Ever wondered what it's like behind the scenes of Scientology’s film productions? Mitch Brisker and I, Marc Headley, are pulling back the curtain on the bizarre and intricate world of Scientology filmmaking. From working on "EM5: How to Set Up a Session and and the E-Meter" to the absurd portrayals of L. Ron Hubbard as a white savior in Africa, we reveal unfiltered stories from the frontlines. Learn about our experiences acting in these unique films, the meticulous and often oppressive quality control at the International Headquarters, and the controversial influence of Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl on Hubbard's work.
Join us as we recount the surreal logistics of creating film sets at Gold Base, including the hazardous conditions faced by the sets crew and even children. Discover tales of unsafe production environments built by the Rehabilitation Project Force, the drive to meet Hubbard's exacting standards, and the cultural sensitivity challenges we navigated, like editing out outdated and racist language from Hubbard's original scripts. You’ll be gripped by stories of actors like Larry Anderson and the dynamics on set, including David Miscavige's critical oversight and the peculiar bias against Scientologist actors.
We also dive into the intriguing connection between Hubbard and Leni Riefenstahl, exploring how this odd historical tie influenced Scientology's technical training films. From Hubbard’s bizarre belief in his reincarnation as Cecil Rhodes to the musical plagiarism controversy involving Cirque du Soleil’s African-themed score, every chapter offers a mix of humor, intrigue, and critical reflection. This episode is an eye-opening journey into the strange and complex world of Scientology’s film productions, packed with surprising revelations and personal anecdotes.
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Ever wondered what it's like behind the scenes of Scientology’s film productions? Mitch Brisker and I, Marc Headley, are pulling back the curtain on the bizarre and intricate world of Scientology filmmaking. From working on "EM5: How to Set Up a Session and and the E-Meter" to the absurd portrayals of L. Ron Hubbard as a white savior in Africa, we reveal unfiltered stories from the frontlines. Learn about our experiences acting in these unique films, the meticulous and often oppressive quality control at the International Headquarters, and the controversial influence of Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl on Hubbard's work.
Join us as we recount the surreal logistics of creating film sets at Gold Base, including the hazardous conditions faced by the sets crew and even children. Discover tales of unsafe production environments built by the Rehabilitation Project Force, the drive to meet Hubbard's exacting standards, and the cultural sensitivity challenges we navigated, like editing out outdated and racist language from Hubbard's original scripts. You’ll be gripped by stories of actors like Larry Anderson and the dynamics on set, including David Miscavige's critical oversight and the peculiar bias against Scientologist actors.
We also dive into the intriguing connection between Hubbard and Leni Riefenstahl, exploring how this odd historical tie influenced Scientology's technical training films. From Hubbard’s bizarre belief in his reincarnation as Cecil Rhodes to the musical plagiarism controversy involving Cirque du Soleil’s African-themed score, every chapter offers a mix of humor, intrigue, and critical reflection. This episode is an eye-opening journey into the strange and complex world of Scientology’s film productions, packed with surprising revelations and personal anecdotes.
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: ...
Welcome back to the channel. Hello, I'm Mark Headley. With me today is Mitch Brisker for another episode of Mark and Mitch Make a Scientology Film. Thanks for joining me, Mitch.
Speaker 2:No problem, Good to be here with you.
Speaker 1:Mark, it's good to see you again. It's been a while. Our schedules have been all jammed up and we finally figured it out.
Speaker 2:We took a little break. I mean I still have. I get endless messages from people wanting us to do more of these episodes.
Speaker 1:That's what I was just about to say. I was like back by popular demand. We have been getting messages and comments like, hey, are you guys going to keep doing it? I'm like, yeah, yeah, we'll get there.
Speaker 2:I got to tell you, though, in all honesty, if people hated us doing this.
Speaker 1:I would still want to do it because it's so much fun. It is fun and also I was thinking about it the other day there's no other place where there's any record of these things actually happening or the behind the scenes stuff. I mean, there might even be people that are in the world of Scientology and Golden Era Productions that don't know these stories that took place because nobody ever told them about them and we're the only ones who know about them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if you were on the other side of the street, you know, working at whatever CMO, ant or RTC or Audio or any of those other, everything is, you know, very isolated in Scientology, and even at the base, the different divisions were even isolated from one another Completely. Yeah, a lot of this might've been going on without anybody knowing about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and there's also sometimes I'll be telling a story about how we did this on a certain film or we did that on a certain film, and there'll be people that used to work in the cinematography division that are like I never heard about that. It's like, yeah, you weren't on the shoot crew, you were doing your thing and we were up doing you know.
Speaker 1:yeah yeah, that's a fact yeah, so the film that we're going to cover today, guys, is called em5, and it's how to set up a session and an e-meter. Is that the proper?
Speaker 2:term. Yeah, and the e-meter how to set up a session, and the e-meter and EM, by the way, stands for e-meter film. So this is specifically about e-meters and this is Hubbard's instructional film about how you set the meter up and how you set the session up set the session up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and this film was shot in the early 1990s and it was actually shot before I became a member of the shoot team, right, and at that time I was, um, I was either working in manufacturing or I was working in quality control at golden air productions. And for this film, um, I guess we could backtrack a little bit. If this is the first episode you guys have seen of this series. At the Scientology International Headquarters, anyone who worked at that property also had a duty besides just being a Sea Org member and doing whatever job you had to do. You also had the hat of actor, and if you were called to be an extra or play a part in one of the scientology films that was written by L Ron Hubbard, you couldn't really deny doing it. If you were the right part or you were the right look or whatever, you had to go do it. And so for this shoot I got to play a part as an actor in the film of this guy who just walks in randomly, accidentally.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, you were one of L Ron Hubbard's messengers. He had a bunch of messengers with him. Yeah, you were one of the messengers.
Speaker 1:And I walk in while he's doing this thing. And the reason this was portrayed is because one of the things that you're supposed to do when you're supposed to set up the session is you're supposed to put a sign on the door saying, hey, we're in the middle of a session, an aud. That time, when the film was produced, I ended up watching this film. Every single copy of this film that was going to play in Scientology organizations around the world was reproduced on 16 millimeter film and it had mag stripe audio, and it was my job to check every single copy of these films before they went out. So I've seen this film at least 400 times because, because, even though I watched everything, not every one of them passed, and so we have to send multiple and anyway. So I know this film inside and out. And and then, after it was shot in the nineties, it was then res the 90s. It was then re-shot later on, and I don't know what year you guys shot it at.
Speaker 2:Around 2005, I think, maybe a little later.
Speaker 1:Okay, so it was after I had escaped from the base.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a couple of years after you made your final push to freedom.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I just want to show you guys real quick some of the locations and then we're going to get into sort of the more detailed. Yeah, this film.
Speaker 2:I mean it sounds simple in that it's just meant to instruct you how to set up a position in the email. Having this weird, insane kind of imagination and having made his living as a fiction writer where he just churned out stories not very good ones in my opinion he decided to create this, concoct this whole story around these certain characters and circumstances and then, within that story, you would see how a emitter was set up and so forth. And this is very creative stuff, except it was a very racist approach he took to the story. It actually has a connection, which we'll get to, with the Nazi propagandist Lenny Riefenstahl, who he reached out for location research. So there's a lot of crazy little things going on with this film.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean. The film starts out where a telex is being sent to L Ron Hubbard, and when we shot this film in this modern times, the telex Scientology was still sending and receiving telexes, and they may even be sending and receiving them until this to this day.
Speaker 2:They're not. They're referring to whatever they're sending and receiving as telexes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and they have a whole number.
Speaker 2:They get an email and they call it a telex.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's wild guys, because L Ron Hubbard never mentioned an email in his course writings.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it has to be a telex.
Speaker 1:So because he called it a telex, they still have to call it a telex. Anyway, it starts out with him receiving a telex and his messengers informing him that there's some auditor in the middle of Africa at a Scientology facility that has been auditing the son of the king, and the son of the king is unhappy and is about to cause a big problem and Scientology is essentially going to be kicked out of the country because of this bad PR situation that's brewing. And so then Hubbard is being asked hey, sir, you've got to come and you've got to handle this. And then he actually flies in and he flies and this is the best thing of all. If you're in Scientology, this is the most absurd concept ever that L Ron Hubbard would fly from wherever he is to train the single auditor on how to set up a session.
Speaker 2:Because that's how much he cared. Yeah, that is ridiculous.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a very ridiculous premise. The part of him gumming there, the part of them getting kicked out of Africa. That's 100% accurate.
Speaker 2:I think I'm not sure, but I think it was based on Algeria or Morocco, where they did try to audit the king and they were kicked out of the country.
Speaker 1:And I think that is the story that it was based on. Yeah, and I want to say that Janice Gr Janice Grady I think it's Gillum Grady has spoken about this.
Speaker 2:About yeah, about the, but not about the connection with EM5, about being kicked out of Morocco. I think it was Morocco that they were kicked out of.
Speaker 1:Very possibly. I know that they got they. They've been. The rocks were thrown at the ships and the seahorse members in different ports, so I might I might you know which one is which?
Speaker 2:so I I think kind of hubbard takes it on himself to travel to africa, but he really mocked, he creates himself as like a white savior, like I'm the white savior that's going to go to africa, like save everything. And it's pretty crazy the way he if you really look at the film, like from a political, cultural standpoint, you have this very privileged white guy who is going to rescue a problem that really was created by himself. He's the one that really created the problem and now he's going to go solve the problem. And this is a kind of it ties in with the indoctrination in time, told you, because they, they do this to people, they convince people that they're damaged, and then it accepts the people and just by the fact that they're upset about it as proof that they need help. So then they start, uh, you know, forking over money to get help this part of this crazy brainwashing con called scientology yeah, there's another um thing that I'll put a link in the description, but there's a.
Speaker 1:Basically, there's this guy named chris owen, who may be the most prolific historian, scientology historian, whoid government and how he thought he was Hubbard. Evidently, hubbard was convinced that he was a reincarnation. He was.
Speaker 2:Cecil Rhodes. Yeah, rhodes who was gay, by the way, who happened to be a gay man a gay white supremacist, yeah, gay white supremacist.
Speaker 1:So anyway, so. But Hubbard insisted that he was the reincarnation of this guy and he actually traveled to Africa to find the gold and diamonds that Cecil Rhodes had hidden there somewhere, and it's a fascinating article. I'll put a link to it in the description, but regardless.
Speaker 2:I just have to interject. They still deported him, oh yeah.
Speaker 1:No, he actually did get kicked out of South Africa and, and it's just a weird, so when, if you know all of that and now we're going to tell you about, about the film, you go like, oh he, he literally wrote this film with all with all this background information as the story to how you set up an e-meter in a room and all the different things. It's literally a checklist that he wrote.
Speaker 2:It's nothing, yeah, it's nothing.
Speaker 1:You've got to have a dictionary, you've got to have the meter. You've got to have a spare meter. You've got to check the meter's uncharged. You got to have a dictionary, you got to have the meter. You got to have a spare meter, you got to check the meters on charge. But the fact that he had to make this political sort of racist statement as the backdrop for how you set up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's really crazy, and we helped him do it Because at the time we were of that mind that we thought we were helping the world.
Speaker 1:And we thought everyone was going to watch this film and love it. And so here let me show I'll put up.
Speaker 2:Well, they do love it if you're in the brainwashed cult. If they love it.
Speaker 1:Totally so. This is the United States and you can see, on the Western end there's California and there's a town called San Jacinto, and San Jacinto lays right below the base. You can see it up there. I'll move it over here a little bit. Golden Arrow Productions is right there.
Speaker 1:The first time that we shot it, we shot it at this place that was called the Int Ranch and this is where all of the kids of the Sea Org members that worked at the international headquarters, this is where they went to school. This complex, right here. It was called the Int Ranch ranch. Now it's owned by the saboba indians, right, um, it's not, uh, it's not no longer belongs to scientology, but this whole village was set up in this area, right here, um and it's, and it was pretty secluded and I don't think you could really I mean we, you guys had to watch your angles if you didn't want to see any of of the little town, the little village where the ranch was, but it was sort of in this section here that had little hills all around it yeah, it was pretty, it was a, a decent place to shoot.
Speaker 2:I mean it was, you know, except for the rattlesnakes and the heat and all the cold and all that other stuff.
Speaker 1:But yeah, yeah, and also the weather, the weather, so, so you could build. They built a whole village out there and I want to say um, the at this property, um, I'll zoom in a little bit here, but there was all these bungalows and um, they've torn a lot of it down by now, but this also used to be the location for what was called the in this, in this big empty space right here. This was where the rehabilitation project force was for the international headquarters.
Speaker 1:So, if you were a SeaRig member and you got in trouble, you were sent out to this remote location and that's where you, that's where you lived, you ate, slept and did all your rehabilitation and hard labor at this property. And I want to say, the first time that we shot EM5, that the religious, the rehabilitation project forces, the ones who built the majority of the village. Yeah, I think so. I think so With the help of the sets crew.
Speaker 1:But they were the labor force to build all of the sets and that was the case for many, many of the years that I was there. The Rehabilitation Project Force was the main sets and props production facility for the shoot crew for most of the 90s and into the 2000s of the 90s and into the 2000s, even when it was eventually there was a lot of uh bad press around there being this uh labor camp um near the scientology facility and um, even when it was disbanded and gotten rid of, almost all those people became sets and props people, yeah, ones that were the backdrop artists and the props people. They became part of sets of props um, and then we'll go to the golden era productions. But I.
Speaker 2:I just want to add to that. Interestingly enough, even though the rpf and the sets people like it, was built by adults. Once we were finished with the film it was just left. Uh, it was abandoned, the back lot was abandoned, and it sat there forever and then eventually it became like a fire hazard, so they had the kids take it apart.
Speaker 1:I'm pretty sure the kids actually used to go out. I want, I don't know if I'm remembering my stories right, but I think from some of the ranch kids that I've spoken to, there was a fair bit of nonsense that would happen out there at the little village, Sort of you could kind of go out there and nobody'd know you were out there Cause you'd be in one of these little huts or whatever. But you're right, I'm thinking eventually no.
Speaker 2:I remember.
Speaker 1:Had to disassemble the village.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they, they had them tear it all down and the thing is it was infested with rattlesnake nuts, but I don't think the kids I mean back then, if you killed a rattlesnake and you turned it into security, you got a 15 reward, remember.
Speaker 1:So yeah, there was something like that.
Speaker 2:I think there was, yeah, which is yeah, which is not a good thing because you don't want to promote people going and killing rattlesnakes or anything else. But I think the kids were out there with shovels like collecting, you know, bank killing rattlesnakes. So anyway, it's just they were not treated well. It was a horrible place.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there was nothing good about the, about that facility and especially the rpf was there. The kids were there. Yeah, it was horrible. There's a story one time there was a fire. There was a fire at the base where the mountain was set on fire by one of the theology Sea Org member security guards, and the people that came to put out the fire were prisoners and they were going to sleep up on the hill above the base during the night after they'd done all the firefighting. And I think David Miscavige or some Scientology executives heard about this and they were like you've got to sort this out, this can't be. And so the port captain, a guy by the name of Ken Hoden he made arrangements for the all of the prisoners to sleep at the ranch with the kids instead of oh, no, that was that was his solution, and then, when they found out about that, it was like what.
Speaker 2:Anyway.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, not a lot of good happening on that. Now, this is the, this is the base, and there's a highway that runs between it. On the right side of the highway, that is pretty much Religious Technology Center and International Management is on what was called the north side of the highway.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the hole, the notorious hole, was on the north side the hole.
Speaker 1:Yeah, here I'll zoom in on the hole so you can see and audio Well it's gone now.
Speaker 2:I'll zoom in on the hole so you can see and audio. Well, it's gone now, but it might be in this. Well, yeah.
Speaker 1:That double wide trailer right in the middle of the screen. That's where the hole was. And then these buildings were international management and audio, the audio recording studios and archive audio storage and all that other stuff. Yeah, and then up here is where the city castle was, that big uh building there with the lake in front of it, and then right over here is where you guys re-shot it later in these, uh, in the mid.
Speaker 2:Right, right, right. Yeah, we re-shot it there. I came up with this crazy plan because basically it's kind of hard to explain, but I but I wanted the work at Gold to be as it sounds weird, but I want it to be as convenient as possible. For me it doesn't sound weird.
Speaker 1:That checks out. From when I was there, that totally checks out. Literally, we're working all night and all day. Mitch is like I don't want to drive an extra 30 minutes to go do this at another location.
Speaker 2:We should just shoot it here and you're just yeah, I was always figuring out ways all night, day and you're worried about traveling.
Speaker 2:An extra 30 yeah, well, it wasn't that bad bark. You're kind of exaggerating, but I mean, usually I would come up with these plans and they would kind of benefit everybody. So I said, look, why don't we just build the backlot right outside the castle? It's right next to sets production and what we can do is we can build a whole village. The only problem is is that gold doesn't know how to do backdrops.
Speaker 2:Because in a situation like that, my plan was we're going to shoot the exteriors on this backlot and then we'll replicate the sets in the studio and we'll shoot all the interiors inside, which means you have to have really realistic backdrops outside all the doors and windows. You have to shoot the actual environment that you're shooting in and then create backdrops. They didn't know how to do that, so, and then I said the rest of it, you know the road and the castle will remove it with with cgi'll just take it out. And so this meant that if it rained one day, we could go in the castle and shoot. It meant that we could finish the film much faster. I mean it was more expensive to do it that way, but it was much quicker.
Speaker 2:But they didn't know how to do backdrops. So the next thing I'm complaining about to miscarriage with these guys. They just don't know how to do backdrops. Blah, blah, blah. So the next thing I know I'm like invited to spend four days on the set of where the world's to see how Spielberg's people do these backdrops Right, which I knew how they did it. I just needed to bring it back to gold. I just need to send a text to my kid to handle the dog. He said he would handle the dog and he's not doing it, but anyway, so I went back there. This is one of the backdrops from War of the Worlds. This is like the set that was used as the interior for the house, the home that Tom Cruise lived in. These were the literal views outside that actual place. It was an actual place and then they shot these huge they're called Duratrans and then they hung these around the set. I have a ton of pictures.
Speaker 1:Durable transparencies. So, it's like a picture that you can backlight.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you can put a light behind it and it's just a standard way that you do believable and yeah, you could put a light behind it and it's it's just a standard way that you do believable backdrops in hollywood. And so then gold got into full gear on figuring how to do this and buying the printer and all that stuff, and I can show you. We have, uh, you should show, we have a picture of the actual village, the external one oh, okay, well, I have a whole bunch of pictures.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we could put them up and go through them and then we could talk about the film. Okay, so that's an actual background. You're inside the studio and you're on a set and what you're looking at is a gigantic Duratrans of the actual location. That's outside the studio.
Speaker 1:Oh, so you guys could build. So you build sets. Ah, this makes so much more sense. We always had setting problems doing it the other way. We'd have to wait for a chopper, we'd have to wait for a plane or we'd have to wait for. It was always a nightmare when we shot it on location. Yeah, exactly exactly. So this is actually how you.
Speaker 2:This is how you really do this, and I finally got them to like spend the time and the money to do it. It wasn't easy. It giant photograph of the environment. That's outside the castle, where the exterior set was and dressed up and photoshopped and made all nice yeah, just yeah, yeah, but it matches perfectly so wow, and that's the messenger.
Speaker 1:That's the main character in the film.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, he's. Yeah, the guy that you and I did it with was he. That guy was a tent. Yeah, he was amazing.
Speaker 1:So the guy was and this is a funny thing about, I want to say, david Miscavige is perception of actual Sea Org members and actual messengers. Is this guy, this the guy who played this part of the 1990s film? He was the most amazing messenger that had ever been showed on shown on film and inside anthology and he wasn't a seawork member, he wasn't even a scientist, he just was playing the part that l ron hubbard had written and yeah, he was average, was like touting this guy, as he's a better messenger than any messenger oh yeah, yeah, he was.
Speaker 2:He was basically an actor in a stand-up comic and he was the guy kept us in stitches oh, he was like full-time. Very funny on, just always just joking and yeah, I mean it's kind of a comically written part. I mean the guy's a wiseass. Hubbard envisioned all of his the messengers, as being kind of very having sort of a superiority complex and being really wiseasses and kind of enjoying ridiculing people. This guy doesn't, but it seems funny because it's being written as comedy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so anyway we can kind of spin through the rest of these and then we'll talk about it. Yeah, so there's another one that's inside. That's actually you're inside the studio, it's not an exterior shot, okay. Okay, so this is a sign leading it. We built this entire village and it's supposed to be a fictional african country called mahali arafiki, and so this is the sign, because we know every african village must have a welcome sign yeah, and that's another weird thing that they don't ever really explain is because a lot of l ron hubbard also recorded the voiceover for this film.
Speaker 2:No, not just the voiceover. Not just the voiceover.
Speaker 1:He's featured in the film, I understand, but I'm saying he recorded the voiceover, for all the voiceovers for this film when he was still alive. Even though we're shooting it in the 90s, it never got produced until the 90s. He passed away in 86. So he had already pre-recorded the voiceovers to do this, and then we would do these over-the-shoulder shots of a body double or some guy's arm that looked like him. When we originally did the film did we use Marcus for no, no, no, no.
Speaker 2:We had a guy. I can't think of his name. I think he was the same guy who did the beingness film tr16 yeah, he was that kind of big redheaded guy yeah but hubbard also. He had a camera when he recorded the voiceover, but he also recorded all of his hand motions.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so the guy could match the mimic he did with his arms and hands. And yeah, what I want to say, cause I've seen the film a million times- right.
Speaker 1:They say in the very opening sequence they say they want you to go to Africa. And then he, and then he they're like, okay, we're going. And then they go to Mahali and you're like I thought they were going to Africa, where's? I've never even heard of that. And that's always a part that I always thought like why couldn't they just do one or the other, like he could have said in the vo they want you to go to arafiki and then go to arafiki, but anyway, whatever, small.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's my nitpick of watching the film well, it's 500 times and saying this is weird yeah, yeah, it's just, it's a fictional country that sounds kind of really corny, like a kid would make it up. So yeah, that's what do we have. Okay, so now you can see the extent of this African village. Interestingly enough, the landscape in Southern California and this part of Southern California is very similar to the landscape in in this one part of Africa where this would, it's in kind of Northeast Africa, where this is supposed to be, so the the, you know, the vegetation and so forth is is relatively similar.
Speaker 1:I'm not sure why that there's that one and then there's this one.
Speaker 2:I'm not sure, oh yeah, no, I think I just graded one and I just act Okay.
Speaker 2:So here's another thing when you're casting a film in LA and you're trying to do an African village, you really need to find a bunch of people that are from the same part of Africa, because if you just start casting randomly black actors, they're going to look like they're from all over the place, right yeah, they need to look like they're from the same tribe. So fortunately, I found there's a community of Nigerians in North Hollywood who are actors and musicians and dancers, and so I hired them and they were happy to be in the film. The only problem is, as I was going through the script, there's a scene that Hubbard wrote where there's a woman and two small children and they're looking in a window with curiosity about what's happening and they're eating bananas, and he refers to them in the script as Pekingese, which is a really not, it's a very racist term, not a current approved terminology yeah, no, no very racist term, not a current approved uh terminology yeah, no, no, it's anyway so a lot of things like that in these films.
Speaker 2:By the way, that's not an isolated thing where there's references and yeah, yeah, racist, also misogynistic, sort of very not we've talked about some of the other videos, but yeah, we talked about it.
Speaker 1:In the audio division of Golden Air Productions, there's a whole team of people that are editing out racial slurs and coughs, and there is another just editing out anything inappropriate that's currently inappropriate, and L Ron Hubbard did so many of those that there's an actual thing that's written on. You got to take these things out.
Speaker 2:Right, so just let me say that. Yeah, so I had what we call the sides. The pages of the script needed to be delivered to these actors, and I couldn't in good conscience that's I called my there's myself.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry, I didn't.
Speaker 2:I thought there was no, that's okay, but yeah, that's yeah I refer to that as indiana jew, by the way, so you know it's terrible. Um, I can say that I'm jewish but anyway, so no, but so, yeah, don't so.
Speaker 2:so I had to, uh, I had to give these, these script pages to these actors and I couldn't ask permission to change Hubbard's words, cause that's just like a no, no. So I just went ahead and changed it and and and got them. You know, I took the racial, the bad, racist stuff out of the script and gave it to the actors.
Speaker 1:I mean, nobody ever said boo, they were just like I was going to say. That's like a there's, there's no other easy way out of that situation to just do it and and, and. Yeah, does it ask for forgiveness, not permission, because nobody ever said a word. There's no way that you could. You could change it with authority, with, with being approved that you would.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's never going to get approved. But if you changed it and then somebody found out why they'd be like you know he really had to do that. There's no way around that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but these people were. They were lovely people, people they were good to work with. I have some other pictures now. Look, we even had zebras. The reason I was gonna say that is like some serious background yeah, no, we, we had, and you know, I posted this picture on facebook yeah I just said oh, I didn't say anything about what it was and people, nothing, I just said oh yeah, and I got in so much trouble for revealing safari yeah, I got in so much trouble for revealing.
Speaker 2:You went on safari yeah, I got in so much trouble with ethics of gold because I'm like you're revealing our plans to our enemies and I'm like no, I'm not.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, A three shot with zebras.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because you know you have people in the C word, where you have people in Scientology organizations whose job it is to uncover problems and solve them, and if they can't find problems to solve, then they're in trouble, that's true, they're like literally paid to witch hunt.
Speaker 1:That's their job.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that's the reason that Scientology Media Productions is such a disaster. Is you had the entire? The statistic of the ethics department is like what do they call?
Speaker 1:it Situations found and handled.
Speaker 2:Yeah situations found and handled. And if they can't find a situation to handle? They got no statistic.
Speaker 1:That's true, I never thought of it that way. It's sort of like, hey, what are you doing? There's no situation, sir, you better make some, you better find some. Yeah, that can't be true. There's no way.
Speaker 2:There's no nonsense going on, yeah, so, anyways, weird stuff. So, anyway, these were lovely people that uh, uh, they and they, they, they really liked the village, they recognized, they actually validated it as as being very authentic from the an african village and and uh, so, yeah, they were great. I tried to hire them to do the score for the film, but the musicians wouldn't let me, because some of them were very talented musicians.
Speaker 1:Okay, now, before we show this next video, there's a video. There's actually two little clips. I do want to, now that you've brought this up, I do want to say something about this. When this film was originally shot in the 1990s, the musicians have a thing that's called. Hubbard wrote a policy, a bunch of policies, and he called it the art series, and and the and. There's art series one and two and three and so on. Well, there's a policy, or this bulletin that he wrote. It's called art series eight, and what he basically wrote is if you're trying to create something and you don't have any sort of? Um idea, or you don't have any sort of uh, uh, what do you call it? Like a proper muse or inspiration?
Speaker 1:to go watch other things that other people have done and that'll give you an idea. And so the musicians. They could not come up with an african score for this film that that muscavige was in any shape or way or form happy with. And one of their art series eight was an album that was produced by cirque de soleil at the time yeah, I gave him that album, or okay, so that album is the soundtrack to that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, totally. It's such a rip-off. They didn't even change. They used the same songs in the same order in the soundtrack.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, there was a wonderful piece of African-sounding music on a Cirque du Soleil show from I don't know, probably early 90s. I can't remember. I have music and a certain piece of lay show from I don't know, probably early 90s. I can't, I have never been able to find it like this, and they just ripped it off. Yeah, oh, we have a little. There you go.
Speaker 1:We had a little glitch oh, I didn't see it, but regardless, when we, when I heard, I like I told you before I've listened to this thing, yeah, hundreds and hundreds of times. And then somebody told me supposedly the musicians might get in trouble because they they no one. They didn't really tell anybody how much ripped it off. And I think Miscavige found out. But we'd actually released a music cassette of EM5. And I think somebody got a hold of it and they were like like hey, um, you guys know, you're totally 100 percent ripping off cirque du soleil. And then, if you play them, and then I listened to the actual album and then that's when I realized, oh, they didn't even change the order of the songs, like that yeah, kind of wild, if you listen.
Speaker 1:Weird, but um. So if anybody has a copy of the EM5 music single that was released in the 1990s, give that a listen. And I've never been able to find that Cirque du Soleil album that they released.
Speaker 2:I'll remember what it is. I'll remember the name. It was from the early 90s.
Speaker 1:If we figure it out, I'll put it up on the community cage or we'll add it to the community page or something like that, but it's pretty. If we figure it out, I'll put it up on the community cage or we'll add it to the chat or something like that, but it's pretty. So if we do find it and you listen to it, you'll at least be able to listen to the soundtrack to the movie, because they just ripped it off. Okay, when it was redone, did they use that same soundtrack again? Pretty much.
Speaker 2:They pretty much used it. No, yeah, and these guys, these Nigerian actors and musicians, they were like the level of African musicians that had played with Paul Simon. They were on that level Amazing musicians Should we play a video, Because I sing in this video but they're just goofing around. Well I know, but I can hear.
Speaker 1:Seth the sound guy giving them instructions.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, because we did record them singing on the set.
Speaker 1:Like his wild track or some kind of yeah, yeah. Yeah, can I play it.
Speaker 2:Hold on, there you go. Thank you, we're out of here, right? Yeah?
Speaker 1:I think I I shot this on my phone when no one was with him? Yeah, so that I can hear seth in the background yeah, audio direction.
Speaker 2:Oh, and they're. They're singing and dancing because, um, the auditor is now an okay guy like he's uh yeah, they're not going to throw them out of the country. Yeah, they're not going to throw them out of the country, so they're also.
Speaker 2:He is not going to come down on them and chuck them out, so they can sing and they can dance yeah, anyway, I just we went all out to try to make this film as great as we possibly could yeah, wow, and so in the original the main character, there's the messenger and then there's the auditor.
Speaker 1:the auditor was played by larry anderson, who was also in the orientation film that was shot by Scientology, and he plays sort of the bumbling auditor who doesn't and anybody who knows. Larry, he was a comedic actor.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and a magician.
Speaker 1:A magician, a light of hand artist. Yes, so he was amazing at the physical comedy that was written for the part because he could sort of make bumbling, you know, entertaining and it was fun, it was funny to watch. He was really good at it. And the other thing about this film is it was one of the longest of the Scientology films.
Speaker 2:It's about an hour long yeah.
Speaker 1:So a lot of these films that you're watching, they could be 10 minutes or 15 minutes or very short, and this was sort of a film that if you were a student on a course and any course in Scientology that involves an e-meter that you need to be trained on how to use you get to watch this film. So over the years there was a lot of students that would say, oh yeah, whenever I was on course I would try to go and watch that film because it's it's almost, it's like almost an hour long and it's not that bad of a watch. So people would sort of they knew these lines in the movie and there's certain things, that comedic things that would be said. So the wrong room that was a very famous, so even they became catchphrases. Yeah, if ever I walked into an office and it was not where the meeting was, I would always be like wrong room, you know, because that was my thing.
Speaker 1:But, um, there was also the messenger, I think he, uh, larry, leaves the window open and all these papers blow all over the office and there's just papers and stuff all over the floor. And then when the messenger comes in, he's berating him and there's just papers and stuff all over the floor and then when the messenger comes in, he's berating him and he's like and get these papers picked up, or pick these papers up, or something like that. And so that was uh, if you walked into somebody's office and there was stuff on the floor, I'd be like pick these papers up, um, but then the mirror and the actress was it al clegg? Was that who?
Speaker 2:was yeah, the, the, the african son, yeah, the African son of the king.
Speaker 1:The son of the king.
Speaker 2:yes, and he played in the NFL for a couple years, I think for the Kansas City Chiefs, and he had a really bad injury and his NFL career was over. So he became an actor, great guy. Definitely not from Africa.
Speaker 1:And also not a Scientologist. Yeah, besides Larry, larry was a Scientologist, not a Scientologist. Yeah, there were, besides Larry, larry was a Scientologist and besides any extras or people like that that we had in the film, the, the main character, the main cast and actors were not Scientologists they were. They were just actors from Los Angeles that were auditioned and then cast for the film and that. So we were saying earlier about this guy that played the messenger. He was a very good messenger in terms of what David Miscavige thought a messenger should look like and sound like and perform his duties. But then when we did the TR-16 film and we got that guy shane uh, shane, johnson, johnson, yeah, shane he was also another one of these people who played the part of a messenger, like even people who knew what a messenger should be like.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, people would. People would have who were training to be messengers would have to watch these films, were ordered to watch them because this is how a messenger is supposed to act.
Speaker 1:So and this kid these guys were.
Speaker 2:these were pot smoking actors. I mean, these were just like regular fun people, yeah.
Speaker 1:You know who just needed a gig and that would just literally showed up to play a part and phone it in, maybe.
Speaker 2:I don't need, I don't think that I mean, I beat them up pretty hard too but, but regardless.
Speaker 1:They were amazing uh, being messengers, and the fact that david miscavige would tell people watch this film and watch a guy who's not a scientologist and not a messenger, because he knows how to be a messenger better than you. That is a tuesday at the international headquarters. Oh yeah, this can happen all the time.
Speaker 2:No, totally like. Look, I kind of, yeah, he would. His attitude was like well, like with me, I had to hire this mf because you guys can't do your jobs, like it was always a way of holding something up to ridicule the staff. Because david muscavige hates c-org members, he hates staff, he hates everybody except I don't know, maybe four people and some big donors. I mean literally is like despises people, his movie star, his movie star buddy, yeah, and four people and some big donors.
Speaker 1:I mean literally he just despises people.
Speaker 2:His movie star buddy, yeah, and his girlfriend and the big donors and other than that, you're just shit. You're nothing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, it's very true, it's very wild. It's very wild when you're there and you're like we're shooting a film with a guy who has he doesn't. He's never read anything about Scientology.
Speaker 1:He may have gone to the Celebrity Center to do his audition or whatever the Scientology facility at Franklin and Bronson in Hollywood, california. But besides that he doesn't really have any connection to Scientology. And then to hear David Miscavige and David Miscavige never met this guy, he never spoke, he had no connection with him and then he would just be like oh yeah, this guy's a better messenger than any messenger that's ever been.
Speaker 2:And you're just like well, we, we, we did the same thing with Katie Mitchell when she was trained to portray the part of an auditor. All of a sudden, she became the model. She was portraying what it looks like to audit somebody, and then she became the model. She was portraying what it looks like to audit somebody, and then she became the model, like every auditor in the world had to like model themselves after the way she did it. So it was really crazy. Same thing with Jack Armstrong.
Speaker 1:Yeah, jack Armstrong. He became the best auditor in the world Like the most perfect auditor in the world. Yeah, because he didn't. He wasn't an auditor, he wasn't. Yeah, he didn't do the golden age attack. He was an actor pretending to be auditing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then being edited together for all the best parts. So I just have to say do you remember the messenger's final line in the film? Do you remember the last line in the film Clowns, clowns, will they ever learn? Yes doing what ron says always comes out right. Yeah, like that is the punchline of the entire film. That's what an egomaniac this person was. He made this entire film so that at the end of the film he could narcissistically give himself a huge round of applause.
Speaker 1:It's funny because I was thinking about this earlier when we were kind of getting, when I was reading this Chris Owens Rhodesia thing and I was like, oh, that's right. In the film, hubbard is the hero who saved the day. Like they were, scientology was going to get a kick, get kicked out of Africa. Because this auditor messed up, hubbard, flies in on his chopper, he and within a couple of days he turns the thing around. The case is is is amazingly happy, and the whole thing. And then it's like we're getting out of here, we're ready to leave, and it's and, the and and the whole thing. And then it's like we're getting out of here, we're ready to leave, and that's your right. At the end it's like a big pullout shot and the messenger.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, like all of those natives are dancing, like you saw, they're dancing and the camera slowly pulls back and then it moves over to the messenger and he's leaning there, being really cocky, and he says clownss, when will they ever learn doing what hubbard's doing? What ron says always comes out right and yeah, and I thought that was so cool when I did it.
Speaker 1:I mean, I look at it now I'm like so embarrassed, but I thought, oh yeah, that's so cool yeah, and the other thing is that that is actually sort of how some of these other films that it's kind of they go along the same, that same vein. Yeah, there's a lot of ron worship in these. Yeah, in tr16 it's the same way he's coaching these guys. No, you got to do this and no, you got to do right right and then in the end it's like, sir, you're amazing, you were.
Speaker 1:We were able to snap this whole thing together with your help yeah, you're like this is, this is so cry.
Speaker 2:It's so cringy when you think back on it. Yeah, so cringy. It's like, oh my God, but it's just like you're oblivious to it. Yeah, and these are.
Speaker 1:These films are very popular among students that are training to do Scientology, because they're really the only. If you're training to be an executive, or if you're training to be um, an executive, or if you're training to to do some kind of administrative post, there's nothing like this for those posts. Really they might. They might have to watch one or like maybe orientation was a film that they uh an executive I think also they might watch the testing film also yeah, maybe there's like maybe a couple, but if you're ones that, are about about staffs and organizations.
Speaker 2:There are a a few, so they'd watch those.
Speaker 1:But if you're training to be a counselor or someone who audits, does the Scientology counseling on another person, the higher you get up you have to watch more and more of these films, and you might watch one of these films in 10 years of Scientology courses and stuff. You might watch some of these films hundreds and hundreds of times each. Because you're supposed to watch. You're encouraged to watch them over and over and over again. What does he say? Hubbard says number of times over equals certainty.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're never going to forget that, I know.
Speaker 1:Every once in a while. I can't remember what it was now, but I was talking to my wife, claire, and I was like what's that thing when you do the thing? And she was like I can't believe you don't remember. I was like that's a good thing, I think.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that really is a good thing.
Speaker 1:I'm overriding some of my old memories. Yeah, your brain's letting go.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the synaps brain's letting go. It's really good.
Speaker 1:this is like we're never going to use this, just just a race, yeah, but there are things like that number of times over equal certainty and understanding, um, that you just there. But so that's a common theme in scientology. You do these things. There's a lot of, uh, repetitious brainwash drill, drill, drill, that's oh, my goodness, I'm trying to think of anything else. So when you guys reshot it, was there any particular talent, or well, yes, there was um the guy who played the messenger.
Speaker 2:I, I'm sorry, I forgot his name. He's a wonderfully talented actor. He's also owns a reclaimed woodworking and wood supply business. He's a very, very talented guy. Um, I can't. He built a piece of furniture for me. He's a wonderful guy.
Speaker 1:Uh, so he was in the I remember al clegg and the other guy. What about you?
Speaker 2:yeah no, I just.
Speaker 1:I just, for some reason, his, his name slips my mind it's not like you worked with thousands and thousands of actors over the years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly um, which I did. But no, this guy. He was in the professional TRS course. He played one of the two main actors, oh wow.
Speaker 1:When he shot that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he was in this film.
Speaker 1:We should mention this before we talk about this. Yeah, almost all of these films, even the one that Mitch just mentioned, were shot previously by L Ron Hubbard, some by the crew in the 90s. But almost all of these films had to be reshot because, for instance, Larry Anderson that we spoke about, he declared persona non grata by Scientology, as has been just about every main actor in the films that we originally.
Speaker 2:Yeah, eventually so many people left these films and left Scientology and spoke out, rendering the films useless, which is weird, because Scientology is such an insulated bubble that the people inside that bubble probably never heard of Larry Anderson. That's right, they never knew that all this horrible stuff happened. Yeah, but especially years later yeah, but still they had to be remade.
Speaker 1:Uh, that's the best part, they had to be remade. And the actors, these films. Scientology teaches you that the their goal is to clear the planet, to make make everyone a clear. A Scientologist.
Speaker 2:Unless you're an actor in a film.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but if you're a Scientology actor, you can't be in a Scientology film, because then you might not be in Scientology anymore.
Speaker 2:Yeah, miscavige laid the law. He said no more Scientologists in these films, we're just going to hire actors from the outside. So there's this whole group of people out there that can never be in Scientology. It's the outside.
Speaker 1:So there's this whole group of people out there that can never be in scientology. It's weird, it's the most, because we might leave scientology and then we do those films exactly.
Speaker 2:It is kind of like this amazing case of an organization being biased against its own members.
Speaker 1:Totally so it's, and the it's just so crazy it's, if it's mind-boggling if you think about it, that we don't want you to be in our film because you might end up getting into scientology, yeah, and leaving scientology. So we just want to hire you to be an actor. But the actresses and the actors that are already gung-ho scientologists and want to be in the films you can't be in. No, no, no.
Speaker 2:All of these films you see, anything you see that's out in the public, like the Way to Happiness film, like the Super Bowl ads, all of these, none of those people are Scientologists. The people that are playing auditors and that are playing people receiving auditing none of them are. They can't be by policy because Miscavige is too afraid that they're going to leave and speak out. I have a couple of friends that I made over the years who were these actors, who were never Scientologists and are still my friends today. They'll never work for Scientology again.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think I'm actually friends with Shane Johnson on Facebook.
Speaker 2:Oh, really, because, Shane, he's a kind of under-the-radar quasi-Scientologist.
Speaker 1:I think I might be friends with him on Facebook. And there's another guy. Do you remember a guy named Jack Maxwell?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely was he and he was from the what is happiness video. What? That's what it was.
Speaker 1:I could never remember. I'm like I know this guy, I shot with this guy. I remember he was buying a starbucks in downtown, la on on grand avenue, because we were so broke we didn't have any money. He's like do you guys want me to buy you some coffee or something? No, this is not good. This is going to come back to to buy that. The talent can see like these guys are ragtag. They're not running on a. They're not running. No, no. Jack Maxwell yeah, no, I'm friends with him on Facebook too. He's a good, good guy, he's amazing and he is the most recognizable dude we ever shot in a million years. Yeah.
Speaker 2:He was in.
Speaker 1:Uh, he has a really cool look and he's just a really yeah, he's kind of a kind of a james dean kind of character. He reminds me of, uh um, the guy that used to play starbuck on uh battlestar galactica.
Speaker 2:Uh face, yeah very much so yeah yeah, you remember he was also in tears in life, which? Yes yeah, he, he played the guy who put the pick through his toe, that's right Through his boot.
Speaker 1:Did we shoot that in the oil field?
Speaker 2:We did in the actual real oil field down in LA. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Near downtown LA. We have to do it.
Speaker 2:It's actually called Ladera Heights.
Speaker 1:It's on the way to the airport, yeah that's right On the way to the airport we got that was a tier one. Did we already covered? Did we already do I?
Speaker 2:don't think so that we should do that. That's an amazing film. That was the film we shot in black and white.
Speaker 1:Yeah, don't tell any of the stories, cause there's some yeah. So yeah, I'm not going to.
Speaker 2:But getting back to EM five for a second, there's a very interesting piece of. That's another very interesting connection between a lot of people may be aware of. Well, you may or may not know who Leni Riefenstahl is. Leni Riefenstahl is a very noted documentary filmmaker. She was hired by Adolf Hitler. She was like a superstar in Germany in the 30s as an actor, as a director, as an actress. She was hired by Adolf Hitler Personally an actress. She was hired by Adolf Hitler Personally. She directed two films Triumph of the Will and Olympia four of the Nazis. They are considered to be two of the greatest, most effective propaganda films of all time. I found out about it in film school. Her work is still studied. It's a very strange story. We could do a whole episode on it. She through. We could do a whole episode on it.
Speaker 2:Through a very strange series of circumstances, hubbard ended up rewriting a film her most famous film which was called the Blue Light, which is a film she did before she worked for Hitler. It was a pre-war film. It's a notable film. You can see it. It's even notable film. You can see it. It's even on YouTube. You can watch it. So the whole circumstances about how she and Hubbard colluded and did this thing Damn.
Speaker 2:I actually had some stuff here I wanted to show. Oh, I have the picture. We have this one letter. People reported on this. Tony Ortega did a very nice article about this. I've written about it in my book. I have more of the material than anybody else. I have a copy of the script that Hubbard wrote. I have letters he punched up no, no, no, this is actually well, the script is. Yeah, it's his script. It's his English language version. He was hoping to reboot his quote unquote filmmaking career, career which never happened. Because when I researched it, I found out hubbard was only in hollywood for 10 weeks. And I've got to tell you, if you come to hollywood and you have a job for 10 weeks, you were fired like nobody wanted you around. If you couldn't make more than 10 weeks, right.
Speaker 2:But this entire illustrious l run hubbard the filmmaker yeah, the screenwriter is a bunch of bullshit, but he was hoping to reboot his kind of film script writing career. In honesty, in terms of Hollywood, the footnote about L Ron Hubbard is some of his dime novels were used as source material for serials, serials that you never heard of.
Speaker 1:The Secret of yeah, unless we told you yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:The secret of treasure Island you never heard of unless we told you about them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we ain't talking like the Trito and yeah, we're not talking about Buck Rogers here.
Speaker 2:So anyway, um, he and Lenny Ravenshaw managed to come together in 1960. What is that? 15 years after the Germans are defeated, he's now collaborating with this woman who almost went to prison for being a Nazi collaborator.
Speaker 1:And he's also trying to find out about this Africa thing, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so what happens is so I'm reading, I'm researching this, I'm reading through all the documentation I have, which was given to me as a gift by David Miscavige. I have the stack.
Speaker 1:Was it because you were doing this film and this had it some kind of no, no, no, no, I'm writing a book and I'm reading all this stuff.
Speaker 2:I'm going through and I'm very carefully reading the letters. There's a letter you could bring it up like there is no doubt that hubbard was dear friends with lenny riefenstahl. This is a letter from lenny riefenstahl from her production company, because she's still not trying to make films. This is from July 11th. What does that say? July 11th, 1979. Yeah, 1979. Okay, and I can't read it, but maybe if you can see it, you can read it. I don't have it in front of me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it says, it's written it's, and it says Mr L Ron Hubbard, St Hill Manor. So she's writing to him in East Gridstead in Sussex in England and it says dear Ron, I was very much surprised and pleased and I was very much surprised and plea.
Speaker 2:To hear from you after such a long time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there you go. I regret to say that I cannot provide photos of South African village because I never been in that part of the continent. I spent my time mostly in the Sudan or in East Africa. However, I can send you a photo of Anuba village if you want. In this case I have to know whether in color or black and white, and which size. I hope you are doing well. I should be glad to meet you again. With kind regards, Lenny Riefenstahl.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So let there be no doubt that Hubbard was friends with this Nazi collaborator. I mean, there is absolutely zero doubt. So I'm reading this letter and I'm saying, wait a minute. I'm looking at the date 79. He's not at saint hill in 79 he's at la quinta.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he was in the.
Speaker 2:Uh, he's a leke yeah, he's in la quinta, so obviously this is still like his international mailing address, because he's on the run from the fbi, because the snow white breakage just happened. Oh yeah, this is right around when it was right, and so he's hiding out in this, in this compound, right With our dear friend Mike Rinder and our dear not friend David Miscavige, but he's with all of these people, right, and he's hanging out in La Quinta Well no, I don't think David Miscavige was with was ever with him at that time.
Speaker 2:No, I think he was no, was it? But they were shooting films on lakinta and we have pictures of no dave on the camera.
Speaker 1:That's what I'm saying when he that that was when that was. Oh, you're right, you know what this was six years before. Um, like religious tech, not all the crazy, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is when he was right he was a messenger and he was like trying to be a cameraman and yeah, he was shit camera but? But the real point is, I'm reading this letter from Riefenstahl and you can tell from the letter that Hubbard had requested pictures of Africa. He is. It is a historical fact that at this time in 79, he's writing the tech film scripts. Right, there's only one technical training film that takes place in Africa.
Speaker 2:So, if you put this all together. He is reaching out to his old Nazi collaborator friend saying hey, lenny, you got any pictures of Africa? Because I'm about to do a film in Africa. And when I read this I was like holy shit, like this whole village was based on information in Africa that Lenny Riefenschau published a very notable book of African native life. She did publish some photography books. They would never let her make a film again, she and she was a pariah of the German cinema. I mean she, on her death she was referred to as proto-feminist, fascist filmmaker. Right, but if those, those two things can exist together, so I this is just this another weird piece of history that people don't realize that this was, yeah, that it was lenny riefenstahl's photo exposition expedition to africa that then informed hubbard about writing this film about him being a white savior and helping this, this special mission project out.
Speaker 1:So yeah, well, I thought I'd share that. Yeah, it's, that's a pretty well, I mean, this is all insanely wild, like just this right, this kind of backstory and this is for a silly film about how you're setting up an e-meter, like, yeah and like like who's he gonna reach out to for help about africa?
Speaker 2:well, I know this nazi broad. You know she used to work for hitler. She's over in africa. I'll just give her a send her, you know, send her a letter and she's writing back to saint hill thinking that he's still the head of, yeah, of this worldwide movement so that's so wild and yeah, it's crazy.
Speaker 1:The the other thing that's wild about any of this sort of um backstory and this different stuff. Like I will, I'll definitely put a link to this uh chris owen thing in there. You can see that Hubbard was. He had plans and I think I genuinely believe that that is where Hubbard wanted to set up what is now the flag land base.
Speaker 2:In Africa.
Speaker 1:In Africa because he was trying to buy a hotel there and he was trying to buy these properties and he was trying to do these different things. And he was trying to do it because in one of these documents that he's quoted as saying about this area is that they have about 270,000 people and he's like we have more than 270,000 Scientologists worldwide. So this is actually like a down statistic in our view to take over this small little place statistic in our view to take over this small little place. And you're just like, oh, he was trying to set up a base there where he was going to be a popular dude and the people would look to him for solutions.
Speaker 1:He actually wrote a special kind of what's called a security check in Scientology, which is where they interrogate you and try to uncover what crimes you have in order to further your Scientology, spiritual counseling, productivity or effectiveness. You can't have these hidden crimes that you're covering up. And he wrote a special one of those called the Joburg sex check. The people that lived in that area were a particularly hard case to crack and, um, so they had to. They were extra super, uh, criminal and he would have to get to the bottom of this. So Hubbard definitely had, uh, some wild ideas and, uh, it's amazing that more people don't know about these and, like I said before, we did edit out a lot of these racial things and references in his record audio recordings but, um, they're very nuanced in these films and they're sort of well, they just bleed out because it's his, it's his basic uh, it's his uh, cultural indoctrination.
Speaker 2:It's his cultural indoctrination, it's his cultural programming. It's very misogynistic and very homophobic and very racist and it bleeds into his work. It's a natural thing. It's like his pathology. I do want to just share one thing with our viewers. I think they'll appreciate this.
Speaker 2:This all began in 1995. I was up at Golden. I was reading Lenny Riefenstahl's memoir. It was a 600 and some page memoir and I'm reading it and I come across this passage in the book and I'm going to read it because I'm going to just read this. It's very short.
Speaker 2:She says Philip Philip was a student, by the way. Well, you'll find out. Philip wrote he had found a gifted American author to collaborate on the way. Well, you'll find out. Philip wrote he had found a gifted American author to collaborate on the script. She's talking about the Blue Light. This American, he enthused, is a brilliant and famous writer who has written many screenplays for Columbia and Hollywood. He is also the head of a great international organization that has spread across the entire globe and there's more than a million members. His name is L Ron Hubbard. He is a psychologist and a Scientologist.
Speaker 2:Lenny Riefenstahl, a memoir, page 448. So this is like the crazy BS that was being fed to her about this guy. So, yeah, so anyway, and then the two of them, I have all the letters going back and forth and you know, hubbard like writing about doing the project, and dah, dah, dah, dah, and I probably will do some content on it. I've written about it in a book. It's because it's pretty crazy, because this was a person that I was interested in since film school, lenny Riefenstahl. I mean, this is a person that I literally had been studying since I was, you know, for many years. So I got very excited when I found that excerpt in the book and I put a tab on it. I sent it up to Miscavige's office Like an hour later. Hold on one second. No, this will be worth it.
Speaker 1:I know, I know what you're going to grab. You're going to probably grab the thing. I wanted to actually say this while Mitch is having this.
Speaker 2:I thought it was right here, but it's not. I have the folder.
Speaker 1:I do want to say something, though, about this. Yeah, go ahead. There's, like SeaWorld members that worked at the international headquarters. I would say maybe 10% of them ever talked to David Miscavige like directly.
Speaker 2:Absolutely ever talked to David Miscavige like directly.
Speaker 1:Absolutely okay, maybe 10 percent at a maximum. 10 percent of those people were having direct communications with David Miscavige now, and even a lesser amount than that would have a written conversation back and forth with David Miscavige. Even I was at that property for 15 years. I would say that maybe in the entire 15 years I had maybe 50 to 75 direct communications with David Miscavige, like back and forth.
Speaker 1:On one thing, over a period of week would be one thing. I would say I maybe had 75 of those in my 15 years mitch. I would estimate and correct me if I'm wrong. I would estimate he's had at least 10 000 back and forth communications with david. Yeah yeah we were films. He would have one or two a day for. Okay, so for.
Speaker 2:Mark, decades. Do you remember in the RTC headquarters, before they built the big $50 million building up in those headquarters or the room, there was a bunch of transcribers and then they had these, the big filing cabinets that they could roll. I went up. I rarely ever had any reason to go up to that office, but I was up to. I went up to that office with him one day. We're walking into his office, we're walking past the filing cabinets and he says you see those filing cabinets, those filing cabinets are the written communication between you and me At this time.
Speaker 1:This was like early 2000s, late 90s, he said there is more written communication between you and I than between me and anyone else in the world. There you go. So I was thinking about this, but, mark, I thought, I thought it's going. How does mitch get this, this, all this stuff, with l run, hubbard and this lenny how do you say the last name, riff and stuff, riff and stall, reef and stall. How does mitch get his hands on this? And I think, and then I realized I go, mitch. That's when I started thinking about it. I go. Mitch was having a conversation with David Miscavige every single day, multiple, every single day of the week. So the fact that he has this is not it's wild that he has this, but it's also, if you think about it, it's not it's wild that he has this, but it's also, if you think about it, it's not because David Miscavige was talking with Mitch so regularly, I would say almost the most consistent person that was always on the same exact job.
Speaker 2:Because even on the communications that I have, they're from maybe four or five different jobs. They're not all the same job. Yeah, no, I think I had my job longer than anybody but him, I mean consistently, like I was on that, you know, because everybody changed posts so much. You know that nobody's on the same job for very long, so, but that's not something that I'm. I have to say one thing, though when I was reflecting back on all this stuff and I was thinking about that day that he said there's more written communication, it occurred to me that there, of course, was a lot, but I think he was also lying about that, because he would always say things to pump people up, like he would say you see those filing cabinets. There's more written communication between you, know, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, yeah, I thought about that later I thought this guy's so full of shit.
Speaker 1:He just non-stop lies to everybody but also that sometimes there'd be one little nugget, like the one you just showed, this letter, that could be all there is that in the script and whatever it is, and you could have said you know there's, you know that's what I'm going to give you, but you know what we've got. And he, even, when I got a tour from him of l ron hubbard's house, he showed me the next e-meter, the one where you can right, right, right, it's wireless, that it can detect the body thing yeah, you don't.
Speaker 2:You could be dead.
Speaker 1:You could be audited when you're, you no longer have a body and and I'm, and, but that's up in l ronbard's house, but I'd never even heard of that before. He told me that. I was like what are you talking about? And I was I never. You know, I I'm not, I haven't even read Dianetics, I'm not even clear nothing. So for him to talk about this e-meter that works wirelessly, I'm just like the what?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, this is like you're in, like, yeah, it's crazy, this is some shit up here. They spent so much money on that meter it was like a cst project. Yeah, I spent, I, I think just to build physically build that. That one model that you saw cost a hundred thousand dollars. These are fucking sorry. This is a group that doesn't even get proper medical treatment for its members, yeah, and yet they can spend a hundred thousand dollars building the most insanely useless device you could possibly imagine.
Speaker 1:You can't get contacts through financial planning, but we're going to spend $600,000 on designing this box for the e-media.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we can audit you when you're dead.
Speaker 1:We're going to have the people that designed the iPhone boxes come and design our e-media box. Yeah, the $30 contacts from Walmartmart. No, that's too much you can forget it.
Speaker 1:You can just forget it okay, guys, I think we covered well, this was a great, uh great video after a little bit of a break, so we hope you guys enjoy this. Um, if you guys haven't uh got a copy, we'll put a link in the description to uh to mitch's site and um mitch's youtube channel and also mitch's book. If you haven't uh got got your hands on that yet, we'll put all that below and then, um, yeah, we have to think of uh, this was a good one if we've got another film like this that we actually have some meat. It's hard to go through these films and cover them, uh, because we don't have a lot of documents that we can or stuff that we can yeah, I wasn't exactly stuffing, stuffing my pockets full of full of evidence.
Speaker 2:I don't know how about you mark, I wasn't exactly you know what?
Speaker 1:I told this story before. I don't know if I've told it on youtube, but the night before I left in january of 2005. Yeah, um, I had access to david miscavige's private photo server and because I set up the networking of the whole entire property, right, I pretty much had like shared folders on every single server that I would configure things with and that sometimes would lead to other little finds.
Speaker 1:But, um, I had jeff baker, had david miscavige's entire personal photo server on this, um, visual effects right network and um, and I went in there and I got pictures of him with the beckhams and tom and snowmobiling. Oh my god, I just filled up this hard drive. I filled it up with all kinds of like holy mo moly. I'd never even been to it. I was looking for something else and I saw this. Anyway, I, I put I had a decent size drive that I filled up with all these photos and, um, when I escaped, um, I actually fell asleep waiting for my wife to come home. She never came home and then when I woke up I realized, oh shit, I overslept, I gotta get I'm supposed to GTFO right now and get out of here and I left that drive on the boarding board in my place.
Speaker 2:Wow so anyway, Somebody's going to leave with all those photos, Mark.
Speaker 1:You know it, someday it's going to happen.
Speaker 2:All that shit's going to come out. Somebody's going to leave from, like Sheila with the with, from the manufacturing site where they they handle all the technical training films. Yeah, Somebody's going to leave from somebody's going to. All this stuff is just going to start coming out, Cause it's just like yeah, hopefully.
Speaker 1:I mean it'll just be more, it would. It would also be fun for these films to eventually become public and then to be able to go back and watch our videos and then see, see, this is what we were talking about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly yeah. Tech Film Film Festival. It's going to happen eventually they're going to come out for sure.
Speaker 1:Awesome dude. Well, thanks again. Thanks for everybody that tuned in and until next time. Thanks for watching. If you'd like to help support the channel, feel free to check out the tuned in and until next time 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 can click on this link right here, or you can click on this one here, or you can click on the subscribe button right here. Thanks a lot, until next time.