A precious trove of Tom Cruise's sermons on Scientology could be headed to the Internet.
"It's the most unintentionally hilarious footage you've ever seen," says investigative journalist Mark Ebner, who is helping to post more than two hours of the videotaped preaching. "It's better than Tom jumping on Oprah's couch. It's better than the 'Trapped in the Closet' episode of 'South Park.'"
Among the actor's pronounce-ments, according to Ebner:
- "We [the Scientologists] are the authorities on the mind. We are the way to happiness."
- "Crush these guys [psychiatrists]! I've had it! Psychiatry doesn't work. No mercy! None! Go to guns!" (Ebner allows that Cruise wasn't advocating killing shrinks, but merely spouting some macho "Top Gun" talk.)
- "If you are a Scientologist, you see things the way they are, in all their glory, in all their complexity. It's rough and tumble. It's wild and woolly. It's a blast."
- "When you're a Scientologist, and you drive by an accident, you know you have to do something about it you're the only one who can really help."
Sunday, a nine-minute clip went up on the Web purportedly showing Cruise speaking at a 2004 ceremony where he received the Freedom Medal of Valor from church head David Miscavige. Shortly after gawker.com (via defamer.com) and huffingtonpost.com linked to the footage, it disappeared.
It wasn't the Church that yanked it, Ebner believes, but rather a "consortium of church critics" who posted it in the first place.
"These tapes were made for purposes of recruitment," Ebner tells us. "I imagine it was an apostate who wanted to get them out. I think the church critics got worried that the tapes were the property of Scientology."
Ebner says he's now working with others, who have the tapes, to post them through his Web site, hollywoodinterrupted.com.
"You hear the theme from 'Mission: Impossible,'" he says. "You hear Tom railing against 'SP' 'suppressive persons.' One speech was shot at a rally where you can hear the faithful chanting 'LRH! LRH [church founder L. Ron Hubbard's initials]!' It's very totalitarian.
"We're only showing the public - which they call 'wogs' - what they show their recruits, whom they call 'raw meat.'"
Reps for Cruise and the church had no comment by deadline on the tapes.
