Author Archives: Mark C. Rathbun

Going Clear Movie Part 10, Tony ‘Back Page’ Ortega – three time loser

Transcript

Mark Rathbun:

Gibney rips off film student’s techniques with Ortega

Tony Ortega got his foot in the door with me during a previous documentary that mainly involved me, Scientologists at War which came out in 2013.  They way they used Ortega was, they interspersed him.  They would show interviews with me on a subject and then occasionally they would have Ortega come in to interpret what I was saying; and thereby, come to conclusions that they could not get me to come to.  And that is how he was used throughout that.  He was taking what I was saying and turning it into something that it wasn’t. That is what they pretty skillfully did.  And that was their technique.   So, then Going Clear comes along. What blows me away is that Alex Gibney gets all these accolades. It is just this cult of celebrity culture we live in.  It is like, once you are recognized by somebody you are somebody go be lionized.  Gibney wasn’t original in the slightest. He used the exactly same thing in Going Clear that those fellows had done in Scientologists at War.  And those guys, by the way, were novice filmmakers.  The guys from the UK, they worked for a guy who was a producer who had won Oscars.  But this was part of a program where he was taking promising young directors and saying ‘here, here’s all this stuff; go make a documentary.”  So Gibney actually ripped off from these cinematography students this technique and basically used the same thing. I mean, if you get the book Going Clear, and go to the index and look for “Tony Ortega”.  He’s not there.  Zero pages.  He is not even in it. Now, we go to the movie which is, according to Gibney, a recreation of the book, and now Tony Ortega is suddenly the critical link to everything.  The reason I say, he’s the critical link to everything, is not because he has more air time, but it is more critical, crucial air time, because Gibney uses Ortega exactly the same way the folks did in Scientologists at War.  And that is, he bridges.  He’ll be putting together this salacious segment and it just doesn’t quite add up.  And then, all the sudden there is Tony Ortega with a convenient soundbite that sort of leads you to this conclusion.  And it is interspersed throughout the film.  I told Gibney, it may even be in writing, I told him “in posterity, that is dumbest thing you ever did. This guy (Ortega) is a troll, he’s an avowed anti Scientologist, he has no personal experience, and you putting into this movie cheapens it and turns it into a propaganda piece.  And it does. He has no personal experience. 

Tony Ortega and the Village Voice

The CEO and one of the directors of the Village Voice (where Ortega ran a lot of his earlier anti Scientology campaigning) ultimately got indicted and arrested for running prostitution, human trafficking of minors. That was the main source of income for the Village Voice publication at the time.  And so, they got to get rid of Ortega because – according to Ortega –  Ortega told me, “it turns out the church’s accusations and investigations into the Voice were more true than anyone believed.”  Essentially the Village Voice was bought and paid for through the human trafficking Back Page ads.  As a solution they wanted to get out from under the scrutiny of the church; and of course Tony Ortega was doing nothing at the Village Voice other than by becoming what he became, a full time Anti Scientologist. And so, he wasn’t helping general circulation with his editing work.  He was harming it. And all he was doing was bringing the scrutiny of the church upon them.  So, what they decided to do was to give Ortega a sweet honey package to go off and do what he wanted to do, which was to write a book about Scientology.  And it was a pretty sweet package because he was at it for two years.  He got to go shopping it for the next two years, doing nothing else but shopping. 

Ortega Channels Miserable Old Lady

So, Ortega gets his package and what does he do?  He goes and get this woman who settled all her differences with the church 35 years ago and gets her to unsettle.  Paulette Cooper.  Because she’s got this story of going after the church, and the church going after her, that’s a very salacious story that had been told in the seventies.  And then she had subsequent litigation and then she settled in 1981. 35 years later he is going resurrect her in the hopes that maybe he can become her.  I think the guy is unbelievable disappointed that Scientology didn’t take the bait and come after him.  I mean, he’s been trolling so hard. Here’s this guy and talks with all this air of authority and he’s done “this, this, this, this, this, and this” and all he can talk about in terms of harassment is what happened to the woman who he wrote a book about, that happened forty years ago, not to him, but the woman he wrote a book about. 

Ortega and the ASC (Anti Scientology Cult) sum up

This is this whole ASC (Anti Scientology Cult) culture of “your narrative is my narrative”. “we’re all one great big narrative”,  just this big cluster. “You suffered that and therefore I suffered that and therefore everybody ought to be in fear of suffering that.”  And, that is Tony Ortega.