... I won't name him by name (I can bet maybe one or two can guess who he is, though).
But a personal friend, an aspiring filmmaker, and a beloved member of the videogame industry and press has succumb to one of the worst pitfalls of Los Angeles -- Scientology. Last June, he embarked back to his rural origins in hopes of revitalizing his film career with my ex-roommates. Then, in late August, he agreed to take on a small gig here in Los Angeles on a short film. He and my former roommates had just completed a draft of their script and were taking a break to get some feedback, analyze the story and such. He thought it'd be a week or so, he'd get some cash, work on his script and head back to the midwest. I've known him for over seven years, so of course he called to tell me he was in town, he wanted to hang out and that he'd call me back.
He never did.
He didn't care for Los Angeles and was determined to stay in rural middle America for quite some time, as a "breather" he said. He even went as far to build a mammoth $1,200 workstation and buy furniture. He had no intentions to returning to Los Angeles anytime soon.
Which is why it was quite a shocker when I heard from my ex-roommate today that our friend had just returned back to the midwest today, and was planning on going back to Los Angeles. My roommates decided last week that they had enough and are moving on, now back in California.
Basically, my friend took this gig that was being run by some young aspiring filmmaker Scientologists. He must've got caught up in it, because he told my roommate that they had found him places to stay and had work lined up for him in Los Angeles long term. My roommate confronted him about what a scam Scientology is, and our friend told him, "Most of what you heard is not true. It's lies. And a lot of their teachings make a lot of sense."
His reactions, demeanor and personality has changed. Stunned by these recent events, and a little hurt by the complete lack of response, I called him and got voice mail. Even his voice mail sounds drastically, and disturbingly different.
The short film he worked on was apparently littered with Scientology propoganda to boot. Something about select humans that see aliens that the rest of the world doesn't see. They try to warn us, with "us" being in the form of this woman, who laughs at them and thinks they're crazy. She escapes only to learn far too late that these believers were right all along.
The current theory is that he's not going to speak to me, because I'm the most outspoken against Scientology of our circle of friends. My roommate and I have joked about taking it down, like Blade and the Bloodpack, in some underground war.
My roommate and I joked from the onset, when we learned that there were Scientologists involved, that he would be susceptible to that kind of group. We laughed.
Oh well.
