Teasing the Korean Posted March 30, 2015 Report Share Posted March 30, 2015 Did anyone watch this? It premiered on HBO last night. (It had earlier been shown at a film festival.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
clifford_thornton Posted March 30, 2015 Report Share Posted March 30, 2015 Tried to but our HBO Go streaming was really spotty - probably because so many people were trying to view it. Seemed like it had potential to be interesting. Caught one shot of our man Chick in the front row as Cruise was doing some rallying. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
colinmce Posted March 30, 2015 Report Share Posted March 30, 2015 I watched 75%, will finish tonight. Fucking insane. I've never delved too deep into it so a lot of the information was new to me (and apparently there's much, much, much more than the film got into). I'd like to follow up with the book of the same name. The footage from the Cruise thing was bizarre, but the stuff from their 1993 summit was unreal-- you have to see it to believe it. The film does a good job of framing Scientology as fully capitalist venture, and a truly ruthless one at that. It was interesting to learn more about Hubbard and to see just how "accurate" PTA's film The Master was in summarizing his character and the beginnings of the cult. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ejp626 Posted March 30, 2015 Report Share Posted March 30, 2015 It was interesting to learn more about Hubbard and to see just how "accurate" PTA's film The Master was in summarizing his character and the beginnings of the cult.It's probably just an urban legend, but my impression was that Scientology was more or less started as a bet between Hubbard and Heinlein that Hubbard could actually start a religion based vaguely on the lines of what is portrayed in Stranger in a Strange Land. Obviously the engram stuff got added later. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
catesta Posted March 30, 2015 Report Share Posted March 30, 2015 I definitely plan on watching this. I think the only experience I've ever had with Scientology was years ago when I was in my early 20s. A buddy and I each took a "personality questionnaire" in a local free paper geared towards the music scene and mailed it in. We had no idea what it was for other than we would get some kind of personality score/reading sent back to us. What ended up happening was getting a call to sit down with an expert one on one and discuss. So like two fucking idiots we went after work to what looked like a retail book store except there was only one book being pimped and it was "L. Ron Hubbard's Dianetics" or some shit like that. I still had no idea what the fuck was going on and who L. Ron Hubbard was but it took both of us about 15 minutes to realize we were in the wrong place and we got the fuck out of there. It probably would have been sooner but some of the chicks were cute. We went to a bar across the way and got shit faced after. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eric Posted March 30, 2015 Report Share Posted March 30, 2015 OMG, one of the funniest posts I have read in some time! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
clifford_thornton Posted March 30, 2015 Report Share Posted March 30, 2015 I definitely plan on watching this. I think the only experience I've ever had with Scientology was years ago when I was in my early 20s. A buddy and I each took a "personality questionnaire" in a local free paper geared towards the music scene and mailed it in. We had no idea what it was for other than we would get some kind of personality score/reading sent back to us. What ended up happening was getting a call to sit down with an expert one on one and discuss. So like two fucking idiots we went after work to what looked like a retail book store except there was only one book being pimped and it was "L. Ron Hubbard's Dianetics" or some shit like that. I still had no idea what the fuck was going on and who L. Ron Hubbard was but it took both of us about 15 minutes to realize we were in the wrong place and we got the fuck out of there. It probably would have been sooner but some of the chicks were cute. We went to a bar across the way and got shit faced after. Haha! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jazzbo Posted March 30, 2015 Report Share Posted March 30, 2015 I lived with members of the Org in Austin for a few years in the late 'eighties. . . rented a garage apartmen at a house where four to six of them were renting rooms. Nice people, quite misguided. I remember it with sadness because of the misery these people were suffering quietly. . . making no money, living poorly, thinking they were saving the world. I only know of one of them that is still in the Org. He married the widow of an important part of the Org and climbed the ladder. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gmonahan Posted March 30, 2015 Report Share Posted March 30, 2015 Frankly, I tend to regard all religions as kind of nutty (I mean, really, a demigod born to a Palestinian virgin in the reign of Augustus??), but I do confess that some are definitely crazier than others, and Scientology is at the top of the list. I recorded the show and plan to watch it tonight. gregmo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
erwbol Posted March 30, 2015 Report Share Posted March 30, 2015 Saw it. If I'm not mistaken a lot of the people who left now claim the freedom to practice their religion outside of the control of the church. Mainly the dianetics/auditing. That should have been mentioned. The first part of the documentary, before the OT levels are introduced and explained, gave me some sense of why they would want to do that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ejp626 Posted March 30, 2015 Report Share Posted March 30, 2015 I lived with members of the Org in Austin for a few years in the late 'eighties. . . rented a garage apartmen at a house where four to six of them were renting rooms. Nice people, quite misguided. I remember it with sadness because of the misery these people were suffering quietly. . . making no money, living poorly, thinking they were saving the world. I only know of one of them that is still in the Org. He married the widow of an important part of the Org and climbed the ladder.I lived a bit down the street from a big Moonie complex in Chicago. I don't think the Moonies are nearly as big a thing as they were in the 80s and 90s, at least in North America, but they are still around. I think it is true most people who are apt to join cults are missing something and hope to find it in the brother/sisterhood that one falls into immediately when one joins. But it is maybe just a question of degree from the other kinds of groups and associations one can join, and a question of degree how outward directed these groups are.After all, one could argue that someone trying to spread the gospel of Parker or Coltrane is a missionary of sorts, trying to save the world, and probably an unpaid one at that... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Ayers Posted March 30, 2015 Report Share Posted March 30, 2015 Uh - politics and religion? Do we want to close this thread before the 'opinions' multiply? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jazzbo Posted March 30, 2015 Report Share Posted March 30, 2015 Frankly, I tend to regard all religions as kind of nutty (I mean, really, a demigod born to a Palestinian virgin in the reign of Augustus??), but I do confess that some are definitely crazier than others, and Scientology is at the top of the list. I recorded the show and plan to watch it tonight. gregmo Not commenting on the nuttiness or not, but NOT a "demigod." The Word incarnate, the Son of God, not a son of a god in the Greek sense. ejp, saw lots of evidence of "missing something and hoping to find" in these friends and cohabitants. And I was too. . . just was not looking to Scientology to find that, and found what I needed independently of Scientology and left that place and started my real life. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JSngry Posted March 30, 2015 Report Share Posted March 30, 2015 Uh - politics and religion? Do we want to close this thread before the 'opinions' multiply? We do, but won't, but we certainly will when/if appropriate, as Scientlogy is considered a religion, and as you note, we don't allow political or religious discussions on this board. However - the topic of the original post was an HBO show, not the religion itself. So...fine line. Very fine line, already being teetered on. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sgcim Posted March 30, 2015 Report Share Posted March 30, 2015 I think everyone knows that Scientology only established itself as a "religion" so L.Ron wouldn't have to pay taxes. There were many jazz musicians who got involved in it, and as a previous poster said, it was sad to watch some of them living in poverty because they were giving what little money they made to the Org. One musician told me the sales pitch they gave was: "You can either spend tens of thousands of dollars going to a psychoanalyst, or you can just give us a thousand bucks, and get the same result." The Org was basically in a vicious fight with psychiatry to get people who had psych issues to come to them, rather than a shrink. One Org musician proudly showed me the letter he had written to some newspaper, backing the effort to close down mental hospitals. The Org probably helped some of the musicians I knew deal with issues that were not solely biological, but those who who had mental disorders of a purely biological nature just got worse. The last time I saw one musician like this, he was trying to stab another musician in the band with a fork (they had an argument about dynamics on the stand), and after he was disarmed, proceeded to have his head banged on the pavement repeatedly. As he was restrained by an off duty cop, he repeatedly defended his actions by exclaiming, "I had to defend my integrity!" The first time I met this musician was around the time that L. Ron had passed. His first comment was, "He's not dead; he's just away on research." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xybert Posted March 30, 2015 Report Share Posted March 30, 2015 Hopefully i don't cross any lines here. I'm a pretty big Chick Corea fan, was fairly deeply head over heels in to his music before i discovered that he was a Scientologist. Somehow i'd missed the Hubbard dedications in the liner notes. I still very vividly remember the moment when i was reading his Wikipedia page and came across the section about his involvement in Scientology. It was a real WTF moment. My world paused and there was a make or break moment where it was either going to be a deal breaker or it wasn't. In the end it wasn't, but i feel like my brain re-wired itself to a certain degree in that moment. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gmonahan Posted March 30, 2015 Report Share Posted March 30, 2015 Frankly, I tend to regard all religions as kind of nutty (I mean, really, a demigod born to a Palestinian virgin in the reign of Augustus??), but I do confess that some are definitely crazier than others, and Scientology is at the top of the list. I recorded the show and plan to watch it tonight. gregmo Not commenting on the nuttiness or not, but NOT a "demigod." The Word incarnate, the Son of God, not a son of a god in the Greek sense. ejp, saw lots of evidence of "missing something and hoping to find" in these friends and cohabitants. And I was too. . . just was not looking to Scientology to find that, and found what I needed independently of Scientology and left that place and started my real life. Seems like a distinction without much of a difference, Lon, but I sure won't start a discussion of religion here! I am very much interested in the documentary. It's getting a fair amount of play in social media. gregmo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jazzbo Posted March 30, 2015 Report Share Posted March 30, 2015 I see a lot of distinction, but I'm a student of such things. World of difference really but this is not the place. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
page Posted March 30, 2015 Report Share Posted March 30, 2015 (edited) There is an office of Scientology in A'dam and ever since I was 18 someone from them spoke to me on several occasions in trying to come with them and take some sort of test. I never did, since I am not as gullible as I look (apparently). (Even one time in Belgium a colleague of his did too. Weird.) A friend of mine did go one time and told me he had to take some psychological test which told him he needed to take action to get his life in order and they were his best option. For the people in Holland, this recrutement had this particular spot in the Kalverstraat for a very long time and since I first was student and then worked in the center of our Capital City I ran into him all the time. I do believe there must be a God (maybe strange to say for someone who grew up in a Christian home), but I don't understand a lot of things that happen in the world and have my questions about that and i do believe in a free mind; therefore I have become kind of hesistant towards movements like this one. No, I wouldn't even go with Tom Cruise when he would ask, not even when he would give me that great smile. Edited March 30, 2015 by page Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sgcim Posted March 30, 2015 Report Share Posted March 30, 2015 One pianist I knew went to Berklee, and there was a Scientology office right down the street, and they were always trying to recruit musicians. He and his friends used to get drunk on Friday nights, and then go over to the Scientology office and tell them that they wanted to commit suicide. They'd give the suicidal guy a test, and the suicidal guy would rip up the test papers and run out of there laughing his head off. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Larry Kart Posted March 30, 2015 Report Share Posted March 30, 2015 The leader of the outfit was/is particularly scary: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Miscavige It's also nice that various celebrities involved, like Cruise, are virtual prisoners of the outfit because they know that all the highly personal s--t they've spewed out over the years in whatever they call those "sessions" has been recorded and can be used against them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spontooneous Posted March 31, 2015 Report Share Posted March 31, 2015 Fell for the personality test scam for a minute, when I was about 16. I got out of there before I bought the book. Really, the only reason they got me was because they were next door to a record store. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kinuta Posted March 31, 2015 Report Share Posted March 31, 2015 I read the book, partly because I was impressed by his previous one, The Looming Tower. It was heavy going but pretty definitive and reinforced all my previous ideas about the cult. I can't see the documentary adding anything new but look forward to watching it asap. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scott Dolan Posted March 31, 2015 Report Share Posted March 31, 2015 (edited) Scientilogy, the religion where you genuinely pay your way to the top. Don't hold your breath on that two for one sale for Operating Thetan VIII. Edited March 31, 2015 by Scott Dolan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sidewinder Posted March 31, 2015 Report Share Posted March 31, 2015 Used to get acosted for a 'Personality Test' on a daily basis many years ago. Glad to say that I always politely told them where to go. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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