While I was going through my decompression from Scientology Inc. my wife and I watched Paul Haggis‘ Oscar-winning film Million Dollar Baby. The movie prompted me to have the first in-depth discussion on the subject of Scientology that I had had since leaving the cult. I pointed out to Monique Haggis’ wonderful depiction of a number of elements of L. Ron Hubbard’s seminal work, The Code of Honor.
I was to later learn that David Miscavige and his deputy Tom Cruise had quite an opposite reaction to Haggis’ award-winning work.
Movie guys Tom and Dave on a date
I covered it in The Scientology Reformation: What Every Scientologist Should Know, as follows:
…At first, Wilhere acted as if this surprise encounter and Tom’s immediate cottoning to Nazanin (Boniadi) would take priority over the “secret mission” for which she’d been selected. But after Nazanin lived with Cruise for a couple of weeks, the heights of Miscavige’s conceit apparently made him forget to inform Nazanin that the “secret project” had been cancelled. Nazanin began to suspect her encounter with Cruise was set up from the beginning. She was so overwhelmed, though, by the affections of the number-one movie star in the world and the number-two Scientologist in the world, that she was afraid to create an upset. Her trepidation was exacerbated by the fact that she was constantly being coached by Tommy Davis and his then-wife Nadine, as well as Tommy’s future wife Jessica Feshbach, on how to act around Cruise. They were clearly working for the boss, David Miscavige, and the coaching was constantly reinforced with implications that her pleasing Tom Cruise was the most important thing in the world of Scientology.
Ultimately, Cruise’s own behavior became so erratic that Nazanin had difficultly continuing to play the obedient wife-to-be.
One evening, while Miscavige and his wife Shelly were visiting Tom’s home in Telluride, Colorado, they watched a private screening of the Paul Haggis written, Oscar-winning movie Million Dollar Baby. David Miscavige proclaimed extreme distaste for the movie, saying the content indicated that Paul Haggis, a Scientologist at the time, was a depraved person.
“Yeah,” Tom piled on, “what is up with Haggis? Is he back on board?”
Miscavige asserted, “No, that film was so low-toned and completely psych-oriented.”
“Yeah,” Tom double-piled on, “he needs to get his ethics in.”
Tom and Dave apparently prefer billion dollar babies to million dollar babies:
Moving On Up a Little Higher 