Canadian Oscar winner Haggis opens up about Scientology
"Crash" writer/director Paul Haggis holds up his two Oscars in West Hollywood, Calif., in March, 2006. The Canadian writer-director has told the New Yorker about his 34 years in what he calls the “cult” of Scientology. (March 5, 2006)
CHRIS PIZZELLO/AP FILE PHOTOOscar-winning Canadian writer Paul Haggis has detailed his 34 years in what he calls the “cult” of Scientology for the first time since his very public break with the controversial group.
“What I did was a treasonous act,” Haggis says about his denunciation of Scientology over its “public sponsorship of Proposition 8,” the California legislation against gay marriage.
“These people have long memories. My bet is that, within two years, you’re going to read something about me in a scandal that looks like it has nothing to do with the church.”
Lawrence Wright’s profile of Haggis and Scientology, titled “The Apostate,” is published in the Feb. 14 issue of The New Yorker.
It’s a prelude to Wright’s book on the group founded in 1952 by L. Ron Hubbard and Haggis’s role as one of its shining celebrity trophies.
Haggis, who grew up in London, Ont., won two Oscars in 2006 for best picture and best original screenplay for Crash. He was nominated in 2005 for best adapted screenplay for Million Dollar Baby.
Handed a paperback copy of Hubbard’s book Dianetics in 1975, when he was 22, Haggis embraced the philosophy after years of being “a bad kid.”
When he broke away, he was an Operating Thetan VII, the highest level short of studying at sea, and had spent $100,000 on courses and “auditing,” plus $300,000 on Scientology initiatives, he told Wright.
Haggis admitted Scientology connections, starting with many of the actors he met through theBeverly Hills Playhouse, gave him Hollywood breaks. Actors Tom Cruise and John Travoltaare its most visible celebrity champions.
The Church of Scientology lists 8,500 churches, missions and groups in 165 countries, including most major Canadian cities.
An FBI investigation into allegations by Scientology defectors of beatings straddled Haggis’s own research into the group that preceded his explosive August 2009, split. The investigation continues, Wright reported, led by agents whose specialty is human trafficking.
“I had such a lack of curiosity when I was inside,” Haggis told Wright. “I always felt false.”
Haggis found stories on the Internet of children who join at age 10 or 12 and spent years without an education, doing manual labour. To get out, they have to pay “freeloader tabs,” sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars, for courses and counselling.
“It horrified me,” he said. “I would gladly take down the church for that one thing.”
The Church of Scientology told Wright it follows “all child labor laws” and freeloader tabs are “an ecclesiastical matter.”
Wright carefully noted Scientology’s denial of allegations — and there were thousands of them. Scientology spokesman Tommy Davis, whose own Hollywood connections include his mother, actress Anne Archer, produced four dozen binders of documents for Wright.
But, the article concluded, they don’t hold up. No genuine military documents support Hubbard’s account of his miraculous cure from crippling, blinding war wounds, Wright said.
Davis contended anti-gay slurs were slipped into Dianetics by a non-Hubbard renegade, but they are still there, on page 125, Wright wrote.
Reports in January had contended that Haggis was collaborating with Wright on the book. A spokesman said recently, “Haggis asserts that he has absolutely no involvement in the book” although he is cooperating with Wright.
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