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

music he composed for Haggis’s 1996 television series, EZ Streets. He had scored Crash
and Haggis’s last movie, The Valley of Elah. Soon he was supposed to start work on The
Next Three Days. Now both their friendship and their professional relationship were at
risk.
Isham had been analyzing the discussion from a Scientological perspective. In his
view, Haggis’s emotional state on the Tone Scale at that moment was a 1.1, Covertly
Hostile. By adopting a tone just above it—Anger—he hoped to blast Haggis out of the
psychic place where he seemed to be lodged. Isham made what he calls an intellectual
decision to be angry.
“Paul, I’m pissed o,” he told Haggis. “There are better ways to do this. If you have a
complaint, there’s a complaint line.” Anyone who genuinely wanted to change
Scientology should stay within the organization, Isham argued, not quit. All of his
friends believed that if he wanted to change Scientology, he should do it from within.
They wanted him to recant and return to the fold or else withdraw his letter and walk
away without making a fuss.
Haggis listened patiently. A fundamental tenet of Scientology is that diering points
of view must be fully heard and acknowledged. But when his friends nished, they were
still red-faced and angry. Haggis suggested that as good Scientologists, they should at
least examine the evidence. He referred them to the St. Petersburg Times articles that had
so shaken him, and to certain websites written by former members. He explained that
his quarrel was with the management and the culture of the church, not with
Scientology itself. By copying them on his resignation letter, he had hoped that they
would be as horried as he by the practices that were going on in the name of
Scientology. Instead, he realized, they were mainly appalled by his actions in calling the
management of the church to account.
Haggis’s friends came away from the meeting with mixed feelings—“no clearer than
when we went in,” Archer felt. What wasn’t said in this meeting was that this would be
the last time any of them would ever speak to Haggis. Isham did consider Haggis’s plea
to look at the websites or the articles in the St. Petersburg Times, but he decided “it was
like reading Mein Kampf if you wanted to know something about the Jewish religion.”
After that rst meeting with friends on his back porch, Haggis had several lengthy
encounters with Tommy Davis and other representatives of the church. They showed up
at his oce in Santa Monica—a low-slung brick building on Broadway, covered in
grati, like a gang headquarters. The ocials brought thick les to discredit people
they heard or assumed he had been talking to. This was August 2009; shooting for The
Next Three Days in Pittsburgh was going to start within days, and the oce desperately
needed Haggis’s attention. His producing partner, Michael Nozik, who is not a
Scientologist, was frustrated. Haggis was spending hours, day after day, dealing with
Scientology delegations. He resorted to getting members of his sta to walk him out to
his car because he knew that Scientology executives would be waiting for him, and he
wanted to give the impression he was too busy to speak—which he was. But then he
would give up and let them into the office for another lengthy confrontation.
During one of these meetings, Davis showed Haggis a policy letter that Hubbard had