For five months along, Nicole Kidman sure is doing a good job of hiding her growing stomach. Especially because it seems from these pictures that she’s not trying to hide it at all. Nicole is supposedly five months along. I am no pregnancy expert, but I had no idea a person could have such a small stomach at that point. That’s what J-Lo looked like 48 hours after conception. I have don’t know what’s going on here, but something is fishy. Nicole was out and about promoting her film “The Golden Compass” in Japan. Depending on who you believe, the film supposedly promotes atheism.

“These books denigrate Christianity, thrash the Catholic Church and sell the virtues of atheism,” asserted [Bill Donohue, president and CEO] of Catholic League, who earlier this month called on Christians to boycott the movie.”

[From the Christian Post]

Interestingly, Nicole said that both of her children, who are being raised as Scientologists by ex-husband Tom Cruise, have seen the film. One would think this could cause quite the parental skirmish between the former spouses. Though Scientologists aren’t Christians, many say that the film promotes atheism on the whole. However it should also be mentioned that Nicole has said she considers herself Catholic, and yet she starred in the film.

In the story, a malevolent governing body called “the Church,” which answers to the “Vatican Council,” is known to kidnap children for experimentation. With the help of a golden compass that reveals a coded answer to any question asked by the user, Lyra, by the trilogy’s end, gets to the bottom of the missing children and kills a character called “God.”

[From the Christian Post]

“The Golden Compass” sounds very interested and complicated – surprisingly so for a children’s movie. Nicole said both her kids have seen it, and she’s glad to make a kid’s movie once in a while.

During the press conference, the five-month pregnant star revealed she had deliberately chosen The Golden Compass script because it’s child-friendly.

She said: “My Bella and Connor are 13 and 15. So they have seen the film and they loved it… my child inside won’t see the film for a long time.”

“But I think once you have children you want to balance the work you do because they give up so much of you to your work. So occasionally you want to make films that they can take their friends to, they can go to the premiere of, that they celebrate.”

[From the Daily Mail]

I can’t help but wonder how much Nicole runs by Tom and visa versa. I would love to know what went on behind closed doors in terms of Connor and Isabella’s religious upbringing. Since her divorce, Nicole has gently said that she considers Scientology to be hogwash, and always did. Her father is a very prominent Australian psychologist, and Scientologists are famously opposed to psychiatry. However her kids were obviously already being raised as such, so whether due to Tom’s insistence or Nicole’s acquiescence, their kids still go to Scientology camp every summer. It’s hard not to wonder if “The Golden Compass” got them thinking. Reading about it has gotten me thinking too. Though I’m still mostly thinking about Nicole Kidman’s confusing lack of visible stomach.

Nicole Kidman is shown at a press conference for The Golden Compass in Tokyo yesterday.

I’ve always considered Brad Pitt a pretty down to earth celeb, everything considered. Or if not down to earth, a really nice celeb. Not the kind to throw ridiculous hissy fits. But there’s a chance I’m wrong about that. Last week word leaked that Tom Cruise was getting the very first Ducati Desmosedici RR motorcycle. As much as a lot of people can’t stand Tom, they still seethed with envy and wanted to be his very best friend. But apparently Brad Pitt just seethed with envy. According to TMZ, Brad went apeshit and demanded that his bike be delivered immediately - before anyone else’s.

Tom Cruise was the first to get the new Ducati Desmosedici RR motorcycle and Brad Pitt threw a tantrum, at least according to e-mails obtained by TMZ.

The e-mails, sent by a UPS exec to various freight terminals,instructed that all shipments of the bike be stopped immediately until Brad got his delivered. A UPS source claims the shipping freeze ticked off Denzel Washington and Michael Jordan, both of whom allegedly complained.

Reps for both Brad and Ducati say it’s not true — that Brad never ordered the bike and was never supposed to receive one. We contacted UPS, but rather than deny the story, the UPS exec repeated several times, “I do not want to comment on that.” Reps for Washington and Jordan were mum.

[From TMZ]

Logically I hear this and think, “There’s no way this is true, a rational adult wouldn’t act like that.” But you never know, and stars are incredibly spoiled. I would find it more believable if the issue was that Brad wanted one right away and wanted everything possible done to make sure he got it. I find it a little less believable that the problem is that Brad wanted his before everyone else, and was willing to go to the length of making UPS stop their shipments for everyone else. Although I will agree with TMZ that the UPS exec’s reply was a little suspicious…

There’s a lot of circumstantial evidence that suggests that Suri Cruise might not have been born on April 18, 2006 as claimed. First, her birth certificate wasn’t signed by anyone who actually saw Katie or Suri in the hospital and wasn’t issued for a full 20 days after her birth date. It took a full five months for anyone to catch a glimpse of little Suri, when she made her big debut in the October, 2006 issue of Vanity Fair. That seemed extremely suspicious back then, but Britney managed to hide Jayden James for a longer period of time so it’s not necessarily a red flag. The Scientologists also have this thing where babies can’t be exposed to negative influences or something, so that was also cited as a potential reason to have kept Suri under wraps for so long.

A lot of people speculated that Suri wasn’t born in April at all, and cited photos of Katie’s Holmes growing and shrinking bump to show that there was some funny business going on. One photo in particular that made us scratch our heads had Katie looking like she was smuggling a beach ball under her top. There are theories that Suri isn’t Tom Cruise’s biological baby and that Katie was instead pregnant with her ex Chris Klein’s child when she met Tom just a month after her breakup with Chris. Cruise was rumored to be sterile or at least unable to successfully reproduce, given the fact that he had no biological children with ex wife Nicole Kidman and she suffered some miscarriages during their marriage. The curious way that Suri was kept from the public and the lack of convincing evidence of her birthdate were used as evidence that she could be older than Holmes and Cruise claimed, which made her paternity up to question.

Now there’s some hearsay to add to the rumor that Suri is Chris Klein’s and not Tom’s baby. The National Enquirer has a source this week that claims to have had a conversation with Chris that suggested that Katie was pregnant when they broke up back in March of 2005. Their source also passed a lie detector test, but that’s possible with the help of some medication so you can’t put much faith in that. The Enquirer never says outright that Suri must be Chris’ baby, but they sure hint strongly at it:

“Mad Money” star Katie, 29, and Chris, 27, started dating in January 2000. They got engaged at Christmas 2003, but Chris has said they split in March 2005 because they fell out of love.

A month after the breakup, Katie flew to Los Angeles from New York to meet Tom. Two months after that - on June 17, 2005 - Tom announced Katie had accepted his wedding proposal.

But even before their engagement was made public, Chris told the source that he had impregnated Katie, says the pal. “Shortly after his relationship with Katie ended, Chris and I had a heart-to-heart,” the source - who passed a polygraph test - told The Enquirer.

“We were having dinner at Cafeteria, a restaurant in NY’s Chelsea district, when Chris blurted out ‘Dude, you know I got Katie preggers.’

“There was a long silence. I realized Chris had said more than he intended. My next thought was: What happened to the baby?”

Chris never said - and the source says he didn’t ask.

“From the look in Chris’ eyes, I realized this was highly personal. I didn’t want to probe any further. We quickly went on to another topic,” the source said.

“Chris never brought it up again, but I know he must be reminded of Katie’s pregnancy every time he sees her daughter Suri.”

[From The National Enquirer, print edition, February 4, 2008]

I really don’t believe that Katie Holmes ran the full NY Marathon or even walked it, but it feels kind of wrong to speculate whether Suri is Tom’s biological child or not. A lot of signs point to “no,” but this is a little girl who is being raised by a batshit crazy, but still completely attentive loving father who is doing his best to ensure that she’s indoctrinated in the manner he’s accustomed to. All we have at this point is some circumstantial evidence and the word of a person who may not even be real. Even if some friend of Klein’s heard him say this, it doesn’t mean that Suri is Kleins. Katie could have had a miscarriage or maybe she thought she was pregnant and really wasn’t. Maybe it doesn’t matter if Tom is Suri’s biological dad or not. Heath’s death helped me grow a conscience this week, although I’m sure by next week I’ll be back to normal.

Thanks to Splash News for these photos and Pink is The New Blog for the composite image.

I heart this guy so much after watching this. Jerry O’Connell spoofs Tom Cruise’s wacky Scientology video in a clip on Funny or Die. He goes on random tangents while wearing a black turtleneck and staring off into space, periodically laughing like an idiot. He talks about being an actor all wild-eyed and refers to the Writer’s Guild like Cruise referenced Scientology in his video.

The mainstream news isn’t really taking on the behemoth cult with a penchant for litigation, but the kids on the Internet won’t be silenced. Our heroes over at Gawker note that the Internet is Scientology’s most powerful enemy and no matter how much they try to keep the videos from spreading they’re sure to fail. The folks over at 23/6 made a “Scientology Balls ‘O Meter” (warning on that link! Read the rest of this paragraph before proceeding) measuring the nerve of the media outlets covering the recent exposure of the cult. Radar Online, Gawker, and South Park scored high, but those guys used a graphic featuring a photo of real human testicles, so they must be pretty ballsy too.

There have been rumblings for some time that Katie Holmes couldn’t possibly have run the full NY Marathon during the day and gone out with heels on that night. Katie drew some skeptics when she was seen at her husband’s side that very night wearing heels at the premiere of his film Lions for Lambs. She could easily obtain custom made sneakers as well as those insanely expensive Louboutins that are made from a mold of your foot, so maybe her feet were immune to the wear and tear that plague average runners.

Katie also ran 26 miles on concrete in 5 and a half hours wearing a camisole-type top with just a built in bra and no sports bra. Many female runners say that would chafe and be extremely uncomfortable, but Katie told David Letterman that she felt “strong” afterwards. Others note that her pants seemed to drag on the ground and looked too long. Five and a half hours is not an incredible finish time, and a 12 minute mile is not a brisk run, but it’s very physically grueling and it seems like you would need to wear a sports bar.

There are hardly any photos that I could find of Katie Holmes running the race apart from when she crossed the finish line. That could be explained by the fact that she wasn’t recognized until the end. The NY Daily News says that husband Tom Cruise met her halfway through the race to give her an encouraging kiss, but there are no photos of that. She is seen in just a camisole in the few photos of her on the course and is in a jacket when she finishes.

A “mystery” guy was seen running with Katie with a bib number, 6074, that was not registered in the marathon. He is widely assumed to be her bodyguard, which doesn’t seem like a big deal, but I’m mentioning him because he figures in some of these stories.

It sounds ludicrous to use such flimsy evidence to suggest that she would fake running the marathon for publicity purposes, but there are some real indicators to suggest she may well have.

Defamer had a tipster send them in the “split times” of Katie Holmes compared to another runner from the NY City Marathon, as found on the official marathon website. The split times are registered electronically at specific stations on the route using the chip for each runner. She has the exact same times, down to the second, of this other guy for most every benchmark in the middle of the race. Even if someone was running alongside her the entire time, would they have the exact same time down to the second like that?

The other guy is registered as Paul Vincent, bib number 28994. He was seen running near her in several photos at the finish line and is shown above in the header image. Katie, the unregistered guy who is thought to be her bodyguard, and the guy with the exact same “split times” as Katie are all wearing similar black jackets.

A commentor on Defamer notes that they finished just two minutes behind Katie and never saw her:

OK…I ran the NYC marathon too and came in about two minutes behind Katie…however, my first half of the marathon was better than the second half due to a bathroom break gone bad in Fort Greene…(I know TMI) However, this would mean at some point Katie and her many, many handlers would have passed me. And the people I was running with. And I never saw her—and people who are running in entourages are extremely obvious. My take…she was dropped in somewhere around Long Island City where no one would notice and ran about half the damn thing. Her “chip” was actually worn my someone else who did run the whole thing…(whether it is this guy, who knows?)

Not like I’m bitter or anything, but she beat me by two minutes. I still smell a conspiracy…

[Comment from Defamer]

Maybe it’s possible that Katie and her bodyguard did cross specific markers at the exact same time down to the second, another commentor on Defamer says that the same split times are possible:

I’m all for a good conspiracy theory, but I ran NY and have to disagree. There were so many people running that it is very possible to have exact spit times b/c several people cross the markers at the same time.

[Comment on Defamer]

Also, Katie was 28 at the time of the marathon in early November, not 30. It is thought that she raced in the higher age bracket in order to receive a more favorable finish rating.

It’s a real accomplishment to run a marathon, and Holmes deserves a lot of credit if it all went down as she claims. This could just be a far-fetched conspiracy theory and maybe she did run/walk the entire marathon without a bra, and one of her bodyguards was close enough to her the entire time to mirror her finishes down to the second.

A story about how Holmes was able to register for the Boston Marathon despite not having a qualifying finish time in the NY Marathon was quickly removed from US Weekly’s website. They decided to delete the post instead of issue a correction.

Hurry up and watch it before it’s removed. It’s hard to tell what the hell Cruise is talking about, apart from the fact that in his addled mind he thinks he has the answers to everything. At one point he talks about SPs, which is Scientology-speak for suppressive people, or people who try to detract from their craziness, and how they don’t confront him.

“It’s our responsibility to educate, to create the new reality…”

A commentor on RadarOnline, which had a YouTube version which was removed, is a former Scientologist and offers some definitions for all the cult-speak.

And US Weekly has a transcript.

Thanks to reader Moogle for the heads up on this video.

Update: Gawker is personally hosting the video and they refuse to remove it. If the video is not working above, and that’s probably the case, you can view it on Gawker.

Update: Thanks to commentor moogle for the link to the video above. It was also on YouTube and posted by RadarOnline, but that video has been removed.

The “church” of Scientology is known for lawsuits and threats to control all negative coverage, so it’s not surprising that a nine minute promotional video for the cult that showed Tom Cruise ranting about how he held the key to happiness has been promptly removed. Gawker has some excerpts, though, and The Huffington Post has screenshots. They say the film was removed within a half hour of the time it was posted.

Mark Ebner, the investigative reporter, just emailed us links to some Scientology promotional videos. [Cruise Biographer] Morton’s central claim is that Cruise, star of movies from Risky Business to Mission Impossible, is the effective number two of the Church of Scientology, the cultish religion founded by L. Ron Hubbard, and subscribed to by other eccentric Hollywood actors such as John Travolta. The videos bear out, at the very least, that Cruise is central to the organization’s marketing efforts. In this amazing clip, to a background track of theme from Mission Impossible, Cruise explains how Scientologists are “the authorities on the mind”, the only people who can bring peace and unite cultures. Watch it, after the jump, before the scary Scientologists silence us all.

[Quotes from Cruise] “When you’re a Scientologist, and you drive by an accident, you know you have to do something about it, because you know you’re the only one who can really help. We are the authorities on getting people off drugs. We are the authorities on the mind…. We are the way to happiness. We can bring peace and unite cultures. Now is the time. Being a Scientologist. People are turning to you. If you are a Scientologist, you see things the way they are, in all their glory, in all their complexity… It’s rough and tumble. It’s wild and woolly. It’s a blast. It really is. It is fun. Because damn it, there is nothing better than going out there and fighting the fight, and suddenly you see — boom! — things are better. I want to know that I’ve done everything I can do, every day… I do what I can. And I do it the way I do everything.”

[From Gawker.com]

We have a healthy fear of these people, because they have threatened us too for even a smidgen of negative coverage about them. I honestly don’t think Tom Cruise is gay, but crazy and scary, he definitely is.

Last week an article in US Weekly that Katie Holmes was set to run the Boston Marathon was mysteriously removed instead of being updated with a correction.

And we’ve heard about the suspicious deaths of a couple last summer who were supposedly friends of the musician Beck, who was born into a Scientologist family. One of the couple penned a screenplay about a musician who escaped a cult just like Scientology with the help of fans who stage a fake kidnapping. The woman who wrote the screenplay committed suicide after telling her friends repeatedly how she was harassed by Scientologists. The woman’s partner also committed suicide a week later by walking into the ocean. As of now, two out of three stories we’ve found on the double suicide with links to Scientology have been removed. One story, critical of the dead woman, remains available. Beck has denied any involvement with the couple and says he did not know them well. Here’s a link to a longer Vanity Fair article about the couple. [Thanks to commentor Breederina]

So we’ll probably never see these videos of Cruise ranting about how great his personal brand of salvation is. Given his very public couch-jumping and angry interview with Matt Lauer, we can all imagine what he looked like.

Hey look - isn’t Suri cute and isn’t his young bride so glamorous? I love her hair! Is she pregnant again? Wouldn’t that be nice? How harmless and privileged they all are.

The more details that come out about the Andrew Morton unauthorized biography of Tom Cruise, the more it sounds like re-hashed Internet rumors that we’ve all heard before - with one exception. Tom is supposedly a love ‘em and leave ‘em type of guy, but the only evidence they have on the matter is the fact that he broke one high school girlfriend’s heart and moved on quickly after another dumped him. This sounds typical of guys that age and I don’t think we can make much of it apart from the fact that he likes women. The guy has been married three times. I agree that he gives off some ambiguous vibes about his sexuality, but apart from those rumored trysts that no one has found any evidence for there’s nothing to suggest he’s gay. (I truly believe this after a lot of investigation.)

One high school girlfriend told Morton: “When he was done with you, he was done with you.”

The first woman who slept with Cruise, then dumped him for an older man, agrees. “Don’t let that smile and those teeth fool you,” she recalls. “He could have a really nasty streak and was very mean.” Within days of their split, he was dating another girl.

But that was nothing new for Cruise. When a grammar school classmate refused his advances, he put the move on another 11-year-old and staged a make-believe wedding in the school playground.

And he was a terrific kisser, according to Laurie Hobbs, who attended Sacred Heart Academy in Louisville, Ky.

“I remember thinking how surprised I was that he could kiss like that. We just floated along clinging to each other. I even had to tell him to keep his hands to himself,” she told Morton.

[From The National Enquirer, print edition, January 21, 2008]

So Cruise got dumped by a girl in high school and she’s complaining now that he was mean to her afterwards for dumping him? Add all that crap about how he staged a fake wedding when he was 11 and was a great kisser as a teen and it sounds like there’s not much new dirt in this book at all. I guess we’ll have to see what it says when it comes out, but nothing that has been leaked so far sounds like much of a revelation. Another woman who sings his praises is Melissa Gilbert. She says he was great at making out. There’s also a story that Cruise got uncomfortable when he had to watch “La Cage Aux Folles,” according to a girl he dated in high school who claims he’s homophobic.

His first Hollywood girlfriend, “Little House on the Prairie” star Melissa Gilbert, was just as smitted.

“I can honestly say that he’s a very sexual person,” said Melissa, who dated Cruise after he moved to LA at 19. “He gave me butterflies in my tummy, and there was a lot of making out on the couch in my mom’s living room…”

Despite his way with women, Cruise has been dogged by gay rumors for years. But even as a teenager, he seemed to display an aversion to homosexuality - bothered by gay themes when he took an old high school flame to see the Broadway musical “La Cage Aux Folles.”

His date recalled: “Men dressed as women, he couldn’t handle it. We had to leave before the intermission. It really bothered him. He was definitely homophobic.”

[From The National Enquirer, print edition, January 21, 2008]

A lot of people are going to say that Cruise is homophobic because he’s afraid of his own urges, but really what proof do we have of that? As for whether he can reproduce or if he has that rumored mild genetic defect that could explain Kidman’s miscarriages, I have no idea. One thing we know is that he’s stupid enough to pour money into a major cult and personally endorse it. I don’t like the guy and I would tout real evidence that discredits him, but it also seems like this new biography doesn’t have any new stories about him based on what’s been leaked so far. That’s a shame, because we were really looking forward to it. We’ll have to see if Morton saved the real dirt for when it comes out, but it’s doubtful.

It really is celebrity pregnancy season. Katie Homes’ husband’s ex, Nicole Kidman, just announced that she is pregnant with her first biological child. Last night at the premiere of Holmes’ female crime caper movie, Mad Money, her first film in three years, she wore a strapless silver dress with a band right above her stomach. From some angles her stomach is sticking out and she looks pregnant. A false bump was spotted on Katie last year when she wasn’t pregnant, and she looks like she’s really sticking her stomach out from some angles. Katie also wore an odd toga-like dress to the People’s Choice awards and some people speculated that it was an attempt to hide a growing baby bump. So is she pregnant or just slouchy? She could be trying to look less tall next to her husband.

Homes is very athletic and thin, and I can’t see her having a bump like this unless she’s pregnant. It’s hard to tell in that dress, but I’m voting for yes. How convenient for Holmes and Cruise’s PR that she’s pregnant again right at the same time as Kidman and right around the release date of Andrew Morton’s negative biography of her husband. We’ll have to wait and see, though. She really does look like she’s slouching in these photos, but maybe that’s because she wants everyone to get the hint.

There was a rumor that Tom Cruise couldn’t get Katie Holmes’ pregnant on his presumably second attempt, and we’ve all heard the theories that Suri isn’t Tom’s biological baby and that he’s really sterile. Whatever the case, congratulations to Tom and Katie on their second baby if this is true. They aren’t my favorite couple by a long shot, but if they want to have another baby and they’ve been successful we can wish them well. Katie probably feels the same about her husband’s ex. She said on the red carpet that “I’m so happy for [Nicole]. It’s wonderful.”

I hope Mad Money tanks at the box office, though, because it looks like a piece of crap. Fox News reports that the film makes no sense and is not entertaining. They also note that Katie and Tom skipped the post-premiere party. None of Tom and Katie’s friends like the Pinkett-Smiths or the Beckhams showed at the premiere.

Update: Everyone is voting for slouchy, so I’ll have to go with the majority on this one. Oh and she’s also going to run the Boston Marathon. My pregnancy-dar needs to get recalibrated after Nicole Kidman broke it.

Thanks to WENN and PR Photos for these pictures.

Tom Cruise is flaming. And by that, I mean the little bugger is flaming mad. Famous celebrity biographer Andrew Morton’s new, highly unauthorized biography of Cruise is hitting American bookshelves next Tuesday, despite attempts by both Cruise and the Church of Scientology to halt the publication. What could possibly get the Scientologists so riled up? The usually low-key, live-and-let-live followers of Xenu have got their panties in a bunch over the majority of the revelations in Morton’s book. As we had previously written, Morton actually had to go into hiding a few months ago due to threats from Scientologists. Then why am I writing this? Well I’m a horrible combination of highly principled and incredibly stupid, which just so happens to be the most successful personality combination for a celebrity blogger.

Scientology is one of those religions/cults (depending on your view) that’s so secretive it’s impossible to separate fact from fiction. And frankly, I think that if you’re going to keep so much of your “religion” private, you’ve got to expect that people are going to call it a cult and all sorts of urban legends are going to be invented. The problem with the secrecy is that it makes it hard for the rest of us non-cult members… I mean those of us who are not Scientologists… to make educated guesses about what’s fact and what’s fiction. And considering the whole legend of Scientology, I don’t think it’s ridiculous to believe a lot of the stories we hear about the inner workings of the cult/religion.

According to Andrew Morton, Tom Cruise has risen so high in the Scientology echelon that he’s effectively the number two in charge. This is one of many points in the book that’s being disputed by the church.

Tom Cruise has become the de-facto second in command of the Church of Scientology, according to a new biography - which makes an extraordinary attack on the star by comparing his 20-month-old daughter Suri to the Devil’s child in the film Rosemary’s Baby. Andrew Morton’s unauthorised biography claims Scientology has taken over the 45-year-old actor’s life, with its officials selecting many of the staff at his Hollywood mansion. The biographer of Princess Diana alleges Cruise is consulted by Scientology leader David Miscavige on “every aspect of planning and policy” and is tailoring his career to fit the aims of Scientology.

[From the Daily Mail]

Frankly, that’s one of the least salacious points in the book.

He [Tom Cruise’s lawyer Bert Fields]criticized a passage in which Morton claims some “fanatical” Scientologists believed Suri Cruise was actually the result of a sperm donation by Scientology’s dead founder, L. Ron Hubbard. Morton writes that Ms Holmes may feel she was in “the horror movie Rosemary’s Baby, in which an unsuspecting young woman is impregnated with the Devil’s child”.

[From the Daily Mail]

You’ll note that Andrew Morton doesn’t claim that Katie Holmes was impregnated with L. Ron Hubbard’s sperm, but simply that some fanatical Scientologists think she was. I’m going with ex-fiancé Chris Klein, but L. Ron Hubbard is a good second choice.

The book appears to portray Scientology leader David Miscavige as Tom Cruise’s biggest fan – to an almost creepy extent. Morton mentions a story that has been told for several years about Tom Cruise wanting to run through a field of wild flowers with Nicole Kidman before they were married. An earlier mention of this anecdote said it was a field of wheat, but the point remains the same.

Miscavige is said in the book to have gone to extraordinary lengths to charm Cruise, even ordering his staff to plant a field full of wild flowers at a Scientology base in California after Cruise had told him of his fantasy to run through a wildflower meadow with his then newlywed wife Nicole Kidman.

“A team of 20 Sea Org disciples was set to work digging, hoeing, and planting wheat grass and wildflower seed near the Cruises’ bungalow. Naturally the work was regularly inspected by David and Shelley Miscavige [his wife], who would ride over to the site on his motorbike. They were apparently unhappy with the finished appearance and had the area ploughed over and reseeded.”

Although Scientologists deny the wildflower planting ever happened, Morton claims to have legal affidavits from several witnesses.

[From the Daily Mail]

Much of the Daily Mail’s article about the book focuses on Scientology’s recruitment attempts. While they’ve always paid special attention to their celebrity followers (who many people claim are actually just paid celebrity endorsers), Scientology gets the bulk of their wealth from charging exorbitant fees to regular parishioners. Thus the more converts they have, the more money they get, and Morton accuses them of recently targeting the German people.

The author says Germany’s population of 80 million made it a perfect “new market” for Scientology, although the church is not recognized officially as a religion there.

“David Miscavige and his lieutenants were in Scientology’s war room at Hemet, planning the invasion of Germany. From time to time they were joined in their desert bunker by Tom, who these days is the organization’s second-in-command in all but name, involved in every aspect of planning and policy.”

[From the Daily Mail]

That’s interesting, considering how unwelcoming the Germans appeared to be towards Tom Cruise when he was filming Valkyrie around Germany. The film initially had trouble getting permission to do much of the necessary filming, though the German government eventually acquiesced. However it doesn’t appear that Tom Cruise – or Scientology – won over the hearts and minds of the German people during his tenure there.

Andrew Morton’s Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography comes out January 15th, and I’ll be in line to get it that day, and I hope I’ll see the rest of you at Barnes and Noble.