Blown for Good - Marc Morgan Headley [140]
Dave Miscavige ended up dictating the entire Tom Cruise video project. Dave’s idea was that no one could talk about Tom Cruise better than Tom Cruise himself. A list of questions was drawn up and Tom would be shot on video and, more than anything, Tom would say whatever he wanted to say and from the footage, a video would be cut together that would tell the story of Tom Cruise the Scientologist.
When the tapes came in, the footage was transcribed and all the transcripts were reviewed by Dave himself. He would cut up portions of the transcripts and piece these together to make a script. The music that Dave decided on was the Mission Impossible II movie theme. The video would start out with a VO and some graphics of Tom Cruise. Then we would use footage of a lot of other videos that had anything to do with Tom or anything he had ever done, Ground Zero in New York, CCHR, Interviews with Larry King, movie premieres, you name it, the footage had to be tracked down so it could be used in his video. Everything from supermarket magazines to newspaper articles was sent in from Tom’s PR people. We shot it all five different ways, pan across, zoom in, zoom out, static, you name it, we shot it and gave Dave Miscavige six ways from Sunday to edit it.
Dave sat in the video edit bay for over a week straight, day and night, tweaking every single frame of this video until it was perfect. This was going to be his baby. He worked out what was used and exactly how one shot transitioned to the next, what interview bits from Tom were used, everything. There was nothing about this video that was not seen by Dave Miscavige at least ten times.
The music had to be perfect; the shots used had to all be perfect. No stone was left unturned. Dave was not only making a video that would be about Tom Cruise, but Tom himself would have to be blown away when he saw it.
The funny part was that in the end when the video was done, it was as if Dave Miscavige had put on a Tom Cruise mask. The way Tom talked and acted was as if he were a clone of Dave Miscavige. People who know Dave well and don’t know Tom Cruise could tell you, in 2004 Tom Cruise started acting like Dave Miscavige. Now all Tom Cruise needed was to get an acting role as some foul-mouthed executive that beats his staff and he would be set.
Dave Miscavige thought he was the Tom Cruise of the Int Base. Dave once met Bill Clinton. When Dave was telling the story to some of us, someone commented, “You met the President of the United States?” Dave Miscavige answered, “No, he met me!” That was Dave Miscavige in a nutshell.
Dave made the entire Int Base watch his Tom Cruise video several times and told us that this was how a video got done and when someone really wanted to get a product, it could be done.
A special Freedom Medal of Valor was designed and made for this event. It was just like all the other freedom medals that had been given out over the years except it was a bit bigger and was encrusted with diamonds and instead of being gold plated it was white gold or platinum or some such thing.
When the event finally came around and everyone went off to UK where it was held, we all knew that Tom Cruise would be there. It was even leaked that Tom Cruise might be there so that more Scientologists would attend the event in a remote part of East Grinstead, England.
Oddly enough there was not that much concern for Tom Cruise at the actual live event other than making sure he had a seat in the front row. The event video cameramen were instructed to keep the cameras off Tom for the entire event while he was in the crowd. He was sitting next to a girl that he was going out with who was not EVER to be on camera during the event. Even so, she still ended up on camera when he got up from his seat to accept his medal and when he sat back down.
At the event that night Dave Miscavige did a whole intro to the Tom Cruise video,