My Scientology Movie
King mischief-maker Louis Theroux opens his My Scientology Movie by saying it’s his “dream to see a more positive side of the church.”
It might be the most ingenuous line in a movie since Rick chucked Ilsa on that plane at the end of Casablanca. Suffice to say, with this muckraking look behind the curtain of L Ron Hubbard’s controversial religion, this dream doesn’t come to pass.
Theroux’s deadpan doc, directed by John Downer, makes for a loose, comic companion piece to Alex Gibney’s powder-keg Scientology takedown Going Clear, from earlier this year. Both films make great use of Mark Rathbun, a defrocked member of Scientology’s high-command who was known as "Mr Fixit" for the organisation's current head honcho, David Miscavige.
Rathbun left the church in 2004 after a spell in “the hole”, a degrading punishment unit created by Miscavige to keep his Sea Orgs (the church's most senior members) in line. Theroux brings him in, here, as an advisor to cast actors to stand-in for Miscavige and Scientology's most famous believer, Tom Cruise, when interview requests were not forthcoming.
You’ll be familiar with Theroux’s interrogation techniques from his BBC shows: part bumbling Hugh Grant-alike, part Spanish Inquisition. It’s a tactic that has works particularly well against self-righteous aggression: in the past his nice-guy act has turned nazis and survivalists apoplectic, and he gets similar reactions from Miscavige’s enclave.
We see him hounded by a hilariously intense Sea Org for walking on a stretch of road outside their HQ in South California that she claims is private property (it is not), followed for hours by a white pickup with tinted windows and filmed outside an LA soundstage by a recalcitrant church member.
Even more pathetic are the intimidation techniques dished out to Scientology's enemy-number-one Rathbun, who’s subjected to several episodes of “bull-baiting” by “squirrel busters”, groups wielding HD cameras who follow their target SP (“suppressive person”) and throw withering insults at them.
The film climaxes with a Rathbun-scripted recreation of one of Miscavige’s violent rants to a group of Sea Orgs sequestered in “the hole”, which reminds us that even though potshots at Scientology is like shooting fish in a barrel, these fish are piranha and they’ll take your hand off.
Theroux should be on his guard: one of the Scientologists following him around claims she's making her own film about him. If the bonkers snippets of the church’s Hollywood epic-style promotional videos are anything to go by, we can’t wait to see the result.
My Scientology Movie has its world premiere at London Film Festival on 14 Oct 2015
Released by Altitude 7 Oct 2016, with special satellite Q&A screening in various cinemas across the UK on 10 Oct