Book: Going Clear

This may be the creepiest book I have ever read. It is also totally riveting and one of the best books I have read this year.

It covers L. Rob Hubbard's life, how he created Scientology, various scandals related to the church, the rise of current church head David Miscavage, and the relationships of various celebrities with Scientology. Lawrence Wright covers all the angles thoroughly. He conducted interviews with over 200 current and former Scientologists as part of his research, and he focuses heavily on the story of Hollywood screenwriter Paul Haggis' experience in the church. Haggis joined the church as a young man in the 70s and was a devoted member for 35 years before leaving in 2009. Lawrence Wright wrote an article for the New Yorker about Haggis' experience, in which Haggis called the church "a cult," and that article inspired Wright to write a book on the subject.

I saw The Master last year, which was rumored to be kinda/sorta based on L. Ron Hubbard's life, but not officially about Scientology. Now the movie makes a lot more sense because 1. a lot of the stuff in the film very closely mirrors L. Ron Hubbard's life and early events in Scientology history, and 2. I can see why the backers denied it being a film about Scientology, because church members love to harass anyone they deem threatening. I'm sure the principles involved still got their fair share of grief, even though they tried to distance themselves from any connection between the film and Scientology.

Large swaths of the tale told in this book are hard to believe. The extent to which Hubbard could manipulate others defies logic. There are a lot of heartbreaking stories about people who gave up their relationships with their loved ones in exchange, only to be later abused by the church. Hubbard himself alienated many of his close family members.

My dad once (jokingly) told me that "all you have to do to be a teacher is stay just one lesson ahead of your students." L. Ron Hubbard took that farce to the extreme. He had a gift for making up stories on the fly and writing quickly. He spun that into a career for himself and, ultimately, one of the greatest scams in history.

This book is a must read. Not just for the story it tells, but also for Lawrence Wright's journalistic prowess. I've added his earlier book The Looming Tower to my reading list.

Books: Beautiful Boy

I've read a string of really great books in the past few weeks. I finished this one most recently and it was the one that made the most impact on me, because my brother has a history of drug abuse and has been using for most of my life. Until now I have never gone out of my way to try and understand what it all means.

I originally ran across David Sheff's new book Clean while perusing an airport bookstore and put it on my reading list. But in doing some more research, I found that Clean was a follow-up to Sheff's earlier book Beautiful Boy, and I vaguely remembered reading some positive reviews of that book when it came out. I decided to start from the beginning of the story and picked up Beautiful Boy from the library.

I read it over the course of a few days and it got so intense in some parts that I had to stop and take breaks because the story made my eyes well up with tears. It resurrected some memories from my childhood I had not thought about in a long time, but remember vividly. There's a reason I haven't thought about in a while. They are some of the most painful memories I have. It also helped me make sense of a lot of the emotions I remember feeling back then, the helplessness, the hurt, the confusion over why my brother did things that made no sense at all when he seemed like a naturally smart kid.

It's just now hitting me that I really don't know my brother at all and I never have. Maybe I have known this for a while but couldn't verbalize it until now. He started using drugs when I was so young that I have only a few fuzzy memories of him before the drugs. All I know about his early years is borrowed from what my parents have told me. It's like in Blade Runner where the replicant Rachel insists she's a human because she has memories of her childhood and Deckard tells her they are implanted memories, taken from someone else. I'm just now realizing I never refer to my mom and dad as our parents and I don't think of them that way. They're my parents, they have always been there, while he has been in and out and had kind of a phantom presence.

And now I fully understand how much people change when they start using drugs. This is one of the hardest parts of drug addiction for families to cope with. The child they know vanishes and is replaced with a person who lies and steals. My brother became that when I was so young that I've never known what he is really like. We watched an old home video at a relative's house recently, and my cousins and I looked and acted like younger versions of ourselves. Seeing my brother felt like seeing a ghost, and impression of a person.

The timing of my finding this book feels like fate, if you believe in that sort of thing. I'd been wanting to spend time with my parents this summer and talk about certain things; for whatever reason, I feel ready right now to process big stuff like this. They did their best to shield me from what went on with my brother, but 20 years of near-constant worry and stress inevitably took its toll on them and me.

I got into the habit of not talking about my brother a long time ago because it seemed like opening up to people caused them to say things like "well why don't you just send him to rehab?" "Why don't you do [x]?" They made it sound like there was an easy solution to the problem and my family just wasn't trying hard enough. I used to wonder, why doesn't anything work? Why isn't he fixed yet? We did everything we could do. You just can't save a drug addict with love. There are tons of people out there just like us.

Why did I never take the time to learn about my brother's condition until now?? Maybe I just didn't want to think about it, it was too painful. My parents wanted me to be OK and I focused on making it to adulthood and creating a stable environment for myself. Now I'm ready to think about it all.

21. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

I saw a good chunk of this movie on PBS when I was about ~10 years old, but this past week was the first time I actually sat down and watched it beginning to end. The parts I remembered from childhood include: the space station spinning to Strauss like a ballerina, the mysterious black monoliths showing up, and (most vividly seared in my memory), HAL singing "Daisy Bell" as he's being shut down.

I like most of this movie a lot. It achieves an epic feel without resorting to the usual glittery tricks other epic films employ (lush scenery, dazzling costumes, star actors to deliver crackling dialogue). What it lacks in instant gratification, it makes up for in thought provocation. The pacing is solemn and meditative. The starkness of it leaves you feeling unsettled.

I would put this movie in the category of "films you should watch once a decade." It is the work of a supremely confident director (if you ever needed proof that Stanley Kubrick was born to make movies, here it is. But I doubt you need it.) Kubrick was still in his 30s when he started production of this film. Pretty impressive.

Fun fact: the apes in the beginning section were portrayed by a mime troupe.

20. Spirited Away (2001)

Confession: I probably would never have watched this movie had it not been on the list. I don't normally seek out animated films, because I think of them as "kid movies." This movie shot that bias to hell. I'm so glad I watched it, because it is a masterpiece and totally deserves its place on the list. The story is surprising and creative and the animation is beautiful.

It reminded me of the book Haroun and the Sea of Stories, which is ostensibly a children's book, but is complex enough that I had to read it for a college English class. We spent a lot of time discussing the symbols and references in that book, and you can do the same with Spirited Away.

The story focuses on a 10-year-old girl named Chihiro, who is moving to a new town in Japan with her parents. On the way to their new house, they stumble across an abandoned theme park, and the parents get into some trouble. Chihiro then has to figure out how to save them.

If you haven't already seen this one, I hope you will check it out and be pleasantly surprised like I was. 

19. Blade Runner (1982)

Blade Runner is the first sci fi movie I can remember feeling blown away by.

I watched the Star Wars trilogy a lot as a kid, but it was just always around for me to watch whenever because we had the VHS tapes. I can't remember a time when I hadn't seen Star Wars yet. 

The first time I saw Blade Runner all the way through was a few years ago, during my original half-assed attempt to watch the movies in the book.

From the opening shot (below), the movie is just jaw-dropping. The art direction and music are perfect for creating this futuristic mashed-up version of Los Angeles. The whole thing is even more jaw-dropping when you find out that all the special effects were done in camera!

Ridley Scott proved himself to be a genre mix-master here, as he takes a noir film vibe and transplants it into a futuristic setting (2019--not so far off, now!). Throw in some heavy symbolism, and you've got yourself a sci fi epic. Except it was a flop when it came out in 1982.....

This is one of those special movies that has risen through the ranks of well-regarded films over the years. Time has served it well.

I watched the "Final Cut," which has no voiceover, includes the dream sequence, and does not have the original ending the studio tacked on. If you don't know what I'm talking about....get a copy of this movie immediately!!

Here is the opening scene, one of the best in film history:

18. All the President's Men (1976)

All the President's Men tells the true story of two reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who uncover the Watergate scandal while writing for the Washington Post newspaper. Of course, it's not yet the Watergate Scandal when they start out, it's just an odd burglary. But as they start to investigate, they realize something much bigger is afoot and have to fight to keep reporting on it.

I first saw this movie in high school history class. We watched a few other history-related movies, but this is the only one that stuck with me as being really good (I will never forgive my teacher for making us sit through all of Dances with Wolves.......). Everything about this movie is simple and straightforward, but the pacing and editing propel it into thriller territory. No time is wasted on backstories of the main characters or exposition. This is a procedural movie. It's less about the historic outcome and more about the process of chasing down leads that eventually nailed President Nixon. The music is unobtrusive and doesn't even start until half an hour in, but once it does, it increases your sense of dread. It takes place in mostly drab locations, and there's a ton of dialogue, but it is well-paced and engrossing the whole way through.

My favorite thing about this movie is the balance of earnest vs. goofy between Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman. There is one great scene in particular that shows their initial interactions: Redford puts a finished piece in the stack of articles to be re-typed.....Hoffman strolls over, picks it up, and starts making corrections.....Redford feels wounded and walks over to ask Hoffman what he thinks he is doing. Watch:


Their relationship starts off uneasily, but they gradually ease into a symbiotic working partnership.

Jason Robards has the perfect amount of crust as publisher Ben Bradlee.


More crust here.

I wonder if young Aaron Sorkin watched this movie and felt inspired to become a writer.

American filmmaking at its finest.

17. Mad Max (1979)

This was my first time ever watching this movie. I can see why it's a classic.

One of the things I worry about with my project is whether I will remember any details of individual movies after I've watched so many of them. Here's what I will remember about this one:

1. Mel Gibson was once young and innocent looking

All my memories of Mel Gibson are post-Braveheart, so it was refreshing to go back to what first made him famous and see him in all his fresh-faced glory. It's kind of mind-boggling to think about how much has changed for him in the interim and what a catastrophic fall from public grace he had. Maybe he was always destined for a troubled personal life, since he showed up to the first audition for this movie with facial injuries sustained in a bar fight.

2. This movie may be an Australian sci/fi, but it feels like an American western

Is it a bleak prediction of the world's future, a story of revenge and the triumph of good over evil, or a meditation on the themes of lawlessness and control that prevail in stories about the Old West? All of the above. Mad Max was inspired by incidents of violence related to the 1970s oil crisis and the director's experience working on car crash victims as an ER doctor. George Miller noticed that Australians would go to great lengths to keep their cars running. I've never been to Australia, but it sounds like their car culture is comparable to America's. The attitude embedded in this film reminds me of all the 2nd Amendment debates that are all over the news in the wake of 2012's shootings. What do people really need those guns/all that gas for? Doesn't matter. What matters is what they believe is within their rights, because that will drive their actions. Ideology is the greatest motivator.

3. The villains are memorable

It takes great skill to make a villain really scary. You need an actor who can portray someone so angry and unhinged that you actually believe they would do crazy and evil things. Hugh Keays-Byrne is pitch perfect as the Toecutter. 

4. It's got a great ending

I don't need to describe the ending, because you've probably already seen it. It is perfect and this movie would not be nearly so satisfying without it.