The Documentary

It really is. You get hooked in almost immoderately after you start watching it.

OMG! Yes he did, he seemed like a very unsavory man. He was also a world class liar, he lied about everything always tall tails in his head.

I love the whole scene where they have this huge celebration when the become tax-except like it was the greatest thing ever.

That was so crazy and what he told his wife (don't want to spoil it) is insane. That's one of the ironies of this that this man obviously had some serious psychological issues and yet he and his religion denounce psychology.

What really got to me was the extent of the devotion/belied of it's members. Like when we hears the stories about what David Miscavige did to his executives and the fact that they did it.

If you think about it the religion reminds you a lot of how LRH treated his wife and how he later treated or had his people treat his followers. There is a lot of psychological and physical abuse involved. It's sort of striping it's followers down so that they are wholly depended on Scientology to an extreme you don't see very often in other religions.

I totally like the base idea of Scientology: Make the world better one person at a time by getting them to let go of their shit and then helping someone else and so on and so on.  I don't necessarily agree with the methods of doing that (hold on to two rolling pins attached to a box by jumper cables ) nor do I buy the whole fugitive space aliens attached to my body and soul shit.

I'd also like them to open their books so we can see where the money is going.  My understanding of tax exemption for religions is that once they pay the payable people and their utility bills the rest of the money is for charity: soup kitchens, free pre-school, clothing drives etc.  Where is Scientology doing that?

The fact that they call Hubbard LRH and have big birthday parties where they salute his picture even though he's dead is just whacked out!  You can see from the video clips of Hubbard they showed that he was a loon!

And that video with Tom Cruise?!?!?!? He has drank the fucking Kool-Aid big time!!  How do you not know about the people in the Sea Org?  These stories are not new; they're told over and over again by people who get kicked out leave (unless of course it's just one person telling all these suppressive defectors people who came to their senses what to say /sarcasm).

I was telling my dad about some off the stuff and he wanted to know why the cops don't arrest them all; I told him they close ranks and just dismiss anyone who says anything bad about them.

Pretty standard cult fair as far as cults go - isn't it? Charismatic manipulative leader with some new fangled theory he manages to get people to buy-in on (literally) for profit and ego stroking while actually hiding a dark side full of everything he preaches against. This could fit a whole lot of religious groups across many cultures and time periods.

I remember a story last year, I think, in which a former Scientologist placed a missing person report with the police regarding Miscavige's wife. The policy supposedly investigate and spoke to the woman, but she still has not been seen. I imagine that she's totally brainwashed and just said what she was told to the police.

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Completely unrelated but I watched a very good documentary last weekend, It's older, I believe 2011, called Senna about the Brazilian Formula 1 race car drive Ayrton Senna. Fascinating guy and documentary. I would highly recomend it.

Another documentary I'd like to watch but hasn't been released yet is Love Between the Covers, about the romance writing/writers industry. I don't read that much romance anymore but I loved it when I was younger, and some of it is really good. Both the industry and the books catch a lot of crap and it would be nice to see a more in depth view of this genre and world.

Yeah, that was kinda a rhetorical question, kingeomer is correct Leah did it after she left and supposedly the cops were told that she was fine but no one actually saw her.

I cried like a baby at then end of Senna even though I knew the story.

I used to read a lot of historical romances, the medieval ones were my favorite!

Bumping because I've watched a lot of documentaries lately.

The most recent ones were Amy and Capturing The Friedmans...the latter came with so much "wtf"

I was not expecting that towards the end. I do have a bit of a problem with the choice of sound effects he used when he actually revealed what happened. It was so cheap an inappropriate. It brought me out of the moment, but God that was so sad. I was bawling by the end of it.