When Allen Barton steps into the spotlight, the curtain lifts on a world where art and reality intermingle with profound consequences. As a former Scientology actor turned playwright, Barton's narrative "Disconnection" not only mirrors his own journey but resonates with those tethered to or severed from the church. Our reunion with him unveils the stringent world of Scientology's film industry, where we grappled with casting challenges, braved extreme heat, and toiled under a crew burdened by the church's towering demands.
Venturing further into the realm of Scientology's influence on Hollywood, we uncover the tumultuous saga of the Beverly Hills Playhouse – an acting school that became a controversial nucleus for church recruitment. The dynamic presence of Scientology in the arts had reverberations, leading to a cultural shift within the church and turbulence in Tinseltown. With candid stories and revelations, Barton highlights the personal betrayals that underscored our respective departures from Scientology, marking a pivotal moment of change.
As the conversation unfolds, the peculiarities of Golden Era Productions come to light, from the quest for authenticity in representing L. Ron Hubbard to the emotional resonance of our shared memories. Each chapter of this episode paints a vivid collage of life before, within, and after the church's embrace, offering listeners an intimate glance at the enduring bonds crafted through the crucible of creative expression. Join us on this journey through laughter, nostalgia, and the sobering realities of Scientology's shadow over Hollywood.
BFG Store - http://blownforgood-shop.fourthwall.com/
Blown For Good on Audible - https://www.amazon.com/Blown-for-Good-Marc-Headley-audiobook/dp/B07GC6ZKGQ/ref=tmm_aud_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
Blown For Good Website: http://blownforgood.com/
PODCAST INFO:
Podcast website: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2131160/share
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/blown-for-good-behind-the-iron-curtain-of-scientology/id1671284503
Spotify: ...
When Allen Barton steps into the spotlight, the curtain lifts on a world where art and reality intermingle with profound consequences. As a former Scientology actor turned playwright, Barton's narrative "Disconnection" not only mirrors his own journey but resonates with those tethered to or severed from the church. Our reunion with him unveils the stringent world of Scientology's film industry, where we grappled with casting challenges, braved extreme heat, and toiled under a crew burdened by the church's towering demands.
Venturing further into the realm of Scientology's influence on Hollywood, we uncover the tumultuous saga of the Beverly Hills Playhouse – an acting school that became a controversial nucleus for church recruitment. The dynamic presence of Scientology in the arts had reverberations, leading to a cultural shift within the church and turbulence in Tinseltown. With candid stories and revelations, Barton highlights the personal betrayals that underscored our respective departures from Scientology, marking a pivotal moment of change.
As the conversation unfolds, the peculiarities of Golden Era Productions come to light, from the quest for authenticity in representing L. Ron Hubbard to the emotional resonance of our shared memories. Each chapter of this episode paints a vivid collage of life before, within, and after the church's embrace, offering listeners an intimate glance at the enduring bonds crafted through the crucible of creative expression. Join us on this journey through laughter, nostalgia, and the sobering realities of Scientology's shadow over Hollywood.
BFG Store - http://blownforgood-shop.fourthwall.com/
Blown For Good on Audible - https://www.amazon.com/Blown-for-Good-Marc-Headley-audiobook/dp/B07GC6ZKGQ/ref=tmm_aud_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
Blown For Good Website: http://blownforgood.com/
PODCAST INFO:
Podcast website: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2131160/share
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/blown-for-good-behind-the-iron-curtain-of-scientology/id1671284503
Spotify: ...
Hey guys, welcome back to the channel. Welcome to another episode of Mark and Mitch Make a Scientology film. Let's get Mitch in here, hey Mark, hey Mitch, great to see you again. Good to see you again. It's been a while, yeah.
Speaker 2:I understand you've been busy, which is a good thing.
Speaker 1:Yes, I've been all over the country over the last few weeks and yeah, well, but we're back. And today we have a special episode for you guys, because we have tracked down one of the actors who appeared in many of the films that we've already covered. And and yeah, without further ado, let me welcome you to Alan Barton. Hello, alan, he's a playwright.
Speaker 2:See you guys.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I just if I could say something before we go on. This is like a Jerry Springer show. You're seeing a reunion in real time, Okay.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:I, alan was a dear friend, a great actor.
Speaker 3:I one of the people I really, this is literally our first conversation in over 20 years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so I just want the audience to understand you're seeing something very unpremeditated. This is live, spontaneous. Alan, I just want to reach through there and give you a hug. It's so great to see you. Yeah, my mind is just like bursting with all of these these experiences that we had, because, you know, yeah, we were working for Scientology and it's an evil cult and all that, but we were artists doing our thing and, you know, at the time we thought we were doing something good. So I'm so happy to see you, yeah it's so great to see you.
Speaker 3:I'm so glad you made your way through and out and to see you and you look exactly the same. As I remember you haven't been touched by age or years or anything. So whatever deal you made, I want it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's a painting at my house in the closet that's aging very rapidly. Okay, yeah, so a portrait there you go?
Speaker 1:The last time we spoke, alan, was when you were writing a play called Disconnection. Yeah, that, that and it. What year was that?
Speaker 3:That was the Disconnection happened in 2015. But you and I spoke while I was writing it, in 2014 and 15, because there's a scene in the play between two C org members, married C org members, and and I sent it to you basically for like, does this pass muster? Like, is this what a conversation would be like between two people who are facing this? In that circumstance, I really wanted to make sure that I had it right, yeah, and so you helped me out by reading that scene and sort of saying, yep, that's pretty much how that might go.
Speaker 3:Yes, so we did two runs of that play in Los Angeles in 2015,. One at the beginning of the year and it was like bonkers, just like practically sold out the whole run. And then we brought it back in the fall with a change I made to the beginning of the play. Because you know, when you're playing right, you're watching your own play you're like you know what, this opening scene just doesn't cut it. You know like the place is full, like everyone's going crazy, and you're like I'm not happy with the first scene. And when it's, when it's your theater and your play, you get the chance to be like you know, I'm gonna fix it so, but that was an amazing experience and amazing to see the people who came out, who people who I knew, and then a lot of people who I didn't know, who were in at a much higher level than I was or even worked in the sea or worked for Miss Gavage, and the conversations I had after that play, sometimes for an hour or more, were really something else, really something else.
Speaker 2:So you know, I hope you do it again, alan. I hope you do it again, because I would yeah, I'll send you the script.
Speaker 3:Yeah, at least. I'd love to read it, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Great Thank you. One of the fondest memories I have of Alan and shooting on the set was when we were doing the film TRs in Life TR-1.
Speaker 2:Which is when we first met Alan. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And we shot all these vignettes throughout the entire film, with different characters from different time periods and different walks of life. And at the end of the film all of these people are sort of mystically conjured into this course room, a Scientology course room, where they're going to learn how to do these training routines so they can sort out the problems they had in their individual video.
Speaker 2:And there was. I just want to say Mark, there was. We had the heavy hitters in terms of the cast in that film Because we had Alan and we had.
Speaker 3:Sorry, I missed that last question. You guys cut out what was it?
Speaker 1:We were saying who we had in that film. We had Jason Begay, we had Larry Anderson. Yeah, larry Anderson.
Speaker 2:Carl Zamudia.
Speaker 3:And Elliot Me yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there was all of the heavy weight Scientology actors, scientologists.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the whole gang was there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like you know, if a jumbo jet would hit that stage, no, more movies.
Speaker 1:Scientology film production would have been shut down for years. But when we got every, when we had to get everybody back for this scene, there was so many I want to say there was at least 15 or so different actors that we had to reunite, and some of these people were on TV shows or some of them actually were working actors, and it was hard to get all of them out to this air force base in the middle of the San Fernando Valley. San.
Speaker 3:Bernardino, san Bernardino. Yeah, it was way out there. It was like a full hour yeah it was literally Indian.
Speaker 2:You know, literally Native American Indian country.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and there was no air conditioning. Yeah, so that was it was pretty hard.
Speaker 3:The actors were just pissed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we're getting everybody there. It's a million. It's at least 100 degrees inside the studio. We have all these lights on and we can't turn on the air conditioning because it makes all this noise.
Speaker 2:We brought in a portable. By the way, alan said there was none, but we brought in one.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, I remember there was like a big and we would all go near it and like yeah, that's exactly right.
Speaker 1:It was like this giant flexible hose that the actors would cluster around in between the scenes.
Speaker 2:You could crawl into it. It was big enough that you could actually crawl in and cool down.
Speaker 1:Yeah. But so I wanted to ask you, what was that like? Like, from our end it was just a giant cluster. It was a nightmare to work, even to work in that studio, because it didn't have air conditioning. It was in the middle of nowhere, we didn't have any kind of food services or craft services or anything, but it was quiet.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was quiet, it used to be a new life within 10 miles, but it also not even a scorpion.
Speaker 2:It was too hot, it was dead. We had scorpions in the restroom. I'm sure you found a couple.
Speaker 1:The studio that we shot in used to be a nuclear bunker where they had that was like a secondary location after whatever's in the mountains and call it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was built as a movie shooting studio, but it was built to withstand a nuclear attack because right outside the studio was a runway. They used to take like transport jets and not while we were there, but fighter jets. So they built that studio so you could hear a pin drop while there was like an F-16 fighter taking off outside, so it was really so quiet in there. It was kind of scary. And we also believe it was the site where they filmed the alien autopsy, because we found evidence that that happened there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there was a lot of freaky stuff in that place Really freaky, but it was cheap and it was quiet.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but I wanted to hear from Alan what was your impression and what was that like compared to going to other shoots and working with other crews?
Speaker 3:Well, it was at the time, the conditions you described. We're all agreeing about the conditions. The first thing we remember was like ridiculous. But as an actor and I was not like some big-time Scientologist, I was like a celebrity center guy doing courses and stuff but got pulled into audition and I got this gig. But you had to get sex checked, you had to go through these clearances to work and to be hired and it was like this big deal and my father worked in the defense industry and so there was kind of a hitch because it was like what did he do and where did he work? And so there was this sort of big hump I had to get over just to get onto that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but in fairness, alan, you also spoke fluent Russian, so even I was suspicious.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so there is a little bit.
Speaker 2:It's a questionable there.
Speaker 3:You know one of the big commercials I got when I was still acting. I had to speak Russian in it and it was shot out in that area too at some point. Yeah, but I remember my first day on the set, which was in LA, because my scene was I was a traveling salesperson and this Atlas housewife. She opens the door and I try to sell her something and she has a crush on the salesperson. And it was my first day on any gold set, so I had no idea what this was. Were these people prissy? Was this like a solemn journey of spiritual awareness? Like what was the vibe?
Speaker 3:I was a little bit scared my first day. I didn't know who Mitch was. He walks over and we do a little rehearsal and Mitch walks over and gives Mariana Elliott, who's playing the housewife, the following direction. He says just look at him like you want to f his brains out, okay, like open the door and here's this guy, you just want to f his brains out. And I laughed so hard because Mitch has got that very humorous way of delivering these things. I went oh, this is going to be fun. Like the director's cool and you were cool, mark and Sadie, and like all these people I remember like were very cool, accessible, fun people. So when I read when I read your book, mark, and when I read Mitch recently, your book to see the behind the scenes of the horror show under which you guys were working as an actor, you were really shielded from that, at least I was like.
Speaker 3:For me, working at gold was a blast, other than the drive and sometimes the conditions. You know, once we got to the new studio is lovely. But you know, norton was a shit show. But, um, yeah, to put it, my vibe that you guys created on the set and I don't know if that came from Mitch, I don't know if it was just that particular crew at that particular time late nineties I think this was it was honestly a lot of fun.
Speaker 3:There was a great camaraderie and an easygoing thing and it went to for the actors. It didn't feel rigid. It had the same, you know, the robotic arm from hell on that shoot. You know, I remember Jason McGay losing his shit because he was the one working professionally and he was making a special effort to get out there and he was fucking pissed and he's got that temper and so it was tense, because sometimes the actors were tense, but what you guys created was really a fun environment. I had a blast generally working for gold. I looked forward to going out there, mostly because of you two and Sadie. And who was the camera guy? The? He was John John.
Speaker 2:John, john, yeah good guy, he's still in, yeah. Yeah, but a wonderful guy, I mean, and I don't know.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I don't know what he was behind the scenes. He was a good guy.
Speaker 2:Well, I just want to experience was like as an actor for me at least.
Speaker 2:Thanks for that, Ellen. I think it was our intention to do that. You know I've spoken with Sterling Topkiss I don't know if you knew Sterling. He was a Seward member, a young kid, and I had him in a number of films and he mentioned about how, for a staff member at gold, it was like being in the studio and being in a film was like an oasis, because nobody could grab you out. You weren't going to get any trouble during that time. But I just want to I feel kind of obliged to say, because you did reveal the fact that I gave Mariana Elliott kind of a obscene direction. I have to tell you Mariana thanked me for that so much because it did help her to get to the absolute perfect.
Speaker 3:Oh, yeah, and Mariana is totally cool, like she's not someone who and this was also.
Speaker 1:You know, this was late 90s.
Speaker 3:I don't want them to think that I was using you know yeah, but even late 90s already as a generation enough that you're like, yeah, we spoke differently then and there was a different attitude about how you spoke to people. But Mariana was totally cool, she loved you. Yeah, no problem.
Speaker 1:She did shoot a ton of things with Mariana as well, yeah, she was she was in probably just about as many as town was in.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, she's terrific at it. Yeah, I don't know what she's doing today, but she was. There were a few people that I was. I felt there were good friends that I actually saw outside of that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, she worked with me at the Playhouse for a long time and then, honestly, it was actually my play ended it because she was kind of ordered to from wherever the ethics at CC or whoever, oh, she was, basically gave her. Gave her a.
Speaker 1:You either quit that place or you can't do it Do this or whatever should disconnect from you because you play senior sense connection.
Speaker 2:Haven't seen her since she's still in Scientology.
Speaker 3:I think I would think so, but on that level where she's been in for 25 or 30 years and still isn't clear, I don't know. Yeah, it's terrible.
Speaker 2:It may just be.
Speaker 3:I think for a lot of people it's just something that's comfortable that they do, it's a routine, it's I don't know. I don't want to get you guys know way more about what you do have a place to speak on that.
Speaker 2:I mean I think of that as community and structure which is important, like a religious community, quite a separate from the belief system is an important thing, any kind of community like that. So sometimes people, they just need that support in that community which Scientology can give you in some situations not in the sewer for sure, yeah, well, there's that.
Speaker 3:There's that what I found when I I mean, I had been out for a number of years for various reasons and it wasn't until whatever 2007, eight, you know, jason Begay did his videos and then, right, the blogs, and the blogs were starting to come out and Rathbun, and you know, and I was like huh, what you know, I would be up until three or four in the morning, sometimes reading, and reading could not believe, because I had been there, like when I read Mark's book, I was like I was on set an hour before this hellacious, awful, abusive thing. Yeah, I was sitting, I was sleeping or watching TV and the G's, the guest quarters, which were really quite nice, right, service, you know, you had a service person come in and anything you need, blah, blah, blah, while Mark was running laps in the mud or whatever Crazy shit, like I was flipping these pages, I couldn't believe that I was seeing. They're like, yeah, what a professional run set. Ooh, I'm having so much fun. And like there was just abuse happening all around. Oh, my God, what a journey.
Speaker 3:But for a guy at my level, going to CC was fun. There was fun people there, there was a piano in the lobby. I got to play it, I got to work in these films. I became kind of within that universe, a bit of a celebrity once those movies came out, like you'd get talked to a certain way or like you know you've got that little taste of what it would be if you became a celebrity in the real world. So for me it was honestly a lot of fun. I never had any difficult time other than production difficulties or fights between. I don't know if you guys were aware of. Sometimes there'd be these epic fights between was it Hillary who ran? Who was the host?
Speaker 2:Yeah, Hillary.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Uh, I don't know, somewhere between her and up above her and Milton could sell us who ran the playoffs. Yes, There'd be these huge battles about me and my time because Milton would be like I need him for a meeting and if Milton needed you for right, because you were for those who don't know.
Speaker 2:You were an executive at the Beverly Hills Playhouse.
Speaker 3:Yeah, like way up there. So if he needed me for a meeting, that was it, and I would be like, well, I'm supposed to go do a reshoot at gold. Yeah, He'd be like no, he'd be like, no, you're not going. Tell him you can't go, and I'd be like uh, uh, uh my boss says I can't go.
Speaker 3:And then there'd be this battle of like intention, without reservation, Like who can turn out on board? Yeah, the other one, like these battles might be seeing they're going like uh, so sometimes I don't know if you remember, I'd shoot until two o'clock and then come back for a meeting and then go back out and sleep overnight, shoot in the morning, go to the playhouse for a meeting, Right, you know that would be the well you you've brought up two things here that I want to address.
Speaker 2:One production difficulties. I want to get back to that, sure. But you also brought up the Beverly Hills Playhouse, which a lot of people watching are not going to know. They're not going to know anything about. So maybe you could give us a little background on the Beverly Hills Playhouse, because it actually played a very important role in the Scientology community in Los Angeles.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the Beverly Hills Playhouse is one of the big acting schools in Los Angeles. It's been around for now 40 some odd years and it was founded by a guy named Milton Cotsellos, who was a very, very famous and legendary teaching.
Speaker 2:We had a little clip Are you there, yeah, did you, just you glitched out for a moment.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, sure he there's occasional glitches on my end. I have a good signal, but it's glitching here and there. Um so Milton Cotsellos was a very, very famous acting teacher. He started the Beverly Hills Playhouse as a school. He was also a very well known Scientologist and really before the era of Tom Cruise, I think, in Hollywood was considered one of the main opinion leaders or one of the most foremost upstanding. Like I am a Scientologist, yeah, yeah, f yourself. He was out there upfront.
Speaker 2:He was personal friends with Hubbard, he knew Hubbard yeah.
Speaker 3:There was a picture of the two of them. I remember to this day on the ship behind Milton's desk there was a picture of him and Ron on the ship. So very, very close ties to Jench and all the people who started CC very tight, very close relationship and for a period there in the mid late nineties there was a tremendous flow of people back and forth, like Div six to the Playhouse, playhouse to Div six. There was this kind of became a.
Speaker 2:It became a sales funnel. The Baylor's Playhouse was kind of known as a sales funnel for Scientology.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but it was more. It wasn't in the classes, like if you were to sit in a class, it really wasn't there. That right here and there they were talking about.
Speaker 2:They were talking about.
Speaker 3:PTS. It was more like just that within the structure of the classes there were so many Scientologists who would do FSM or would take you to an event or would. There was like all this private coaching and FSM and going on. So there was a period there where there was a tremendous amount of synergy, that. But even at that peak that was maybe 15% of the students had anything to do with sign Right. Yeah, there was just. It was just that a lot of big ones yeah, but that's a lot of people.
Speaker 2:The school was, it was and it was gay and our Jim.
Speaker 3:Elfman Bodie, elfman Catherine Bell, I mean like big celebrity Jeffrey.
Speaker 2:Timbore Jeffrey. Timbore Giovanni Rebezi.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there was a moment there in the late nineties where all of these people were successful at the same time Very much out Scientologists and we're studying with Milton.
Speaker 3:And we're studying at the Playhouse. So that's, I think, mitch, when you want to serve a reference point. And that carried all the way until about 2003, which is we're getting into the Tom Cruise era, where this increased pure tentacle, militant style of advocacy for the, for Scientology, kind of took hold. Milton, that pushed Milton away. He was not that kind of guy. He had his own ethics in his personal life. He was a single Greek man, highly charismatic Greek man, of a certain age, a certain era. They ran their lives a certain way on the, on the 2D as we say. So he would get in notorious trouble because he was such a horn dog, let's face it. You know what I mean. He would just make. I do know left and right, I do know and, and I wanted to look the same.
Speaker 2:They were tall, skinny blond, so I mean it was like yes, milton, yeah the time, yeah the time.
Speaker 3:And so, as the cruise kind of pure tentacle thing took over, milton's old school style was pushed aside. And not only pushed aside, he became a target, and they by 2003, 2004,. He was being targeted for his ethics and his out to the in the fact that he didn't progress on the bridge and he didn't give money and he didn't go to events and he had his iconoclastic like I am my own man style Suddenly became in conflict with the new culture there and that's what blew it up. That's what actually blew me out was not so much things that were happening to me, but the things I observed happening with Milton that I felt were in unjust, unfair, extreme.
Speaker 3:And I ended up being with him in meetings with like these high level ethics people at the AO, confronting these like 50 page knowledge reports you know people were to write knowledge reports is like just a mass, like like they were crazy. So I would be kind of his. I don't know a consigliari in these meetings at AO and I was watching these people go insane, crazy. Not that Milton was a prince, but the. The reaction was so extreme that it turned me off and that was actually when I got out was long before I even wrote Disconnection, or long before 2007, 2008, when the blogs and Marty and the people were starting to get out and tell people what was going on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I remember it got to the point where you were expected if you were an actor, if you were expected to speak out against Milton, that where you could actually get points with ethics for impugning the Beverly Hills Playhouse and then enter Grant Cardone who turned it into a career Right.
Speaker 1:Wasn't that and wasn't that sort of through Elena that that happened, because Elena was an actress who is studying at the Beverly Hills Playhouse Right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and like she, you know, there was like some interaction with her and Milton. I won't get into that. There was an interaction with her and Milton. I won't get into one way to weigh all that stuff. I don't know. You know what I mean. That's right.
Speaker 1:I started that fire with.
Speaker 3:Grant. I know some things about that, but that's what lit the whole Grant Cardone thing on fire. Grant wrote an email, kr, that he then blasted to like a thousand people. That was just the shitstorm of shitstorms. Yeah, so yeah, that's, that's, that's that's yeah.
Speaker 2:So the, the, the, this, this sort of the space, the Beverly Hills place, it became this lightning rod for, uh, essentially, and when I was at gold.
Speaker 3:Uh, you guys probably knew I was being pulled into whatever ethics was in the studio. I was being pulled in and being grilled on Milton, yeah. So I would come off set and they'd be like, come here, I'd sit down and be like what's going on? And there'd be someone Potter, what's your name? Potter? Something Potter, Anyway, uh, and she would be like what's going on with Milton's uh, out of ethics on his 2D? And I'd be like sorry, I don't know, Like I'm, I'm just here shooting a movie. I'm not responsible for Milton's ethics on his 2D or what he's doing in the bedroom. Like, and she goes well, what's going on with the Beverly Hills play house? I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, you know, like this very rigid thing that was pushing me away as well, this like that rigid, prissy thing being pulled into ethics by like, like at CC, I'd be pulled in sometimes by like a 14 year old ethics officer being questioned about the play house, about Milton, about my allegiance to the Milton, and that's going on, you know, and I just went like you're 13.
Speaker 1:Like what is going on, like that's when. I started to be like this is like the Twilight Zone, you people never ends, whatever you know, true crime watchers or whatever.
Speaker 2:What you're hearing about is the David Muscavige era of Scientology. Yeah, like this is 100% what is going on with us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I remember from the golden era and and the talent, the you know the people that dealt with the actors and actresses that there was a guy I think his name was Mark and he worked at the play house as like sort of an ethics officer within the play house. Mark.
Speaker 3:McPherson.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so he was getting parts and getting kind of they were putting him into stuff because he was giving us information and he was sort of like the inside guy. That was kind of giving us the real deal of what was going on. But then I remember when I was out and seeing like oh no, that guy, you know, these people are still there and they're working, are they? You know who, what their allegiances were or whatever.
Speaker 1:I don't know after I left in 2005, but I do remember that it was just a big mess and even if we got somebody, if they had been at the play house, it was then where it used to be like a good thing. It was like, oh no, we can't use that person because they're connected to the play.
Speaker 2:So it kind of was turning into this thing, yeah, and thinking 9% of all the good actors I had to work with, it was really true, yeah. Yeah, and then you'd have to reshoot, right, it's like yeah, I, you know, somebody gets something stupid like made it, wrote a play, put on a play called disconnection. Yeah, but that was.
Speaker 3:I have to reshoot. Well, like I'd be curious, like when did when did I become like? Because I think I was declared somewhere, I don't know, 13, 14, 15, something like that. I never really, of course, I never got copied. You know, you find out because everyone's dumping you on Facebook or something you know, was there a time where at some point they were like okay, we got to reshoot the Dianetics thing that this guy, alan, became up?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I imagine me. Well, you know, I was going to say one is a big reshoot. Yeah, we did that. I want to bring up this picture real quick, mitch, I'll bring this up. We did a film called TR 16 beingness, and in this film we had not only these four, which is Jason Begay, alan Barton, there up on the upper right, and then Jeff Pomerance, who does all the voiceovers for us. Scientology, different productions the intro.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he does all the events, if you've ever heard that. But crazy like, are you ready to rumble? It sounds like the Las Vegas wrestling guy.
Speaker 1:Yes, that would be him, and then Larry Anderson is there, the last one of the picture, but you also had in this film. We had we had Tate Rupert, we had Jim Mescomand, jim Hammer my god, we have Odie Elfman.
Speaker 2:Was it Odie?
Speaker 1:Elfman, carla Zamudio. We had a whole. We basically had the who's who of the Scientology actors that had been in other films.
Speaker 2:Well, it had a huge cast.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we had it in this film as well, in this TR 16 film. But the film, the thing that you were just talking about with the Dianetics video we shot a project called the. It was going to be a Dianetics. They called it a documersal because they didn't want to be. They didn't want to be be lumped in with the infomercial.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because I had pointed out to David Ms Gavage I didn't want to do an infomercial because I thought it was bad positioning for Scientology. And I said you tell me one premium product in existence on planet Earth that has ever done an infomercial, and you tell me all the products that you really love and admire. Not one of them ever did an infomercial. And so he said okay, we're going to do a documersal.
Speaker 1:So it's just an infomercial. That's called a documersal, like a documentary and a commercial. But but regardless, we shot, we shot that and the host, the narrator of that project was Grant Cardone.
Speaker 2:No, yes, and so on camera commentator. That's how we met Grant.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that is how Grant got involved with all of this was yeah that's how he met Elena.
Speaker 2:She was cast in a film. That's where they met. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we were downtown LA, you know, midnight we were. She was in a little vignette. I was sitting in the trailer with Grant. She came walking into check in with talent. Talent wasn't in there, so she walked up, introduced herself to me. I recognize her. She didn't know me, but I cast her in my headshot because she didn't have any lines. She just had a slap a dude and walk away. Remember, we shot that kind of shit all the time. Just slap him. You know, it's for Dianetics. And so Grant went like Mono Salabek when he saw her. He was like, and then he said to me you have to introduce me to her and I'm like, I'm not going to pimp for you. You can, she's on the set, go introduce yourself. So anyway, that's how that whole thing happened.
Speaker 1:So we shot that whole thing and David Miscavige didn't want to use Grant. We had to basically sell him on using Grant and then we shot the whole thing. And with him we shot all these different where he just narrates and introduces a scene, and one of those was the session where we show how to do this session. Now, the actress who came to be in that session was was going to be. It was just, it was a two shot or it was just two, two actors this girl and then been shares facing each other.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and they had to do a Dianetics auditing session. Well, that girl had been up all night with Grant the night before it was Grant.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and it was Grant.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and he was nagging about it. In the morning, when he came into the lounge and the town lounge and the cast, he was like that's perfect. He was like oh, I, you know, I had to use up a whole bottle of Viagra. And he's telling all this stuff and we're just like, are you an insane person?
Speaker 3:Like we have to show the guy who writes a KR on Milton.
Speaker 1:Yes, and we had to shoot with him, but that's whatever.
Speaker 1:But yeah, but he was. But but because we had to shoot with her, he, she literally didn't know any of her lines. And to me it was kind of wild because Alan would do his lines and then he would do her lines and then she would just pair it back her lines to Alan. So we had that, we, we cut around everything, but Alan, just from that. Yeah, this, this part to me was I went, you went up so many levels as an actor to be out. Yeah, you did all of your lines. I remember the crew lines.
Speaker 3:That was like a day where the crew I earned a certain level of respect with the crew. I remember I like no because, I want but saving that on that day, by, by doing because, the thing it going out of way to.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the thing at Gold, this actress who, by the way, I got in her end of Scientology and she used to work for me. She was a really good friend of mine, she was, she had been one of the girls that was brought into audition as Tom Cruise's potential girlfriend, and blah, blah, blah and I never do about this. I thought, oh, poor girl, you know, sometimes this happens to an actor right now and they're just having the worst day and they can't remember anything. And I thought, oh, I've got to help her out. What am I going to do? Plus, at Gold, everybody gets in trouble. If we can't get through that day, if we can't figure out a way to solve it, they're not going to blame it on her, they're going to blame it on everybody. And they're going to blame it on a lot, on Mark, because he's running the group. So, yeah, he's really going to get it big time.
Speaker 1:So we had to come up. I just remember Alan saving my ass that day.
Speaker 3:He did all of her lines. I was like this guy's our superman, we're going to do this.
Speaker 2:We handed him the script and, like, read her her line. So he would say hello, how are you, how are you doing today, how's it going? And she would say fine, and then we would cut it together.
Speaker 3:It was great. So, yeah, you couldn't tell that. That's how it was put together at all.
Speaker 2:It was amazing.
Speaker 1:But, in the end none of that footage, none of that stuff ever became a project and they know we never got released.
Speaker 2:Well, but just for clarification, just just to be historically accurate about this, everything we shot with Grant was thrown out. All the other stuff was then incorporated into other projects.
Speaker 1:Yes, we used all of that footage in B-Roll or Scenic.
Speaker 2:But Grant footage never, ever saw the one and somewhere.
Speaker 1:There is a whole thing of Grant being the front guy for Scientology and Dietics and being this thing, and the craziest part of it is that David Muscavige didn't like him because he came off as like a swarmy Swarmy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he's just like a like a used car salesman.
Speaker 2:Yeah, kind of a thug, yeah, so yeah, but the so the amazing thing is not long before I left Scientology, I was at Scientology Media Productions and I got a letter from David Muscavige and he said that, okay, so I did this thing with a writer, this woman that used to work with us, and she and I wrote this thing. Right, she was with us on the set all the time when we were shooting Grant. She had a massive crush on Grant, right, and it was kind of silly. But so apparently Grant had gone to Muscavige years later and said he'd warned the writer of this woman that it wasn't going to work and that we were just like kidding ourselves. He lied to him this was a total fiction, Like he never. He never told her that because he was never with her when I wasn't there, you know, it was like because we were always on the set together. So he, to ingratiate himself with Muscavige, he told this lie about.
Speaker 2:Well, you know the thing I told the writer that it wasn't going to work and then I know that Ms Gavige believed it because he wrote me and said the person's name. Grant told me that he warned her that that wasn't going to work out. Anyway, fortunately this was towards the my final days there and there was so much crap going on. But yeah, so anyway, that's that's our. Somehow we managed to work in a grand card on story.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, because he crossed so many different paths. Well, yeah, and with the playhouse he really was a villainous talk character.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and he was doing it also just to ingratiate himself, to make himself look good. He was just going to tear these people apart, which is you know sort of sort of Milton on a platter for. Yeah, yeah, his own psychopathic, narcissistic game. It was just not a good guy, yeah, the other shoot I wanted to ask you about, alan, was.
Speaker 1:We did a what we called well, it was a trailer for one of these films and we shot it on Hollywood Boulevard, right where they Scientology has the Hollywood test center, the big building right near Hollywood in Highland that's got the Scientology sign down the side of it, and it was. It was a trailer for the film PC indicators, and what was supposed to happen is they're supposed to be this this gunman who's up in up in the building and he's either got hostages or he's I don't remember premise, but he's got a gun and he's shooting at everybody and there's a gun.
Speaker 2:He's got a an AK and a key, so he's got a machine gun.
Speaker 1:I don't think we're supposed to say that word. We say Pew, pew. Right, he's got a Russian designed and he's supposed to shoot at a bunch of the cop cars and we had like pyros squibs, you know, to make the bullets fire and all this other stuff. But we were supposed to do this starting like right when it got dark and, of course, in true golden era, shoot crew style. We weren't exactly ready at that time.
Speaker 3:I was like it was midnight one in the morning.
Speaker 1:I want to say, yeah, we were shooting off these Pew Pews, these fully automatic Pew Pews, in the middle of the night, with blanks but, but I remember it being very loud. But what were you in that seat? You were like a reporter.
Speaker 3:I was a reporter or somebody who didn't understand what was going on. So someone comes up like the Scientologist or the person who knows about indicators, like says some. I just remember, because this was the audition, like you know, you got to look at the guy's skin tone and my response was like skin tone, yeah. So I thought the after you talking about you know, and that was the audition was skin tone and for years after that, like people would come up to me at CC and be like skin tone. You know, like it was just one of those readings that you know, yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean, yeah, I think, I think the setup was there was a hostage negotiator. Yeah, that was using Scientology technology to try to evaluate the guy's emotional state.
Speaker 3:Exactly.
Speaker 2:And so they could talk him down.
Speaker 3:Of course, the whole thing goes horribly meant bad, and you were the kind of lead hostage negotiator and some guy who knows about PC indicators is talking to me and say I look at the guy's skin tone. I'm like oh my goodness, that was an early gig for me too. That was like one of the like second or third or something like that. I was still sort of getting my sea legs on. The vibe was.
Speaker 1:Yeah, one of the other reasons why I remember that because it was a night shoot and we would set up during the day and then we would shoot at night and then we would sleep in Los Angeles. And then the next day we drive back up to the desert to golden air productions and one of the crew was in trouble. He was a camera guy and he had gotten trouble because some shot was out of focus or something happened or was a bad camera move and and he was supposed to get interrogated at gold. So he told us in the morning he said hey, I got to go back to gold to go get interrogated and there's a special shuttle that'll take people, like at times. So then we were setting up for the shoot and then we shot all night and then the next morning somebody said hey, blah, blah, blah needs to come to get sex checked right after you guys are done with the shoot. We're like he went yesterday to do that and then we were like, uh-oh, he got a 24-hour head start. He's gone, he's gone.
Speaker 3:He's way to the Arizona border.
Speaker 1:And no one has ever heard from that guy ever. He literally disappeared into the ether and I've asked people about him since I left in 2005. But yeah, no. So whenever we did that shoot we lost somebody and then that ended up, then we had to. All kinds of other nonsense happens when one of the crew kind of escapes during a location shoot.
Speaker 3:He gets busted for the fact that an escape happens at you or Well, that was a huge thing.
Speaker 2:No, no, I would not get in trouble with that.
Speaker 3:Because you were never like see your Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean. Well, the other thing is they're not going to yank me into ethics because that means they have to shut shooting down. Yeah, so they can get another cameraman or whatever, but I was the only guy who could run the crew direct to set, so it was like I could get away with a lot and I did so.
Speaker 1:I'm pretty sure I'm the one who got in trouble for that, because he was, he was in, I was over grip, lighting and camera were my direct.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Seared members that I was responsible for, even though I was also responsible for makeup and costume and props and everything else. But yeah, but the organizationally grips, camera and lighting were directly under me, so if a camera person escapes, yeah, he was your guy, Mark, and you should have seen it coming.
Speaker 2:God damn it. You should have seen it coming.
Speaker 1:I know I didn't. You know what I didn't see? I didn't see the indicators, that's what?
Speaker 3:Yeah, you didn't see a skin tone. I couldn't tell what a skin tone Mark skin tone.
Speaker 2:He was. Well, you know, alan, as you mentioned the I guess buzz phrase that is a thing. The catchphrase I guess the catchphrase for you from that ad was skin tone, right, and it became like a catchphrase. People would come up to you and they'd say it. That's one of the things that Mark and I have been discussing on the show is the number of catchphrases within Scientology. They came out of these films. You know, like I duplicated. You're right, mark did one. He came out of a room. He said wrong room. People would do that all the time. There's a bunch of them. You also had another one in that being this film. I'm trying to remember what it is Was it the four?
Speaker 2:Yeah, the four. Yeah, it was with the yeah.
Speaker 1:Do you remember Could?
Speaker 3:I just have. What is it? Two more days?
Speaker 1:You know like yeah.
Speaker 3:Like because he's always wanting more time, if I remember, and I would be like I need just one more day, just one more day. Like he was so neurotic, he was so overwhelmed.
Speaker 2:You know, it was like a big deal getting that.
Speaker 3:I remember reading like LRH advices or whatever they called them, like pages of him talking about this character that they couldn't cast at the time he was making these movies, yeah, yeah, that's another key thing.
Speaker 1:I didn't even we should bring that up and that TR-16 being this film. Elron Hubbard is coaching these people on how they're supposed to do this. I had to have scenes with him, yeah.
Speaker 2:And so we had a political Well hold on, Not with him, but we had a With a voice. Yeah, we had a body actor that we shot from behind, because that's how.
Speaker 2:Hubbard instructed to stupidest thing in the world. We had a voice. You know, we were never supposed to say impersonator, we were supposed to say, and then we had an actor portray his voice. It was a portrayal because obviously, as any actor knows, there's a difference between an impersonation and a portrayal. So so anyway, but basically we did the best we could to impersonate Elron Hubbard from behind.
Speaker 1:And, just as another callback, the guy that we used most of the time to do the body double back there Elron Hubbard back then yeah, was the guy that blew on that shoot in Los. Angeles.
Speaker 2:All right, that's right. So on this, on this film, we had to get an outside.
Speaker 1:It's when we had a real big guy that really matched Elron Hubbard, exactly Like they just died. Yeah, we had to do all these hair tests to send him a scavenge of the back of this guy's, like the right on his neck and his hair and his ears, and they were comparing, forensically comparing, yeah, yeah, and Hubbard's head, yeah.
Speaker 2:And he was really concerned. Remember Mark with Hubbard apparently had very thick wrists and long, long, skinny fingers. So this was like whoa, this is a big deal. No, fingers are too short.
Speaker 1:Nope, wrist or tooth, that no it was just it was never ending to find a guy who matched Elron yeah, from back so, and he didn't. All he did was move, that's it. He would do like there was hand movements and then there was head shakes and there was not. Yeah, yeah, that was really it, and it was like this is the hardest part is just getting something to look like him. Not even the other stuff, and pretty much anybody we get can do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know if it's worth talking about the con, the actual concept of that film, but it's based on a true story that Hubbard had actually himself trained all of these auditors up to a certain level and they all were horrible, and so his, his, his solution for that was to explain to them that maybe it was their attitude, that maybe when they were auditing they had the wrong attitude, and maybe they needed to take a little bit of time and think about their attitude and think about what and who they were trying to be. It's really a mind fuck kind of a thing, and and and. So a messenger had recorded this lecture in real life and then Hubbard took it and he wrote it into this fictionalized version and it's a crazy film. It's just because he's just gaslit all these people into thinking the reason that his, his ridiculous technology didn't work it was because they had the wrong. But they had the wrong attitude.
Speaker 3:You just had the wrong attitude.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I remember that being a very large scale film, like it wasn't that like sort of like to finally shoot TR 16. It was a huge deal, yeah.
Speaker 1:I think it was also one of the last few ones that had never ever been done.
Speaker 3:Maybe that's it. Maybe that's. I remember there was something about it. It was like well, maybe that was the one that we completed.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we completed the tech films the first time we completed them. That's the only one.
Speaker 1:We all got it, it was also the last one that had to be done. It was that we did all of them. When we finished that one, they were all done for the very first time in history, even though they'd all be multiple times get redone. But like that one they got like a quaint one.
Speaker 3:They gave you a week off and sent you to a nice no no, no, they gave us letterman jackets and patches that they took that they kept for me. When I escaped, they said no, we're not giving you that jacket, I have I remember that one, that film you only get to see at a very high level and I couldn't even. I wasn't even at the level to see the film. And I remember I think I got to see it on the ship.
Speaker 3:I was down there for something, and then I got to see it there like in a small room, and it was me and Jeff and we got to. They sort of snuck one by because that wasn't high enough to see the movie that I had just been in. Like I know the movie guys, I was in it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:I remember there being an issue about whether I could see the movie that's just Act, the whole thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it makes no sense. There's a lot of strange, weird stuff like that, so yeah, the, what was the movie we did?
Speaker 3:where there was, it was a kitchen set up and things were falling apart.
Speaker 2:Oh, that was with Get married.
Speaker 1:That was a Mariana as well.
Speaker 2:Mariana, you, you, you yeah.
Speaker 1:When we did start. Oh yes, we covered.
Speaker 3:It was like when I go to the refrigerator and the handle came off.
Speaker 2:Yes, I shot that film three times. I did. It was the first film I did when I went to gold that I shot it again with you and then, after you left, I shot it again with Jack Armstrong, and Jack remember Jack, his name. I shot it. I thought it was a shot with Jack Armstrong and I forget who played his.
Speaker 2:Anyway, I wrote about that film because it was quintessentially the script contained Hub Hubbers really misogynistic view of women's role in society. It really was. You know this woman, she was accident prone, she was like ditzy and she wasn't fulfilling her role of taking care of the man. And this is kind of subtle in the film Like I didn't even realize that I was making it, how much it was based on. His sort of very 50s misogynistic view of a woman's role in life was basically to care for a household, which is something he had written about, and that you know, when a society fails to do that, they're on their way out and blah, blah, blah. So we made a whole film about. Oh, you know it was. It was yeah, maybe I'm confused, I don't know, but it was. You were in Mary and Elliot do it twice. I guess she was, because the time I did it with Jack was with Mary, yeah.
Speaker 3:So she did a role again. Yeah, but knew me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, no, but wait a minute. But you, but you played the role of the husband, right? Yeah, yeah, you were the husband. So you were in the one with Jack Armstrong. Where's the? He was the auditor.
Speaker 3:Oh, was he the auditor. I think that was it. I think that was it.
Speaker 1:Maybe Jack was the auditor, maybe we're all.
Speaker 3:This is the all three different things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, but maybe I only shot it twice then, maybe because the second time you were the husband who called the auditor. Jack was the auditor, mary Anna was the auditor.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it reminds me of a joke you want to be the husband or you want to be the wife, yeah, Anyway, Okay, so we did that film. What was another one that we did? We did I'm because I remember shooting. We did you ever shoot at those studios in Hollywood where we were doing a E meter films? Did you ever do any of that? Were you around during that was like. I was like mid 90s.
Speaker 2:That was actually when Jason came in.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, cause we first met Jason in Hollywood in a we're in Sunland. We were in some some place and he was but at least he got to shoot like studio.
Speaker 3:I was like I shot something at AO with you guys and but a ton of teasers, like stuff of the events, yeah, yes, like I feel like half the stuff I shot for you was like a teaser for the events. That they were still fun. But I remember, mitch, you and I going to get Mexican food up in Hollywood Boulevard because there were some some problem with this setup or they weren't ready, and you were just like, come on, man, let's go, let's go eat. And I was like huh director is asking me to go eat. You know, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:I would. That was a move that Mitch would do. I always thought he was doing that to to shield the actors from the horrible food that we were going to possibly get. Well, I was, and so he would be like, hey, let's go grab it. And it was always if there was chips and salsa within a hundred feet of Mitch.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I would find that little radar that goes off.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would absolutely find it. I am a true Angelino, not born here, but so the food.
Speaker 3:The food went up when you got to the castle. I've never they seem to remember the food quality.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, Well yeah, when we were at Norton we had to get whatever food. They'd make the food the night before and they put it in these like metal trays and then when we grab it, yeah, we just grab it and bring it out there, and it was sort of like, you know, it was a surprise what we were going to get. Most of the time it was what I used to affectionately call rainbow beef and sweaty cheese, because they didn't bring in these things for, you know, 12 hours by the time it get to lunchtime or whatever it was, and so Perfect, yeah, to me that was always my most embarrassing sort of aspect of shooting with people outside of the bubble, like sometimes we'd get Scientology actors and that would be horrible, but sometimes we'd get just actors that didn't know anything about Scientology and I would always think this is the worst representation of these. People have all this money but they can spend 80 bucks on lunch for somebody, that's for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. Also, there was the motor home issue we would go on location and they wouldn't necessarily provide. You know, this is when I, you know, coined the term of, you know, Starbucks America's de facto restroom, so, but I don't know if you remember. Well, there was that whole issue with SAG too.
Speaker 3:Remember like there was the big moment of like, was Golden Era going to do a SAG contract? I seem to remember that was being a fairly significant like.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, we the goal.
Speaker 3:We're really going to get paid.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, yeah, that was a real problem, because you remember what's her name Shawna Breakfield, right, did you? You knew Shawna? She was married to Tate Rupert. Did you ever know? Yeah?
Speaker 3:I knew Tate well but and I know her yeah.
Speaker 2:She's not there, but haven't been married in years and she's no longer. Has been Scientology for years. As a matter of fact, she testified on behalf of Paul Haggis.
Speaker 3:Tate Stillen.
Speaker 2:I don't know. I'm not hearing from him.
Speaker 3:I was. He was such a good guy and I'm sure he still is. I mean, I say was because these people are like from another chapter in my life.
Speaker 2:But yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't know. He's back east because his wife, his ex-wife and his daughter moved back there and he wanted to be close to them. I know he was struggling financially and painting houses and stuff, which is kind of a good actor, but Shawna was in charge of. She used to work for SAG. She was a Scientologist who worked for SAG and she used to work for the, the Indie department, the indie, the part of SAG that is trying to make deals with independent filmmakers like so at least they can capture that you know they can work with that sector, right? Yeah, so we worked with Shawna and she actually did this deal which is how, which is how gold could, could be a signatory. They could hire SAG actors but they could mix the SAG actors with staff members who were extras only extras, not speaking parts Because the idea was is that those Scientology staff members are not taking work away from anybody in the, in the, in the guild, but and then of course, they could always do independent work, which we mostly tried to do.
Speaker 2:But sometimes we would do the sad contract because you know, it's like when I redid the film Jason was in, I had to spend a lot of money to get decent actors. You know we're going up the thousands of dollars a day, you know kind of fee for people, because I, you know they learned the lesson that. You know you pay as penis, you get monkeys.
Speaker 3:So you know didn't evolve to a certain point, Mitch, though, where they weren't using Scientologists as actors at all at all and you were only using non Scientologists because you can't do things, because that was like that was an amazing sort of like a security bit of logic that they got to the point of having to not use Scientologists because if the Scientologists left they'd have to reshoot because, god forbid you see a person on up there who maybe is not as if someone viewing the thing would know or not know, but I think they would have known who Jason became, I guess within. Yes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but even more, I think, even more cogently, is the idea that we're going to clear the planet except for enough people to be in our films. Yes, we don't want Scientologists in our film, so we're always going to leave enough people out there. Just, you know, just.
Speaker 3:I want to ask you guys about, because in your book Mitch, I was so astonished. I can't remember if it's in yours as well, mark, and maybe it is and I can't remember. Forgive me, but Lisa.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I wrote.
Speaker 3:I remember that was the biggest, one of the big shocks to me, because on set I remember liking her a lot when she was your assistant, mitch, or your first AD. She seemed like as genuine as Mark or Sadie or John or like any of these people, like the makeup people, the there was the Southeast Asian one and then the Redhead and like all these person, arnie and Sam, yes, or so great. I really, really enjoy them, and Lisa was one of them. Yeah, well, they had they were all happy.
Speaker 2:They had the best jobs in the seawork. I don't know, but it was. That was the most astonishing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Lisa. See that Lisa was the sort of the monster that you clearly portray, and I'm sure it's an accurate portrayal, but that one was. I was like whoa.
Speaker 2:I can tell you Mike Render read my book and he graciously also did some some fact checking on the manuscript and one of the notes I got back from him was you nailed, Lisa.
Speaker 1:So yeah, the description of Lisa is the most comprehensive description of this person that you could have easily. Yeah, but to?
Speaker 2:really answer your? To answer your question, alan, it was. She hadn't. Miss Gabbage had and fully got no hold of her and turned her into a monster, because he has a way of doing this. I mean, she went from my being my assistant not an assistant a D, but director's assistant to being the commanding officer of GoldenEar Productions and to working as a protege of David Miss Gabbage, and who then threw her in the hole? Yeah, you know, you've all heard the horrible story about being Debbie Cook, being put in a barrel of ice water and having a sign put on her that says Lesbo. Well, that would have been Lisa who had the sign around her neck. So, like that's just.
Speaker 3:yeah, I know it's why I can't conceive that this cool person who would like give me smokes and we know because you wouldn't have her would like go have a smoke on a break. Yeah, like all the time, like there's 100 cigarettes she was funny.
Speaker 2:She was funny, but she was. She was at a great spot then because she'd been busted up and she was what, mark, she was, the, she was in charge of the and she was in charge of ethics in CMO.
Speaker 1:Yeah, she was over the HCO, which is like the. Yeah, she was like a HCO chief.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and she'd been the receptionist in CMO, blah, blah, blah. Then she got busted and then when they I was overworked, I needed assistance. So they, somehow her handling, they, you know, I don't know they we got so much of the trash.
Speaker 1:But I was going to say in the C organization at the end base golden era productions is the lowest you can be. So that's.
Speaker 3:I was literally about to make that point was that's something that I learned after the fact? Because as an actor coming in and you get the clearances and you get the directions and can you go and the thing into this, and that you feel as though you're like at the top man, like they're like right across the street there, you're at the bottom of all happening the studio and the thing and the musicians and you're at the top of the I mean you know, and then afterwards to read the books and you go like gold was like kick him to the trash.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, I guess Wait a minute, except for the scavenge but for miscavige. The ultimate is for you. If you're a high up executive and now you're the assistant to the director on the shoot, there's not. There's, I mean, a lot of those guys. If they were males, they would have been put in the grounds department as a de-weeder or. But if we have a person that could be this assistant person, who's personable and she could interact with Mitch, it's still a punishment though, because of she was, she was to be, that.
Speaker 2:But wouldn't you say that, yes, if a toilet backs up at gold, yeah. Or if a sprinkler breaks, or if you need a light bulb or a fuse change, you've got to call an engineer from gold. You call gold because gold supplied all the support services for the whole base, including food, including a launching, like they were responsible for all that. But the shoot crew I mean miscavige spent millions on that castle and lavished us with equipment as long as we were producing lots of work. The shoot crew was its own rarefied bubble. That's true. You're feeling that, alan. You're feeling like you hit the top. You know you were at the top in that environment.
Speaker 1:It was right Because I didn't have a pet. We were David Miscavige's pet project, so yeah, that's definitely the vibe I got.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I didn't call anybody from CMO and or RTC, sir. I wasn't expected to. I never. I didn't even call Miscavige sir. I made me feel uncomfortable. I'm like why am I calling this guy sir? It's like weird, you know. It's like whatever, so but whatever, but I think that's it. Yeah, but it is very much outside Once you set up the castle, that's the like, that's like you're at Harvard, and then that's the janitorial department.
Speaker 1:That's a funny thing that you mentioned that, mitch because because the castle was so far away from everything else, right, people wouldn't go there from on the property, like if you didn't work there there'd be no reason. Yeah, that's true. So we just had to go left alone. Just based on the location, it was just too far to go.
Speaker 2:Too far? To give you a reason, yeah, we were like 800 yards away from the closest facility out there. So yeah, it was pretty far.
Speaker 1:And the other thing was is if David Miscavige did go to the castle, which he did on a pretty regular basis if he was at the property. He wanted to see what was going on over there.
Speaker 3:I met him there a couple times yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so if you were at the castle and you weren't supposed to be and he was there, you were toast like you could be in really big trouble. So it was sort of like we had a little force field but at the same time David Miscavige was in there with us. So it was we were protected from the rest of the property but not him. So you know, it was all sorts of nonsense and they. The funniest thing is, even after we built that place, that's where we packaged almost all of the Scientology basic books and compact.
Speaker 3:I remember shooting there Maybe it was on TR 16 when every hallway. Yes, I think the circumference of the castle is like a mile Probably you know, all those, all tables.
Speaker 1:I got to tell you that you you might be the first person that's been out in the wild he's ever seen that, because that was. That was how David Miscavige was justifying that the all of the Elrond Hubbard policies and all of the Elrond Hubbard bulletins are not right because they're out of order and there's things that shouldn't be, and so they could never, ever look at everything. And so he had this bright idea why don't you print out every single thing that Elrond Hubbard ever wrote and put it in order? And they kept trying to do it and took the circumference of the castle to do it.
Speaker 2:Actually it wasn't. It wasn't big enough. That whole thing is a move to a warehouse that looks like the end, at the ending of Indiana Jones, the original one, literally it's on a warehouse.
Speaker 3:Men.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the thing is is that Miscavige has this delusion that he, if he lays out in date order everything that Hubbard ever did, he'll be able to figure out the sort of magic key that will make it all work. And it's never going to work. Why?
Speaker 3:it hasn't worked yet.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because what happened was yeah, they're always finding some key pieces of information. It's how I remember.
Speaker 3:I remember very early on, you know, again I got in because I mean I found a lot of his stuff legitimately interesting and I have the kind of brain that'll read a thousand page book like the Dianetics or you know the tone scale thing and you know and. But I remember early on at one of the events, like I would go to the CC events 10 X, 12 X, 20 X, 30 X, yeah, and then I'd be there the next year and I remember asking someone I got like a really evil, look, I forget who. I asked staff member somebody and I was like but if it was 20 X last year and it's 30 X this year, the parking lot, you need a new parking lot, you need like five new parking lots, right, like that doesn't make any sense to me. I was saying that in like 1998, I was like if it was, but I was here last year and it said 10 X, yeah, and this year it's 20 X.
Speaker 1:The cognitive distance has to be very strong to keep you.
Speaker 2:We are all those people, and so it's never the next where you are, Alan.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's 10 X and 10 X, and the yeah, yeah and a lot of times in literally, it literally would be in a no organization.
Speaker 1:They got one person clear last year, yeah, yeah, and this year they got 10. So it's 10 X, but they don't say Well, yeah, but it was not even really one, because that guy that got cleared, he was already cleared before. He just was Somebody told me it wasn't.
Speaker 3:He's a retrater.
Speaker 1:That's what I want to do.
Speaker 3:The student hat again, it's new stats. Look at the stats, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think a lot of people they lost a lot of people on that whole, that whole routine making them do stuff over. But it's amazing that people they did lose. I mean it's like one particular person I'm thinking of who happens to be married to Jim Eskiman. She was on solo knots longer than anybody I knew, maybe 10 years and she do every. She did every iteration of it. Just when it would finish there's a new one would come out yeah, come on.
Speaker 2:Just when it would finish and some people, they just persevere. They're so hardwired into that community and that ideology. And you know, and the thing is you have paid to have it, to accept a false identity for yourself. I mean, that's a pretty serious thing. You know the fact that you're a spiritual being, that you live for all these years, that you were in this cataclysmic, you know cosmic Galactic disaster, and that you're infested with body things and all this stuff. You've accepted this over time as your identity. So, in order to change that and the more of that you do and you've also paid for it- so yeah, the sunk cost.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but it's not. It's not. Yeah, that is big, but it's also. It's this idea that you really don't know who you are. I mean, I struggled with this because you've so accepted this fictional identity and and you know your story of who you are. That's the most important thing you have. And so you've now paid money to have this fake one, and it can be really devastating to say I know that's bullshit, but who the hell am I? I mean, it's like I struggle. I had a lot of issues.
Speaker 1:So when when you were, when you were talking about earlier, you saw this and this was kind of the thing. And was there one thing? If you could isolate that, or or? Or just one thing, just one, one piece of information or a story or something that kind of pushed you over the edge, like what was that thing that you just saw? Yeah, for you, alan, that you were like I'm not going to be in this anymore, like well, the I want to make sure I'm not glitching.
Speaker 3:Are you there? Yeah, we're good. Now we're good. Ok, cool, I saw you. I got the spinning wheel, and what did it for me was the this jihad against Milton.
Speaker 2:The school.
Speaker 3:Because he was a teacher, mentor, a friend, depending on the day, given that there's four years difference between us I was.
Speaker 3:I was the guy really helping him run the school. By that time it was fairly high up in the management and it was the way they were treating him and these insane. I remember a big moment for me was the famous Tom Cruise meritorious, gigantic, whatever award he got, and that speech he gave which which became very famous. I didn't go to that event but then I watched it later and I remember thinking there was sort of this thing of like you either get on the train or you, whatever it was.
Speaker 1:You're on the team.
Speaker 3:You're not like someone at the playhouse I can't remember. I said I watched that event and I said I'm going to get off your train because I don't like you and I don't like your attitude and I don't like divide. So I'm getting off the train, but Milton, you know, but I did it quietly because Milton was still in. He was still seeking a connection with CC. I think he was personally hurt by the people who were coming after him and losing Jenna Elfman, who I think he felt a real kinship to as a student and someone who became successful under his guidance and I was very my allegiance was really first to him and to the school and Scientology was way down on the list and and I had met my now my wife of 20 years but we were dating back then and she was raising some flags that at the time I was like, oh my God, is this a problem? Is this a person for me? I don't know. Should I find someone else? She was kind of like that person that I was in a certain way going. But if it was 10x last year, how come the cooking was empty, Right, she would ask that question and I'd get ornery about something else, but I was smart enough to be listening, and so all those things kind of led me to be like you know what I think I'm done with this.
Speaker 3:There was a demand at one point that there were these two students, brother and sister, Manjamello, Manjelo, something, and their mother was declared and she was a woman who would show up at events with placards like Scientology is bad, and they were students at the school and we got pulled in or I got pulled in on behalf of Milton to be given an order that these two kids had to be thrown out of the Beverly Hills Playhouse because their mother held up a sign at an event. And if we didn't throw those, these two kids who were perfectly good students of ours, if we didn't throw them out of the school because of their connection to their mother, because they wouldn't disconnect from her and we had to disconnect from them, then they would disallow every other Scientologist at the school from doing anything inside, all down to CC. All those people would be kicked off their kick off lines or whatever you could call it, because the Playhouse didn't sever its connection to two young kids whose mom was. I just went. No, no, this is wrong.
Speaker 3:It just finally hit that moment for me, and this was probably 2001, 2002, where I just went. I'm done, I can't do this, but it was another 10 years before they messed. You remember Mario Fenninger?
Speaker 3:Yes, I was going to say this story that of my play, which is that he was my piano teacher and he was a very tolerant, genial man, didn't care that I was in out, was willing to talk about anything, very old school, old and old school and but he was always in financial straits and I was helping him out. I was just helping him pay his bills. You know, he was 90 something years old, you need to help. And at some point they told him that they he had to return those checks from me because I was still affiliated with the Playhouse or Milton or whatever. And that was the one that turned me from kind of passively inactive yeah to okay, fuckers, now you're going to hear from me.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and that's when I got in contact with Marty Rathbun because he had posted something about Milton and that whole story and I was like I know all about that. Yeah, this happened. And then this happened. And then this happened and that whole thing with Mario, when he told me that he was pulled in by ethics and could no longer not only not accept my help, could no longer see me as a student or as a friend because of the I just that just pissed me off so bad. Yeah, and that's what I remember driving around going. That's actually a good idea for a play. How poignant is that to interfere with a teacher student relationship, which is a very strong relationship. When you've got the right crumble, it's very powerful.
Speaker 2:Especially when you're talking about something like music. Yeah it makes it all the more powerful.
Speaker 3:And to take this guy who is 90 something and basically couldn't pay his electricity and deny him the help Because I wasn't cool with something they had done 10 years prior. This is really unfolded over a long time. Yeah, that's when I became sort of more agitated, which then cleared because then I was in what's his name? Interviewed me for the book going, clear, I'm in that book. Interviewed me, lawrence Wright interviewed me for that book. That got me in trouble. You know, I think that was the thing that really got me like okay, now you're declared, yeah, now you're out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but you didn't have any family, or no? I was fortunate. I was lucky that way.
Speaker 3:I didn't have family ties in. I wasn't going to lose a brother, a sister, a mother, a father if I took this stand and Milton had passed away in 2008. So when he was alive, I was quiet because I was like, Listen, man, this is your school, this is your, you have the primary relationship here. I spoke with him honestly about it, but I stayed quiet. But he had passed away in 2008. It was my school now, so I was like, okay, I'm going to write a play, what's?
Speaker 1:with you and this connection to these old dudes that worked with Elmer. However, didn't Mario Fentcher also have an interaction?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was going to mention people that don't know Mario was. He was a noted concert pianist In his time. He was internationally. He started the.
Speaker 3:Paris, original Paris, or if I remember.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and he was an early advocate of Scientology. He was part of the original celebrity project to bring people in and he himself have brought in yeah, he brought in David Campbell and a few other really notable people. So he was actually a kind of a I'm kind of a big figure in Scientology. Yeah, he continued to have a school he had. I forget his partner's name, but I know when my son was my older son was nine he wanted piano lessons and that's who we took him to his old, his partner. You probably know him.
Speaker 3:I can remember his name.
Speaker 2:Really sweet guy was Ian. Yeah, great guy he was. I used to my son piano, so they were just these great guys.
Speaker 1:I think we actually shot with Mario, did? He used to have that spot right off the 101?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. He lived in this really famous apartment that like where they shot like Sunset Boulevard with the movie yeah, it's like next to my play, you know is it that same?
Speaker 3:Is it that same? The first scene of the play, that an adult student comes to him who has been referred to referred to him by Scientology, although I never mentioned the name of the, the organization and he says 10,000 cars past my window every day. At least you stopped, you came up the stairs.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean. Like I remember that apartment. I used to take my son there for piano lessons. So wild.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's pretty crazy. Well, I think we're going to wrap it up. Guys, we did. I think that was pretty good with Alan. It was great.
Speaker 3:Appreciate you this is amazing to see you guys. I mean again for people who may be watching this, I haven't seen either of these guys in 20 something years. Yeah, again, I read Mark's book when he came out, but I haven't seen you. And, mitch, I thought about you so many times, wondering in how still study and I can't remember how your book came. I was like instantaneously read. I read that book in like one day, wow, and I'm so happy that we were able to get in touch. I think Mike Rinder gave me your email or helped in some way. But I look forward to seeing you in person and this is me.
Speaker 3:I was like when you texted and said, would you want to do this thing? I was just like thrilled, Couldn't wait to cover some of this territory. It's amazing.
Speaker 1:Nice, Nice. Well, we appreciate it. Let me just put up some. If you want to learn more about the Beverly Hills Playhouse, that's a link.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Beverly Hills Playhouse is still one of the big acting schools in LA and since Milton passed away 15 years ago, I took over the school and that's most of my activity these days is teaching there, running that business and then as a playwright. But yeah, if you want to find out about the school, we're still quite active.
Speaker 1:And then you also wrote a book called the Oasis of Insanity and that's the story of the Playhouse. So if you want to read all of that, it's the story of my men.
Speaker 3:The first part of it is the first 100 pages is the story of my mentorship with Milton, which is a classic old school story and there's a whole chapter in there on Scientology, because it was such a big part of his life and then my life and I basically sort of declare what the new thing is for the Playhouse with regard to Scientology. But it tells all the story of Milton and what we alluded to in this talk of how he was like celebrated and then kind of kicked to the curb.
Speaker 1:Nice. And then also we got Mitch's site, if you guys want to check out what Mitch is up to. And then Mitch also has a new book on Amazon Scientology Big Lie and yeah, you can check that out. And all these links are in the description as well. And, yeah, thanks a lot guys. I enjoyed this. I love it when we can get some new faces and some new stories on here and provided in spades today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, cool, it's really meant a lot to us, alan.
Speaker 3:Thanks, we really appreciate it Absolutely Such a pleasure, such a pleasure.
Speaker 1:Thanks, guys, Until next time. Thanks for watching. If you'd like to help support the channel, feel free to check out the merch store link in the description. We have Hale Zee New Zee New is my Homeboy and BFG branded mouse pads, shirts, mugs, all sorts of other stuff in there that helps us to bring you new content on a regular basis. You can also pick up a copy of my book Blown for Good Behind the Iron Curtain of Scientology in hardback, Kindle and Audible versions as well. There's also a link to our podcast and you can get that on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts, and if you'd like to watch another video, you could click on this link right here, or you could click on this one here, or you can click on the subscribe button right here. Thanks a lot, Until next time.