BEFORE: Today is the day that, traditionally, I'd usually be heading to San Diego to set up a booth at Comic-Con. Then I'd pretty much take a break from movies for the next 5 days, because there just wouldn't be time for me to watch them while in the middle of that entertainment circus. I know, it sounds ironic, right? But after 10 hours a day working in a booth, I would usually just want to grab some dinner in a nice restaurant and head back to my hotel room or my AirBnb apartment. But my last trip out to San Diego was in 2017, and currently there are no plans to return - the trip had stopped being profitable for my boss a few years before, and we found that we were sort of beating a dead horse by continuing to have a presence there. We'll have a table at New York Comic-Con this October, that should be a lot easier for us. Still, my body feels like it wants to fly to San Diego today, I'm a bit surprised that I haven't had the usual annual Comic-Con stress dreams yet. Maybe when I start watching coverage of the convention they'll return.
Instead, I get to continue with my movies and get closer to wrapping up Documentary Month. This year's movie schedule is so packed that I don't see how I could have taken a break for Comic-Con, anyway. If I'm being honest, I've watched bits of this film before - for a while a year or two ago, HBO was running the hell out of it, and it was hard to turn on TV without seeing it. But I've never watched it all, front to back, so here we go. It just took me a while to be able to link to it and clear it off my books.
Barbara Walters carries over from "Richard Pryor: Omit the Logic" via archive footage.
THE PLOT: A documentary looking at the inner-workings of the Church of Scientology.
AFTER: This is where things get a little tough for me, because I have to comment on things I don't really know all that much about, and then my opinions and feelings about other things might get in the way, and I can't really compartmentalize myself enough to comment on some things while ignoring others, so there's this sort of personal minefield that I have to navigate through.
But the question still comes down to this - is scientology a religion, or something else? And if it not a religion, what is it? A cult? Isn't a cult a religion? A bunch of people who love the same science fiction? That also sounds a bit like a religion to me. A group of people running a tax scam? Maybe we're getting a little closer with that one, but still, that also kind of defines a religion. Because we're SUPPOSED to have a separation of church and state in this country, but when you look at the exemptions that are made for the major religions, things start to get a little foggier. We don't tax the Catholic Church or other major "acceptable" religions because theoretically that would interfere with their mission of "doing good things". But at the end of the day, who's making sure that these religions are following through and doing those good things? OK, so this church claims to run a mission or a soup kitchen that feeds hungry people - let me see the paperwork on all that before we give them a tax break.
The last third of this film also deals with people who say they were abused as scientologists, or were witnesses to others being abused. Well, OK, but welcome to the club. How many people have been abused by the Catholic Church over the years? Not just by pedophile priests, you've got to throw the Inquisition in there, along with the Crusades, and a number of other holy wars and scandals. What about conversion therapy, making people try to "pray the gay away"? What about violence and ill will directed at women who have abortions, when the world's already over-populated as it is? But since that's one less Christian baby in the world and therefore one less person to indoctrinate, that affects the church's bottom line, now, doesn't it?
At the end of the day, which is crazier, believing that an ancient alien named Xenu threw souls into volcanoes on Earth to imprison them, turning them into Thetan spirits that can inhabit modern people and prevent them from achieving their life goals - OR that God created the universe in 6 days, lives up in heaven (Umm, where is that, exactly) and can see everything we do, judges us at the end of our lives to see if we're deserving of eternal peace or eternal hellfire? Oh, and also he impregnated an Earth woman, had a son who somehow absorbed all the sin from his followers when he died, so as long as we believe in him and ask forgiveness, we can get the eternal peace, and not the hellfire?
Honestly, if you switched "God" and "Xenu" in that last paragraph, I think I could look at the two scenarios objectively and have a hard time choosing between them. Which is more likely to be real? How about "None of the above"? Who says one has to be the way the universe works? If God is infinite and works in mysterious ways, what are the odds that HUMANS (who wrote down both the Bible and "Dianetics", BTW) would somehow land on the right details, that we could somehow understand how the divine machine works? Christianity sounds a lot like wish-fulfillment to me now - it's like that's the way that people WANT the universe to work, but how could we possibly know? Wishing doesn't make it so.
And if you want to do good deeds in the world, just DO them. There's no reason that religion needs to be involved. You can donate money to charity or you can give your time to an organization that helps people, there's just no reason to bring God into the mix. Because once you do, then the help you're giving others becomes conditional. Oh, we'll feed you today, but we want to make sure that you KNOW you're being fed in God's name. Oh, we'll take care of you when you're sick, or bring water to your country, but you're gonna KNOW that God had something to do with it. Umm, no thanks, you can keep your gift if there are strings attached.
So Scientology finally filed enough lawsuits and put enough pressure on the IRS to be officially declared a religion, for tax purposes. If you ask me, they should have aimed higher. Who wants to be lumped in with Islam and Hinduism and Buddhism (these are the "bottom feeder" religions, according to most Americans...) and then who wants to be associated with all the pervs in the Catholic Church? Christianity's dying anyway, have you seen how few people are still going to church these days?
If you don't like the fact that Scientology won itself tax-exempt status, there's a simple solution: legislate that away. But you've got to do that for ALL religions in America, it's well past the time that they should have been paying their fair share, anyway. Again, we're SUPPOSED to have a separation between church and state, and the best way to prove that is to remove the tax-exempt status for ALL of them. Boom, problem solved, you're welcome.
Well, there's still this little issue with e-meters and PreClear folders and all of the blackmailing that could lead to from the leaders of Scientology. The other religions have this, too, only the Catholics call it "confession". When I was a kid I had to go into a dark room with a priest on the other side of a little window and tell him the bad things I'd done. Now, I was an altar boy for several years and I knew all the priests, I always felt that they recognized my voice, and therefore knew way too much about me. Or maybe they didn't, and they just wanted to KNOW what I was up to, those sick freaks.
Meanwhile, the priests live pretty much rent-free on the Catholic church's dime, and that doesn't seem right either. Why can't they grow up and start pulling their own weight? And what do I get, as a church-goer, for paying their salaries and their room and board? Forgiveness and eternal peace? Umm, no thanks, I'm good, I'd rather hang on to my own money and live with my own guilt and worry about the afterlife, umm, after. If there is one, which there probably isn't.
My heart goes out to the people who realized that they were in some form of a cult, and then worked hard to get out, even though that meant disconnecting from family members who are still involved. Honey, I've been there, only the cult I was in was the Catholic one. And you don't quit anything that ends in "olic" very easily, like "alcholic" or "shopaholic" - you just take it one day at a time and try not to backslide. Now I wish more people would watch this film and realize that their religion, whatever it is, probably shares a lot more of its DNA with Scientology than they realize.
Also starring Jason Beghe, Tom De Vocht, Sara Goldberg, Paul Haggis, Kim Masters, Tony Ortega, Marty Rathbun, Mike Rinder, Spanky Taylor, Lawrence Wright, with the voices of Alex Gibney, Sherry Stringfield, Marina Zenovich,
with archive footage of Nazanin Boniadi, Anderson Cooper, (last seen in "Fahrenheit 11/9"), Larry King (ditto), Tom Cruise (last seen in "Mission: Impossible - Fallout"), L. Ron Hubbard, Nicole Kidman (last seen in "Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind"), David Miscavige, John Travolta (last seen in "Gilbert")
RATING: 6 out of 10 suppressive persons
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