going-clear-scientology-hollywood-and-the-prison-of-belief-by-lawrence-wright-2

Celebrity Centre. As the most popular and sought-after leading man in Hollywood,
Cruise was given perks that few other stars could match. He had asked Tommy Davis,
now his full-time Scientology handler, to set up a tent on the set of War of the Worlds in
order to distribute church materials to the crew and provide Scientology assists. The
precedent alarmed many in Hollywood, and Spielberg was widely criticized for letting it
happen.
“It’s really remarkable to me,” Spielberg observed, as he and Haggis walked to his
trailer. “I’ve met all these Scientologists, and they seem like the nicest people.”
“Yeah, we keep all the evil ones in the closet,” Haggis replied. 3
A couple of days later, Tommy Davis called Haggis at home and told him someone
from senior management needed to see him urgently. Haggis had no idea what was
going on. He assumed that the church was going to pressure him to take some more
auditing or another course, as had happened so often in the past. Davis met him at the
Celebrity Centre and escorted him to a room where Greg Wilhere was waiting. Wilhere,
a handsome former college football player, was a senior executive in the church
assigned to be Cruise’s personal auditor. (He accompanied the star even to the shooting
of Days of Thunder, where a character in the movie was named after him.) Wilhere was
livid because Haggis had upset Tom Cruise by subverting years of work on Cruise’s part
to recruit Spielberg into the church.
“It was a joke,” Haggis protested. He said he had no idea how that could have
undermined Cruise’s eorts to draw the most powerful man in Hollywood into
Scientology. Wilhere said that Steven was having a problem with one of his seven
children, and Tom was working to “steer him in the right direction.” All that was ruined,
Wilhere said, because Spielberg now believed there were evil Scientologists who were
locked in a closet.
Haggis felt like he was trapped in a farce. It all seemed wildly ridiculous, but he was
the only one who thought so. Still, he’d be crazy to antagonize Tom Cruise and Steven
Spielberg. He oered to explain to Spielberg that he had been kidding, there were no
evil Scientologists, and if there were, they wouldn’t be kept in a closet. He couldn’t
believe that Spielberg would actually think he had been serious.
Wilhere was unappeased. He said Cruise was apoplectic. He directed Haggis to write
the star a letter of apology—this minute. Haggis dutifully wrote out a note on the paper
handed to him, but Wilhere said it wasn’t sucient. Haggis wrote a more contrite note.
Wilhere said he would pass it along. But Haggis never got a response from Cruise. 4
Haggis came away from that meeting with a new appreciation of the signicance of
Tom Cruise to Scientology. He had heard that Cruise had often been enlisted to try to
recruit famous people. They included James Packer, the richest man in Australia; David
Beckham, the British soccer star, and his wife, Victoria, the former Spice Girl; and
Cruise’s good friends, the actors Will and Jada Pinkett Smith, who later funded a school
that used Hubbard educational techniques. But there was no one else like Spielberg. Had
Cruise been successful in his eorts, it would have been a transformative moment in the
history of the church, especially in its relation to Hollywood. It would have given reality
to the mythology of Scientology’s inuence in the entertainment industry. Who could