The Church of Scientology lost one of its most high-profile members when the Hollywood film-maker Paul Haggis quit the organisation in protest at its stance on same-sex marriages. In an explosive letter of resignation, Haggis claimed he could no longer “be a member of an organisation where gay-bashing is tolerated”.
Haggis, the writer of the Oscar-winning dramas Crash and Million Dollar Baby, had earlier called on spokesman Tommy Davis to denounce statements made by the church’s San Diego branch in support ofProposition 8, the controversial legislation that bans gay marriage inCalifornia. “The church’s refusal to denounce the actions of these bigots, hypocrites and homophobes is cowardly,” Haggis wrote in a letter addressed to Davis.
“Silence is consent, Tommy. I refuse to consent.” The resignation was later published on a blog by the former Scientology official, Marty Rathbun.
The Church of Scientology was founded in 1952 by the pulp novelist L Ron Hubbard. It is a system of beliefs that promises members a form of “spiritual rehabilitation” through a set of counselling sessions known as “auditing”. Scientology is recognised as a tax-exempt religion in the US where it has attracted a list of celebrity devotees that includes Tom Cruise, John Travolta and Lisa-Marie Presley.
However, Haggis’s outburst looks likely to be seized on by critics as proof of the organisation’s alleged heavy-handed tactics and lack of transparency. The film-maker goes on to list the other grievances that prompted his departure, accusing officials of waging a smear campaign against former members by leaking details of their private life to the press. For good measure, Haggis also suggests that Davis was lying when he publicly insisted that the organisation did not practise the policy of “disconnection”, whereby followers are encouraged to break off all contact with those who have criticised the church.
“I was shocked,” wrote Haggis. “We all know this policy exists. I didn’t have to search for verification – I didn’t even have to look any further than my own home. You might recall that my wife was ordered to disconnect from her own parents … although it caused her terrible personal pain, my wife broke off all contact with them.”
Haggis was a member of the Church of Scientology for 35 years. During that time, he wrote, “I saw the organisation – with all its warts, growing pains and problems – as an underdog. And I’ve always had a thing for underdogs.
But I reached a point several weeks ago where I no longer knew what to think. You had allowed your name to be allied with the worst impulses of the Christian Right … Despite all the church’s words about promoting freedom and human rights, its name is now in the public record alongside those who promote bigotry, intolerance, homophobia and fear.”
His letter ends: “I am only ashamed I waited this many months to act. I hereby resign my membership of the Church of Scientology.”
The Church of Scientology has yet to publicly respond to Haggis’s allegations. In the meantime, the Oscar-winner has hopped from one illustrious list to another. The roll-call of celebrities who have first joined and then abandoned the organisation reportedly includes Nicole Kidman, Van Morrison and comedian Jerry Seinfeld.
I’ve added video to this post.
From James Cameron to the Wachowski brothers to Steven Spielberg, US film-makers are paying homage to a groundbreaking Japanese anime – the movie that gave us today’s vision of cyberspace.
Ghost in the Shell 2.0, which James Cameron called ‘a stunning work of speculative fiction.
When Larry and Andy Wachowski were pitching The Matrix to their producers, they played them a DVD of an 82-minute Japanese cartoon and said: “We wanna do that for real.” The film was 1995′s Ghost in the Shell, which defined a visual identity for cyberpunk cinema and counts James Cameron and Steven Spielberg among its most high-profile fans.
As it turned out, The Matrix wasn’t quite Ghost in the Shell “for real”, but it is indebted to it. Both films explore the virtual realm with a combination of existential questioning and kick-ass violence. The Wachowskis borrowed many of Ghost’s key details, including the digital “rain” of green numbers that signifies cyberspace, and the way humans plug themselves in through holes in the backs of their necks.
While he has just rereleased a “2.0″ refurbishment of his 15-year-old film, director Mamoru Oshii is modest about its pioneering qualities. “I did not revise it because I was dissatisfied with the original, but to prove how far we have progressed since then,” he explains. A cheerfully taciturn man with a penchant for basset hounds, Oshii doesn’t like to talk about the Matrix and any similarities to his film. “I’ve been asked this question hundreds of times. Frankly, it gets a bit annoying. I’m sure the Wachowski brothers feel the same. It is an entertaining movie, but I prefer their debut, Bound.”
Adapted from a comic book written by Masamune Shirow, Ghost in the Shell possesses many hallmarks of the anime (Japanese animation) genre: vast metropolises, lovingly detailed robots, military hardware, pneumatic women with huge eyes. The story is a future-noir thriller along the lines of Bladerunner, following a female cyborg detective on the trail of a mysterious hacker. She also questions her own identity: does she possess a “ghost” or a soul? Is she just a machine?
Surprisingly, the film was co-financed by a British company, Manga Films, an offshoot of Island records. Andy Frain, the movie’s executive producer, says: “I wanted to do a blend of east and west: western storytelling combined with Japanese artistry and a great soundtrack – we were talking to Massive Attack at one point.” But his suggestions were largely ignored, he says. The critics were lukewarm, and the film only reached a sizeable audience on video and DVD.
But it did appeal to an influential contingent of film-makers. James Cameron has described Ghost in the Shell as “a stunning work of speculative fiction . . . the first to reach a level of literary excellence”. (His forthcoming movie Avatar envisages a future in which humans can transfer their personalities into the bodies of an alien species. Sound familiar?)
Ghost in the Shell’s influence on Spielberg, another fan, is clear in AI: Artificial Intelligence, which ponders the philosophical implications of the human-automaton interface, and in the future-tech visions of Minority Report. In April this year, Spielberg’s Dreamworks studio acquired the remake rights to Ghost in the Shell; he plans to make a 3D live-action version.
In the past year, we’ve also had Joss Whedon’s enjoyable TV series Dollhouse, in which secret agents are wiped clean of their memories and personalities, so as to be implanted with new, temporary ones. And the sci-fi film Surrogates, out last month, imagines a future in which people prefer to stay at home and control avatars of themselves in the outside world.
But Ghost in the Shell went further than its Hollywood counterparts. Unlike the replicants in Blade Runner, the techno-slaves of The Matrix or the robot in AI, Ghost’s cyborg heroine does not seek to regain her “lost” humanity. Without giving away the ending, the film hints at the start of a brave new post-human era (or is it a Buddhist parable?) about the surrender of self into a larger entity. Quite a burden for an 82-minute cartoon.
In 1986 NSUK, a UK Buddhist lay organisation, put on a show at Hammersmith Odeon theatre called ‘Alice’. It involved almost every member of the organisation, who gave their time to rehearsals and the performance freely. It was a life-changing experience for many, me included.
The rehearsals began in Spring 1986 and were almost nightly at the end.
BEST UK FEATURE
***DOWN TERRACE, Ben Wheatley, UK, European Premiere
- Ken Loach meets The Sopranos in this darkly comic and disturbing slice of social surrealism.
DESIRE, Gareth Jones, UK
- Steamy and sexual psychodrama, between a writer, his wife and his muse.
EXAM, Stuart Hazeldine, UK
– 80 minutes, 8 candidates, 1 answer, no question. How far would you go to win the ultimate job?
CRYING WITH LAUGHTER, Justin Molotnikov, UK
- Let Joey Frisk tell you about the worst week of his life.
RESURRECTING THE STREETWALKER, Ozgur Uyanik, UK, World Premiere
- An ambitious young filmmaker discovers an abandoned horror movie from the 1980s and decides to finish it – big mistake!
Raindance website
“A film that is, even for Peckinpah, relentlessly bleak in its portrayal of life. Tellingly, it was one of the last films Peckinpah produced; it was also the fearsome director’s personal favorite of the many movies he directed. Warren Oates stars as Bennie, a piano-player who happens upon two bounty hunters who have been dispatched by a Mexican rancher to collect the head of Alfredo Garcia. It seems that Garcia had impregnated the ranchers daughter, who wants his head as indisputable proof that this deviant is dead, and won’t be bothering his family again. Penniless and out of luck, Bennie does a little snooping of his own, discovers that his girlfriend knows where the final resting place of Garcia is, and decides to usurp the bounty hunters by severing Garcia’s head and collecting the cash for himself. Peckinpah unleashes some ferocious scenes of violence as Bennie attempts to complete his task, while Oates is magnificent as Bennie, who slides into madness as events take a turn for the worse; he even resorts to talking to Garcia’s decapitated head, and washing it in the shower. A truly awesome addition to Peckinpah’s canon of films, BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA is often unfairly overlooked in favor of more popular Peckinpah fare such as THE WILD BUNCH and
STRAW DOGS. While the film may be shot through with Peckinpah’s trademark misogyny and violence, it nevertheless remains a potent ride through humanity’s dark side, with Peckinpah training his unrelenting camera on some gruesome scenes that remain long in the memory after the final credits fade.”
Director: Sam Peckinpah
Script: Sam Peckinpah, Gordon Dawson
Composer: Jerry Fielding
Starring: Warren Oates, Isela Vega, Gig Young, Kris Kristofferson, Emilio Fernandez, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia,
