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esponsibility for the indignities inicted on members of the Sea Org, sometimes directly
because of his membership. Excepting Paul Haggis, no prominent Hollywood
Scientologist has spoken out publicly against the widespread allegations of physical
abuse, involuntary connement, and forced servitude within the church’s clergy,
although many such figures have quietly walked away.
Since leaving Scientology, Haggis has been in therapy, which he has found helpful.
He’s learned how much he blames others for his problems, especially those closest to
him. “I really wish I had found a good therapist when I was twenty-one,” he said. In
Scientology, he always felt a subtle pressure to impress his auditor and then write up a
glowing success story. Now, he said, “I’m not fooling myself that I’m a better man than I
am.”
The same month that Haggis’s resignation from the church had become public, United
Artists, Tom Cruise’s studio, terminated Haggis’s development deal. I asked if the break
had anything to do with his resignation. Haggis thought for a moment, then said, “You
don’t do something that obvious—it’d be a bad PR move.” He added, “They’d run out of
money, so we all knew we were being kicked out.”
Recently, he and Deborah decided to divorce. They have moved to the same
neighborhood in New York, so that they can share custody of their son. Deborah has also
left the church. Both say that the decision to end their marriage has nothing to do with
their renunciation of Scientology.
On November 9, 2010, The Next Three Days premiered at the Ziegfeld Theatre, in
Manhattan. Movie stars lined the red carpet as photographers red away. Jason Beghe
was there, and he told me that he had taken in Daniel Montalvo, the young man who
lost his nger in the church book-publishing plant. Montalvo had recently blown from
the Sea Org. He was nineteen years old. “He’s never seen television,” the actor
marveled. “He doesn’t even know who Robert Redford is.” Nazanin Boniadi, who has a
small part in the movie, was also there; Haggis had given her the role after learning
what had happened to her after the church had engineered her match with Tom Cruise.
“Naz’s story was one of those that made me realize I had been lied to for a long time,
that I had to leave and do so loudly,” Haggis later confided.
After the screening, everyone drifted over to the Oak Room of the Plaza Hotel. Haggis
was in a corner receiving accolades from his friends when I found him. I asked if he felt
that he had nally left Scientology. “I feel much more myself, but there’s a sadness,” he
admitted. “If you identify yourself with something for so long, and suddenly you think
of yourself as not that thing, it leaves a bit of space.” He went on, “It’s not really the
sense of a loss of community. Those people who walked away from me were never
really my friends.” He understood how they felt about him, and why. “In Scientology, in
the Ethics Conditions, as you go down from Normal through Doubt, you get to Enemy,
and finally, near the bottom, there is Treason. What I did was a treasonous act.”
The lm did poorly at the box oce. It had the misfortune of opening to mixed
reviews on the same night that the last installment of the Harry Potter series premiered.
Haggis had to close his oce. It looked like another bleak period in his career, but he
followed it by writing a screenplay for a video game, Modern Warfare 3, which would go