by Ian Halperin
But the thing that struck me most after watching the broadcast is the fact that throughout the show, only one photo of Nick with Whitney was ever displayed, over and over again—a photo of the two of them and Bobbi during what appears to be near the end of Whitney’s life because of her ravaged appearance. They displayed the same photo at least ten times, despite the fact that Nick claims the trio was inseparable for years and traveled everywhere together. There are, in fact, countless photos of Nick with Bobbi taken after 2012, including a number displayed during the Dr. Phil episode but only that one single shot of the three of them together. It makes me wonder if Nick exaggerated the nature of his relationship with Whitney, whom he claims to have regarded as his second mother.
His penchant for exaggeration may explain the final revelation that Dr. Phil delivered for the cameras as the credits rolled:
“After our interview taped,” he announces, “the Houston family reached out to us. They say that Nick Gordon did not perform CPR on Whitney Houston and the police report reflects that.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Did Whitney really marry Bobby Brown to reestablish her credibility in the black community or to finally silence the lesbian rumors that were starting to impact her career? Would somebody really go as far as to discard a happy, fulfilling relationship for the sake of money or fame? We may never know the answer to Whitney’s motivations for discarding Robyn, though only the most naïve or disingenuous observer still believes they were simply friends—an absurd notion that beggars belief.
By the time I completed my investigation into homophobia in the entertainment industry, however, I knew that celebrities are often willing to go to much more desperate lengths to remain in the closet than simply marrying a person of the opposite sex.
As I pursued the undercover quest for my documentary more than a decade ago, few phenomena shocked me more than the role played by the Church of Scientology in maintaining the celluloid closet—something that first came to my attention while playing poker with the Queers of the Round Table.
After a peremptory investigation, I learned that part of the appeal of Scientology for some celebrities is its alleged promise that it could turn a gay person straight through an elaborate and expensive science fiction–inspired regimen.
Although there were literally thousands of anti-Scientology sites on the web, I didn’t trust any of them to supply an objective view of the religion, because most seemed to have an ax to grind. Instead, I turned to a 1991 cover story about the church in Time, one of the world’s most respected and credible media outlets. Judging by the headline, however, the article did not at first glance appear to be all that objective: “Scientology: The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power.”
The article, by award-winning journalist Richard Behar, makes no bones about its view of the church, which Behar claims was founded by L. Ron Hubbard to “clear” people of unhappiness. Scientology, writes Behar, portrays itself as a religion but “in reality, the church is a hugely profitable global racket that survives by intimidating members and critics in a Mafia-like manner.”
However, in the decade leading up to the article, he writes, prosecutions against Scientology seemed to be “curbing its menace.” In recent years, he continues, hundreds of longtime Scientology adherents—many charging that they were mentally or physically abused—have quit the church and criticized it at their own risk. Some have sued the church and won; others have settled for amounts in excess of $500,000. In various cases, judges have labeled the church “schizophrenic and paranoid” and “corrupt, sinister and dangerous.” The article calls Hubbard “part storyteller, part flim-flam man.”
Born in Nebraska in 1911, Hubbard served in the navy during World War II and soon afterward complained to the Veterans Administration about his “suicidal inclinations” and his “seriously affected” mind. Nevertheless, Hubbard was a moderately successful writer of pulp science fiction. Years later, church brochures described him falsely as an “extensively decorated” World War II hero who was crippled and blinded in action, twice pronounced dead, and miraculously cured through Scientology. Hubbard’s “doctorate” from “Sequoia University” was a fake mail-order degree. In a 1984 case in which the church sued a Hubbard biographical researcher, a California judge concluded that its founder was “a pathological liar.”
Behar warns that the church, which at the time of the article boasted seven hundred centers in sixty-five countries, threatens to become more insidious than ever.
But that really wasn’t the part of the article that interested me. Instead, the passage that caught my eye involved one of the church’s most famous members: John Travolta.
The church’s former head of security, Richard Aznaran, told Time that Scientology ringleader David Miscavige repeatedly joked to staffers about Travolta’s allegedly promiscuous homosexual behavior. Travolta refused to be interviewed, and his lawyer dismissed questions about the subject as “bizarre.” But two weeks later, Travolta coincidentally announced that he was getting married to a fellow Scientologist, actress Kelly Preston.
According to the article, “High-level Scientology defectors claim that Travolta has long feared that if he defected, details of his sexual life would be made public.”
“He felt pretty intimidated about this getting out and told me so,” recalled William Franks, the church’s former chairman of the board. “There were no outright threats made, but it was implicit. If you leave, they immediately start digging up everything.”
I had never even heard a hint that Travolta was gay, although everybody has heard the rumors about another Hollywood A-list Scientologist. But not so long ago the National Enquirer published a photo of Travolta kissing another man on the lips while he was coming down the airstair of a private jet at an airport in Hamilton, Ontario, while he was in Toronto filming Hairspray, in which ironically he plays a woman.
Travolta’s lawyer, Martin Singer, was quick to respond to the media uproar that resulted from the seemingly damning Enquirer photo. “As a manner of customary greeting and saying farewell, Mr. Travolta kisses both women and men whom he considers to be extremely close friends,” said Singer. “People who are close to Mr. Travolta are aware of his customary, non-romantic gesture.”
Not long after reading the Time article, I tracked down and met with a former high-ranking member of Scientology, a Beverly Hills artist named Michael Pattinson. In 1998, Pattinson had filed a lawsuit in a US district court against Scientology and many of its top officials and adherents, including Travolta. In his suit, Pattinson charged the church with a number of offenses, including fraud and false imprisonment. Chief among his allegations was that the church had promised to “cure” his homosexuality but that, after twenty-five years and more than $500,000 shelled out in fees, he was still gay.
When I talked to him, Pattinson, a British expatriate, was still bitter about his long ordeal. He told me he first encountered Scientology in 1973, when he was living in Paris, and his doctor recommended a book called Dianetics by L. Ron Hubbard.
“I had a stomach ulcer and the doctor actually thought Scientology might help me,” he explained. “So I went to one of their centers in Paris and tried the auditing. Soon I was hooked.”
The appeal for him, he said, was something he read by Hubbard where Hubbard promised he could cure people of their homosexuality by auditing.
“You have to understand that back then, where I came from—England—being gay was still very taboo,” he said. “It was probably like the American South is now. So, along comes this religion that can supposedly make me straight. Of course that appealed to me.”
He said he kept taking the courses, which required paying higher and higher fees, anticipating that if he reached a high-enough level, he would finally be offered the auditing process that Hubbard had said could cure homosexuality.
“Whenever I asked, they would tell me to be patient but that eventually I would be ready,” he said. “The case supervisor is the one who decides these
things, but he kept putting it off. Meanwhile, I was spending a fortune on these courses.”
Pattinson said that nobody ever explicitly used Travolta as an example of a gay adherent who had been cured of his homosexuality by Scientology but that people inside the church would constantly refer to the movie star as one who had been cured. He said he traveled in the same circles as the star.
“I joined pretty much the same time as he did, knew all the same people. In fact, I was considered a celebrity, I think, even before he was, and was even once on the cover of the church’s magazine, Celebrity. Everybody knew about him early on. It was pretty obvious. Travolta was a role model for the cure, especially after he got married. I thought, well, if he could get married, he must be cured, and I took even more courses and spent even more money, just waiting for the day when I would also be cured of what they called my ‘ruin.’ Well, that day never came and finally I’d had enough.”
By the time he left the church, Pattinson says he had achieved a very high rank.
“I was treated by the same handlers, or Terminals as they’re called, as any other celebrity, such as Travolta, such as Tom Cruise, such as Kirstie Alley. I know that it is very important for public relations that within the industry some of these people are seen to be straight while actually being gay and trying to handle it within Scientology. . . . All this, of course, would be in their ‘pre-clear’ folders under an assumed name, a code name because all their innermost secrets are there. But it’s very important to have that paradox going on. Maybe they have something in the industry that would seen to be terrible and yet they have to be shown to be straight. They would probably be very inclined to go into an arranged marriage.”
Pattinson eventually dropped the suit after he ran out of money, claiming that the church’s deep pockets made it impossible to fight the case any longer. “They spent more than $2.5 million fighting it, and it was obvious they were going to keep fighting it till I couldn’t afford to pursue it any longer,” he claims.
What had Travolta done to personally incur Pattinson’s wrath, I wondered. A clue, perhaps, can be found in his district court filing:
Defendant Travolta has knowingly participated in the intentional violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, thus instigating the “excessive entanglement of church and state.” Defendant Travolta has known of Scientology’s “gulags” and “concentration camps,” otherwise known as RPFs, through both personal observation and information received from a certain former Scientologist, but has deliberately chosen to turn a blind eye to their existence and to refrain from disclosing his knowledge to people such as Plaintiff who trusted and relied upon him as a principal spokesperson on behalf of the Defendants. Indeed, when the movie Saturday Night Fever was first released, he knowingly arranged for a hard copy of the movie to be shown to members of the Sea Org sentenced to armed confinement in the RPF, or “gulag” in Scientology’s buildings in Hollywood, California. Defendant Travolta’s public statements, “handling” and subsequent marriage were material statements Plaintiff reasonably relied upon, as Commodore Hubbard intended when he taught Defendants how to “use” celebrities, such as Defendant Travolta, for the recruitment, brainwashing and retention of the Plaintiff and others.
I was damned if I could figure out what all that meant, or if I wanted to be delving too deeply into anything associated with gulags and concentration camps. But I figured those terms were probably a little hyperbole used for dramatic effect. At least I hoped so.
With Pattinson’s nightmare ordeal fresh in my mind, I decided it might be time to join Scientology and experience the religion for myself. But first I paid a visit to a veteran reporter for the Hollywood Reporter named Barbara Sternig, who has written a lot about Scientology and celebrities over the years.
“I can only assume the idea is to get them while they’re young,” she tells me. “Get them before they’re successful and there will be a loyalty base there that will stand you in good stead forever. If you get another Tom Cruise coming out of that, another Lisa Marie Presley coming out of that, you have your income guaranteed for the future; you have a generation of money. I’m sure it is based on money, though the church would probably deny that.”
According to Sternig, Hollywood is terrified by the rise of Scientology, so much so that it has skewed the results of Oscar voting on more than one occasion.
“There’s allegedly a good reason why neither Travolta nor Cruise have won an Oscar,” she reveals. “For example, look at Cruise’s performance in Born on the Fourth of July. It was brilliant, tailor-made for an Oscar, but he was shut out. Then he was also denied for both Jerry Maguire and Magnolia. And, of course, Travolta was the odds-on favorite for Pulp Fiction and he should have won, but again he was shut out. It’s fairly obvious that the Hollywood establishment doesn’t want to see a Scientologist win an Oscar for fear that it will just help them recruit more celebrities and everyday members. Can you imagine the speech that one of them might make to a billion viewers if they actually won?”
She points to Cruise’s ex-wife, Nicole Kidman, as a perfect example of this phenomenon. “If you remember back to Nicole’s brilliant performance in To Die For. All the reviewers were predicting she was a shoo-in for an Academy Award. That, of course, was when she was still married to Cruise and she was a practicing Scientologist. She wasn’t even nominated. Then a few years ago, only after she divorced Cruise and renounced Scientology, she won her Oscar. That’s probably not a coincidence.”
I really had no idea what to expect when I set out to invade Scientology’s castle headquarters on Hollywood Boulevard. From what I had been reading, most of the world’s anticult organizations regarded the religion as a sinister sect. I had heard countless stories of journalists attempting to invade other religious cults, such as the Moonies. These journalists, the story goes, were quite knowledgeable in the particular church’s practices before “joining” and were certain they could withstand the cult’s sophisticated brainwashing methods, which include sleep and protein deprivation. But before they knew it, they had been brainwashed into joining the church. I didn’t really think Scientology employed those kinds of methods, but I packed a case of protein bars before I journeyed in just in case.
I also insisted that my publicist, Melanie, accompany me for some extra protection. And I brought along my cameraman, Miles, as well, though I was fairly sure he would be turned away when they saw his video camera.
On the day in question, the three of us swept up the steps and through the entrance. The receptionist seemed a little taken aback to see me in the garish green outfit that I had employed as part of my undercover quest and asked what she could do for us.
Melanie quickly introduced me. She explained that I was thinking of joining Scientology and wanted to take their personality test. A church official immediately approached us and said, “No cameras.” I tell her (truthfully) that my uncle invented the credit-card key and that he had long been fascinated by Scientology. As an actor, I explained, I was also quite interested because of the church’s track record in producing celebrities. At this point, I can almost see the dollar signs light up in her eyes, calculating just how many tens of millions my uncle must have made from such an invention.
Melanie explained that we were documenting my quest to become an actor on video, at which point the official finally relents and agrees to let the camera in. She insisted on processing my membership and overseeing my test personally.
We walked through what can only be described as a shrine to L. Ron Hubbard. His photo and writings are everywhere, and it reminded me of a trip I once took to Soviet Russia, where Lenin was omnipresent. The only difference is that his little social experiment eventually ended up in the crapper, while Hubbard’s seems to be thriving.
She brought me over to a table and produced a written test. “Read the front page,” she said to me, “fill out the top, open the booklet, and start answering the questions. Th
e front page will explain how to answer. When you’re done, you’ll get a computerized graph showing the strong points, weak points, and from the viewpoint of improving something about your life, and it will give you a good bird’s-eye view of what’s going well and what can be improved.”
I signed my name and my address then started to fill out the lengthy test.
The questions themselves seem rather innocuous. Among them:
• Is it easy for you to relax?
• Do you have little regret on past misfortunes and failures?
• Does the idea of fear or apprehension give you a physical reaction?
• Could you take the necessary action to kill an animal in order to put it out of pain?
I decided to answer each question the opposite of how I really feel, just to see what would happen.
While I was waiting for the results, I asked my Scientology handler whether the church could really help my acting career take off. “Obviously I’m not at the level of Travolta or Cruise,” I tell her, “but are there any classes for me to take to help me become a star?”
“Absolutely,” she replies. “I mean, that’s what we do. We have courses that people can take where they learn how to, on the one hand, handle certain things in life that are causing trouble. It could be marriage, money, or any other problem you might be having.”
“And you’ll be able to tell with this test?” I asked.
“Yeah, it’s actually very accurate,” she asserted.
I then proceeded to tell her that I am actually having a big problem. I’m gay, and I’m worried that it might hurt my acting career.
Melanie jumps in. “He needs this because he’s so hung up about being gay,” she told the handler. “It’s affecting his overall confidence. As an actor, he needs confidence to make it.”