Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief(116)
Tom Cruise and David Miscavige at the Church of Scientology opening in central Madrid, 2004
After that, Brousseau was regularly assigned to work on special projects for Cruise. Shelly Miscavige had drafted Brousseau and seven other Sea Org members, along with many of Cruise’s employees at Odin Productions, to work for more than two weeks rehabilitating Cruise’s leased nine-bedroom mansion on Alpine Drive in Beverly Hills—painting, fixing the roof, doing cabinet work, stretching the carpet, rewiring, pressure-washing the tennis court, weeding and planting, repairing the irrigation system, and even reorganizing the clothes in the closets. In the last week, Brousseau says, he had at least a hundred contractors under his direction in order to get the house ready for Cruise.
Brousseau and a Sea Org executive, Steve Marlowe, also oversaw the renovations on a Blue Bird bus, like Hubbard’s, that Cruise had purchased. Later, Cruise bought another bus, which he called The Silver Screen. Brousseau spent three months commuting to the Marathon Coach factory in Coburg, Oregon, to oversee the retrofitting of the forty-foot vehicle into an elaborate motor home. Brousseau estimates that the redesign cost about $1.5 million, but that doesn’t include his labor or that of Sea Org members in the Golden Era prop department, who manufactured the furniture, countertops, and cabinetry. In 2006, Brousseau also customized a limousine for the star, using the body of a Ford Excursion that he says Cruise acquired using the Scientology fleet discount. Katie was pregnant and wanted a new vehicle with a baby seat. Miscavige had wanted to impress the couple by renovating the Excursion at a local custom shop, but the job was poorly done. Miscavige purchased another Excursion for Cruise to replace the one that had been botched. Meanwhile, Brousseau spent the next six months personally rebuilding the original Excursion. He ripped the vehicle down to its frame and installed handmade reclining seats and wood paneling fashioned from a burl of a eucalyptus tree that had been toppled in a storm. He spent about two thousand hours on the project. The materials were paid for by Cruise’s production company, but according to Brousseau, his labor, and that of about ten other Sea Org members, was not compensated. “It was a half-million-dollar beauty all done by me, with other folks from Scientology,” Brousseau said.
Brousseau had even carved a matching Montblanc pen out of the burl, its own hidden storage case in the vehicle. When Cruise showed it to Katie, she was dazzled. She turned to Brousseau and asked, “Oh, J.B., did you make that?”
“Don’t thank me,” Brousseau quickly responded. “I’m just the hammer. This—,” he said, pointing to Miscavige, “is the hand that wields me.”
Cruise, who became a pilot while filming Top Gun, keeps a hangar at an airport in Burbank for his airplane collection. Sea Org members completely renovated the hangar, installing a luxurious office that had been fabricated at Golden Era Productions. Brousseau says that the furniture—a dry bar, table and chairs, desks, et cetera—was milled at an RPF base in Los Angeles. Brousseau took dozens of photographs documenting his handiwork on the star’s behalf.
No member of the Sea Org has spent more time in Cruise’s service than Tommy Davis, who was viewed within the church as the star’s special handler and personal assistant. Although Davis maintains that he provided similar services for other celebrities, his assignment to Cruise was his primary duty between 2000 and 2004. However, he asserted, “None of the Church staff involved were coerced in any way to assist Mr. Cruise. Church staff, and indeed Church members, hold Mr. Cruise in very high regard and are honored to assist him.”
IN JUNE 2006, Shelly Miscavige disappeared.
She had spent her whole life conveying orders and gathering intelligence for a powerful, erratic, domineering church leader, first for Hubbard and then for her husband. She and Miscavige were always respectful toward each other in public, if not openly affectionate. As he gained power within the church, she began to see the two of them as reincarnations of Simón Bolívar and Manuela Sáenz, and the lesson she drew from that previous existence was that she needed to be fiercely protective of her mate, and to keep him from making the kinds of mistakes that his character was destined to commit. In the eyes of some Sea Org members, Shelly was brittle and imperious, but Rathbun noted that she sometimes objected when Miscavige’s physical assaults threatened to get out of hand. No one else did.
That spring, Shelly returned from a Freewinds voyage before her husband did, and in his absence she decided to arrange the Org Board herself. There were no settled posts, executives were still churning in the Hole, and the management structure was a mess. Taking matters into her own hands, Shelly made a number of appointments.
Soon after her husband came back, Shelly’s mood visibly changed. Her brother-in-law, John Brousseau, observed that she looked cowed: “The bulldog was gone.” Shortly before she disappeared, she asked Mike Rinder if Dave still had his wedding ring on. Then she vanished. Although a missing-person report has been filed, the Los Angeles Police Department will not comment on her whereabouts. She was escorted to her father’s funeral in August 2007. That’s the last time she was seen in public. Former Sea Org members say she is being guarded at a church facility in Running Springs, California, near Lake Arrowhead, one of the several repositories for Hubbard’s writings. It gets cold there in the winter. Miscavige sent Shelly a sweater and a pair of gloves for Christmas.
In November 2007, Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes married in a fifteenth-century castle outside of Rome. Among the celebrities attending were Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony, Will and Jada Pinkett Smith, Jenna Elfman, and even Brooke Shields. Once again, David Miscavige served as the best man.