May 2, 2000

7:05 PM

Cruise and Kidman, um, get religion? The story quotes a pair of gossip reporters as saying that the pair are ditching The Religious Technology Center, Inc., er, um, excuse me: The Church of Scientology.
posted by baylink (11 comments total)

Speaking of $cientology, Johnny Travolta's official vanity site recently became live. No "religious" links, near as I can tell -- although the interface is so hideous as to preclude a thorough investigation.
posted by highindustrial at 8:31 PM on May 2, 2000

6 pages of bio; not a whisper.

Which I find interesting, if he's supposed to be so proud of what he's gained from the practice.
posted by baylink at 9:25 PM on May 2, 2000

Careful what yoou say, the web has ears.



I've already said too much
posted by Mick at 9:47 PM on May 2, 2000

i bet he is proud of whatever it is he's gained from the practice. he and his wife are both in Battlefield Earth, based on the book by L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology's founder. the subliminal message implications of that are pretty amusing.
posted by bluishorange at 7:23 AM on May 3, 2000

I read somewhere that a portion of the sales of BattleField Earth action figures will be going to the Church of Scientology. Of course if it's the turkey it looks to be, the won't be selling much.
posted by owillis at 8:46 AM on May 3, 2000

One of my friends talked me into "joining a spaceship" at BattlefieldEarth.com. I might have thought twice if I had thought I was going to end up on some Church of Scientology mailing list. I hope these people don't spam me - I will be very perturbed.
posted by shmuel at 8:52 AM on May 3, 2000

Dude, not only will they spam you, but they'll send tracer bots into your email, reqriting everything to look like either Travolta or L. Ron Hubbard.

If the report about Cruise & Kidman is true, it'd be a ballsy move. Scientology tends to be, um, rather litigious when it concerns ex-members. It'll be interesting to see if the Church pushes the issue. After all, Scientology has a lot more to lose from a public feud with Tom Cruise than Tom does. If they're smart, they'll just let it go.
posted by solistrato at 8:58 AM on May 3, 2000

baylink, you missed page 3 of the biography:

In 1975, John was working on his first film in Durango, Mexico and met an actress who gave him the book Dianetics and introduced him to the religious philosophy Scientology. Scientology appealed to John because of its workability. Once he returned to L.A., he participated in Scientology courses and auditing sessions. His career immediately took off and he landed the role of Vinnie Barbarino ....

And it mentions Hubbard as the author of B:E. (I recently talked to a co-worker who touted B:E as "this year's Star Wars" or maybe "bigger than Star Wars". *snicker* I bet the longest lines are right next to Church facilities ... night after night after night. Just like they boosted the book's sales by having members go out and buy ten copies at a crack.)
posted by dhartung at 9:37 AM on May 3, 2000

Yeah Shmuel, not to be all conspiratorial on you, but getting out of the $cientology contact database is nigh impossible... As for Tom & Nicole, I hope it's true... I'd like to think that they were watching EWS, and suddenly realized that $ didn't make them invulnerable to career mistakes - but more likely they're just smarter than I've given them credit for.
I've got plenty of opinions about $ - living in the shadow of the Celebrity Centre will do that to you - but I think the sea org has me pegged as a Suppressive, so they're probab%#$$NO CARRIER
posted by CrazyUncleJoe at 10:29 AM on May 3, 2000

D: BE Has been out forever - back in about '83 there were rumors of it being made into a movie, and they were going to cast in Denver. At the time I didn't know anything about it, so I read the book (blah) figuring I'd be perfect for the movie (hey, at 18 I figured I'd be perfect for *every* movie) - I would have described the John Travolta role as a giant tick (not blue and nigh invulnerable, but roughly 8' IIRC) - which seems oddly appropriate as a symbol of CO$, IMO... I don't remember BE having any overt CO$ imagery, but I'm sure the many sequels "written" by El Ron in recent years have corrected that...

Hey, where did that soapbox come from?
posted by CrazyUncleJoe at 10:35 AM on May 3, 2000

Yup, Dan; you're right: I missed it.

The books have been out, as someone noted above, for almost 20 years... they continued to be written and released under LRH's name well after he was reported dead, much less suspected to have died (which was at least a year earlier).

Pretty neat trick.
posted by baylink at 10:57 AM on May 3, 2000