Peek behind the secretive veil of Scientology as we unravel their reactions to the "South Park" parody that left Tom Cruise in a closet—literally and figuratively. Discover the staggering lengths to which the church went to stifle laughs and retain control, including leveraging celebrity ties and crafting counter-narratives. Our exposé unveils an apologetic document aimed at David Miscavige and the specific OSA Network Orders that dictate the church's media strategies, laying bare a narrative of damage control and public relations gymnastics.
Transitioning to the tumultuous world of Hollywood, we trace the ripple effects of executive shake-ups at Paramount Pictures through the lens of Tom Cruise's career and the release of "Mission Impossible 3." Witness how the studio's strategic shift towards a younger audience, high-stakes hirings, and Cruise's public image collided to create a perfect storm of industry politics. As we dissect the hidden dynamics of TV episode distribution and censorship, you'll gain a comprehensive perspective on the intersecting forces of faith, fame, and film.
Peek behind the secretive veil of Scientology as we unravel their reactions to the "South Park" parody that left Tom Cruise in a closet—literally and figuratively. Discover the staggering lengths to which the church went to stifle laughs and retain control, including leveraging celebrity ties and crafting counter-narratives. Our exposé unveils an apologetic document aimed at David Miscavige and the specific OSA Network Orders that dictate the church's media strategies, laying bare a narrative of damage control and public relations gymnastics.
Transitioning to the tumultuous world of Hollywood, we trace the ripple effects of executive shake-ups at Paramount Pictures through the lens of Tom Cruise's career and the release of "Mission Impossible 3." Witness how the studio's strategic shift towards a younger audience, high-stakes hirings, and Cruise's public image collided to create a perfect storm of industry politics. As we dissect the hidden dynamics of TV episode distribution and censorship, you'll gain a comprehensive perspective on the intersecting forces of faith, fame, and film.
Welcome to the channel. I'm Mark Hedley, your host for today. Welcome to another episode of Scientology's Tom Cruise spy files, and in these episodes we're specifically covering the internal Scientology documents that have to do with Tom Cruise. And in today's documents we're going to cover something that many of you have been asking about for a while, ever since we started the Scientology spy file spy files episodes, and that is the episode of South Park called Trapped in the Closet and Scientology's internal response to that episode. So one of the things that we do before we cover these documents is we show you who the key players are in the document. There's a lot of abbreviations and there's a lot of names mentioned, and we're just going to show you who those people are at the very start of the episode and then we'll get into the document.
Speaker 1:
So here we go Scientology's Tom Cruise spy files key players. Of course we have David Miscavige, chairman of the Board, religious Technology Center, the leader, the ecclesiastical leader, as they call him in Scientology. Then we've got Tom Cruise, teen Matt and A Idle. And we've got Shelley Miscavige, cob Assistant, that's the Chairman of the Board's Assistant at the time. And we've got Mike Rinder, who is WDC Osa at this time. And we've got Brad Gray he was the CEO of Paramount. And then we've got Burt Fields he's a lawyer. He's Tom Cruise's lawyer. Then we've got Michael Doven he is the head of Odin Productions, that's Tom Cruise's production company. And then we've got Tom Freston he was the COO of Viacom at the time. And then we've got Paul Block, who's Tom Cruise's publicist. Nancy Kirkpatrick, who's also at Paramount, kevin Huvane that's one of the main guys who runs CAA, which is Creative Artists Agency, of which was representing Tom Cruise at the time. And then we've got Rick Nassida, who is Tom Cruise's specific CAA agent. And then we've got Mark Ebner, who is an author and he's covered Scientology for many, many years, and then Isaac Hayes, who is a Scientologist at the time and actor, musician. Okay, so those are all the key players. Let's get right into the document. Okay, now this document is going from WDC OSA to COB RTC. It's 18 November Now.
Speaker 1:
The South Park episode trapped in the closet aired on 16 November 2005,. And this is from 18 November 2005. And it's got carbon copies going to COB assistant, cob com communicator, cob communicator for compliance and the COCMO int, which is the commanding officer of the Commodore's Messenger Organization International, and it says re South Park. Dear sir, thank you, and this is going to David Miscavige directly. Dear sir, thank you for your dispatch and I apologize for the no report and no handling. I see the insanity. As you pointed out, it was just a knee jerk piece of crap I have not put in my lines and the fact that there was no report when the show came out was inexcusable. And my report to the CO was then a squirrel handling. So probably what happened was nobody knew this thing was happening and it just came out and then David Miscavige was like what the hell? How could this happen? The real failure is exactly as you say no intelligence and therefore the unpredicted end.
Speaker 1:
Theta rolls in and I am defensive, ie ineffective in responding. To give you the summary of the show I should have originally reported. It tells the story of the loser on the show, stan, being depressed, getting a free personality analysis and coming into a church of Scientology. He then pays $240 for auditing and when he is put on the meter, his Thayton reading shows he is OT9 and therefore he must be a reincarnation of Elron Hubbard, at which point he becomes a prophet and is briefed on OT3. Oh, this is an actual internal document that admits that OT3 as covered in South Park is OT3, because it says he is briefed on OT3, which is the Lord's Zee news story Just then.
Speaker 1:
Gather at his house like this is the second coming of Christ, including Tom Cruz and John Travolta. When Tom Cruz sees him, stan tells him that he thinks his acting isn't good and the guy who played Napoleon Dynamite is better, at which point Tom Cruz gets upset and locks himself in the closet of Stan's room. There are then a lot of lines about Tom Cruz won't come out of the closet, and then John Travolta joins him in the closet and they both won't come out. Stan writes new scriptures in which he says people shouldn't be charged money for Scientology, and so he is denounced as a fraud and everyone threatens to sue him. It's funny. That's the internal synopsis of the Tom Cruz episode.
Speaker 1:
Isaac has scheduled a meeting with Trey Parker, one of the writers, this evening, and is going to schedule a meeting with the head of Comedy Central. Isaac intends to get them not to re-air the show and then get them to make up the damage. He isn't going to try and pitch a script, but simply insists that they do something that targets the real enemies, whether psychiatry or Ebner or anything else. Isn't going to get into any specifics, but the data can be provided them once they agree. So they literally think that Isaac's going to go there and then they're going to not re-air this show and then they're going to do a new show about psychiatry or Mark Ebner or what else. That's ridiculous, okay.
Speaker 1:
Page two I reviewed the OSA network orders. Osa is the Office of Special Affairs, the organization that took that was used to be called the Guardians Organization and that's basically the Scientology Dirty Tricks Department, and these network orders are just basically policies that are written specifically for OSA. I reviewed the OSA network orders. A complete special bank of the media attacks is being done per OSA Network Order 35, intelligence estimations and predictions, and OSA Network Order 14, how intelligence is run To get to the real who and handle them. Per the reference on counterattacks counterattack tactics by threatening what is valuable or costing them their job. One name that has shown up is Terry Press, the head of PR at DreamWorks, who is personal friends with Kim Masters, who wrote the radar article, and another reporter, vanessa Gregoradias, who has written N-theta articles. Ntheta is just any bad news about Scientology or anything true about Scientology. That's not good. Press would not handle the Ntheta generated on World of the Worlds or by Kate C. This special bank in estimation and handling is the highest priority and we presented as a complete product and proposed handling.
Speaker 1:
I spoke with Doven concerning Paul Block and CAA and then I spoke to Paul Block directly. I understand that this is a two-way street. If there was no publicity for MI3, paramount and Viacom would have a seizure. The other planned script on Comedy Central is a JND. That just means joking and degrading Anything joking or that puts anybody else down in Scientology. I'll run how Hubbard calls that joking and degrading. So if you're putting down Scientology, you're degrading it and it is JND, or joking and degrading is strictly forbidden within Scientology. The other planned script on Comedy Central is a JND skit with Andy Dick, who has a show of skits on Comedy Central, where he is a wedding planner planning the wedding. It has the wedding gown as a space suit, the wedding car is a rocket with tin cans tied to it, the band for the wedding is aliens from the Star Wars bar and the choir is the Scientology choir that is staring-eyed kids. This is reportedly planned for a December show.
Speaker 1:
When I briefed Paul Block about this. He immediately called for Kevin Huvane. He didn't reach him yet and to the head of Paramount PR he said that this has to be stopped right now and that he will go to Brad Gray or higher, as they are shooting themselves in the foot. Paul said that he had handled a similar situation with another client at Fox and he had gone all the way to the top and the word had come down and the attacks vanished. He said the same thing is going to be done here. He is starting at the low level with the head of PR as a courtesy, but is certain that between him, caa and Burt Fields, if needed, he will get to the person that will call the shots on this and end it. He said that he will keep me briefed on what happens and that there is a great deal of pressure that can be brought to bear on Paramount slash Viacom, as their biggest asset is being mauled by their own people and that they should not only completely end that, they should be actively handling it, even if it comes out outside their quote-unquote family. Paul said that he wants to stay briefed on what happens outside their workplace with Isaac and that once he gets a hold of Kevin Huvane. We should all talk and strategize further and strategize further actions, but he didn't wanna wait to hear from anyone before making the first call to Paramount and starting the process, which he has now done, and he is also going to check on his lines for anyone he can find that is stirring things up.
Speaker 1:
Okay, so that's pretty much the end of the South Park in this document. And then it talks about Rolling Stone. I'm not gonna get into that because I'm gonna do a Rolling Stone thing as a separate set of documents and we'll cover this one when we cover Rolling Stone. And then at the end of this document it says much love. This is okay. Much love, mike. Okay, so that's on 18 November. Now, the next time that there is another document, we skip all the way forward to December. So we're gonna bring that document right up. Okay, so there's no headings, there's no anything. It's just an excerpt or just the bulk of the document with no headings and no signatures. And it just says re South Park slash Comedy Central, dear sir. And then this is likely going from Mike Rinder as WDC OSA to chairman of the board religious technology center, and this is the date of this is two December, and the title of the document or the name of the document is South Park to December.
Speaker 1:
Dear sir, when I briefed Paul Block on South Park in the future skit on the wedding that had come out, come into Odin, he called Kevin Huvane and Rick Nassida. They immediately called Brad Gray, head of Paramount, who said he knew nothing about it and would handle it as a highest priority and get back to them. I spoke to Paul and Rick last Friday to get an update on this. Both said they had nothing back and would chase up on it. Rick said that he would find out about it and let me know. I tried calling Rick yesterday and he was still in China. I called for Kevin Huvane twice today and he hasn't returned my calls. When the first call was made, paul told me that Kevin and Rick will go to Tom Freston or Summer Redstone if they can get no action from Brad Gray.
Speaker 1:
Isaac Saw Trey Parker, one of the South Park writers, who told him there wasn't anything they could do about the show, and he said he didn't really like Mark Ebbner, though Ebbner wrote a chapter in his book about Parker. Ebbner was announced on an internet blog as being a consultant on the show and it carried enemy lines from the internet. Ebbner wrote the radar online piece that announced the South Park show would get air, giving details of it before it appeared. And enemy lines means anything that is bad about Scientology or true and doesn't make Scientology look good, anything that somebody says like Scientologists steal money from elderly people they do. Or Scientology breaks up family they do. But those are in Scientology. Those are called enemy lines.
Speaker 1:
Isaac wrote a letter to the and it doesn't say to the blank, it's just says stars. Isaac wrote a letter to the star star dot dot dot of Comedy Central South Park, insisting that they not put the episode out on DVD or foreign. They responded that they would not do this as they don't do it for anyone. And then that's the end of this document. Okay, and then let's do the last document. Now this is a bit of a big one and this goes into excruciating detail on what they're doing, and this is from 5 December 2005. And this is from WDC OSA, it's going through the commanding officer of CMO International and it's going to chairman of the board, religious Technology Center, and it says Rhee, south Park, slash Paramount. Dear sir, I know Michael Doven briefed you on what Kevin Huvane had to say concerning Comedy Central and the South Park show from his meeting on Saturday. Huvane has put in calls to Summer Redstone, sherry Redstone and Brad Gray today, monday, but has not gotten a hold of any of them yet and I'm staying on this until he gets through.
Speaker 1:
Okay, now it says situation. Whenever it says situation data, that means that this is what in Scientology is called completed staff work and it's just an internal form in Scientology that you have to do if you're asking for approval on something. Situation in the course of pulling strings on media. Slash entertainment industry attacks. I have found data about Paramount. Slash Viacom that needs to be handled Data.
Speaker 1:
There have been major changes in attitude and direction at Paramount since Tom Freston came on the scene and then even more so after Sherry Lansing left in March of this year. In June 2004, tom Freston from MTV and Les Moonves from CBS became the new co-chief operating officers. Slash presidents of Viacom. Freston oversees all cable network properties MTV networks that includes VHS, vh1, nickelodeon, comedy Central, country Music TV, bet and Showtime Networks and the motion picture business of Paramount. The CBS end of the business is headed by Les Moonves.
Speaker 1:
An article appeared in USA Today in October 2004 about a movie Team America World Police done by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of South Park on Comedy Central. The article notes that the movie was made for $32 million in six months and Freston is quoted saying that Viacom needed to reinvigorate Paramount by making less expensive movies aimed at kids and the college crowd. Freston stated instead of spending $120 million on the Stepford wives, we could have made three pictures targeted at younger audience. That could be a lot more profitable. In November 2004, sherry Lansing announced she was leaving Paramount Pictures and was gone by the first of March 2005. In January 2005, freston named Brad Gray Chairman and CEO of Paramount. Gray had no experience in the major studio, coming from Brillstein Gray, a talent management and production company mainly television shows and the most prominent is the Sopranos. In March 2005, gray named Fox Entertainment President Gail Berman to replace Donald DeLine as President of Paramount Pictures. This was Gray's first appointment. Berman has no movie experience and before being at Fox was at Comedy Central.
Speaker 1:
Shortly after Sherry Lansing left Paramount, sharon Waxman wrote an article in the New York Times entitled Tom Cruise Mixing Business and Church To 22 March. It was the first piece of N-Theta and preceded the Oprah Winfrey show by two months. The media attack started almost immediately after Sherry Lansing left. On June 1st, sharon Waxman wrote a story about MI3 in which she quoted an anonymous executive at Viacom stating that all the studio had not yet decided to push ahead with the production. On June 1st, sharon Waxman wrote a story about Mission Impossible 3 in which she quoted an anonymous executive at Viacom stating that the studio had not yet decided to push ahead with the production due to the budget. Waxman reported that the film might be suspended. She attributed this information to data disclosed on a blog on TheHuffingtonPostcom. It was an anonymous posting. However. An article in the Washington Times stated that the Huffington Post will have a group blog, manda, amongst others by Barry Diller, tom Freston, david Geffen, henry Evans and his wife, tina Brown. Either Freston or possibly Geffen, or whoever may put up information for them, could have leaked the data about MI3 in order to put pressure on Mr Cruz.
Speaker 1:
Brad Gray and David Geffen have been friends for years. When Burt Field saw Geffen eating lunch with Brad Gray at Geffen's house in Malibu at the time the negotiations were occurring, geffen told Burt there were issues related to the Paramount deal on MI3. Burt told him he shouldn't be talking about such things with Gray and Geffen responded that he had given Gray some friendly advice. Per Burt Geffen has been the one since collateral that has been the most outspoken about Mr Cruz's deals and how outrageous they are. Geffen is a major supporter of gay causes and has given 200 million to the UCLA Medical Center and it says in parentheses which houses their psych facilities. Scientologists are not fans of gay people or psychiatrists and they refer to them as psych. If it's a psychologist or psychiatrist, scientology refers to that as a psych facility. The David Geffen Foundation donates money to a number of causes, including the AIDS Community Research Initiative of America. Mayor Roshan Gay, editor of Radar, is on the board of the ACREA. Okay, wow, there's a lot. Okay, page three In early June 2005, karen Warner from Oden, that's Tom Cruise's production company, was asked to set up a lunch with Brad Gray and several Paramount executives regarding Mission Impossible 3.
Speaker 1:
Jerry Ridge, head of Paramount Marketing, told Karen there won't be any meeting until he, mr Cruz, works some things out with Brad and that Brad might not be backing MI3. This was later resolved, but not before it started a new round of speculation in the press. In late September 2005, nancy Kirkpatrick, head of Paramount Publicity, was briefed on the possible Barbara Walters show and that the plan was to tour Barbara through the church. Nancy stated why would you do that? Oh, here we go. Another world of the war of the worlds. Okay, a little, just unpack that a bit. So when Tom Cruise was doing World War of the Worlds, he set up a giant Scientology volunteer minister's tent on the set of World of the Worlds and they had people coming in there and getting back massages and Scientology assists and it was a big flap and it created a lot of PR backlash. An article in Vanity in November 2005 again stated that Fresden's plans calling for zeroing in on pictures that targeted younger audiences, making use of the easy marketing access to the MTV generation he is trying to create quote a revolution in the Hollywood studio system. Unquote.
Speaker 1:
In November 2005, karen Warner of Odin met with Jerry Rich, president of marketing at Paramount, who told her he is excited about meeting with Mr Cruise and all the network heads of Viacom in December. This will be the heads of MTV Network's Comedy Central, vh1, nickelodeon, etc. To be briefed on Mission Impossible 3. Mitch mentioned that Doug Herzog, head of Comedy Central, will be there and he is happy he will meet Mr Cruise. Karen asked isn't Comedy Central the network that did a recent South Park episode on Scientology? Rich responded yes and that South Park was funny and satire and not to be taken seriously.
Speaker 1:
When the marketing and publicity binder containing all of the plans to remote MI3 was first presented, it contained black PR about perceived but never specified image problems of Mr Cruise. Black PR is just any public relations that is not favorable to Scientology bad public relations. The source of this was Jeff Hall, who is over research at Paramount. After being confronted on it, jerry Rich had it pulled and then said that the research showed that the interest for Tom Cruise starring in Mission 3, has never been higher around the world. On 1 November 2005, gail Berman, the Paramount president, who had earlier been at Comedy Central before she was at Fox TV, stated to Variety that she wanted to make more comedies at Paramount After greenlighting a sequel to the Jackass to Jackass the Movie. Then, on November 17, 2005, paramount and Parker and Stone South Park Creatures signed a three-year movie production deal. This was one day after the South Park Scientology Tom Cruise show, media Edge. In October 2004, media Edge was awarded the 480 million media planning and buying account of Paramount. Media Edge is a WPP company, although no hard evidence exists to show that they have taken any adverse actions. In April 2005, michael Dolan, a former chairman and CEO of WPP's group Young and Rubicon, joined Viacom as chief financial officer.
Speaker 1:
Okay, page four analysis. There has been a major shift in Paramount since Frestin moved in and Sherry Lansing left. The support for Comedy Central is part of the new breed quote-unquote at Paramount slash Viacom. Following Tom Frestin, who wants to move away from big budget movies when they should be supporting and promoting their biggest star, they are attacking him from within. He is a big budget movie star. They are trying to turn Paramount into a studio that is the antithesis of big star movies, preferring J&D puppet movies by the creator of South Park Solution.
Speaker 1:
I provide this information to Dovan and set up a meeting with him. To brief CAA, they should already know most of the data above and should be offering solutions and a strategy. I do not know what arrangement exists between Mr Cruise and Paramount beyond MI3, but the environment at Paramount has changed radically and I doubt any other studio would treat him like they are now doing. Caa needs to either handle it or come up with some deals with studios that want the biggest star in the world and they will treat him as such. The purpose of the meeting is to ensure they are briefed and know they need to come up with a solution and strategy either handle the situation at Viacom, slash Paramount or get new deals set up elsewhere. This is okay. Much love Mike. And then it says okay and aligned to sign, and not okay and aligned to be signed Okay.
Speaker 1:
So to recap, another document, this is very similar to the earlier documents that we covered when we first started doing the Tom Cruise spy files. David, miscavage and Scientology are essentially like hey, tom Cruise is the biggest movie star in the world, no one should ever say anything bad about him and if you have any control over that, you need to stop it. And throughout these documents they're essentially going to try to get. The show is already aired, that's done. That genie is out of the bottle.
Speaker 1:
But now what they want to do is they want to get it to either not be re-aired or they don't want the episode to end up on the season DVD, and that's really what they're going to go for, and we're going to go into that in a lot of these other documents. We're going to end it off right there because there's, so there's probably another looks like there's about another eight documents and some of them are pretty substantial. So we're going to end it there. Appreciate you guys tuning in, and until next time. And if you'd like to watch another video, you can 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.