Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography pdfdrive com

for Lambs on October 22, 2007, he insisted that the bags of all photographers be
searched for water pistols. He did not want a repeat of the incident two years
before, when a TV film crew squirted him with water as he worked the crowd.

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Although he spent nearly two hours meeting and greeting his fans, the movie
received a lackluster reception from the critics. “The drama glows as brightly as
a five-watt bulb,” wrote James Christopher in The Times, the newspaper that
sponsored the film festival where the movie was showcased. The review
described Tom, in his role as a Republican hawk, as “a desk-thumping, ultra-
smooth flirt who beams at [Meryl Streep, playing a cynical journalist] with total
insincerity.” Even though the film dealt with the controversial subject of the
conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Hollywood star smoothly sidestepped
questions about the War on Terror. He did, however, reveal that he planned to
take his friend David Beckham for a fast car or plane ride to cheer him up after
his new soccer team, the L.A. Galaxy, failed to reach the playoffs in Beckham’s
injury-prone first season.
If Tom’s first feature with United Artists signaled his studio’s intention to take
on edgier issues, his next was an audacious fusion of faith and film, a symbol of
his utter immersion in the promotion of Scientology. As Tom and his colleagues
were sifting through potential scripts on the lot of United Artists, David
Miscavige and his lieutenants were in Scientology’s war room at Hemet,
planning the invasion of Germany. From time to time they were joined in their
desert bunker by Tom, who these days is the organization’s second-in-command
in all but name, involved in every aspect of planning and policy. Just as the
denizens of the Kabbalah Centre do nothing without the approval of their great
champion and paymaster, Madonna, so the marketing strategy of Scientology is
molded around Tom Cruise.
Germany was a hugely desirable prize, a potential market of 82 million
people. What’s more, it would be an immense public relations triumph to gain
legitimacy in a country where Scientology is officially viewed as a commercial
rather than a religious enterprise, a totalitarian organization that takes advantage
of vulnerable individuals. In short, as far as Germany is concerned, Scientology
poses a risk to democratic society. Over the years, various German states have
taken measures to protect their citizens from infiltration by the group, whose
activities are monitored closely by the Office for the Protection of the
Constitution.
In turn, Scientology has aggressively argued that Germany’s attitude is a
denial of fundamental religious freedoms, their lobbying in Washington causing
a rift between the U.S. and Germany on this human rights issue. In January
2007, Scientology established a major beachhead in its campaign when it opened
a glossy 43,000-square-foot building in the heart of Berlin. Two months later, in
a brilliant pincer move, Scientology effectively parked its tanks on Germany’s
ideological lawn when Tom Cruise announced that he would produce and star in

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a movie about Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, the German
aristocrat whose failed attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler in the dying months of
World War II earned him a place in the pantheon of German heroes.
Not only would a leading Scientologist be playing a symbol of the new
German democracy, but the moviemakers wanted to film in the exact locations
in Germany where the plot was hatched and dispatched. This was the
Cruise/Miscavige axis at its most Machiavellian, planning to march their
ideological storm troopers through the streets of Berlin, camouflaged in the garb
of artistic integrity and religious freedom. The film could be seen as the stalking
horse.
Tom’s presence on German soil provoked debate among all sections of
society about the rights and wrongs of Scientology. Which was precisely the
master plan. “The subject of Stauffenberg was chosen deliberately,” claims a
former Scientologist who was privy to the organization’s plans for European
expansion. “It was a brilliant way to rub it into their faces. The Scientology high
command was laughing their asses off. It created controversy in Germany, set
politicians against politicians, which was just what they wanted.”
Controversy was not long in coming, as members of the Stauffenberg family,
the German church, and politicians robustly attacked the film. The hero’s eldest
son, Berthold Graf von Stauffenberg, a retired general, declared, “Scientology is
a totalitarian ideology. The fact that an avowed Scientologist like Mr. Cruise is
supposed to play the victim of a totalitarian regime is purely sick.” Tom was
compared to infamous Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels by the German
Protestant Church, whose spokesman, Thomas Gandow, divined the underlying
purpose behind the movie: “This film will have the same propaganda advantages
for Scientology as the 1936 Olympics had for the Nazis.”
When it was discovered that United Artists planned to film in Germany,
politicians clamored to man the barricades. Defense Ministry spokesman Harald
Kammerbauer said, “United Artists will not be allowed to film at German
military sites if Count Stauffenberg is played by Tom Cruise, who has publicly
professed to being a member of the Scientology cult. In general, the Bundeswehr
[German military] has a special interest in the serious and authentic portrayal of
the events of July 20, 1944, and Stauffenberg’s person.”
Tom’s battalions valiantly threw themselves into the fray, Shrek star Rupert
Everett publicly saying that Scientology was no more ridiculous than other
religions. Whether the openly gay actor was aware of Hubbard’s policy stating
that homosexuals should be “disposed of quietly and without sorrow” is not
known. Paula Wagner fired her own broadside, arguing that Tom’s personal
beliefs “had no bearing on the movie’s plot, themes, or content.” This was no

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more than the truth, as screenwriter Chris McQuarrie and director Bryan Singer,
the creative duo behind the slickly intelligent crime drama The Usual Suspects,
had no idea that their von Stauffenberg project was possibly being used as a
Trojan horse to promote the cause of Scientology.
The man at the center of this war of words was statesmanlike and disarmingly
low key. After paying a three-hour Sunday-morning visit to the new European
headquarters of Scientology during a June reconnaissance of the film’s Berlin
locations, Tom coolly opened a second front, diplomatically and unusually
inviting selected journalists for a cocktail party to meet other members of the
cast, which included Bill Nighy, Kenneth Branagh, and Terence Stamp, and to
watch the filming of a scene on set. He spoke humbly about the Catholic
aristocrat who was executed the day after the bomb he was carrying in a
briefcase injured but did not kill the Führer. “He was someone who realized that
he had to take the steps that ultimately cost him his life. He recognized what was
at stake. It’s compelling when people stand up for things.”
His last sentence was a sentiment that could serve as a metaphor for the
world’s fascination with the actor. Certainly the scene in which, as Stauffenberg,
Tom watched his children play just before embarking on his dreaded mission
reminded the watching media why he had been at the top of his trade for more
than two decades. “Without the aid of dialogue, his face obscured by an eye
patch, Tom still manages to convey grief and turmoil,” observed entertainment
writer Ruben Nepales. “Watching the scene reminded us why we’ve always
believed that Tom is an underrated actor. The controversies have often
succeeded in eclipsing the fact that the guy is one of the finest actors of his
generation.”
Within a matter of weeks, the strategy paid off. The German defense ministry
waved the white flag and agreed to his demands to film at military locations.
After their abject surrender, another government ministry paid “reparations,”
giving the film $6.5 million in subsidies because the movie dealt with issues of
national history. So, on July 17, 2007, without a shot being fired, fighter planes
emblazoned with swastikas, the banned symbol of the Nazi regime, flew low
over the village of Loepten outside Berlin as filming began. Only a few Germans
realized that they were being invaded.
Although he may have won this battle, the war was by no means over. As
Tom continued filming in Berlin’s Babelsberg Studios—once favored by
Goebbels for making Nazi propaganda—Scientology suffered assault after
assault. First, a fourteen-year-old girl and her stepbrother, children of a high-
ranking German Scientologist, made headline news after fleeing their home in
Berlin to escape the organization. They sought refuge in Hamburg, which has

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safe houses for those leaving cults. Then Ursula Caberta, who had spent fifteen
years investigating Scientology as the commissioner of the Scientology
Taskforce for the Hamburg Interior Authority, released The Black Book of