A new anti-Scientology documentary, Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, has caused quite a stir at Sundance. The film’s “devastating” critique of the religion specifically calls out Tom Cruise and John Travolta—the religion’s most high-profile adherents—for Scientology’s many alleged abuses against its members.
In what Variety calls “a devastating portrait of a religion guided by greed, instead of motivated by altruism,” Alex Gibney’s film accuses Scientology of regularly abusing its members financially and, at times, psychologically and even physically. Part of the blame, the film makes clear, lies at the feet of the stars promoting it, particularly Cruise and Travolta.
Gibney based his documentary on a book by Lawrence Wright. In a joint interview, Variety asked the two men to comment on culpability of Cruise and Travolta in the church’s alleged abuses:
AG: By now there is a well-documented record of abuses in the Church of Scientology, yet Cruise and Travolta have never spoken out about them. By not speaking out, it’s a kind of an endorsement and I think that’s why we’re right and properly critical.
LW: They’re selling a product and the product they’re selling is oppressing some of the people inside the church, especially the clergy, which is called the Sea Org, and Cruise has spent countless hours out on the Sea Org base where — on that same base where he has a special chateau — there’s these double wide trailers called the hole, which is a kind of re-education camp where people have been incarcerated for years. Sleeping on the floor on bedrolls with ants crawling around, abused physically, made to lick the floor or the toilet with their tongue. It’s just unbelievable degradation. If he’s ignorant of that then it’s willful on his part.
AG: The other thing about Cruise is that he’s been the beneficiary of this unbelievably low-paid Sea Org labor. These people are being paid forty cents an hour and they’re tricking out Cruise’s cars.
LW: We hold people like Tom Cruise and John Travolta and others responsible for not demanding change inside that church.
