scientology gatherings, some of which include the church’s biggest star, Tom Cruise...

Featuring interviews with several fallen-away high-level church officials, the film paints a damning portrait of the involvement of Scientology’s highest-profile members, Cruise and John Travolta, which continues despite numerous allegations against the church that claim forced labor and other abuse under Miscavige’s leadership.

https://www.yahoo.com/movies/bombshell-scientology-film-alex-gibney-on-cruise-108751189867.html

[Curmudgeoness]

1. That ought to be good.

I would be really interested in seeing this film.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

2. this was cross posted in GD.

Still worth watching. Funny as hell. Sad and pathetic too.



God's love in action amongst his followers, indeed!

[Warren Stupidity]

3. Is it ok to mock this religion?

I really don't get the rulez.

[PassingFair]

4. The 500 year rule.

Anything under 500 years is the rule.

Except for B'hai....they get a pass for some reason.

[Act_of_Reparation]

8. The Kumbaya Rapid Deployment Squad are always looking for backup singers.

And the B'hai can carry a tune.

[LiberalAndProud]

5. No rulez.

As long as unbelievers are sufficiently chastised, anything goes. But don't make the mistake of comparing modern religious myths to ancient Greek mythology. That's disrespectful. Apollo weeps.

[sakabatou]

6. I read the book and I liked it

[AlbertCat]

7. Back in the '90s...

.... TIME mag did an entire issue on the evil underworld of Scientology. It was scary then! Scientology "agents" followed the reporters around and their children to school, and called their friends and employers and stuff with veiled threats. I remember it was the 1st time I found out about how dumb and completely ridiculous the ideas of scientology were. They deliberately target high money-making professions.... like movie stars and dentists. Who would fall for this baloney???

[Hissyspit]

9. I read that when it came out. I was sitting in a laundromat waiting for my clothes

and read it in one sitting. I remember what an impact it made on me.

[onager]

10. You can read the whole article here...

The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power by Richard Behar - Time Magazine May 6, 1991

Scroll down to the Sidebar at the bottom, to read about Behar's harassment by Co$ when he was writing the article.

http://www.xenu.net/archive/media/time910605.html

"Xenu.net" - a name which must annoy the shit out of $cientologists - is the home site for the invaluable "Operation Clambake." That site has been around since the "$cientology Usenet Wars" of the mid-1990s.

Interesting item from July 2013, showing that the cult is keeping right up to date with its tactics:

The DMCA is now widely used by the entertainment industry to have content removed from the internet.
For the Church, it was a tool that allowed them to go after ex-members and others who had posted "secret scriptures" online.

One such site, Operation Clambake, was a particular thorn. Set up by Andreas Heldal-Lund, the site not only hosted previously private Scientology documents, but large amounts of criticism of the Church too. Due to it being set-up in Norway, Xenu.net was beyond the DMCA's reach.

So the Church did the next best thing: it made a request to Google for the site to be wiped from search results. Google complied, sparking strong criticism.

Faced with the backlash, Google came to what founder Sergey Brin would later describe as the "right compromise", removing the listings, but replacing them with links to another website - chillingeffects.org - which lists the details of DMCA requests.

Meanwhile, anti-Scientologists with websites linked to Xenu.net, thus pushing it up Google's rankings until it appeared ahead of the Church's official site.

Ex-high-ranking Scientologist Geir Isene, who left the Church in 2009, told the BBC the Church was so concerned about this that it put pressure on Mr Brin at a conference in the hope he would alter search results to down-rank, or remove, anti-Scientology material.