Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief(100)
Cruise turned his attention to the other Scientologists in the industry. Many had gone quiet following the scandals in the church or had never openly admitted their affiliation with the church. Cruise called a meeting of other Scientology celebrities and urged them to become more outspoken about their religion. The popular singer Beck, who had grown up in the church, subsequently began speaking openly about his faith. Erika Christensen, a rising young actress who was also a second-generation Scientologist, called Cruise her spiritual mentor.
Inspired by a new sense of activism, a group of Scientology actors turned against Milton Katselas, the gray eminence of the Beverly Hills Playhouse. No one had been more instrumental in forging the bond between Scientology and Hollywood. Katselas had been a longtime friend of Hubbard’s and still kept a photograph of him on his desk. The two men were similar in many ways, but especially in their transformative effect on those who studied under them. Humorous, compassionate, and charismatic, but also vain and demanding, Katselas was not above bullying his students to make a point; however, many of them felt that he had taken them to a higher level of artistry than they had ever thought they could achieve. When Katselas addressed an acting student, it wasn’t just about technique; his lessons were full of savvy observations about life and behavior.
One of those students, Allen Barton, was a classical pianist as well as a promising actor. When Katselas heard him play, he found him a teacher and paid for his piano lessons. Barton eventually arranged a recital on a Sunday evening. Katselas showed up at the theater at eight that morning, just as the piano was being delivered. He noticed that the stage was scratched, there were piled-up boxes spilling out of the wings, and a large spiral staircase—a prop from an old production—was left on the stage, because it was simply too big to move. Barton explained that he was going to cover up as much as possible with black drapes. Katselas called his office and within an hour ten people arrived. He sent Barton off to relax and prepare himself for the performance. When Barton returned that afternoon, the staircase was gone, the boxes had disappeared, the stage had been sanded and painted, and four trees surrounded the piano. Even the pots the trees were planted in had been painted to match the backdrop. The overall effect was stunning. “Have a good show,” Katselas said, and walked away. Overwhelmed, Barton ran after him. “How can I ever thank you?” he asked. As he drove off, Katselas said, “Learn to expect it of yourself.”
Such stories became a part of the Katselas legend. He was an OT V and a very public Scientologist, but he had stopped moving up the Bridge, in part because he refused to travel to Flag, where the upper-level courses were offered. Moreover, he had gotten into Ethics trouble because of his behavior with some of his female students. Jenna Elfman was a leader of the revolt against Katselas. She had been one of his prize students, winning a Golden Globe Award in 1999 for her free-spirited performance in the sitcom Dharma & Greg. Allen Barton, who had become a teacher at the Playhouse, wrote Elfman a letter in June 2004, begging her to relent. He called the movement against Katselas “Scientological McCarthyism,” harking back to the blacklisting of Hollywood celebrities in the 1950s because of their supposed Communist sympathies. “As Scientologists, are we now a group that blacklists, that casts aside friendships and alliances on the basis of how fast someone is moving up the Bridge?” he wrote. “If we as a group are going to take on the billions of wogs out in the world, how can we disconnect from each other?” Elfman never responded.
After Cruise rallied the Scientology celebrities, a group of students demanded that Katselas make the Playhouse a “WISE” business. The acronym stands for World Institute of Scientology Enterprises. Katselas refused, even though he lost a hundred students in a mass Scientology walkout. Many of them went to another school, the Acting Center, which was founded in 2006, based in part on Scientology techniques. Katselas died of heart failure in 2008, and the Beverly Hills Playhouse is no longer connected with the church. The long line of protégés that Katselas left behind cemented the association between the church and the Hollywood acting community, but in the end he was ostracized by the very people whose careers he had nurtured.
Tom Cruise was now considered the unofficial Ethics Officer of Hollywood. He was the embodiment of Hubbard’s vision of a church with temples dedicated to celebrity rather than God. Cruise’s intensity and commitment, along with his spectacular ambition, matched Miscavige’s own. It was as if Miscavige had rubbed a magic lantern and Cruise had appeared, a genie who could open any door. He was one of the few people that Miscavige saw as a peer. Miscavige even wondered if there was some way to appoint Cruise the church’s Inspector General for Ethics—Rathbun’s job. “He’d say that Tom Cruise was the only person in Scientology, other than himself, that he would trust to run the church,” one former Sea Org member recalled. Rathbun observed: “Miscavige convinced Cruise that he and Tom were two of only a handful of truly ‘big beings’ on the planet. He instructed Cruise that LRH was relying upon them to unite with the few others of their ilk on earth to make it onto ‘Target Two’—some unspecified galactic locale where they would meet up with Hubbard in the afterlife.”
HAGGIS HAD ALSO BEEN folded into the celebrity recruitment apparatus. He had put his money and his reputation in the hands of the church. He, too, was serving Scientology. But he rarely spoke about his affiliation to his employees or associates. Even his close friends were surprised to learn that he was in the church. “He didn’t have that sort of straight-on, unambiguous, unambivalent view that so many Scientologists project into the world,” Marshall Herskovitz observed.