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5
Dropping the Body
Hubbard never lost his interest in being a movie director. He wrote innumerable
scripts for Scientology training lms, but he still thought he could take over
Hollywood. He had particularly high hopes for one script, “Revolt in the Stars,”
that was based on one of his novels. Inspired by the thunderous success of Star Wars,
Hubbard worked on the script in 1979 with the legendary acting teacher Milton Katselas
with the aim of having it made into a feature film.
A journeyman theater and lm director before taking over the Beverly Hills
Playhouse, Katselas had directed the 1972 lm Butteries Are Free, starring Goldie Hawn
and Edward Albert (Eileen Heckart won an Oscar for Best Actress in a Supporting Role).
He was a vital link to the Hollywood celebrity machine that Scientology depended upon.
The list of his protégés included Al Pacino, Goldie Hawn, George C. Scott, Alec Baldwin,
Ted Danson, Michelle Pfeier, Gene Hackman, George Clooney, and many other nowfamiliar
names. His invitation-only Saturday master class was seen by many young
actors as a portal to stardom. He attained OT V status and was one of the most
protable sources of recruits for the church, receiving in return a ten percent
commission on the money contributed by his students. At one point, Katselas asked if he
could join the Sea Org, but Hubbard told him it was more important to continue doing
what he was doing.
When Katselas and Hubbard nished the script of “Revolt in the Stars,” Hubbard
dispatched one of his top Messengers, Elizabeth Gablehouse, to Hollywood to make a
deal. After the Moroccan adventure, Hubbard had appointed her his Personal Public
Relations Ocer. Gablehouse came from a moneyed background, and she knew how to
talk about nances. She shopped the script around and found a buyer willing to oer
$10 million—which, at the time, would have been the highest price ever paid for a
script, she was told. The Guardian’s Oce became suspicious and investigated the
buyers, who they learned were Mormons. Hubbard gured that the only reason
Mormons would buy it was to put it on the shelf. Gablehouse wound up being sent to the
RPF, and when she balked at that, she was demoted even further—to the RPF’s RPF,
alone, in the furnace room under the parking garage of the Clearwater base. The script
never did get made into a film.
Hubbard’s location was a deep secret. Scientologists who asked were told he was
“over the rainbow.” Meantime, a full-fledged movie studio, the Cine Org, was set up in a
barn at Hubbard’s La Quinta hideaway. With his usual brio, Hubbard assumed that he
was fully capable of writing, producing, and directing his own material, but his novice
sta often frustrated him. He would do scenes over and over again, exhausting
everyone, but he was rarely satised with the outcome. He walked around the set