Louis Theroux And John Dower Discuss Their Documentary, "My Scientology Movie"

[Music] you hello can I just give you a letter we're doing a documentary about Scientology whatever Scientology Scientology a religion created by a sci-fi writer run by a mysterious leader David Miscavige so this is my chance to experience it all firsthand you need to leave telling mr. squirrel oh you guys are trespassing guys need to say so can we have a comment are you here he's right behind us and have their attention why are they doing this it's just not like any Church that you can think of gradually I realized they were never going to let me in I began thinking of another way inside I was the baddest ass dude inside although science hold signs old I knew that there would be consequences was there someone on the inside with some power long ago their happiness is a course away yeah believe so much they can convince you a bit scary Scientology little ol fennel town tell him tell me well you're filming us tell him point what you tell him to stop tell him to stop you tell him to stop and I'll tell him to stop thanks guys they say it brainwashes people do I look like a brainwash to you keep it going for these guys my son who is a fascinating thank you very much in a documentary I was lucky enough to see it at Tribeca and it's a beautiful piece of work and so fascinating you know it's it's the subject I feel like now more than ever is being talked about all over the world and what brought you guys to do a deep dive on the subject I mean I've been obsessed with Scientology going back decades I mean yeah you're right it's a hot subject now you've got the Leah Remini series our movie is out but uh there's something perennial is it's an evergreen source of material you know it's about religious commitment weirdness UFOs a sci-fi writer who created his own religion and allegations of people being kept against their will at a secret base in the desert outside Los Angeles plus Tom Cruise it's got all the makings of a great film how about you John what was your fascination I I wasn't as in any way in deep as Lilly was must have heard of it I heard of it but I actually I think it was actually quite useful for the film I had more of a punters take on Scientology the sort of more tabloid reputation of the space ships and Tom Cruise's into it and John Travolta as well so don't stop me from going off the deep end and obsessing about arcane rituals Louis Louie can geek out on it and at times I was I I wondered whether he might I don't know go up the bridge well I think that's that's the beautiful thing about documentaries it can go any which way and you know the thing about this I'm sure it evolved quite a bit through the planning process because the church you know didn't want to participate and these sort of things you know tell us a little bit about how it evolved into what it is now so so in my day job for 20 years I've made documentaries on TV for the BBC and they revolve around me getting access to secret world's porn sets prison Nazi Nazis that Westboro Baptist Church anything kind of offbeat or extreme and so this was very differ because early on it became clear that Scientology did not want to get to play ball if you like and so it became a process of trying to figure out how do we tell the story without them helping us out and we devised this technique using a kind of movie within a movie and and using reenactments but in a matter way where we're exeunt ologists kind of helped to direct these reenactments and part of that was also realizing that if we did this the Scientologists would come after us which they have a track record of doing and that you can kind of reveal a lot about Scientology in through being stalked and harassed by a Scientologist you know that that they come and film you and that's it so it's both weird and really fascinating I mean it was a real shot in the dodge you can probably tell when you start watching the film I mean the first scene is it's kind of literally the first day of filming and we had no idea if it was going to work or not and we did the first casting for the leader of the church David Miscavige and we had Marty Rathbun one of the former very senior members helping us on the casting couch and we didn't really know if it was going to work or not but it seemed the most important thing is it it almost took Marty back to that place when he was in the church we never wanted to make a retrospective story the history of Scientology I mean mainly because other people were doing here just as we started it but that was the the test would it were and it seemed to work and so we we kept it going we did a casting for Tom Cruise and it you know unashamedly we wanted to we were getting them a bit of a prod whirling we knew they wouldn't like it but we wanted to treat them at the same time with you know a degree of respect so we got this weird way of doing it and I think it works pretty well can you tell us a little bit about the process of casting a Tom Cruise how's that I'm sure you had it quite a quite a few colorful habits I was a mod but the Tom Cruise casting is harder than David Miscavige because people a lot of actors came and tried to play a caricature of what they thought you know they turn up with the glasses and the whole risky business cocktail persona well I mean are you realizes a good actor that you would angry brilliant though be it to play a good actor you sort of have to be a good actor otherwise you just realize you know that your actor isn't very good I think the other thing to say though is that early on Scientology realized in the 50s l ron Hubbard realized the benefit of having a celebrity advocate and he recruited celebrities so the reason we did it is I always feel like that you know in the same ways it's their most important PR tool it can also be the most important way of revealing what's underneath Scientology it's a way of pulling in people showing what's going on and finding out you know how Scientology represents itself and did you guys have any interactions and were the interactions with you know with the true believers the people that really believed in really had their lives changed by this religion you know you know I'm sure it's kept coming out I was you know I was think well they didn't give you access well they kind of did give us access because they kept coming out and finding me and and and and and my and harassing my contributors because they're more fixated on ex-members who speak out even than they are on journalists so literally Marty Rathbun while we were filming with him he was at an airport and that three very prominent Scientologists popped out of nowhere and began hurling abuse at him while he filmed them on his antiquated mobile phone you're know by and kepts yeah just bad and and then it happened again like a couple of months later so it I was very glad like to thank the Church of Scientology for being an important part of this production can you explain a little bit about the interaction with the the squirrel Buster's and you know those those elements of the church you know while you were filming well we I mean what's a squirrel just on well for starters going back to the last question we are according to Scientology scripture you can correct me you know it deeper than I do but we because we're technically journalists media we're sort of on the same level on their tone scalars perverts so as a sexual pervert myself that makes me a twofer but um but the point is what were we talking about yes sir Oh Musti I went I was thinking about perverts and then I just lost focus squirreling is when in in Scientology it's it's a it's basically like being a heretic you you are using bits of Scientology but getting it wrong you're distorting or adulterating it looking at it another way it's a bit like pirating their material because there's also this sort of corporate dimension to Scientology in some ways it's a bit like McDonald's and it's a bit like going often and making a restaurant called McDonald's you know and having big mix you know and they're like hang on that's you're eating into our market shirt so if you squirrel that's really really bad and they come after you and so squirrel Buster's are Scientologists to come and stop you from squirrelly we were squirreling that the day we did Marty's drills he's been squirreling since the thing yeah I like a good squirrel the pit the people they sent along when we were squirreling that was the first time we had an encounter with them when I which was it's the moment in the film where they're just suddenly outside our studio filming us and there's a there's a very attractive young lady who turns over say we had about her but she turns up in very inappropriate Footwear which was the thing I kept she's in these huge massive heels and there's this sort of weird Three Stooges scenario where Louise sort of following them down the street as they film us and we film them it's it's bizarre she wasn't really a squirrel Buster squirrel Buster's were the guys who came after Marty Rathbun when he left Scientology what she was yeah they they're the ones with the cameras on their hats and the sort of wacky t-shirt the woman who the people the crews that followed us around it turned out later was a Scientology documentary crew that were making a film about me which I'm excited to see that's going to be fascinating to be I mean because that's the thing about the churches you know they they rightly want to have their own opinion so they put out their own sort of stories their own sort of videos to sort of counteract the popular belief or the the public knows know what the church is you know how much of a deep dive did you do to those materials I'm sure they were sending you I loved reading and looking at all that stuff and in fact it was almost in a way I'd seen a lot of it on the web and it was an inspiration for our way of doing the film you know having seen how I'm embedded in production now you know it's the Hollywood religion not just because it has people like Tom Cruise John Travolta Kirstie Alley but also because l ron hubbard aspired to be a movie director he established the First Church of Scientology in Hollywood and they use Hollywood style techniques both to generate their materials you know their promotional they don't put out by Gideon's Bibles but they actually send out you know ads on the Super Bowl for example or on the web and so it felt very much in keeping and a lot of their practices by the way because that's the other thing that Scientology probably no one else in this room other than us sort of knows what they do right it's let what we don't know there aren't any here hey that's a good point it happened in Belgium looking very uncomfortable um you know what do they do do you what a Scientologist state well they that's not an easy question to answer but they have a set of practices and a lot of those are almost like acting exercises but self actual self actualization techniques have you ever tried to I'm sorry to interrupt you but do you ever try to read the the Dianetics you know talk about ron Hubbard I've stripped the first book you didn't finish it right didn't I finish it yeah it's absolute drivel and I'd say that with the utmost respect for all religion it is terrible yeah I'm amazed but I don't think half the people in Scientology have read Dianetics I honestly don't think you could get through that book and think yeah this guy really knows what he's talking about fetuses have memories you know and we need to deal with my memories that I acquired as a fetus or as a mollusk as a clam well that's later on that's not in Dianetics so you only find that out until you've paid $20,000 I interrupt your point Edward well actually it's not on your point about the mollusk but the Dianetics was quite I mean as the director of the film it was quite a relief because we was their production values our Kitsch and quite low I mean we're a documentary so you know say for the Tom Cruise casting we can't pay top dollar so we're looking at actors you know who on a list we're starting out yes so it would will be a list one day yeah so it was um yeah I I think I think we almost but they did an amazing job and we had we got Andrew Perez who did an incredible who's a star absolutely on the role of David Miscavige in in in a couple of the key reenactment moments and and a lot of it is to do with you know not creating exactly uh we don't know note perfect what happened inside Scientology but we know what Marty remembers and so we just give him the tools and the team to almost reenact his sense of what happened both in terms of the drills the tech that they do their exercises and also his sense of the abuses and where it went wrong and then and then in the end it's sort of almost as much a way of understanding Marty Rathbun as an exponent of Scientology and now a critic of Scientology and the psychology behind fundamentalist systems and religious abuse yeah I think you know the great thing about this documentary is you know there's going clear obviously which is a great documentary on Scientology but it doesn't bring sort of the characterization of these of these reenactments it's great to sort of see someone retell these stories through people actually so tell me if there was one story in particular that you're like we need to reenact that we need to share this story I'm sure there's quite a few don't open this can of worms he still sore at me because I kicked out one really let's talk about that one then well we had one which we I think that the key for the reenactments was that they weren't driven by me they were driven by the ex-scientologists so it wasn't like a it's his me making the Scientologists look weird by doing it you know that would just be it would be cheap but I think when it becomes a creation of the of the Scientologists or the excellent ologist it feels authentic so we had one that with the one we didn't use was a scene that's well attested in which david miscavige who is or has been best friends with Tom Cruise and one of the stories is that they would hang out together and skeet shoot right they'd have little guns and in a slightly Matt show kind of buddy-buddy way they would shoot skeet and then talk about Scientology I guess that part is more vague I don't know what the part we then made up well so we didn't use that one but that wasn't the idea for that I mean it I have an issue with reenactments sometimes in documentaries because often you feel the director going yeah now I'm making a movie and it they try make them super polish and I think the more movie like you made them the less true and emotionally fill and for us the reenactments were a way of trying to get into the headspace of what it might be like to either become a Scientologist or to be in the Church of that level so the great thing was we we could make them deliberately kind of b-movie and feel which suited our budget as well so it was very much Edward was the aesthetic they were going for rather than lala land and in fact uh the fear because you know the other thing to acknowledge is the level of fear that surrounds covering Scientology this is a sense that okay they're gonna try and sue you and put you out of business they have a lot of resources and I hope you have lawyers Charles by the way I should have said this before we came out here because we're live aren't we we are live exactly I've gotten a few emails from them before Joe is going out and we could say anything and then our lives will change as we attempt to you know fight the lawsuits that come raining down on us but I you know I think it's it's just uh I lost my thought totally what you're talking about there was a fear for these people who speak out lawsuits and yeah so I think your Twitter there's a sense of fear and I think credit goes to anyone who's involved and who's willing to to sort of speak it speak their truth bravely yeah I mean speaking on that you know there's the Paul Haggis is the Lea remedies you know the Tony Ortega who's got a very popular blog did you reach out to these guys I mean obviously there's only so many people you can have involved with this sort of production but we spoke to all signs we reached out to Scientology by the way you know and it was very much not our aim to have a kind of easy anti-scientology film you know and the doors remained open to Scientology I was in chorale at roses Tom Cruise's agen yeah I don't think I'll ever get a Tom Cruise movie now there was more when we embarked on the legal process there was probably more fear about what Tom Cruise's lawyers might do then what Scientology's lawyers would do I don't know what that so maybe our next film should be about Tom and one of the guys thought you know once you started screening it for people involved with the process you know what do they think of how it you know how how it shares their story you know how it shares a story that's a that's a really good question ah the main character obviously the main contributor and subject to the film is Marty Rathbun and to begin with he liked it I would say and then later on he didn't like it but I think that's part of a bigger story there's a wider context for that to do with I think Marty's got to the point where he's so sick of being the go-to guy of anti-scientology that in a spirit of rebellious Ness and exasperation and maybe worn down by all the harassment he's experienced from Scientology he sort of seems to have made peace with Scientology a good way of putting it I've practiced that yeah for the past couple of days I should practice that version as well yeah I mean there's even you know YouTube videos out there of Marty getting harassed at home and that sort of thing I'm yeah he had them out so I mean you know we you know we joke about them following us and but actually we what happened to us was on incredibly minor scale and actually very useful for the film but for the likes of Marty and Tom DeVoe you know Marty had them living outside his house for over a year you imagined that people outside your house those guys in those wacky t-shirts with the camera basically they filming him and kind of provoking him to get a reaction in the hope that you would eventually tire of it so much that you might punch one of them and then they'd get a you get them you can arrest it they get a lawsuit they get it on camera and then they can make and of web documentary showing Marty to be you know out of control I mean that'sthat's the thing is you know you do such a deep dive on these things I don't know about you guys but every time I you know read going clear or whatever I start going on the internet and there's so much information out there must been hard to sort of weed through it all and you I was hot it's such a wilderness of amazing stories and then you've got you've got the books going clear by Lawrence right you've got inside Scientology by Janet Wright man there's other great books then there's websites that are labyrinths of material Tony or takers blogsite there's one called clambake there's and you could just because this has been going on for 50 years you know there have been disgruntled ex Scientologists making amazing claims going back to the mid 50 that was one of the hardest things when we set out apart from obviously having no access no story but an unpredictable presenter yes it's just it's quite overwhelming because it's been going since you know the the 60s you know poor Thomas Anderson made the movie the master just about I'm gonna say the motive is evil Hoffman but about l ron hubbard and we I mean we hardly went anywhere near l ron hubbard know there's bait you know there's space to do a hundred different movies about scientology and you know you see in leo remedies new series i think what's different about what she's done is you got eight parts and and it's given her them the space to explore these individual stories of families i don't know how many of you know about disconnection but it's this policy that Scientology has that if you speak out and leave Scientology and say you know it it's BS then are basically at that point the family is disconnected and you can know families are broken up you can no longer speak to your family because they're in Scientologists in good standing they still believe they can't be exposed they're not allowed to be exposed to your negative thinking so she's done that really interesting good work on all of that I mean you could do an eight-part doc on the history of Scientology don't you think but I'm not going to know right now what would you use a different director for that what would you guys want to do next I mean are you what's the next subject for you Lewis what do you think John I don't know there's so much material I've always thought that there'd be something in well I was going to say the Islamic state but that looks like it's being rubbed off the map as we speak I might have missed my window on that yeah that's one I'm not really keen on well we have some questions there on the audience we're going to start right there well first and foremost I'd like to say I'm a huge fan so it's an honor thank you honor to be in your presence I've grown up watching you and your thank you series your documentaries everything you've done it's really inspired me to go forward and make a difference by informing people and I think part of your appeal is your ability to humanize people and so first question how what was the hardest interview ever done who like you've done Westboro Baptist Church which obviously people have a lot of opinions on done you've gone to prisons you've done a lot what was the hardest for you you know I'm gonna surprise you because those'll thank you for everything you said that really cheers me up because in America I don't uh I don't have the profile that I do in the UK so I'm always grateful if anyone's even heard of me over here so that's great as a citizen is the doors I haven't America yeah I have a u.s. passport I'm a dual citizen but I'm not a sort of dual citizen of the TV universe if you like YouTube check it out you too I'm also on Netflix now it turns out that 20 years watch your Netflix absolutely yeah so the hardest it yo in fact people talking is easy and and you know because it signals emotional availability like Westboro Baptist Church when they were those to me were not especially hard interviews they were um because they're there they're communicating they're sharing time and in sharing time and making themselves open and available you know you build up rapport and a little part of you seeps into them that's a kind of weird image yeah unfortunate turn of phrase ah if you know what I mean what's more difficult if someone's extremely shy or extremely sensitive I attempted to do a documentary about Ike Turner the ex-husband of Tina Turner well-known from the movie well a fictional version of him is well known from what's love got to do with it I filmed with him for five or six days I actually rather liked him but it was extremely it was one of the most challenging interviews I've ever done because he was just exquisitely thin-skinned and if you even mentioned Tina Turner he would kind of uh he blanch and slightly and or it but almost imperceptibly and leave the room and then later you'd hear from his agent what you know wow I really wasn't happy about the way that when and and we had to pull the plug because I wasn't able to in any way reveal him or get to him on camera good question next one there thanks for being here um Louie I'm also a huge fan of your work thank you we got to fuel it's interesting actually how many people in this audience are familiar with Louie's work it's not what stage is it but now the guys you haven't seen in looking a little embarrassed [Laughter] like obsession with the Westboro Baptist Church in like what their ID ideologies are I even use them at for like a sociology paper and I used your documentaries for him so I'm curious would you go back a third time now they're in a brand-new political climate and also for this film what was the most surprising thing you learned about Scientology I would not go back I don't think you know never say never but I don't think it's a likely at all and I think one of the things about Westboro is they are so out there in left field that the political climate for them never changes they would not see much difference between Trump or bush or Obama if I one thing that often surprises people is win in their track record of political activity of which there is some the Phelps clan have done more volunteering for the demo Kratts they haven't they're more active in in kind of Pro Democrat fundraising although they haven't done it recently so they they you know Trump doesn't make any difference that you know they have their own kind of strange way of carrying on and their internal dynamics that can change and might be interesting I think they've changed their leadership I think surely Phelps who I interviewed has been edged out but it's not enough to go back for and you join you do the second one what was the most surprising thing I mean I think one of the sequences I'm most fond of in the film is when we try and reenact the actual Scientology drills because normally in a Scientology documentary all you really see is somebody sort of grasping the hands of the you know the the cans of Annie meter and that's taken as a shorthand but there's so much of it and we got Louis - we got louie and Marty to take you through the training routines and some of them actually you know look quite useful the bear-baiting you know where you sit opposite someone and scream abuse at them I mean there's a lot of people like that I was fine and then and then that but then someone a couple of days ago said but why were you screaming at an ashtray well that's Scripture and then I was like ah yeah it isn't about you but why what's that about I you know it really stumped me that I'm not sure why you do scream at an ashtray in Scientology you're just trying to perfect your tone for tea it's about creating coz I did think about it's about creating attention and intention it is which is tone for tea it's a basically are we answering why you scream at ashtrays it's so that you can put your your influence of influence across does that an ashtray well if you supposedly if you get to ot8 operating thetan a twitch tom cruise's you can communicate with animals and move and you're not your doctor doula now that was a different movie and move inanimate objects such as ashtrays with your own mind so Tom crow somebody when they interviewed Tom Cruise about his next movie should ask him to move the ashtray or the the coffee cup that would be the real test of whether it's working for him then weightless to that now there's no one left well knows that question right there hello I was gonna ask you said four previous documentaries you people give you access to kind of their world did you ever feel at this point at for doing this one actual fear of what they might do to you or what could be done to protect their I would say I never felt physical fear I felt disquiet I felt a sense of you know emotional being emotionally embattled on occasion the scariest thing it sounds maybe a bit banal but it's the the legal letters they send can be oddly frightening and if you are on the receiving end of one and especially if you think you are personally exposed like it's something you've said or done is in some way you get a legal letter from them to say we're gonna sue you because what you've done is clearly libelous I it's it's actually more frightening than you might think you know I'd rather be punched in the face to be honest with you really I see I really would actually the legal letters were helpful as well I mean they were you know it's a bit worrying when you get a letter saying if you carry on with this will sue you for lots of money but they kind of helped orientate us where we were well during the process anything they threw at us was obviously good because we knew that it was the film was going to contain as part of its story their attempts to handle and harass us so there's a feeling like well here you are you've turned up right on time you know and and you if you get tired of shouting at me go your trailers over there and there's some nibbles kickback but actually once the movie process has ended then you're like you know you can stop now we've got as much as we need and of course then it turns out though we don't plan on stopping because we still think you are a squirrel or a a suppressive person well you guys should absolutely check out this movie comes out Friday at the ArcLight in LA and then here at the landmark sunshine in New York in an on-demand on bond on all sorts of plant one more round of applause for Louie and John thanks so much guys [Applause] you

Channel: BUILD Series

Views: 108,357

Rating: 4.8588872 out of 5

Keywords: AOL Advertising, BUILDseriesNYC, AOL Inc, AOL, AOLBUILD, #Aolbuild, build speaker series, build, aol build, content, aolbuildlive, BUILDSeriesNYC, Louis Theroux, John Dower, CharlesT, L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology, 2017, Movie, Documentary, Magnolia Pictures, Dianetics, Tom Cruise, Scientologists, Religion, Re-Enactments, Going Clear, BBC, Netflix, Tina Turner

Id: skJQ-RjEjhE

Length: 31min 6sec (1866 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 09 2017