Here’s a photo of Lisa Marie Presley (from her Twitter account) with her wacky, over-Botoxed mother, Priscilla, in London. Lisa Marie always looks so much happier and fresh when posing for candids as opposed to red carpets where she generally looks stiff and grumpy (she’s still got the best bitch face in the business though). It took me a moment to realize that Mama Presley doesn’t always dress this way just for fun. Nope, this is a backstage picture of Priscilla dressed for her role in the Wimbledon pantomime edition of Snow White where a critic praised her performance as such: “Though the 67-year-old’s expression remains glamorously frozen, she takes regal delight in her Wicked Queen role.” Sounds about right.

Last fall, we reported that Lisa Marie appeared to have placed a substantial distance between herself and Scientology. She relocated from California to London a few years ago, she stripped all references to Scientology from her website, and she has cryptically spoken about a betrayal from her inner circle: “I got bad advice. I was insulated with no grip on reality. They were taking my soul, my money, my everything.” In addition, her new Storm & Grace album references herself as “transgressive” and “suppressive” while inquiring, “Am I a disruption to your corruption?”

Mind you, Lisa Marie hasn’t come out and actually stated that she’s left the CO$. As such, that is the primary question on every journo’s mind. Dame magazine managed to nail her down for a phone interview and asked the same question, and Lisa Marie was slightly more forthcoming with her answers:

Why she left Hollywood (i.e., “living in a wasp’s nest) for London: “Uncovering the fact that I was surrounded by people who were not well-intended, for one. Confidants [who were] very, very intimately and closely involved with me and my life. And had been for years. Basically, it was a big sinister situation, where there was like, kind of intel and covert ops going on, and a whole effort to control me that I didn’t know about. Lots of people (were) involved in that in various ways. And I uncovered it and it was mind-blowing, and I just was done with people at that point…It was just too much for me. I have a pretty high tolerance, and I’ve seen a lot, but I was just not ready for all that. It’s like uncovering [people] one by one, and then somebody that was holding it all together, and then they get exposed, and then I find out who’s behind that person, and that person was no good, and…it was pretty much like dominos. So I just thought, ‘Oh, my God, is everybody this dishonest and awful?’ And I really had an obscured view of the world, so I needed to get far away to rediscover people and life and not have a bunch of people around me. You know how that happens in high-profile situations, where you get so many people around you that they obscure your reality on life and insulate you for their own benefit? That was what was happening. But really, it was a sinister situation. I’m not going to say specifically, but I’ve given you a pretty good scope.”

Naturally, the CO$ has no comment: “[I]t is our policy not to speak about individual parishioners,” spokesperson Linda Wieland said in an email. “You should address such questions to Ms. Presley’s representatives.” Presley’s 2012 tour publicist, Bobbie Gale, answered only that Lisa Marie “isn’t going to give a direct quote… many have tried and she refuses to answer.”

She loves London though: “It was a four-or five-year process and, to be honest, I’m still looking back going, ‘Wow!’ But then all these amazing songs started happening, and I started realizing what life was like without all that going on. Life is actually great, and there are incredible people in England, just out in the country, down in the local pub, you know? People with a conscience and a common sense of right and wrong. The paparazzi were sitting outside my house one day, and a farmer backed his truck into them. He was like, ‘Hey, leave her alone.’ I hadn’t even met him yet. I thought, ‘Okay, now that’s just a really good person who’s protecting me, and I don’t even know him.’ It’s simple, but it was very telling of human nature. I needed to rediscover that again.”

pFrom Dame Magazine]

Yep, she’s out. Not officially out, but she’s in that same phase as Tom Cruise when he drifted away from the cult for a number of years while her was married to Nicole Kidman and after he went into a rage over the OT Level III Xenu story. Of course, David Miscavige pulled Tom back into the fray, but I don’t think Lisa Marie is vulnerable in the same way. Like, I’d be scared of Lisa Marie if I were Miscavige. She doesn’t take crap from anyone. At the same time, she probably won’t ever come out and declare that she’s left the CO$ while Priscilla, who is still well entrenched within the cult, is alive. Unless Priscilla decides to leave too, and then all bets are off.

Here’s Lisa Marie blowing out the candles on her birthday cake on February 1st. She turned 45 years old this year!

Photos courtesy of Lisa Marie’s Twitter and WENN

As the niece of Scientology’s leader (David “Tiny Tyrant” Miscavige), Jenna Miscavige was born into the cult and raised as one of the Sea Org members who sign a billion-year contract as early as age 7. Growing up, she spent very little time with her parents and endured 14+ hour workdays, 7 days per week with only a few days off per year. After her escape as a young adult, Jenna founded the ExScientologykids.com website with a couple of other ex-members, and now she lives a relatively normal life in San Diego with her husband (Dallas Hill, also a former Scientologist) and their two children.

Just this week, Jenna has released a book Beyond Belief: My Secret Life Inside Scientology and My Harrowing Escape that details her harrowing, brutal experiences within Scientology’s ranks as well as her eventual escape. Here’s a clip from Jenna’s appearance on Piers Morgan’s CNN show where she talks about barely ever seeing her parents and being brainwashed by the CO$ to the point where she disconnected from them when they left the Sea Org:

Notice that Jenna mentions the blatant irony of the Scientology Super Bowl ad. That’s exactly how desperate this cult is getting — they’ve been forced to purchase some of the most expensive advertising real estate in history. It’s really only a matter of time before this organization crumbles. In the meantime, Jenna has been doing her part to bring the CO$ down, and during the Piers Morgan interview, she discusses how celebrities are treated incredibly differently than the rest of the members. Primarily, she discusses whether or not Tom Cruise is aware of this discrepancy:

On the heels of a divisive Scientology ad that aired during the Super Bowl, on Tuesday evening “Piers Morgan Tonight” invited Jenna Miscavige Hill to share her unique perspective on the controversial religious organization.

The niece of current leader David Miscavige, the guest left the church nearly a decade ago and has since become an outspoken critic of the organization and its teachings.

Well-known for its connection to some of Hollywood’s biggest names — including Tom Cruise and John Travolta — Scientology has been accused of being a cult that brainwashes its members, and forces children into long hours of unlawful labor.

According to Hill, Cruise and others are either turning a blind eye, or simply perpetuating the problem:

“I think that either he does know what’s going on and he’s not talking about it, or he is willfully ignorant about it,” she says of the star of the “Mission: Impossible” franchises. “People who endorse an organization like this, I feel like they have a responsibility to know everything about it and know what they’re endorsing.”

Having grown up in the church, including staying with the organization for five years after her parents left, Hill told Piers Morgan that conditions and facilities designed for the general population are far different than those reserved for the group’s celebrity members:

“Obviously, the church itself is much nicer,” she revealed to the “Piers Morgan Tonight” host. “Celebrities have their own private entrances. There’s beautiful restaurants there. They have their own classrooms.”

[From CNN]

You know what? I’ve been going back and forth on this Tom Cruise issue for years now, and I’ve concluded that there is no way that he doesn’t realize how he’s treated like a god in this cult, and he just doesn’t see a problem with that. Tom is truly in love with his slave labor. As such, Tom is completely aware that he’s receiving loads of freebies in terms of construction labor and gifts, but he thinks he deserves it because he’s such a “big being“. He has absolutely no problem with his labor being of the unpaid variety because these poor thetans can reap the rewards of basking in the glow of Tom’s happiness. In short (ha!), Tom Cruise is a reprehensible human being.

Tony Ortega has also published a review of Jenna’s upcoming book, and his piece is quite lengthy. I started to excerpt the text, and I just couldn’t do it justice. In short, Jenna became disillusioned with the fabled OTIII level of L. Ron Hubbard’s scripture (the infamous Xenu/volcanoes tale) but decided to overlook that discrepancy because the CO$ was the only life that she knew. Once she got older, Jenna met Dallas Hill, and they fell in love. Unfortunately, the CO$ wouldn’t let them marry, so they engaged in premarital sex and were threatened with separation and never seeing each other again. That’s when they started to plot their escape and met several obstacles not limited to but including the permanent severance of communication from Dallas’ family. It’s a very riveting story, and here’s the link to Ortega’s excerpts if you want to learn more. In the meantime, here’s what Jenna had to say about her childhood:

“To me, the Church is a dangerous organization whose beliefs allow it to commit crimes against humanity and violate basic human rights. It remains a mystery to me how, in our current society, this can go on unchecked. It is particularly insidious because of its celebrity advocates and affiliated groups, such as Narconon, Applied Scholastics, and the Citizens Commission on Human Rights. The list of duties and procedures went on endlessly, and the result of all this process, paperwork, and regulation was that there were no children at the Ranch — only little adults. At special events, we were dressed up in cute outfits and paraded in front of our parents and Int crew to make it seem as though Scientology was creating a normal and joyful childhood, when in fact we were all being robbed of it.”

[Tony Ortega's The Underground Bunker]

“Little adults.” This term reminds me a lot of what we saw Suri Cruise experiencing before Katie Holmes had the foresight to file for divorce from Tom Cruise. If we get lucky, Jenna’s story will reach many ears who will find the courage to leave the CO$. In the internet (and Wikileaks) culture, we probably won’t see many people gullible enough to sign up with this cult. The primary interest, therefore, is helping people who are already “in” get “out” of this troublesome and unlawful organization.

Screencap courtesy of YouTube, photos courtesy of Freedom Magazine, Fame/Flynet, and Amazon

Let me first start out by saying that I am seriously bummed that our photo agencies didn’t get any photos of Tom Cruise at the Tokyo premiere of Jack Reacher. Tom is always very manic and entertaining when he hits Japan because he’s pretty huge there, and I mean that in a figurative and literal sense. Not only do the Japanese enjoy Tom’s movies, but Tom loves the fact that he can actually tower over some of the men in the country. But we will have to make do with these (sort of) old photos of Tom while he was in NYC last month to appear on Letterman (where Tom learned the “F” word). I never noticed before how much I love how Tom’s shadow is wearing lifts too.

To divert slightly from the main point today, a story in this week’s In Touch paints a lovely picture of Tom’s new relationship with Cynthia Jorge, the 26-year-old restaurant employee with whom he was dirty dancing in NYC clubs. Apparently, Cynthia feels that dating Tom “feels like a fairy tale,” and “they have a lot in common and are seeing where things go.” But they’re taking it slow! “They’re getting to know each other. It’s like any relationship in the beginning phase.” This basically means that Scientology is performing its filtering functions right now. Cynthia is probably undergoing the usual processing method of introductory auditing and incisor filing, and I wouldn’t be surprised if her family and friends haven’t spoken to her in weeks. So sure, it’s a “fairy tale” if there ever was one.

Now back to the “F” word. Tom has spoken that word before in some of his movies, but I’m not sure that he knows what it means. I’m not trying to be rude — that’s just how I see Tom: asexual and (to paraphrase Mimi Rogers) the proud owner of a “pure instrument.” Yes, I believe that Tom is Suri’s biological father, but I’m not entirely convinced that he had actual sex to get there. Instead, it seems like Tom has a hero-like fascination with CO$ leader David Miscavige.

The relationship between Tom and Dave is being detailed further in a new book by Lawrence Wright (staff writer from The New Yorker) called Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief. The Hollywood Reporter provides a multi-page summary of this book, but it’s a lot of stuff that we’ve heard already (including the familiar details about how Miscaviage and Tommy Davis instructed Isabella and Connor Cruise that their mother, Nicole Kidman, is a raging sociopath), so mostly, I am going to excerpt the parts about Tom and David Miscavige’s strange relationship. In short, not only are Dave and Tom the ultimate “big beings,” but they also plan on getting in their little spaceship of love together for an actual rendevous with L. Ron Hubbard himself once day. Here are some excerpts, which include a disturbing story about Dave’s dogs and Tom using the “F” word to describe his hopeful candidacy in running the United States:

Miscavige’s taste in music and movies: [Every evening], Miscavige retires to his den and drinks Macallan scotch and plays backgammon with members of his entourage or listens to music on his $150,000 stereo system (he loves Michael Jackson) or watches movies in his private screening room (his favorite films are Scarface and The Godfather trilogy). He usually turns in around three or four in the morning.

Miscavige makes Scientologists salute his dogs: Miscavige keeps a number of dogs, including five beagles. He had blue vests made up for each of them, with four stripes on the shoulder epaulets, indicating the rank of Sea Org Captain. He insists that people salute the dogs as they parade by. The dogs have a treadmill where they work out. A full-time staff member feeds, walks and trains the dogs and enters one of them, Jelly, into contests, where he has attained championship status. One of Miscavige’s favorites, a Dalmatian/pit bull mix named Buster, went on a rampage one day and killed 10 peacocks on the property, and then the dog proudly laid out his kill for all to see. Buster also attacked various members of the staff — sending one elderly woman to the emergency room — before being transferred to another base, causing staffers to joke he had been sent to the dog equivalent of Scientology rehabilitation.

Tom & Dave plotted to take over the US: “Bush may be an idiot,” Miscavige observed, “but I wouldn’t mind his being our Constantine,” referring to the first Roman Emperor to convert to Christianity. Cruise agreed. “If f–ing Arnold can be governor, I could be president.” Miscavige responded, “Well, absolutely, Tom.”

Tom & Dave have a future rendezvous with L. Ron Hubbard: “[Miscavige would] say that Tom Cruise was the only person in Scientology, other than himself, that he would trust to run the Church,” one former Sea Org member recalled. Rathbun observed: “Miscavige convinced Cruise that he and Tom were two of only a handful of truly ‘big beings’ on the planet. He instructed Cruise that LRH was relying upon them to unite with the few others of their ilk on earth to make it onto ‘Target Two’ — some unspecified galactic locale where they would meet up with Hubbard in the afterlife.”

[From Hollywood Reporter]

HAhahahaha. Tom Cruise as Presidential candidate? Don’t worry, it would never happen. Neither Tom nor the CO$ could afford the pay cut (the article points out that in 2004 alone, Tom “donated” $3 million to “the church”). Also, even if Tom managed to convince a political party to nominate him, there’s no way he could handle even one live political debate. It would be all about blinding-white smiles and sticking his finger in his opponent’s face. “But what about the economy, Tom?” You don’t understand the history of psychiatry! I do.”

There’s also a separate article from Hollywood Reporter that is devoted to the portions of Wright’s book that cover John Travolta’s “blithe” acceptance of “the faith,” and it details an auditor’s defection from the CO$ after her baby (who was denied vaccinations) had developed whooping cough: “The baby’s eyes were welded shut with mucus, and her diaper was wet — in fact, her whole crib was soaking. She was covered with fruit flies.” The really sad part of this story? It is probably all true.

Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet

Ugh. Here’s a photo from Usher’s Twitter page of him having dinner with Tom Cruise and Ridley Scott in London over the weekend. Remember those 2007 rumors about Usher converting to Scientology? Usher is definitely in the thick of it now, and I hate to sound rude, but to quote Stephen King in The Stand, “No big loss.”

Today’s episode of Tom Cruise insanity revolves around Tom’s misguided belief that he can bend time and space just because regularly sits for auditing sessions while holding tin cans and has duly paid his way into an OT Level VIII position in the CO$. The information comes via Marty Rathbun’s book, The Scientology Reformation: What Every Scientologist Should Know, which has already received some suspiciously negative reviews from interested parties, i.e. CO$ trolls trying to keep their stats up.

Marty’s words are consistent with both former Sea Org member John Brousseau’s report on “The Hole” (where CO$ execs are disciplined after disappointing David Miscavige) as well as the Vanity Fair story detailing Nazanin Boniadi’s experience with the Tom Cruise wife audition process. Among other things, Marty alleges that Cruise physically assaulted CO$ members at the direction of Miscavige — which we’ve already heard buzzings about a few years ago but not in this detail. In addition, Marty provides his firsthand account of the evening where Tom yelled at Naz for disrespecting Miscavige because he was mumbling, and she inquired, “Excuse me?” If you’ll remember correctly, Naz had already been forced to entertain Miscavige for hours at Tom’s Telluride compound; Tom had ignored her physical pain that she was suffering from intense menstrual cramps and bruising after she fell off a snowmobile. All that mattered to Tom was making Dave happy, and when Naz failed to show Dave the proper “respect,” Tom had one of his underlings remove her from the premises and disciplined for months afterward for her “crimes.” Here is an even more detailed account from that evening:

Excerpt from Chapter 8: The Gates Of Hell

…Miscavige’s reaction to my escape was chilling. He ordered John Brousseau, his resident handyman – and the architect of most of the Tom Cruise vehicle and home upgrades – to install prison bars on all windows in the Hole so that no one else could escape.

With me out of the way, Miscavige’s madness was unbridled. He began to tell Tom Cruise tales of having to physically beat the degraded beings in his environment to keep them in line. Cruise followed suit, doing the same to his own staff. Michael Doven, his long-time personal assistant, started receiving regular physical abuse from Tom. Another of Tom’s staff – a woman – was grabbed and slammed up against a file cabinet by Cruise for failing to show him proper respect. He railed and screamed, like Miscavige, when he discovered a near-microscopic chip in a drinking glass handed to him by one of his staff. He was convinced the degraded beings were steadily sabotaging him, stalking him like the zombies from Night of the Living Dead. Tom even physically abused the one-time international spokesperson for Scientology, one Tommy Davis.

Miscavige was happy to have Tom ape his own psychotic behavior. He once briefed the inhabitants of the Hole that Tom was fully informed of their conspiracies to destroy Miscavige. He told the assembled that Tom promised to come to the Hole to give Yager, Ray Mithoff (the highest scriptural authority in Scientology) and the former executor of Mr. Hubbard’s will, Norman Starkey, black eyes if their confessions were not to Dave’s liking. In order to prevent the world’s biggest star from having to do Dave’s dirty work, the leadership within the Hole decided they had better do it first. The eighty staff went into a frenzy of punching and kicking the trio, fattening the lips and blackening the eyes of all three.

By mid-to-late 2004 Tom was so locked in to Miscavige’s spell he was incapable of comfortable socialization with the outside world, at least on an intimate basis. He asked his best friend Dave to help him find a good-looking Scientologist wife, so he would not wind up with another degraded being like his previous two wives…

…During this same trip, Nazanin (the Miscavige chosen Scientologist wife-to-be for Cruise, Nazanin Boniadi) apparently “disrespected” Miscavige in front of Cruise, by seeking to clarify his trademark staccato comments a couple of times. This prompted Cruise to begin showing Nazanin his ugly, “big-being” side. Tom took her into his home office to give her a “reality adjustment” in front of Tommy Davis, who remained quiet the entire time.

Sitting across from Tom at a wide table – like an employee set down for a tongue-lashing from the boss – Nazanin could hardly believe what she was hearing. Tom looked at her like a frustrated, overworked executive, let down by a degraded-being underling. Then he gave her the intense, laser-focus stare. “You don’t get it. It goes like this,” Tom explained. He raised his hand above his head, palm downward. “First, there is LRH.” Moving his hand down a couple of inches, he continued: “Then there is COB (David Miscavige).” He brought his hand down to his own hairline, highlighting the intensity and seriousness of his words: “Then there is me.”

Nazanin looked at him stoically, hiding her shock at Cruise’s performance of his best Jack Torrance – the psychotic killer played by Jack Nicholson in the film The Shining.

“Dave and me, we’re big beings. We are surrounded by DB’s (degraded beings). DBs can’t help but try to destroy big beings. That’s just the way it is in this universe. You have to understand this. This is LRH, man. It’s the plight of the big being getting jumped on by all the degraded beings. You gotta be unreasonable to survive around a big being like me. You can’t be weak. You gotta be strong to protect the big being from all the degraded beings.” Cruise slammed his fist on the table, veins popping out of his neck from the intensity of his tirade.

[From Mark "Marty" Rathbun's Place]

As awful as this sounds for Naz to have endured (and then she was forced into harsh physical labor where she was made to listen to Tom’s Medal of Valor speech on a loop), just think of how terrible it was for Katie to be married to the screamer for five years. Seriously, this is how Tom Cruise thinks of everyone who isn’t himself or David Miscavige. All of those people who buy Tom Cruise’s movie tickets? Degraded beings. Katie Holmes and Suri? Degraded beings. There, I said it. There will be no crisis of faith for Tom over Scientology. He does not blame Scientology for his divorce. Tom Cruise is a “big being,” and all the rest of us cannot help but stand in his way and try to ruin life for him. One day, he and Dave will climb in their little spaceship of love and fly away, and we’ll all regret making fun of Tom and his lifts.

Oh, and here’s a bit of gossip about Tommy Davis, the former head of the Celebrity Centre who went missing a few months ago. Everyone sort of assumed that he’d been tossed into “The Hole” or shipped off to another location for punishment, but Davis has supposedly fled the CO$ and has been bunking with Rathbun, unofficially. And another one bites the dust.

Photos courtesy of Twitter and WENN

This is a pretty amusing story because it seems like a pretty big step for the Hollywood Reporter, which remains one of the leading showbiz trades (although there aren’t many left), to call out Tom Cruise and David Miscavige’s relationship as “the most intense bromance in history.” Really though, that sort of mainstream declaration is almost overdue, for amidst all of the horror stories that come forth from former Scientology parishioners, there’s one constant — Dave and Tom are thick as lift-adorned thieves, and they are so cute together with their little thrones and motorcycles.

That’s the gist of it and why Tom won’t ever leave the CO$. Dave understands Tom, you see. Nobody else cares about Tom enough to spy on him for years in order to oust a difficult wife (i.e., Nicole Kidman) and bring him back into the fold. No one else comprehends Tom enough to be literally “obsessed” with him and give him all sorts of shiny, slave-labor made toys. No one else cares enough to put Tom’s video-recorded audit tapes on instant replay. Quite simply, no one does it for Tom like Dave does. So what about this claim that Dave wouldn’t hesistate to throw Tom under the bus if he left the cult? Tom doesn’t need to worry about that because Tom’s not going anywhere and knows nothing of a so-called crisis of faith. Here are some excerpts from the Hollywood Reporter article, which is worth reading in full, but here are the relevant parts:

Tom Cruise barely had a breather between what had to be one of the worst summers of his life and the smash opening of the Scientology-inspired movie The Master in New York and Los Angeles. The movie, which director Paul Thomas Anderson screened in advance for Cruise, comes on the heels of the actor abruptly being dumped by his third wife, Katie Holmes, in July and subjected to a humiliating media feeding frenzy, some of which included speculation about Cruise’s close relationship with Scientology’s powerful and controversial chairman, David Miscavige. Ex-Scientologist Marc Headley, who says he worked closely with Miscavige for 15 years during his long tenure with the church, calls it “the most intense, expensive bromance in history.”

The church’s star member could become a liability, much the same way Phoenix eventually becomes a source of trouble for “the Master.” Holmes’ divorce action against Cruise resulted in intense coverage of the church’s controversial inner workings — including Vanity Fair’s September cover story. (Karin Pouw, a representative for Scientology, wrote to The Hollywood Reporter that the recent attention is merely the work of “anti-Scientologists who were kicked out of the Church by Mr. Miscavige, most over eight years ago, [who] used Mr. Cruise’s divorce to further smear the Church with lies so they could promote themselves.” Nevertheless, she writes: “More people have accessed our websites and come in to our Churches over the summer than ever in our history. [The coverage] is having a very positive affect [sic] on people wanting to get accurate information about Scientology for themselves.”

Some people, both in Hollywood and within the circle of former church members, wonder whether Cruise might leave Scientology — as a smart career move if nothing else. But some insiders insist he’d never defect.

“Why should he?” asks veteran publicist Howard Bragman. “You’ve got to realize the difference between a crisis and a controversy in Hollywood. For most people, this is a controversy. It’s not necessarily going to impact his career.”

According to Mike Rinder, who says he was the chief spokesman for Scientology before leaving the organization in 2007, people in Hollywood seem content to look the other way as long as Cruise is making hit movies. “But they act as if his association with Scientology is as harmless as Madonna spending time with the Kabbalah people,” he says. “They don’t realize Tom Cruise is hanging out with someone who is the emotional equivalent of Jeffrey Dahmer.”

“There’s a point of no return, and I think Tom has crossed it,” says [former Scientologist Steve] Hall, who worked closely with Miscavige and knew Cruise slightly. “The time for him to leave was a long time ago. The lines between him and Miscavige are so blurred now.”

The consensus from interviews conducted during the past two months with dozens of former Scientology members who freely divulge church secrets was that Cruise’s relationship with Miscavige was symbiotic. Rinder says Cruise was a “really nice guy” when he first joined the church but, over time, took on more and more of Miscavige’s personality traits. “In Scientology, it’s called being in someone’s valence,” says Rinder. “Cruise has assumed a lot of Miscavige’s qualities.”

Church literature defines the concept of valence in part as “another’s identity assumed by a person unknowingly; a valence is a substitute self taken on after the fact of lost confidence in self or a failed valence or as a solution to a problem.”

Karen De La Carriere, who says she was one of Scientology’s most well-known and respected auditors until she left in 2010, notes that Cruise was “practically channeling” Miscavige during his infamous interview with Matt Lauer on Today in 2010. “The way he lit into Matt Lauer, calling him glib and attacking him — that was exactly how David Miscavige deals with people,” says De La Carriere. “That was the purest example of how Tom is in Miscavige’s valence. It’s a scary thing to watch.”

If true, being in Miscavige’s valence might be why Cruise remains so devoted to him despite what former Scientologists say are Miscavige’s frequent betrayals of him.

Former Scientologists told Vanity Fair as well as THR that Miscavige openly mocked Cruise behind his back. Several sources have told THR that they witnessed Miscavige reading personal details from auditing files aloud. Because Scientologists at every level reportedly are discouraged from reading newspaper articles about the church or watching TV news reports, Cruise might not know of the recent allegations that Miscavige disparaged him behind his back.

But if he ever did find out, watch out: “If the dupe ever links up,” says Rinder, using church jargon — meaning, if Cruise ever realizes Miscavige might have been disloyal — “I don’t think he’ll try to take over the church, but I do think he’d turn on Miscavige like a rabid dog.”

Evidence exists that Cruise has been aware of claims against Miscavige in the past. In a letter sent to ABC News’ Nightline on Oct. 22, 2009, Cruise’s attorney Bert Fields called the actor “a man of spirit, intelligence and independence.” He said, “Mr. Cruise is aware of the claims made against Mr. Miscavige by former members of the Church of Scientology. He does not believe them.”

[From Hollywood Reporter]

Many issues come to the forefront in this article, but what sticks out the most for me at the moment is the notion that Kabbalah isn’t a dangerous cult too. It absolutely is a cult, and there are several resources out there, including this one, that detail ongoings of slave labor and mind control at the centers. Still, Kabbalah is not as flashy of a cult towards which to point fingers, and red bracelets don’t make headlines like couch jumping and e-meters do, so I guess that’s why people will show interest in Scientology exposés whereas talk of Kabbalah generally inspires yawns.

Ultimately, I do agree that Tom will never leave Scientology even if he does truly experience a crisis of faith. This is a shame because it would do so much if Tom had the guts to leave and then give a very public discussion of renouncing the cult. Even if the “church” then leaked his confidential audit files, I think the public would be on his side. Besides, what has Tom told the tin cans that would be worse than what we already know? I find it hard to believe that Tom possesses any secrets that are worse than his love of slave labor or acceptance of a mail-order wife. Bring it on, I say. Tom Cruise could win this battle and maybe even the war itself, but he’d rather just hang with Dave.

Photos courtesy of Freedom magazine and WENN

Clearly, life hasn’t worked as planned for Tom Cruise, who has achieved OT Level VIII as a Scientologist and, as a result, is said to possess unprecedented control over “life, thought, matter, energy, space and time.” Yet even with the benefit of this amazing (paid) accomplishment, Tom hasn’t been able to maintain any sense of control over his three marriages. As such, he finds himself so lonely and miserable, and it certainly doesn’t help that everyone now knows the details of his wife auditions, which included filing of incisors and ignoring menstrual pain. Everyone also knows that he yelled at Katie Holmes for four straight days about the CO$, and she was so terrified of him that she used burner phones to file for divorce. Poor Tom might be realizing that he’s not such a great catch after all.

The natural conclusion here (for normal people) would be for Tom to realize that maybe Scientology hasn’t been so great for him after all. He can’t seem to keep a wife, and everyone else thinks he’s crazy. No one will go watch any of his movies anymore unless he’s bungee jumping off the world’s tallest building. Sure, Tom has all the fame and money that a man could ever desire, but there’s still something definitely missing from his world (sanity?) that cannot possibly be filled by the CO$. Could he ever actually leave the cult though? That’s what this week’s issue of Star claims — that Tom is distancing himself from Scientology even though he hasn’t said whether or not he would ever actually leave the fold.

If Tom ever left, he’d have to worry about his videotaped audit tapes somehow being released. We already know that CO$ head David Miscavige is literally “obsessed” with Tom, and he’s already gone so far as to spy on Tom for years to bring him back from his previous years-long defection while he was married to Nicole Kidman. CO$ defector John Brousseau claims that Miscavige wouldn’t hesistate to throw Tom under the bus by exposing his secrets. All the same, Star maintains that Tom is “crushed that his faith destroyed yet another of his marriages, [and] friends say the poster boy for Scientology is finally ready to move on.” This sounds like wishful thinking on Star’s part, but here’s the story:

Since third wife Katie Holmes blindsided Tom Cruise by filing for divorce in June, he has lost his swagger — and enough weight to seem like a shell of his former action-hero self.

Insiders say it was his unwavering devotion to Scientology that cost Tom his marriage to Katie. And it wasn’t the first time that that controversial religion — which allegedly controls every aspect of his life — had destroyed one of his relationships: His breakups from second wife Nicole Kidman and girlfriend Penelope Cruz were also linked to Scientology’s stranglehold over the actor.

But now, insiders say, Tom, 50, is starting to recognize the role his faith has played in his love life. And after suffering through this most recent and particularly painful divorce, the superstar may be finally turning away from Scienotlogy!

“Tom hasn’t admitted that he’s definitely leaving Scientology for good,” says an insider close to him. “But he’s distanced himself from those in the church and has been hanging out with good firends who aren’t part of the religion.”

For Tom, who for the past decade has surrounded himself with followers of the cultlike organization at all times — even in private moments in his own home — branching out is a giant step. “Tom’s been leaning on friends who have different perspectives, getting advice on moving on from Katie as well as on everything he’s been going through with Scientology,” the insider explains. “He’s finally seeing that being such an advocate for Scientology hasn’t served him as well as he’d hoped — he’s gone through three divorces, and his public perception has sunk to an all-time low.”

Tom’s relationships aren’t the only things that have suffered from his devotion. His once thriving career also hit the skids after he became more vocal in his support of Scientology. Since his now infamous 2005 couch-jumping incident on “Oprah” and, a few weeks later, his controversial interview with Matt Lauer, in which he lectured the “Today” co-anchor on the history of psychology, his odd behavior has been slammed in the press, and audiences have bee less enthusiastic about his films. In fact, with the exception of Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol, his past few movies have flopped at the box office. Tom’s former chef, Sinar Partman, an ex-Scientologist, explains the public’s turning against the star: “He’s associated with a cult, and it’s hurting his reputation.”

If Tom does sever ties with the church again, one thing is clear: David Miscavige will not stop until the star comes back. “everything Tom does is monitored, Parman tells Star. “And David Miscavige has a hold on everything in Tom’s life.

[From Star, print edition, October 8, 2012]

If Tom ever had the balls to leave the CO$, I would have to start thinking differently about him and maybe even stop making fun of his lifts (okay, I wouldn’t go that far). But I honestly don’t ever see how Tom could survive on a daily basis without Scientology’s slaves doing everything for him. They literally do everything for him except actually appear onscreen in Tom Cruise movies. They build and remodel his homes, they cook his food and clean his houses, and they plan his itineraries. All the while, they do the most important thing ever — they totally kiss Tom’s ass. In the infamous October Vanity Fair article, Nazanin Boniadi discussed how Tom’s daily life with his CO$ entourage is a chorus of them reminding him of what a great job he was doing “saving the world” with Scientology. What would he do if he didn’t hear such praise on an hourly basis and his only constant company was the empty vessel left by decades worth of (useless) auditing? He’d completely lose it.

Also, I really don’t buy this story at all except as a necessary continuation of the “poor Tom” narrative. Who belongs to his camp that would say this stuff to Star? All of Tom’s “insiders” are CO$. His household staff is CO$. His entire travelling entourage? CO$. The story also goes on to push the whole Tom wants to get with Cameron Diaz angle too. Ha.

On a related note, a Texas lawsuit claims that David Miscavige has splashed out millions of dollars to spy on one ex-parishioner, Pat Broeker, over the past 24 years. Pat, who was Miscavige’s rival for control of the CO$ when L. Ron Hubbard passed on to his next meat vessel, has allegedly been followed by private investigators since 1988. If Miscavige is this obsessive and ruthless about his former competitor, think of how he’ll be if Tom ever decides to formally leave the cult. Seriously, it’s like a Fatal Attraction thing between those two, isn’t it?

Photos courtesy of Freewinds magazine and WENN

Forgive me for running the Tom Cruise moob photos one more time, but they’re just too hilarious to pass up — especially since this post involves catching up on several Scientology-related tidbits before jumping into the main part of the story. Do you want the good news or the bad news first? Let’s go with the bad news. The Village Voice’s Tony Ortega has resigned from the Running Scared blog “to pursue a book proposal about Scientology in its time of crisis.” This news should probably be met with well wishes for Tony, but I think he’s made a mistake. He can (and has until this date) reach far more readers with his daily articles on the CO$ than he’ll probably be able to influence with a book. Tony is needed on the forefront in a reporter capacity, but I guess maybe the Voice’s recent financial troubles may be to blame for his decision too. Oh well. Tony will be missed more than he’ll ever realize.

Now for the good news. Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master, which has pretty much swept the Venice Film Festival and also fared well at TIFF, has just scored the highest ever opening weekend per-theater average ($145,949) for a limited release movie. In addition, Page Six reports that “Scientologists have been ‘inundating’ the distributor, The Weinstein Co., with strange calls objecting to the film and are concocting plans to combat it.” Harvey has even had to “beef up his own security.” Crazy but believable.

Next up? More on the fallout from the Vanity Fair October cover story that detailed the Tom Cruise wife auditions held by the CO$ before Katie Holmes had the misfortune of falling into the fray. For our previous coverage, go here, there, and over yonder. In a nutshell (get it?), the VF article solidified years of previous rumors by putting a name and face (that of Nanzanin Boniadi) with the audition process. Naz was supposedly the big winner (although she undoubtedly sees it otherwise) before Tom had his CO$ slave labor dump her because he essentially wanted a mail-order bride that “had her own power,” i.e., was already famous. Enter Katie. And the rest is history.

Of course, the CO$ isn’t sitting nicely after this virtual bombshell and has lashed out at director Paul Haggis after he confirmed Naz’s story. According to Us Weekly, both Paul and Naz are not to be trusted because there are both “members of a small self-proclaimed ‘posse’ of anti-Scientology apostates.” Further, the CO$ alleges that Haggis only supported Naz because they’ve been banging for years. Of course.

In addition, Radar Online has published an eight-page letter from David Miscavige’s lawyer to Vanity Fair that threatens a lawsuit if the magazine persisted in publishing its exposé of the Tom Cruise wife audition story in its October issue. Radar has the whole letter available for download, but it essentially accuses Vanity Fair of “hatchet-jobs of minority religions and its members” and takes offense at “the notion that [David Miscavige] has been a kind of third wheel in Tom Cruise’s relationships and marriages.” The letter also describes Orth’s sources as “apostates and, in particular, labels Marty Rathburn and Mike Rinder as “a dynamic duo of lunatic venom and untrustworthy bile.” Then one tiny little paragraph at the end of the eight-page letter refers to Nanzanin Boniadi’s story but never mentions her by name and dismisses the entire wife-audition story as “akin to high school locker-break girlfriend/boyfriend gossip. Either way, the allegations are false.” Yes, it’s the old CO$ mantra of “Don’t ever defend. Always attack.” Here’s Radar’s interpretation of the letter:

It’s war! The Church of Scientology has hit back against the Vanity Fair expose that claimed to reveal deep secrets of the church and Tom Cruise with a scathing letter to the magazine’s publisher in which they call the journalist a bigot and dismiss the allegations in the article as defamatory.

“We are writing regarding your, your editor’s and reporter’s shoddy journalism, religious bigotry and potential legal liability arising out of Vanity Fair’s upcoming story about the Tom Cruise divorce,” the letter states. “Significantly, while Maureen Orth was preparing her story, Vanity Fair ignored its staff and contributors who have firsthand knowledge of Mr. Cruise and of Mr. Miscavige and who would burden her story with the truth.”

The letter accuses Orth of hiding her intentions about the article, and said the list of 32 questions revealed “the tabloid nature of the article,” and her “reckless disregard of the truth and her religious bigotry,” and says the story is “false and contemptible.”

The letter defends the Scientology leader and his relationship with Tom Cruise. “Mr. Miscavige is the ecclesiastical leader of a worldwide religion; a man of impeccable character who is dedicated to his faith and to the service of its parishioners. [I]f Ms. Orth had done any research, she would know that Mr. Miscavige’s vocation requires him to travel extensively throughout the world and he is rarely even in the same cities as the celebrities with whom she suggests he spends virtually all of his time. Ms. Orth’s implications are demonstrably false. If she had considered for a minute the respective travel and work demands placed on both Mr. Miscavige and Mr. Cruise, she would have dismissed outright this ‘third wheel notion.’”

In a shocking comparison, the letter equates the Vanity Fair article’s claims to accusing the Pope of poisoning holy wine. “Ms. Orth shows no sensitivity to Scientology’s religious beliefs as she apparently hasn’t a clue what those beliefs are. Scientology auditing is the most sacrosanct practice of the Scientology religion and the confidences of parishioners given in auditing are inviolate. Yet the very tenor of Ms. Orth’s questions concerning such matters, on the order of “By the way, do you take sugar in your coffee?” evidences her total ignorance and lack of respect for the beliefs of Scientologists.

“The allegations she forwards are akin to asking the Pope if he threw poison in the wine before failing to bless the Holy Communion during the Easter service. Your apostate sources know that is the nature of what they are insinuating and Ms. Orth, who hasn’t the vaguest clue about the practice of Scientology, has been duped into forwarding their anti-Scientology agenda.”

The letter threatens legal action against the magazine, writing “The disgraceful allegations Vanity Fair apparently plan to publish about Mr. Miscavige are defamatory. If Vanity Fair goes forward with publication of such defamatory allegations, now that it is on notice that the story is false, the stain on its reputation will last long after any reader even remembers the article. The sting of the jury verdict will last longer still; far longer than any pleasure from racing to publish a poorly researched and sourced story.”

Vanity Fair is standing by their story, releasing a statement to CNN saying, “We absolutely stand by Maureen Orth’s story. Vanity Fair has never paid sources and never would.”

[From Radar Online]

Once again and as when the Tom’s rep immediately reacted to the VF story as “Lies in a different font are still lies – designed to sell magazines,” the CO$ reactionary focus seems to (tellingly) rest upon the (allegedly) unnaturally close relationship between Tom and David Miscavige. Never mind the details about Nicole Kidman’s lost relationship with her children or the really juicy aspect of the story, which (obviously) is Naz’s nightmare as Tom’s arranged girlfriend who was made to file her teeth down and entertain David and Shelley Miscavige after she’d fallen off a snowmobile and was in “excruciating pain.” Then after she complied with Tom’s order to dance like a little puppet, she was berated for asking Miscavige to take the marbles out of his mouth and speak English, which was followed by Cruise screaming at her and having the CO$ dump her on his behalf. Never mind that this isn’t the first time we’ve heard about Tom screaming at a woman for offending Scientology itself — after all, he verbally abused Katie for four straight days for a similar offense. Nope, none of that is important at all. What really matters is that no one should ever think that Tom and David are soulmates. Because, you know, that would be embarrassing.

Tom’s attorney, Bert Fields, is talking again too but ignores the main issues in favor of insulting Orth’s story by calling it “long, boring and false” with a reliance upon “bogus sources.” Again, the CO$ never defends and always attacks.

In (now) tangentially-related news, here’s some photos of Katie Holmes taking Suri out to the American Girl store in NYC a few days ago. From all indications, Suri’s still attending school like a normal kid. Hurrah!

Photos courtesy of Pacific Coast News and WENN

Our photo agencies have been slacking off quite a bit in regard to new Katie Holmes and Suri Cruise photos over the past week or so, so I apologize for not being able to post these delightful pictures of Katie and Suri feeding the giraffes at the Bronx Zoo on Saturday. Both girls look seriously happy, and it’s nice to see them doing normal mom-daughter things together per their new routine. Also of interest are these cute photos of Tom wearing blindingly white hightop sneakers with massive lifts built into them. Tom was leaving his lunch spot in Malibu before heading straight towards the Scientology Celebrity Centre, so I guess Tom finds it valuable to stick his with routines as well. Whatever.

Yesterday, we covered Part One of John Brousseau’s interview with the Village Voice, which talked extensively about his life inside the Scientology as part of the Sea Org. Of course, I only excerpted the parts of the talk that spoke of Brousseau encounters with Tom Cruise as well as the hundreds of thousands of hours of free CO$ labor that Brousseau not only worked himself but helped to direct. The context of yesterday’s story was how Tom worships CO$ leader David Miscavige “like a god” and how Miscavige would do anything to keep the “face of Scientology” happy. Sure, Tom apparently paid for raw materials to completely revamp his Telluride home and various vehicles and other properties, but Scientology provided the labor free of charge. Those who worked on Tom’s projects were paid about $50 per week for up to 100 hours of labor, and while we’ve heard about Tom taking advantage of CO$ slave labor before, Brousseau’s details make the whole story even more real. He even provides the Voice with several photographs of the work he oversaw (and performed much of) for Tom.

This opens up the brief opportunity to discuss a particular argument that is brought up in relation to the Sea Org’s exceedingly low pay. Brousseau even mentions it in Part Two of his Voice interview, which I’ll get to in just a moment, but first I want to discuss the claim that “low overhead” for Sea Org members is a justification for a $50 per week pay check. Yes, these workers get free room and board and meals; but as Brousseau mentions, this means that you share a house with many other people (or in his case, other married couples) and previous members have commented that the housing is usually substandard with barely-working plumbing and that meals often consist of beans and rice and little else. If one ever decides to leave the Sea Org, they lack basic life and job experience. They lose all of their CO$ friends and relatives, and they are automatically charged in full (as “freeloader debt“) for all CO$ auditing and courses that they have ever received. So leaving is not really an option for the vast majority of Sea Org members.

After 32 years, John Brousseau finally got out, and now we have more of his story, but first, here are some of his photos (courtesy of Village Voice) of what he (and his fellow laborers) constructed for Tom Cruise. Behold the airport hangar made with CO$ slave labor.

Here’s the customized truck interior and a pen carved from a Eucalyptus tree close to where Tom first learned to audit.

Here’s what that eucalyptus tree looked like before it was turned into a truck interior and a pen. Poor tree.

Now let’s move onto the second part of the Voice’s discussion with Brousseau. I’m trying very hard not to excerpt too heavily here (although this stuff is very addictive), so I would fully suggest reading the full piece if the urge strikes you. Among the topics of discussion are his eventual escape from the cult where he was ordered to help turn “The Hole” into a virual prison for wayward CO$ execs, but I’m only including the stuff about greedy Tom and how the greedy cult caters to his every whim:

On that fateful Eucalpytus tree: In 2006, Brousseau [had] been asked to customize yet another vehicle, a black Ford Excursion, which on its own was nothing special for a celebrity like Tom. But Brousseau had found a way to upgrade the vehicle in a way that would bring Cruise, then 44, nearly to tears. Brousseau replaced many of the surfaces in the vehicle with wood sculpted from the burl of a Eucalyptus tree that had been blown down in a storm at Scientology’s International Base. The custom job was so detailed, it even included a matching pen in a special hidden compartment. “Tom fell in love with this thing. I told him, ‘Here you go, Tom. Here’s the pen and stuff that was made from a tree that grew at the place where you learned to audit.’ There were tears in his eyes.”

Tom received repairs on demand too: “Somebody spilled something [in the The Ford Excursion], or there was a scratch on the burl-wood finish. I’m out there wet-sanding it and buffing it in the middle of the night. Laurisse [Stuckenbrock, Miscavige's "communicator"] gets hold of me after Miscavige has flown somewhere in Tom’s Gulfstream. And she wants that done right away. Things like that happened three or four times over the next few years.”

Tom never paid for the labor: “I went up to Oregon to a manufacturing plant that was making Tom Cruise a new [second] motor home,” he remembers. He spent the next six months working at the plant, each day from six in the morning to midnight. “I was making sure these guys were doing these finishes correctly. They weren’t used to this high-end stuff. Tom paid the tab to the company, Marathon Coach, but he never paid me.”

Brousseau wants to be clear that he never felt slighted when he wasn’t paid for the hours he put in working on Cruise’s homes and vehicles. “I’m not complaining. I had low overhead. I had a place to stay and food to eat. I even saved money despite being paid $50 a week.” When Brousseau has publicly released photographs of the work he’s done for Cruise, he says it was not to carp that he was owed money, it was to make Cruise question why he was benefiting from a group that is supposed to be helping humanity.

On the airplane hangar: “Tom had gone to where Miscavige lived. Miscavige had a garage there all tricked out. I had made signs for every kind of car and motorcycle he owned. Tom saw it and said it rocked, and said he wished his airplane hangar looked as good. So Miscavige had the people in Cine [Scientology's movie making division] make these giant signs. Four months it took just to make the signs. And the hangar’s fancy office was completely designed and constructed at Cine Castle. It was reassembled at Burbank. Tom was blown away by it. He was raving — ‘Dave, thank you!’” Brousseau says. “It was sick.”

On a “bed for the gods” & the humidor: “There were renovations going on to Miscavige’s living quarters in Upper Villa. I built him a bed for the gods. It had a hand-carved headboard. It looks like a giant fantail. It had inlaid wood from all over the base. Cottonwood, elm, eucalyptus. Tom Cruise was beside himself when he saw it. ‘God, look at this bed!’ I built a handmade humidor that would hold 500 cigars. I had hand-tooled leather on top. It was one of a kind. You could probably get $40,000 for that humidor. And the thing was, Miscavige didn’t smoke cigars. Tom Cruise did, and Miscavige wanted to show off for Tom when he came to visit.”

[From Village Voice's Running Scared blog]

Then when Miscavige pull out those cigars, Tom’s eye wandered towards that “bed for the gods,” and the two shared a knowing glance … just kidding. Maybe.

Throughout all of this, I have to wonder how Tom — even if he disregards the fact that slave labor was used — ever thought it was appropriate for his “church” to be constructing such elaborate gifts for him. I mean, what on earth kind of church does that for a member? And what sort of church patron thinks he deserves such excessive services? Tom Cruise, that’s who.

Brousseau states that he was motivated to leave the cult after reading the now famous “Scientology: The Truth Rundown” article from the Tampa Bay Times paper as well as watching Anderson Cooper’s four-part series on CNN (during which the Coop interviewed several former church officials including Marty Rathbun and Amy Scobee). When Brousseau left, he was tracked down personally by Tommy Davis (head of the Celebrity Centre and frequent subject of Suri Cruise paternity rumors) and had to barricade himself in his hotel room while claiming that he’d called the police. Brousseau was luckier than most Sea Org escapees because he had a vehicle and some money saved up (due to his work on revamping the Freewinds cruise ship), but he had no family, and he had been pressured to divorce his wife by Shelly Miscavige, who disappeared a few years later in 2007. (Brousseau suspects, “I think you’ll hear that she’s dead at some point, because she’s never coming back. Once Miscavige loses faith in someone, you’re a treasonous b*st*rd never to be trusted again.“) Brousseau soon took refuge with Marty Rathbun and then proceeded to rebuild his life at age 52. He is now remarried to another ex-Scientologist, but he’ll never get back those lost years.

In other CO$-related news, the great grandson of L. Ron Hubbard, Jamie De Wolf, has spoken about Tom Cruise in a CBS-affiliated interview. De Wolf refers to Hubbard as a “portly red-headed charismatic lying con-man pseudoscience self-help author” and performs as a stand-up comedian. De Wolf says that he’s been harrassed by the CO$ but maintains that Tom is merely a “victim of the mirage that my great grandfather created around himself.” Eh. Not really. Tom loves Scientology with every fiber of his being, and the CO$ will continue to give him everything that his little (lifted) heart desires. They’ll even find him a new wife soon too. Just wait.

Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet and Village Voice

Over the weekend, Katie Holmes stepped out with a “male friend” who seemed to be just that, and you can see the photos at the Mail. Although Katie has officially cancelled her first scheduled red-carpet appearance since filing for divorce from Tom Cruise, she’s still leading her own life in New York City. She and her friend (honestly, the dude seems like a gay boyfriend, and I can attest from personal experience that every girl could use several of them) kissed each other on the cheek (Katie is described as “radiant” in the aftermath), and the tabloids are going wild. Meanwhile, poor little (lift-wearing) Tom is merely trying to do the best “dad” job he can do by inviting the tabloids to witness his Suri reunion in the face of such adversity. Now the Mail has provided us details of an “anguished” Tom in the days after Katie filed for divorce:

Tom Cruise refused to leave his hotel in the English countryside to return to New York last week as he continued to struggle with the aftermath of his marriage break-up.

The Hollywood star, 50, extended his stay at five-star The Grove Hotel in Hertfordshire, telling aides he couldn’t face going back to the States after Katie Holmes filed for divorce.

Everything was packed and ready to go,” said a source close to the actor. “The jet had been refuelled and the flight scheduled but a call came in from his assistant saying he was refusing to leave. He was talking about not being ready to go back to America.”

Hotel sources say Cruise, who had been meeting executives at Pinewood Studios, eventually left early on Thursday. “He spent all his time in his room,” added the source. “It was the first time he had off work to just clear his head.”

[From Daily Mail]

Tom was so, so clueless within his marriage, and he remains so willfully blind to everything in his path. Like, we’re supposed to feel bad for Tom for wondering, “What’s happening?” Because you know, mean old Katie filed for divorce and felt compelled to use burner phones to hide her legal maneuverings from her soon-to-be ex-husband. Yet Tom is the one who yelled for four straight days when Katie dared to question the rules of the CO$, which leads me to believe that Tom wants what he wants, and the CO$ provides it. Anything else is unorthodox in Tom’s world. Also, the Mail has also provided a few strategically-placed photos of Tom with greying stubble because, you know, even the best plastic surgeon in the entire world can’t hide everything, right?

Poor Tom. Moving right along…

Last month, CB reported that Scientology head David Miscavige was literally “obsessed” with Tom Cruise, and indeed, that sentiment is what we have heard up until now — that the CO$ spied on Tom for years to bring him back from a decade-long (thanks to Nicole Kidman) defection and that Miscavige would do anything to get his prize Gollum back. Now there’s a new interview of a former Tom Cruise lackey, however, which comes courtesy of Tony Ortega of the Village Voice. I absolutely love reading accounts like this from people who previously worked quote closely with Cruise. Here are some excerpts:

Until now, I’ve never told [John] Brousseau’s entire story as a 32-year member of Scientology and the last person to escape from the International Base who is talking publicly about it. Brousseau’s tale is one of the most remarkable to come out of the secretive organization, and one that parallels so much of Scientology’s own development and controversies.

He and Miscavige were brothers in law. They were both young cameramen working for Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard during his movie-making phase. Brousseau was Hubbard’s personal chauffeur and helped maintain the cloak of secrecy when Hubbard vanished for good. He watched Miscavige transform Scientology and turn its base into a prison camp. He worked for Tom Cruise, which included serving in the household with Cruise and Katie Holmes. And having worked closely with both Cruise and Miscavige, he has choice things to say about the nature of their relationship.

For Christmas 2006, Tom Cruise took his family to a house that had been upgraded and transformed. It was his place in Telluride, Colorado, and he was there with his wife Katie Holmes, their eight-month-old daughter Suri, his mother, and his older children, Isabella and Connor. There was also a full set of people working to make sure that everything went smoothly, as well as the man wrangling them, who had also overseen the house’s upgrade. He was John Brousseau.

“I was making sure everything was beautiful and clean. I made sure the servants knew what they were doing. They had to learn how to make things go right without being visible — I learned that from Miscavige. I would show the staff that it’s not your job to bump into Tom in the hallway. It’s your job to make sure everything’s right, but be invisible. Anticipate his every move. You had to be there with a salt shaker before he even realized he needed it,” he says. “I was sitting there having meals with Tom and Katie and the family. It was like we were guests.”

I asked how the couple appeared to him. “They looked really terrific at that time. They were a hit, it was very evident to me. They were still gaga. At the end of the day, Suri was put to bed, Connor and Bella were in bed. Most of the help had gone home. I’d still be around. And Tom and Katie would go off on their own to chat. They seemed really genuinely happy.”

I asked Brousseau for his impressions of Katie Holmes. “Tom Cruise was the dream of her life since she was a little girl. The Church of Scientology wasn’t. That was just glued on to the package. They put Jessica Rodriguez on her and she must have thought, what the f#*k is happening? I didn’t marry a person, I married an entourage.”

Rodriguez — born Jessica Feshbach — was from a legendary family in Scientology. She became Katie’s “handler,” and was seen at every public appearance during those early years in the relationship. (We hear that Jessica is now gravely ill, and I’ve wondered if Jessica’s absence was a factor in Katie’s ability to secretly plan such a slick getaway from Cruise and the church.)

Brousseau left Scientology in 2010, but I asked him why he thought Katie acted the way she did when she surprised Cruise with her divorce filing. “The maternal instinct kicked in. And Katie’s parents pointed things out. And Katie had read sh-t. And Suri is six,” Brousseau conjectures. “You don’t f#*k with a mother’s child. She just figured the best thing was to yank her little girl out of there, and good for her.”

When Miscavige took Cruise to the base’s shooting range, Brousseau helped out. “I was the gun guy. I’d shoot the first couple of shells to make sure the gun wasn’t going to blow up. Then I’d hand it to Tom.” Brousseau says this was also when he first got to work for Tom, the first of many jobs making or repairing things for the actor. “I got to customize a Bluebird motor home for him. It had custom hard surfaces and upholstery,” he says. Another Sea Org member who was an audiophile made sure the vehicle had the latest hi fi equipment.

“Tom paid for everything. The church never bought stuff. When it came down to paying for stuff, Tom paid for it. But he didn’t pay us,” Brousseau says. As Sea Org members, Brousseau and the others who worked on Tom’s vehicles and properties were paid only about $50 a week by the church, even though their hours could reach 100 a week.

After that initial encounter with Cruise at the Int Base in 1991, the actor made himself scarce, Brousseau says. “He was with Nicole Kidman at the time. But then, he sort of fell away after that. He was gone from Scientology for like ten years. That’s where Marty came in, to get him back in.” During that period, Brousseau also began to work more closely with Cruise. “In 2002, Marty was auditing him and getting him through his OT levels. And I went to his house on Alpine Drive in Beverly Hills. I was put in charge of a complete overhaul of his house,” Brousseau says. David Miscavige’s wife, Shelly, was overseeing the project, and was pushing everyone to hurry.

Brousseau says Cruise had been impressed with the way Miscavige lived at his rooms in the “Upper Villa” on the base, and his apartment in Hollywood. When Cruise complained that he couldn’t get his own place and staff the way he wanted it, Miscavige reassured him that he’d take care of it. “The result was people like me going and working for Tom, making his house perfect. We even landscaped the grounds, everything was transformed. I was the technical guy, directing people, getting the irrigation fixed, the windows, doors, gutters, even the light bulbs.”

After doing many projects not only on Cruise’s house, but also with his vehicles and his airport hangar in Burbank, Brousseau says he got to know the man pretty well. “He’s got more energy than the local grid. But he’s not very smart. He has so much energy, and he always has to be doing something with somebody.” That’s backed up by something a person who worked closely with Cruise for many years told me recently about watching him during his marriage to Kidman: “Tom can’t be alone. He goes nuts if there’s not someone else around him, someone he can bug about stuff. He’d walk around the house, saying ‘Where’s Nick? Where’s Nick?’ He was like a kid that way.”

Hearing Brousseau talk about all the work he was doing around Cruise’s Beverly Hills house in 2002, I had to ask: had Tom Cruise really been living in squalor before the Int Base crew arrived? “It was bullsh-t,” he says. Yes, they improved the place, but Cruise hadn’t been living in a dump to begin with. “Why did it need to be done? It was Miscavige.” Brousseau says he had ample opportunity to examine the two men up close. And it taught him that theirs was a very uneven relationship. “It isn’t the same both ways. Miscavige would throw Tom Cruise under a bus in a minute. But Tom thinks Miscavige is the greatest person in the world. He worships him like a god. Miscavige would pretend that Tom was his best friend, but you could see it was horsesh-t. Tom couldn’t see it.”

After his Christmas with Tom and Katie and baby Suri in 2006, Brousseau saw them only occasionally. Brousseau says he had bigger things to worry about. It had become, he says, the period of “Miscavige unplugged” as Int Base increasingly became a prison camp and more and more top executives were being “disappeared” — at the same time that Tom Cruise was being hailed by Miscavige as the church’s epitome of dedication. “The only thing I have against Tom is that he accepted this sh-t.”

Since he left Scientology, Brousseau has released photographs of the work he did for Tom Cruise — work that was unpaid, and that some have used to argue that Cruise and Miscavige benefited from inurement — enriching that violates Scientology’s tax-exempt status. “The reason I’ve released those photos is because I want Tom to wake up. I remember at the time, I was being told I was doing a good job on these things for him. But I was thinking, what the f%*k am I doing? How the hell is this helping humanity? Why am I being flown to Telluride to be the babysitter for Connor and Bella? What the f#*k was I doing?”

[From Village Voice]

This excerpt, which leaves out a lot of the COS-related discussion, only details Part One of the interview. Personally, I cannot wait to read Part Two, but I am delighted to see that Brousseau has already confirmed that Katie’s “maternal instinct kicked in,” which lends credence to the claim that Katie had snapped over CO$ demands over Suri. I mean really, they were actually telling her that she couldn’t discipline her own child. Nobody goes there.

In conclusion, past reports have confirmed to us that Tom has abused CO$ partitioners and gleefully accepted their free labor to plant wheat fields for he and Kidman to (also gleefully) run through. Tom probably believes that slave labor is romantic, but I think that he’s merely obsessed with Miscavige for what he can provide with little demand. This new account from Brousseau is quite interesting though — will Miscavige ever truly throw Tom under the bus for a new “face of Scientology” (John Travolta, perhaps)? At this point, I don’t think Miscavige even has that option. Nope. David famously accompanied Tom on his honeymoon with Katie, and so it follows that Tom and David will forever be thick as thieves together. Happily ever after.

Photos courtesy of Freedom Magazine and Village Voice

Scientology may very well be on it last legs. In just the past few years, it has (barely) weathered the exposure of its secrets (most effectively through Wikileaks and most amusingly on that infamous “South Park” episode) as well as some high-profile celebrity defections, including Paul Haggis, Jason Beghe, and Lisa Marie Presley. There have also been the accounts from past high-ranking CO$ execs about the punishment and torture that goes on at Gold Base, and of course, there are the various John Travolta scandals as well.

Incidentally and in terms of fresh scandals, the Village Voice has a few other new pieces on the CO$, including a comical story asking why Travolta has not offered public support to Tom during his divorce crisis (answer: Travolta’s too busy covering his own butt via fake marriage) and a more serious one about how Narcanon’s flagship treatment center (in McAlester, Oklahoma) just had its third patient death since October. This damn cult has no business trying to “detoxify” drug users by merely handing addicts vitamins and having them sit in saunas for several hours at a time.

But none of that is really what’s on CO$’s mind right now. What is of major concern to David Miscavige and Co. is that Katie Holmes (by divorcing Tom Cruise, natch) really has blown Scientology wide open because, you know, now even Rupert Murdoch is commenting on the cult’s creepiness. USA Today also has a great piece that interviews Tony Ortega (of the Village Voice) about how the negative energy against the CO$ has been gaining momentum in the weeks since the divorce and how the fallout is at at odds with the cult’s stance that it helps people — when its highest profile member can’t stay married for the third time. Indeed, Cruise really is “the public face of Scientology,” and the Katie-inspired revelations have worked their intended damage. There will be no emergency makeover to ward off the 2005 crazy at this point. Nope. Instead, Miscavige has called a “secret emergency summit” between its (remaining) celebrity members in an effort to change the CO$’s PR tactics. This is ridiculous and of course, it won’t work:

Scientology leader David Miscavige called a secret emergency summit among the controversial church’s top celebrities to deal with the public fallout from Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes’ divorce.

Sources told The Enquirer that among those contacted for the clandestine conference call were Hollywood hot shots John Travolta, Kirstie Alley, Bijou Phillips, Leah Remini, Jenna Elfman and Juliette Lewis.

The church has been on the defensive since Katie blindsided her famous hubby with divorce papers on June 28. Numerous sources have reported that she wanted to protect their 6-year-old daughter, Suri, from falling victim to the religion’s “weird teachings.”

Media outlets have been having a field day with the coverage – the cover of one New York City newspaper featured a mock-up of Tom’s head, with wires attached to it, inside an alien spaceship!

And both Tom and the organization have been the butt of jokes on late-night TV and the internet. Even media mogul Rupert Murdoch chimed in on Twitter, calling people who practice Scientology “evil” and “creepy.”

“Scientology has never been hit this hard, this fast,” explained an insider. “The church is being made out to be a laughingstock, and Miscavige had a meltdown that his top draw, Tom Cruise, was being ridiculed across the globe.”

In an effort to do some damage control, Miscavige directed the top secret conference call from the church’s headqurters in Los Angeles.

“Every one of these celebs, from John Travolta to Kirstie Alley, loves the church and will do anything to promote it,” the source said.

The plan is to embark on a $25 million public relations blitz in which the church will “pull back the curatins” and be more open about its beliefs. As part of that initiative, the church is considering starting a Scientology cable TV channel, which will feature its biggest stars talking about the faith.

“The Scientologists are determined to help Tom,” added the source. “But they also want to protect the church’s reputation from further embarrassment.

[From Enquirer, print edition, July 30, 2012]

NOW the CO$ is starting to think that transparency is a good thing? CB spoke of the cult’s lack of transparency being a precursor to its ways of making money, but in the age of Wikipedia and Wikileaks, I think most people are well-read enough to never give this cult a dollar since we can easiy look up all sorts of weird sh-t about their beliefs. And is the CO$ planning on giving a full, formal reveal of the OT Level III Xenu story or something? How disastrous. We already all know about Xenu and think it’s hilarious fiction, and that would mean even less money coming in for the CO$ if they gave that info away (even though it’s already all out there on the internet). Nope, the CO$ is screwed. They might still have their precious little tax-exempt status, but the internet has been their gradual undoing. It’s only a matter of time, people.

That’s the really lovely thing about the internet — for all his alleged brilliance, L. Ron Hubbard never imagined such a thing could exist. So basically the CO$ is still running off the same “attack” playbook as it did in the 1950s, and it’s failing miserably.

As for the celebrities of Scientology being able to somehow speak to the public and redeem their “religion” at this point in the game, well, good luck with getting these people (below) to sell that game.

Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet