"We are the way to happiness"
Andrew Morton's biography of Tom Cruise, though it's brought threats of a $100m lawsuit, has emboldened other critics of the increasingly rabid Hollywood star. Mark Ebner, the investigative reporter, just emailed us links to some Scientology promotional videos. Morton's central claim is that Cruise, star of movies from Risky Business to Mission Impossible, is the effective number two of the Church of Scientology, the cultish religion founded by L. Ron Hubbard, and subscribed to by other eccentric Hollywood actors such as John Travolta. The videos bear out, at the very least, that Cruise is central to the organization's marketing efforts. In this amazing clip, to a background track of theme from Mission Impossible, Cruise explains how Scientologists are "the authorities on the mind", the only people who can bring peace and unite cultures. Watch it, after the jump, before the scary Scientologists silence us all.
When you're a Scientologist, and you drive by an accident, you know you have to do something about it, because you know you're the only one who can really help. We are the authorities on getting people off drugs. We are the authorities on the mind.... We are the way to happiness. We can bring peace and unite cultures. Now is the time. Being a Scientologist. People are turning to you. 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. It really is. It is fun. Because damn it, there is nothing better than going out there and fighting the fight, and suddenly you see — boom! — things are better. I want to know that I've done everything I can do, every day... I do what I can. And I do it the way I do everything.
[Video was part of a package as Tom Cruise appeared before the International Association of Scientologists to accept its "Freedom Medal of Valor." More background on Cruise and Scientology, mentioning the speech, in a 2005 article in Radar magazine.]
