Documentary Unites Voices Against Scientology
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Lifestyle FRIDAY, MARCH 13, 2015 Redford to receive Lincoln Center’s Chaplin Award obert Redford is being honored with Lincoln Center’s 42nd annual Chaplin Award. The Film Society of RLincoln Center announced Wednesday that Redford will receive the award at an April 27 gala. Among the announced presenters are Jane Fonda, John Turturro and “All Is Lost” director J.C. Chandor. Redford also will be cele- brated with a seven-film tribute. The Film Society will screen his “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” “The Candidate,” “Jeremiah Johnson,” “Ordinary People” “Quiz Show,” “Three Days of the Condor” and “The Way We Were” over April 24- 27. The award is named after Charlie Chaplin. Previous recipi- ents include Alfred Hitchcock, James Stewart and Meryl Streep. Last year, it was given to Rob Reiner. The 78-year-old Redford stars in the upcoming Bill Bryson adaption “A Walk in the Woods” and the Dan Rather docudrama “Truth.”— AP In this Jan 25, 2015 file photo, author/producer Lawrence Wright, from left, former Scientology church member Spanky Taylor, director Alex Gibney, Sara Bernstein, Senior VP of Programming for HBO Documentaries and former Scientology church mem- ber Mike Rinder attend the premiere of ‘Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief’ during the 2015 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. — AP ‘Going Clear’ documentary unites voices against Scientology ike Rinder had spent virtually all of his life in the Church of Yorker (for which Wright writes), bring some heft to their face-off with Scientology. From the age of 6 he was raised in the church, the church. Wright’s New Yorker profile on “Crash” director Paul Meventually rising to become its chief spokesman. Everyone Haggis, arguably the most famous Scientologist to leave the church, File photo shows Robert Redford attends the premiere he knew was a Scientologist, including his wife, his two children, his was the magazine’s most fact-checked story ever. His book brought of ‘A Walk In The Woods’ during the 2015 Sundance mother, his brother and his sister. But after spending more than a year rare scrutiny to an organization that has regularly repelled it. “I envi- Film Festival in Park City, Utah. — AP in a disciplinary facility known as “the hole,” where Rinder says he and sioned that I would have to defend every single word in there,” he other Scientology executives were confined, an increasingly disillu- says. “It’s one reason there are very few adjectives.” sioned Rinder left the church in 2007. It was while in that Los Angeles In a recent interview at HBO’s Manhattan offices, just a stone’s compound that Rinder, now 59, says he realized the church was “a throw from Scientology’s Manhattan office, Gibney, Wright and road to hell” and that he had to get out, even if penniless and without Rinder spoke of “Going Clear” as empathetic toward those lured to his family.”I literally walked away with a briefcase,” says Rinder, who the church, but critical of its enablers. “We’re not attacking the beliefs Heavy metal living: now lives what he calls “an entirely new life” in Florida with a new of the church,” says Wright, who previously collaborated with Gibney wife, a son and a step-son. “A briefcase with nothing in it, but a brief- on the documentary “My Trip to Al-Qaeda.” “You can believe whatev- case.” Rinder’s story is one of eight from former church members that er you want to believe and that’s fine. It doesn’t matter if it’s crazy; Slipknot guitarist make up the emotional arc of the documentary “Going Clear: there are a lot of crazy religions. It’s the practices and abuses that are Scientology and the Prison of Belief,” which opens in theaters Friday going on in Scientology that I think the book and the film shed light and will air on HBO on March 29. Directed by the Oscar-winning docu- on.” stabbed by brother mentary filmmaker Alex Gibney and based on the acclaimed book by Much of “Going Clear” depends on the testimony of former church he guitarist for the heavy metal band Slipknot was injured the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Lawrence Wright, “Going Clear” is members. They do so despite the likelihood of aggressive responses Wednesday in an apparent drunken brawl with his brother, the highest-profile expose yet of the controversial religion founded from the church. The church’s Freedom Magazine has published Tpolice said. In a potential case of life imitating art, guitarist Mick by science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard. harsh appraisals of those it terms “discredited sources.” Rinder is Thomson of Slipknot-known for its aggressive sound, violent imagery labeled “the lady killer.” Haggis is called “the Hollywood hypocrite.” and grisly Halloween-style costumes-was stabbed in the back of his Internet videos Gibney says private investigators have recently tailed several sources head, police said. Police arrived early in the morning at a house in Substantially on the basis of former members like Rinder speaking from the film. Many also struggle with a sense of shame at having Clive, a suburb of the Midwestern city of Des Moines, Iowa, where out, the film paints a disturbing portrait of Scientology, claiming phys- been members of a church they now speak against. Thomson was apparently fighting with his brother Andrew, a police ical abuse happens regularly; that the church drives wedges between statement said. The brothers were apparently drunk and began to families by labeling non-Scientologist spouses and parents “suppres- Public relations brawl outside before they were taken to separate hospitals, police sive persons”; and that the Internal Revenue Service deemed the “I spent a lot of time on the idea of auditing because it’s a kind of said. Lead singer Corey Taylor wrote on Twitter of Mick Thomson: church a tax-exempt religion in 1993 only because of an avalanche of talking cure,” Gibney says, referring to Scientology’s therapy-like prac- “From what I’ve heard he’s okay. We’re sending him all your thoughts. lawsuits. The documentary also singles out several of Scientology’s tice. “So the beginning of the film, people talk their way in. By the Thank you for that.” —AFP most famous faces - including Tom Cruise and John Travolta - for not end, they talk their way out. Speaking out has become their way of using their power to change the organization. not only leaving the church but helping others who might be suffer- The church, which declined interview requests for the documen- ing under the abuses. The idea of speaking out is fundamental to the tary, has mounted a considerable campaign against the film, includ- film.” Former members are seen in the film as sensible, curious people ing full-page ads in The New York Times and Los Angeles Times and a who only learn of the church’s more idiosyncratic beliefs and practices series of Internet videos. In response to a request for an interview for after years of indoctrination. this story, the church pointed toward videos posted by the Freedom “Everything about Scientology isn’t bad,” says Rinder. “It’s the boil- Magazine, which the church publishes. ing frog problem of you start with something, it seems kind of nice. In those posts and others, the documentary’s sources are derided You’re in the pot of water. It’s kind of cool in here. But the heat keeps as “bitter, vengeful apostates.” The church alleges Gibney didn’t pres- turning up and turning up and turning up. And pretty soon you’re a ent the film’s allegations to them for response and calls the film “a boiled frog.” Not lost on anyone is the irony that Wright and Gibney one-sided false diatribe.” Representatives for the church did meet find themselves sitting alongside the former spokesman Rinder, who with Wright, though the church labeled his book “so ludicrous it would have previously been waging a public relations battle against belongs in a supermarket tabloid.” “Their sources are the usual collec- the film. “If you were still there,” chuckles Wright, “you’d be dealing tion of obsessive, disgruntled former Church members kicked out as with us.”Gibney and Wright are pushing for change on two fronts: long as 30 years ago for malfeasance, who have a documented histo- that the IRS might reconsider its classification of Scientology, and that ry of making up lies about the Church for money,” said the church in a the church’s celebrity members act against the alleged abuses. But statement. The church has also vigorously denied allegations of physi- they also hope that “Going Clear” has served as, Wright says, “a bul- cal abuse or confinement. It has previously said that managers like wark against the kinds of intimidation that the church has launched in Rinder were never held against their will, but were subject to “ecclesi- the past.” “The goal was to get enough people that it emboldened astical discipline.” others who would know they wouldn’t be in this alone,” says Wright. A file picture taken on February 13, 2005, US metal band “There was a lot of fear and a lot of tears in reporting this story.” — AP Slipknot arrive at the 47th Grammy awards ceremony in Los Famous Scientologist Angeles. — AFP But Wright and Gibney, with the backing of HBO and The New.