Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief(115)
In 2007, Kyle Brennan, twenty years old, who was not a Scientologist, went to stay with his father, a member of the church, in Clearwater. Brennan was taking Lexapro, an antidepressant heavily promoted by its manufacturer, Forest Laboratories. He was also under the care of a psychiatrist. According to court records, Brennan’s father, Thomas, was ordered to “handle” his son. Thomas Brennan’s auditor was Denise Miscavige Gentile, David Miscavige’s twin sister. She spoke on the phone to Kyle’s mother, who was not a Scientologist, and urged her to enroll her son in Narconon, the church’s drug-treatment program. His mother refused, pointing out that the program costs approximately $25,000; moreover, Kyle was not a drug addict. She sued, charging that church officials had ordered Thomas Brennan to lock his son’s Lexapro in the trunk of his car. Days after that, Kyle shot himself to death with a .357 Magnum that his father kept in his bedside table. (The suit was dismissed for lack of evidence.)
The long history of humanity’s inadequate attempts to deal with depression, and the manifold ways in which insanity expresses itself, have never yielded a clear path. Tragedies such as the suicide of Kyle Brennan demonstrate the danger of dogmatic interpretations of psychiatry, such as those offered by Tom Cruise and other Scientology celebrities on the subject. The American Psychiatric Association felt so threatened by Cruise’s statements on the Today show that the president of the organization issued a statement affirming that mental illnesses are real medical conditions. “It is irresponsible for Mr. Cruise to use his movie publicity tour to promote his own ideological views and deter people with mental illness from getting the care they need,” said Steven S. Sharfstein, the president of the APA. But at the 2005 annual meeting of the International Association of Scientologists, Mike Rinder, who had been let out of the Hole for the occasion, credited Cruise with persuading the Food and Drug Administration to post suicide warnings on the labels of two psychiatric drugs within days of his interview with Lauer.
“If someone wants to get off drugs, I can help them,” Cruise told the German magazine Der Spiegel, in April 2005. “I myself have helped hundreds of people get off drugs.”
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HAGGIS HAD SENT a rough cut of his movie Crash to the Toronto Film Festival, an important venue for independent films that are looking for distribution. In September 2004, the movie met its first audience at the Elgin Theatre, an elegant old vaudeville house downtown, not far from the spot where Paul sold tickets at the soft-porn theater his professor used to run.
As he watched the movie, Haggis was appalled. Everything that was wrong was glaringly apparent on the huge screen. He sat glumly waiting for it to end, calculating what could be salvaged. So when the audience rose to its feet at the end, cheering, Haggis couldn’t believe what was happening. Lion’s Gate Films bought Crash for $3.5 million and scheduled it for release the following spring.
Crash opened quietly in April 2005. There were no billboards or bus signs, which were already touting the arrival of War of the Worlds in June. The reviews for Crash were passionate but polarized. Roger Ebert gave it four stars, calling it “a movie of intense fascination.” A. O. Scott, who reviewed it for The New York Times, was less infatuated. It was a “frustrating movie,” he wrote, “full of heart and devoid of life; crudely manipulative when it tries hardest to be subtle; and profoundly complacent in spite of its intention to unsettle and disturb.” There was no actual premiere, just a screening at the Academy Theater on Wilshire Boulevard, and no grand party afterward. Haggis and his family went out to dinner.
Despite the conflicting reviews and limited distribution, a groundswell was building for the movie, driven entirely by audiences who were caught up in a national conversation over race and class that the movie prompted. It would go on to earn nearly $100 million in international sales. Million Dollar Baby had just won the Academy Award for Best Picture that February. Haggis was writing a James Bond movie, Casino Royale, in addition to the Eastwood picture Flags of Our Fathers. He was flying.
Tom Cruise’s career was headed in the opposite direction. Haggis had seen him at the Vanity Fair Oscar party. Cruise and Tommy Davis arrived on Ducati motorcycles, wearing black jackets, and were let in the back door of Morton’s Steakhouse in Beverly Hills. They said hello to Haggis, but nothing more. Polls showed that Cruise was still ranked as the most powerful actor in Hollywood, and even the most powerful celebrity in the world, but he was also ranked number one as the celebrity that people would least like to have as their best friend.
When Cruise returned to Gold Base, Miscavige showed off his Harley-Davidson V-rod motorcycle, which had been custom-painted a candy-apple red over a brushed nickel surface. Miscavige’s brother-in-law, John Brousseau, known for his elegant craftsmanship, had done the work. In addition to overseeing the renovation of the Freewinds, Brousseau had installed bars on the doors of the Hole shortly after Rathbun escaped.
According to Brousseau, “Cruise was drooling” over the motorcycle. “God, could you paint my bike like that?” he asked. Brousseau looked at Miscavige, who nodded. Cruise brought in two motorcycles to be painted, a Triumph Rocket III and a Honda Rune. Spielberg had given him the Honda after the filming of War of the Worlds; it had already been custom-painted by the set designer. Brousseau had to take each motorcycle apart completely and nickel-plate all the parts before painting them.11 Cruise drove the newly painted Rune, with Katie on the back, to the fans’ screening of his movie at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in June.