Blown for Good - Marc Morgan Headley [83]
The staff editing the event had cut away from Dave before he could utter the words “The War is Over!” Dave had a big deal with this and had wanted to have the cameras focused on him when he said this. He was adamant that this was the most important moment of the entire event and he wanted the event re-edited so that the cameras stayed on him while he said, “The War is Over!” Simple enough request. Well, the video deck recording the camera that was on Dave when he said that line had a problem with it. Apparently it did not properly record that part. It recorded the rest of the event fine, but during that one single phrase, the deck was faulty and did not properly record. This meant they did not have Dave Miscavige saying the most important part of the entire million dollar event.
In addition to cutting away from his big line, the lights had moved off him when he said it. This meant that even if the footage was in some way salvageable, it was too dark and would have to be fixed at an expensive visual effects post production house in LA.
People were being security checked all over the place. Dave was going to get to the bottom of all of the problems with the event. He wanted answers. A list of people that would be receiving a Committee of Evidence was drawn up. It had five people on it so far and as more and more people were security checked, the list grew.
And as people were sec checked, rumors started to fly about what had caused the problems.
The teleprompter story was the first to hit the base rumor mill. The teleprompters were poles with one-way glass mirrors that were raised and lowered by hand, which was done by two staff positioned under the stage. Those staff had to live under the stage throughout the rehearsals and during the entire event. These two guys had to maneuver their way to the front portion under the stage and sit there for several hours and then raise or lower the teleprompter poles on specific cues. Well the poles didn’t only move up and down, but if the person raising them wasn’t careful, they could rotate the pole in its shaft which threw the angle off and made it unreadable to the person on stage. This was the basic problem. Also, the glass on these devices would be cleaned with special cloths for at least 20 minutes before each event. If the glass had so much as the slightest blemish, it would make the text very hard to read. These glass panels were highly sensitive and had to be handled with the utmost of care. You could only clean the glass above the stage because there was no available light below the stage.
Turns out that right before the event, Dave Miscavige had come out on stage for a make-up check. When he stood at the podium, Shelly Miscavige stood in front of the podium to make sure that his make-up looked good. Shelly was wearing a long flowing dress. She stood right above one of the holes in the stage where one of the teleprompter guys was camped out. Now I can’t speak for every guy out there, but if you have a girl that is half way pretty standing above you and she is wearing a dress, chances are you are going to sneak a peek. Now we have a stagehand that is a bit excited, works up an appetite and proceeds to eat a big, juicy green apple. Eating an apple is not the best thing to do when you are sitting inches away from a piece of glass that despises even the slightest hint of bad breath. Well the guy ate the entire apple. A few minutes before the event was to begin, he noticed that he had sprayed apple juice all over his teleprompter glass and in three minutes he would be raising it above the stage. He took off his shirt and tried to wipe the juice off. This made matters even worse and the juice covered the entire glass with smudges which no amount of spit and last minute cleaning was going to save.
Meanwhile the guy on the other teleprompter was asleep. He had been up for a week straight and sitting in a small, cramped place in the dark for more than two minutes will do that to you. The sleepy guy had the teleprompter