I Heart Scientology

Here’s a great practical joke to play on friends. When the subject of Scientology comes up – and let’s be honest, these days, how could it not? – wait a few moments for your friends to get really into the conversation, and then fix them with an angry stare, plaster a forced smile on your face, and say in a falsely-cheerful, irritated voice, “Do you guys know anything about Scientology? Have you read any of the literature?” And for the next two seconds or so, they’ll get really uncomfortable. Then you say, “Because it’s kind of, um, not cool to make fun of something you haven’t even tried to understand.” They’ll shift around, and then one of them will be about to ask why you’re making such a big deal about this, and if, maybe, hey wait a minute, are you saying that you’re a…But interrupt this and say in a matter-of-fact, this-conversation-is-over tone, “If you want to know something about Scientology, the world’s fastest growing religion by the way, why don’t you just ask?” And stop talking and try your best to look really angry.

Wait a few uncomfortable moments, and then feel free to laugh at your friends and make fun of them for their stupidity.

Tell them you were kidding. And then say in a spooky voice, “Or was I?”

And then say in a spookier voice, “Or wasn’t I?”

This is really a roundabout way to say that, for the record, I’m not, never have been, not interested, thank you.

But.

Tom Cruise is right, don’t you think, about Ritalin? And in that uncomfortably tense interview with Matt Lauer, he made sense when he was talking about diet and exercise as a way to deal with depression. I know in my case, as someone who suffers chronic black moods – I won’t glamorize them by calling them, you know, that – as humiliating as it is to admit, dropping 15 pounds and taking up yoga did wonders. I’ve never been much for psychiatry or therapy – I’ve never been, and if I did go, I don’t think it would be at all useful for me. I’d probably spend the hour lying to my therapist in an attempt to be more entertaining and interesting. And I find it impossible to talk about sex at any time, with any one, unless it’s, you know, during or right before, so if I started talking about it during therapy, I’d sort of expect it to lead somewhere, and I’m pretty sure that would, as shrinks say, “break the frame” – so the blood feud between Scientology and the mental health community isn’t necessarily a turn off for me.

Come to think of it, I’ve known and worked with a few prominent Scientologists in my career, and all of them – really, honestly now, all of them – have been incredibly polite, considerate people. We once offered a role in a television comedy to a very talented, funny Scientologist, and she wrote us a note (a nice one, too) telling us how much she enjoyed the script, but that she really didn’t want to jump into another television comedy just yet. Say what you like about engrams and e-meters and the reactive mind, but for me, what makes a Scientologist a Scientologist is polite graciousness. But then, I’m a WASP, and we’ll tolerate any religion that includes the sacrament of the thank-you note.

So why the snickers and derision and spooky-voice reaction to what is, let’s be honest, an eccentric but not totally nutty set of beliefs that somehow leads actors to avoid drugs and write thank-you notes? Sure it’s weird when you get really into it, but then, no one has ever clearly explained the idea of the Holy Ghost to me, either. And then there’s the Great Flood, and the Burning Bush, and don’t get me started on why Good Friday is supposed to be so “good.”

So maybe Tom Cruise – who used to have the office upstairs from mine on the Paramount lot, and who was, let me just say, incredibly polite and nice whenever I saw him – so maybe he’s a little intense or tightly wound or believes that we’re all descended from space aliens, and maybe the Katie Holmes thing makes some of us uncomfortable in some non-specific way. I don’t know, maybe Scientology is what Christianity was in pre-Christian Rome: a creepy, disturbing, all-encompassing cult that irritated and infuriated the establishment. If there’s one thing I know about Los Angeles in 2005, it’s that it’s not too different from ancient Rome.

Again, I’m not and never have been. I’m happy with my own personal articles of faith, which revolve around wine, yoga, and slow-roasted pork (like I said: they’re personal articles of faith), but Tom Cruise just seems like an intense, slightly-nuts (but polite!) guy who happens to have an intense, slightly-nuts religion in a town where that really isn’t all that unusual. What’s unusual, I think, is his incredible focus and incredible success. And if he credits that to Scientology, well then, maybe we should all become Scientologists.

Okay. I’ve gone too far.

Or have I?

Or haven’t I?

 

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