The Church of Fear: Inside The Weird World of Scientology (26 page)

I understand, thank you, I said.

Mole pressed Tommy for an interview with Miscavige. Normally, this kind of conversation is not filmed, but the Church of Scientology is not normal.

‘Where is he? Is he in LA?’ asked Mole.

‘You are assuming he is in LA,’ said Tommy.

‘You don’t want to tell me where he is,’ said Mole. ‘Phone him. Ask him has he heard of our interview approach? Does he know about this programme?’

‘Absolutely,’ said Tommy.

‘Surely the man’s got 30 minutes. Ask him.’

Tommy blocked her, waffling on about this and that.

‘How high are you?’ asked Mole.

‘Well, I report to Mr Miscavige. Is that high enough?’

‘So are you number two in the organisation? Or is that Mike?’

‘We don’t really operate in that regard of number one and number two,’ said Tommy. ‘This isn’t
Austin Powers
.’

It felt like
Austin Powers
.

I wondered aloud to Tommy and Mike: are you Brother Number Two or Brother Number Three?

‘Yeah, precisely. Anyway that is not how we operate. But as far as public relations and media relations…’

‘…you are number one, OK. Well if you could pass on our request again that would be great and give him a call and ask him?’

‘Gladly.’

‘Can you ring him now?’

‘Right here? On camera?’

‘Yeah, why not? Go on, ring him now,’ said Mole.

‘A nice guy called John Sweeney wants to interview him?’ Tommy looked doubtful, adding to the implied negative, ‘I think that is kind of obvious.’

‘Why? What is wrong? Why won’t you call him?’

‘Because that is ridiculous.’

‘How is it ridiculous?’

‘The head of a major organisation? I am just going to call him up…’ said Tommy.

Marla cut in: ‘A president of an organisation? You are so juvenile.’

Mole says that she found Marla hard to deal with, and might have lost it with them, too, eventually.

I asked Mike: What would your recommendation be?

Mike: ‘That you’re an asshole.’

Mole seemed to find Mike’s remark exceptionally funny: ‘That you’re an asshole. That is the recommendation from Mike.’

Mike repeated himself: ‘An asshole.’ Mole carried on smirking.

Marla: ‘You’re the one screaming. I have worked with journalists for the past ten years, I have worked with
60 Minutes
, I have worked with journalists…’

I was trying to make a point, I said. I’ve apologised.

‘I have never witnessed that type of a reaction from any member of the media in ten years working with them on a direct basis,’ said Marla. ‘Why on earth would we recommend you with that type of behaviour? I wouldn’t even recommend that to my enemies, or maybe a few psychiatrists I would. But I certainly would not recommend you to be in the same room with anyone who I held in high regard after that type of behaviour.’

Funnily enough, one year before I lost it Marla said much the same to another reporter who had toured the
Industry of Death.
She complained of Andrew Gumbel of
Los Angeles City Beat
that his behaviour amounted to “the most bizarre encounter I have had with a reporter in 10 years.” Perhaps she says that to all the reporters.

I got the feeling that Tommy didn’t want Marla to raise the subject of my exploding tomato performance. Suddenly, she switched off.

Marla: ‘That’s it. I am done. That is my comment.’

Are there any…?

‘I am done,’ said Marla.

I am glad that you are done, I said. I am just replying to your point that there are some sort of slightly strange things that go on when you start investigating Scientology. We have been followed throughout by investigators.

‘It’s boring. It’s boring. I’m bored,’ said Marla.

We went to lunch, on our own, to a burger bar called Tommy’s. I apologised, again. Mole told me to shut up. Bill, our cameraman, tendered his resignation. He was going to leave the BBC and start anew. He was going to join Gold, the Church’s camera team based in the Californian desert, to work with Reinhardt and co. I started gulping in terror. The only reason stopping him was that he didn’t fancy wearing black all the time. I called him a traitor. We started laughing, and couldn’t stop.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Concrete Angel

L
ike a pitiless concrete angel, the vast two-winged Scientology building stands in downtown LA proclaiming its power to the city of dreams. The building, the old Cedars of Lebanon hospital the Church acquired in the 1970s, is painted a deep space blue and on top of it a great white sign proclaims ‘Scientology’. At night, it lights up, piercing the night sky. Welcome to L Ron Hubbard Way. This street, and the area around it, is dominated by the Church of the Stars. White-shirted, black-trousered adepts hurry across the street, hither and yon.

After lunch we met Tommy and Mike at the far end of the complex from the old hospital. The car park was packed, a sea of windscreens flashing in the sun. It hadn’t drizzled the whole time I was in America. Odd. When I walked through the doors, the strangest thing happened. I stepped into the building about ten feet ahead of the camera teams and Tommy and Mike, and I saw an entire film set, frozen in space and time, as if waiting for a signal from on high, from the Director. One beat, and then as if by unspoken command, everyone started moving, criss-crossing paths, hurrying slightly too fast for real life. I had walked inside a Church of Scientology video. Creepy.

Tommy and Mike were the soul of politeness. It was walk this way, see this, can I answer your question? What had they got up to over lunch? Shown Miscavige the tape of me doing an impression of John Cleese in
Fawlty Towers
going nuts? I guess so.

We came to a stop in front of a bust of L Ron Hubbard. There is a brilliant
Dr Who
episode,
Blink
, about stone statues that are in reality space aliens that move when you blink. Since watching that, I have always felt uneasy in front of statues or busts of any kind.

All of Mr Hubbard’s lectures on compact discs, said Tommy, tantalisingly, pointing at a wall of CDs.

The same thing that we saw at Saint Hill, I said. I didn’t say it then, but the Church of Scientology’s centre in LA is the least religious religious building I have ever been in, in the whole world. It looks and feels like a shop.

A fancy plasma screen caught my eye. Mr Hubbard, said Tommy, gave over 3,000 lectures…

Inside a wood-lined study was a desk, decorated by a naval white cap, as if the captain of the Isle of Wight ferry had just popped out for a pint.

Every Church of Scientology, said Tommy, has an office for L Ron Hubbard.

Other religions have shrines to their dead founders. Scientology, in keeping with its weird mix of corporate Americana, dollar signs and religiosity, has an office. Tommy went on to explain that LRH wasn’t a prophet, guru or a god.

Smashing, I said. What is the naval hat for?

Tommy waxed lyrical about Mr Hubbard’s mastery of the sea, a master mariner licensed to captain any ship on any ocean of any tonnage, sail or motor. The heretic biographer Russell Miller gave me a somewhat different version of Hubbard’s career in the US Navy: ‘He fired on Mexico by mistake. He fought a battle with a submarine that never existed on the Pacific coast. He was not a war hero. He stumbled from courts martial to investigations to unpaid bills. His war career was a disaster.’

Our tour continued. Outwardly, I appeared interested. Inwardly, I was wondering, when would I get fired? We came across a grown man playing with plasticine. Mr Hubbard worked out, said Tommy, that playing with clay figures helps Scientologists.

The man lumped his figures into a ball…

‘…And the supervisor will be able to see…’

…then rolled out his clay.

We walked past a couple sitting at a table facing each other, an E-meter on the table. In real life, it was an unimpressive piece of kit, whiffing of Bakelite and 1950s valves. The needle, floating or not, would not look out of place on the dashboard of a Spitfire. Hi-tech, Scientology is not.

Tommy explained how the Scientologists were training how to become an auditor: ‘And so that involves how to use the E-meter and various drills for that.’

Drill is a military word.

‘…and that they know their tools, they know their trade perfectly and exactly…’

We were watching a display of auditing, not the real thing.

What are the wood bricks for? I asked.

‘Similar to the clay,’ said Tommy.

More auditing was going on.

‘The auditor does not ever validate, evaluate or anything like that. The auditor is fully there to assist the person receiving the auditing and finding out for himself what it is that’s troubling him.’

There were more grown-ups playing with clay, people studying, people auditing with E-meters in rooms off the main corridors. In one long room there were dozens of people, bent over their studies or their clay, none of whom paid any attention whatsoever to the two agents, the reporter, the four separate people behind cameras and the sound person with the very long boom. And that is weird. It is a simple constant of working for TV, everywhere on the planet, that people come up to you and ask, ‘what are you filming?’ and ‘what’s it for?’ and ‘when does it go out?’ and ‘hello, Mum.’ When people not only don’t do that, but do the opposite and entirely ignore the cameras, one can reasonably deduce that they been commanded to behave in that peculiar way, beforehand. It was like wandering around inside the set of
The Truman Show
.

‘Was that satisfactory?’

Very, very good, I said. More than satisfactory.

We were out in the fresh air.

‘If you wouldn’t mind,’ asked Tommy, ‘letting me know where you are going to go? The only reason literally is that when you show up, people are going to call me and say “there is a camera crew here, do you know who they are?”… So just let me know and I will just… even if you just tell me on the day I will tell everyone here there is a crew from the BBC… OK?’

I couldn’t be bothered answering that.

‘Do you have any questions John?’

How much is the Church worth?

‘To be honest with you, I have actually no idea.’

After our tour, it was back to ‘The Some Say Brainwashing Cult’ suite at the Celebrity Centre. Juliette Lewis walked in, the goofy yet very beautiful star of
Natural Born Killers
and former girlfriend of Brad Pitt. In 2007, she was a musician with her own rock band.

The Sci’gy Leaks messages had predicted: ‘
Juliette will go off on him about narconon and that she wld be dead if it wasnt for the program and how dare he criticize it
.’ And lo, it came to pass.

You’re a Scientologist, why?

‘Well, thirteen years ago I had a little drug problem that was horrible and I did the Narconon programme and it’s the only drug rehab I ever did and then never looked back, never did drugs again, so I’m kind of happy about that.’

What does Scientology do for you? Has it made you a better person?

‘Well, what I think about Hubbard just as a writer is he’s like just really interesting and I find his writing compelling and makes me think about things all the like courses I’ve done in Scientology’s made me able to understand communication better so that I could connect with people because as an artist first and foremost that’s like the most important thing to me is this connection with people. And also to understand each other, to resolve differences, because when I was like more of an introverted teen who couldn’t articulate my feelings to save my life, it was really an uncomfortable place to be so now just being able to be more comfortable in my own skin, eh, has allowed me to do live rock and roll shows as well so it’s good, good things. I’ve only had good things.’

It felt like
Groundhog Day
. Still I had to through the motions.

Which level of Scientology are you at, I asked?

‘I don’t like to speak in mysteric, you know, mysterious terms that people don’t understand so first and foremost I would just say I’m Juliette, I am an artist, I am female, those are the things I’m sure you understand. So as far as levels in Scientology I’ve done lots of courses, I’ve had the auditing which is the equivalent to what counselling might, you might know as counselling and stuff like that.’

Some people say that it’s a sinister brainwashing cult. What would you say to that?

‘Some people have also said that women are really stupid and shouldn’t vote!’

Well, the people who said that it’s a sinister brainwashing cult used to be in Scientology.

‘I did movies for fifteen years and I still do movies, and I’ve been sort of in the public eye, I guess, since I was twenty, so I’m kind of used to stereotypes, clichés, rumours, even my best of friends, you know who, they’re just hilarious stories, so, the point is the brainwashing thing I just think is funny because anybody who knows me that’s like really funny, I don’t know.’

Who’s Xenu?

‘Who’s who?’

Xenu.

She did a weird kind of, ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about’ look. Not terribly convincing. Hardly Oscar winning.

‘I don’t know. Is that, what? Off the internet?’

The Church seeks to mock the utility of the internet and net-nanny its parishioners and Juliette’s response fitted in nicely within this picture.

I told Juliette about the evil galactic warlord who blew up bits of aliens, having flown them to earth, next to volcanoes.

‘Really? I don’t…’ She burst into infectious giggles. ‘It sounds like great science fiction!’

Has it anything to do with your religion?

‘I’ve never heard of it. I don’t know. Xenu? I don’t go on the internet a lot for like conspiracy theories and research so I don’t know that that theory, the aliens…’

But you’ve never heard it?

‘Xenu? No! Never heard it. It sounds like a good movie.’

But nothing to do with Scientology?

‘No. That’s the thing, the reason, you have to know why I came here today, is because I have a little rock and roll band and we tour the world and I have to do phone interviews and in-person interviews for hours and hours and hours, and a lot of times like I’ll go to Denmark, Sweden, Germany, UK and I get asked about Scientology, and a lot of the times the journalists will have really funny questions, they’re funny, depending on what mood I’m in, other times they’re annoying or aggravating.’