Blown for Good - Marc Morgan Headley [123]
Then you had Dave Miscavige who had laid out a master plan of things to occur over several years and each new release was tied to an event. In 1990, a list was issued that contained 10 years worth of events. By 2000, all of the “new” products were to have been released and then all events thereafter would be devoted to focusing on the unchecked expansion that would be occurring worldwide.
By 2000, a small fraction of those items had been released, and by 2004, all of the items that had been released had to be redone or re-released due to being incorrect or needing upgrade in some way later on.
Things did not always go as planned at the Int Base; in fact, they never did.
But back to the event for the Freewinds. Most of the event crew stayed up for two whole weeks leading up to the events.
For most of the videos, Dave would sit in the editing bay and critique each cut and each sequence, in each and every video. Then he would head over to Music where he would listen to the music scores and have those revised or redone. Peter Schless could crank out a five-minute video score in a day or two. So doing ten videos in a month was no big deal. But when you have to do ten videos twice over in a month, it adds up. And in between the scores for each video, the music would still have to be recorded and mixed and laid back to the off line edit. And you have to be part of all of the attendant meetings about the videos and then also all of the meetings with COB on how the videos suck and have to be redone. All of this does not leave a lot of minutes left in the day to eat, sleep or be merry.
Now, event speeches would normally be written by the executives who would be delivering the speeches. This was a very short list of possibilities that would routinely be jumbled around right up until the actual night of the event. And depending on which event it was, and what was happening at the base, the people speaking could be doing so from a number of posts or titles. But the usual suspects were:
1. COB – Dave Miscavige
2. Mike Rinder
3. Marc Yager
4. Guillaume Lesevre
5. Danny Sherman
Most of these guys would have to write their own speech for the event and submit it to Dave Miscavige for approval. There were a few Catch 22s put in place by Dave though. No one could submit his own speech unless the others had been written and coordinated with. Something that Marc Yager wanted to talk about could not be in any of the other speeches and each person had to come up with enough stuff to talk about in his own speech so that it could stand on its own.
There was the added bonus that someone in the Management PR Office would have to propose a speech for Dave Miscavige and that his speech had to be much better than all the other speeches so as to put him on a pedestal far above the other speakers.
Last but not least, the speeches could not talk about the stuff that was in the videos, but could only have a short introduction to the video that went with the speech.
All of this had to be coupled with the fact that all of the speeches, videos, and releases were constantly changing and some might not be done in time for the event.
It seemed that Dave Miscavige would leave it up to the regular executives to get everything prepared for an event up until about three to four weeks before the actual event date. So, most people had been working flat out preparing everything and maybe had a bunch of stuff submitted to Dave for approval. A month before the event, like clockwork, he would review everything submitted and reject it as being the worst he had ever seen. Then he would hold several day and night long meetings explaining to all involved why and how it was the worst he had ever seen, and then complain about the fact that he would have to do it all himself again and make sure everything was done correctly.
After years and years of this, most of us were not even surprised by this; in fact, it was expected. As it drew closer and closer to an event, it would be like, “Is COB going to come down here and tell us what he wants to do?”
The Freewinds