Blown for Good - Marc Morgan Headley [126]
6. When the whole show was over, a DVD would be made of the entire show and this would be presented to Mr. Cruise.
In other words, we were flying all this stuff back to the Freewinds for a giant butt kissing! We were going to play his songs and show his movies to him and then give him a DVD of us doing that!
As soon as we heard how the gig was going to go down, most of us came to the same conclusion. One word - Cheese. This was going to come off hokey as hell. It had all of the recipe ingredients for cheese. In fact, if you wanted to make some cheese, you could do so very easily with these people. Luckily, we were thousands of miles away and would not witness this cheese-fest first hand. And, since it was COB’s idea, no matter how cheesy this thing turned out to be, Dave would love it and Tom would at least pretend to love it. I mean, Dave Miscavige once stated that Battlefield Earth was by far the BEST movie he had EVER seen! Let this be a yardstick for his taste and quality standards.
The Video Editing crew stayed up for two days cutting the background visuals for the songs. All the rental gear was turned around in Miami and sent back to the ship. The event crew were sent back to the Freewinds. The equipment that normally took at least a week to set up had to be set up all over again in just two days. The gear rental companies knew they had us in a tight spot and they told us that we would be paying more for the additional rental time since they had other customers scheduled for the gear that was supposed to be returned to them. We had to pay, there was no other option.
The sushi guys were set, and all other attendant accoutrements were on schedule to arrive for his highness, Lt. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, Vampire Lestat, Jerry Maguire, Ethan Hunt, Cole Trickle, Charlie Babbitt, Brian Flanagan, or as we had to address him, Mr. Cruise.
We were told that several other key executives were also going to be there and supposedly if any of the upper level Scientologists wanted to stay and partake, they would have to pony up the cashola for the cheesola. Tommy Davis, Mr. Cruise’s dedicated Scientology handler at the time, would be there. Dave Miscavige, this was his idea, of course he was going to be there. Dave Miscavige’s wife/assistant Shelly would be there. And then ASI execs, IAS Execs and the Freewinds Execs could tag along so as to fill the seats in the small entertainment lounge.
Dave and Tom were just hanging out and their entourages were living it up on the private yacht that had been hired for a few weeks to follow the Freewinds around. They went aboard the Freewinds for dinner and then went over to the Starlight Cabaret Lounge.
Everything was set, the band, the crowd, and the videos.
Dave Miscavige was wearing a tight white t-shirt and black jeans. Tom Cruise was wearing jeans and a green button down shirt with the sleeves rolled up. As they walked in to the theme song from the 1986 movie Top Gun, Tom Cruise patted Dave on the back. Fighter jet footage from the movie played on the huge screen behind the lone guitarist on the stage. Everyone in the room was standing, clapping, and cheering. I mean, a guy just turned 42 years old, why not stand and clap for this to Top Gun music?
Tom hugged Dave and Dave’s wife Shelly as the music continued to play. After three minutes of awkward standing and clapping went by, Dave motioned for Tom to sit down. Yes, Tom, there will be another hour of this coming up.
The musicians had been practicing the songs all week and the set list was ultimately dictated by what videos were edited to go with the songs. All songs had constant clips from Tom’s movies playing whilst the band performed. In between each song there was a standing ovation. This went on for the whole set. The songs were:
1. “Top Gun Theme” performed by Golden Era Musicians with guitar solo from Chris Maio.
2. “Old Time Rock and Roll,” from the 1983 film, Risky Business, where Tom Cruise becomes a pimp and gets roughed up by some other pimps. This was performed