In GOING CLEAR: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, Alex Gibney tackles that so-called 'church'

My first experience with Scientology occurred back in the mid 1970s, when neighbors of mine in Pacific Palisades, California, who had formerly been touting the wonders of this "religion'" suddenly found themselves -- because they wouldn't continue to give it more and more of their money -- on the "outs" with the group. They were harassed just about into insanity, and I felt so badly for them I determined never to get within a mile of Scientology or its acolytes, nor to let anyone I cared about near this sewer of fakery and disgust. Over the years, as has been true of just about all really awful, creepy ideas (and the organizations that spout them) -- from Nazis, Wall Street and our banking system to ISIS, just over half of our current Supreme Court and nearly all of the Republican Party -- instead of quickly disappearing in deserved ignominy, these things seem to grow and grow until they conquer then finally do so much damage that they at last must be destroyed. This certainly seems the case concerning Scientology.

GOING CLEAR: SCIENTOLOGY AND THE PRISON OF BELIEF, the new documentary from the prolific and generally on-the-mark filmmaker Alex Gibney (shown at right, who has formerly skewered everything from Enron and our mideast wars to Jack Abramoff and the Catholic clergy), offers a two-hour crash course in what you need to know to stay away from this crazy cult. His film is well made and features a look at a number of folk -- from the famous to the not so -- who've bought into Scientology's "beliefs" only to eventually leave, disheartened and much the poorer (in ways both financial and spiritual). Gibney also piles up his evidence (often anecdotal, yes, but with plenty of history, statistics and even the so-called "ideas" from the "religion's" founder, L. Ron Hubbard, to back it up), before finally lay out as close to an ironclad case for fraud and fakery as any intelligent non-brainwashed viewer could want.

Of course, the documentary gives us a lot of John Travolta and Tom Cruise -- two Scientology stalwarts, whom the doc shows have shamefully allowed this cult to use their image for proselytizing, marketing and near-destruction -- but also lesser-known lights of Hollywood like actor Jason Beghe (above) and writer/director Paul Haggis (below) who were for years in thrall to the powerful group.

We also hear from people like Travolta's assistant, Sylvia "Spanky" Taylor, below, who had to flee with her very young child (whom the cult had reduced to sick-unto-death) and Hana Eltringham, who, as a very young woman, got sucked into things and only recently, as a senior citizen, came out the other side.

Gibney, as did author Lawrence Wright, in his book of nearly the same name from which the film has been adapted (Wright's subtitle, interestingly enough, was Scientology, Hollywood, & the Prison of Belief), also follows the money -- and we soon see where it has come from and to where it has led. The section involving Scientology lawsuits and the F.B.I. investigation proves, on its own, nearly shocking enough to seal the entire deal.

We get quite a history of that Hubbard guy, above, especially from his ex-wife and mother of Hubbard's child. This section brought to my mind another "religious" leader -- Mary Baker Eddy, founder of the Church of Christ, Scientist (the religion that I was born and raised into), and Mrs. Eddy's own quite checkered history, which the Christian Science church has long done everything it could to conceal. Supposed religious "icons" rarely if ever stand up to close scrutiny -- except in the minds of their often brainwashed followers.

Some of the movie's most interesting sections deal with those at the top of the Scientology food chain, specifically its current leader David Miscavige and one of his former henchman, a fellow named Mike, shown above, who has since left the "church."  Here we learn about the infamous "disconnects"  that members are forced to take from their families, as well as many of the dirty tricks played against those with the audacity to leave the fold, as well as against others in order to "blackmail" them into staying (this theory certainly might apply to Mr. Travolta's continued presence).

Among the more gossipy bits of information involve the search, discovery and training of a new girlfriend for Mr. Cruise. This is lightweight compared to most of what we learn here, but it, too, helps complete a tawdry pattern. All told, Going Clear (the title is Scientology-speak for arriving at one of the higher levels of the "religion," which is, as one fellow tells us, "full of crushing certainty that allows not a trace of doubt." Any philosophy or religion that doesn't encourage a little doubt now and then is already highly suspect.

Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief will open in theaters this Friday, March 13th -- in New York at Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater, in Los Angeles at the Arclight Hollywood, in San Francisco at the Presidio Theatre, and will then make its prime-time cable debut on Sunday, March 29 (8:00-10:00 p.m. ET/PT), exclusively on HBO.

Alex Gibney goes up against the 1 % -- in PARK AVENUE: Money, Power and the American Dream

Time tends to move very fast where political documen-taries are concerned. What only a year ago seemed super-hot and current, now can have us musing, "Well, we know all this already..." In the case of PARK AVENUE: Money, Power and the American Dream, the docu-mentary by the award-winning and hugely prolific Alex Gibney -- who in but the nine years since his breakout hit Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, has made some 21 further documentaries, including the much-heralded Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God and the Oscar-winning Taxi to the Dark Side -- we probably don't know all of this. Still, a good deal of it is indeed old news. However, in the case of how the income gap between the one percent and the rest of us continues to widen, this information cannot be stated -- or, hello, acted upon in some manner -- often enough.

So watching this film by Mr. Gibney, shown at left, is initially interesting in the way he contrasts New York's Park Avenue of Manhattan -- on which street live those who possess the most money of any citizens in the entire U.S.A. -- with the Park Avenue that continues up through Spanish Harlem (where TrustMovies lived for a time during the late 1980s) and across the bridge into the South Bronx, where the inhabitants are among the poorest in the nation. That there is something wrong here seems, well, under-stated in the extreme. Seeing the interiors of the Park Avenue apartments and what we used to refer to as "how the other half lives" (the other half? Things really have changed), is fun in a bizarre sort of way, as is the history of some of these buildings on the Avenue, such as 740 Park Avenue (aka 71 East 71st Street, shown below and further below) -- the edifice that, along with its super-wealthy occupants, receives the most attention here.

These "two" Park Avenues carry the theme of Gibney's doc, as the filmmaker asks if there's a snowball's chance in hell that folk from the upper end of that Avenue, under the system of government we now have, could ever hope to do more than work as doormen or cleaners for those on the Manhattan side. Doormen, in fact, figure prominently in the film. Gibney interviews one fellow who used to work at 740 Park Avenue (disguised in visage and voice, of course), and what we learn is unpleasant but rather expected, particularly in terms of what one of the uber-wealthy Koch brothers gives as a Christmas gratuity. Gee, it's the same as what my ex-wife and I (of the awfully middle-class) used to give, over 25 years ago, during the short time I lived in a doorman building.

The movie goes again into Ayn Rand and Paul Ryan (what a hot pair!) and some of the other subjects that came up prior to the last Presidential election, and we view charts and graphs (as below) about that ever widening income gap. Notes one talking head: "The poor are not very well represented in our system of government." Why? asks the filmmaker. "Because of the decline and destruction of unions," comes the reply. On that note we see what governor Scott Walker has been doing in and to Wisconsin, and hear from, among others, a husband and wife team of teachers in that state.

We also see how the wealthy like to take hold of middle-class resentment and point it downward toward the poor, rather than upward toward themselves, where it should be placed. Even if you will already know much of what Mr. Gibney has assembled here, it's salutary to be reminded of it all over again. As is pointed out along the way, when you hear folk like the Koch brothers, Stephen A. Schwarzman (whom we see a lot of here), politicians like Michele Bachmann and Eric Cantor, and yes, especially New York's own "Democratic" senator Chuck Schumer (who has kept the "carried interest" loophole safe for the wealthy) talk about "freedom," what they manage to leave out is that this freedom is available mostly for our billionaires. Simply hearing the disgraced ex-lobbyist Jack Abramoff (below) talk about how the collusion works between industry, the wealthy and our government is worth the price of admission.

You can view Park Avenue: Money, Power & the American Dream (which was shown on PBS' Independent Lens) via Netflix's streaming service. It's worth a watch and runs only a short 71 minutes.

Alex Gibney's MEA MAXIMA CULPA: SILENCE IN THE HOUSE OF GOD

In his new documentary, Alex Gibney, the prolific director of some 27 documentaries and the man who took on ENRON, torture in Iraq, Freakonomics, Jack Abramoff, Eliot Spitzer and Wall Street now turns his attention to The Catholic Church. The results, as shown via MEA MAXIMA CULPA: SILENCE IN THE HOUSE OF GOD, are properly staggering. One of the many things that distinguishes Mr. Gibney's work is that the filmmaker (shown below) goes after the big boys rather than the ever-expendable foot soldiers doing the bidding of the man (or men) upstairs. His latest documentary is no exception. There have been several other excellent, earlier, pedophile exposés (among them films by Amy Berg and Kirby Dick) but I believe this latest casts the widest net and probes deepest.

Rather than simply concentrating on a single priest -- the Reverend and pedophile Lawrence Murphy, who, while he was "serving" at St. John's School for the Deaf in Milwaukee, abused more than 200 children over a 24-year period -- Gibney only begins here. By the time his film ends, he'll have gone upwards in the hierarchy of The Catholic Church in Wisconsin, the USA, and finally Rome, coming to rest upon the Vatican's current Pope Benedict XVI, proving to my mind (and I suspect most who see this film) that the current Pope knew -- for years! -- of Father Murphy's transgressions and those of many other pedophile priests and determined to keep them secret, thus protecting those priests, their supperiors and of course the Church itself. Papal infallibility? My ass.

Don't worry. The filmmaker never gets as grossly intemperate as I just did. Instead, he lays out his tale quietly and methodically but, since the details are so shocking and unpleasant, there is no chance to anyone growing bored with the film -- which concentrates on several of Murphy's young victims, both then and now, some 40 years later. (That's the Reverend and one of his victims, shown above.) Gibney details everything from how and when the abuses took place to the ways in which the children tried to get word out about what was happening. Murphy smartly chose those kids who parents did not "sign" and so could not be easily informed by their children of what was going on. When the children are finally able to reach the eyes and heart of a substitute priest while Murphy is away, this man tries to alert the authorities, but -- surprise! -- nothing happens.

As young men, the group creates flyers to distribute throughout the community (like the one shown at right). Still there is no change to the status quo. In the Vatican, as the Mafia, the rule of Omertà (silence) is all-powerful. So Gibney digs. Into records, and then interviews with priests, higher-ups, the kids and journalists, he probes. More garbage is unearthed. Along the way Gibney stages his reenactments quietly, using shadow and subtlety, so that we get the sense of what happened without the obvious and mostly unnecessary actors-playing-parts scenes that ruined the recent documentary, Orchestra of Exiles.

The movie does travel back and forth to different time frames frequently, and I wonder if some of the information presented could have been organized differently so that it flowed a bit more easily. I would imagine that this is the most difficult part of putting together a documentary: organizing the reams of information into an intelligible, organic whole that leads us inexorably toward our conclusion. Gibney, despite an occasional gaudy visual (see photo below) gets it mostly right, and by his movie's end, we understand that The Catholic Church -- in these, as I would imagine all cases in which the deeds of that church collide with the best interests of its parishioners -- will always win out. Even and especially when those parishioners are children, the most vulnerable of them all.

Mea Maxima Culpa..., a presentation of HBO Documentary Films and running 107 minutes, opened yesterday, Friday, November 16, in New York at Film Forum and will play a two-week run. Mr Gibney will appear in person tonight, Saturday, at the 7:50 screening. Note: the daily 5:40 screening offers English subtitles for the hearing impaired.