It’s less than three weeks until the opening of The Master (September 21st, to be precise), and thank God, I can’t handle too many more stories about Premium Rush or The Words. There’s a new, presumably final trailer out, which you can watch below, structured in the sort of stylish stand-alone short film style to which we’ve become accustomed. And it’s still totally not about Scientology, you guys, we swear (pleasedontsuepleasedontsue…).
In the trailer, one critic of Schmienschmology (don’t know what else to call it) says at a party: “Good science allows for more than one opinion, otherwise you merely have the will of one man, which is the basis of a cult.”
To which Amy Adams’ character responds: “The only way to defend ourselves is to attack!”
Even with my fairly rudimentary knowledge of Scientology, I know that quote is often attributed to L. Ron Hubbard, and apparently comes from a Scientology “red volume,” taked from a Hubbard article originally writeen in 1955. Full quote:
The DEFENSE of anything is UNTENABLE. The only way to defend anything is to ATTACK, and if you ever forget that then you will lose every battle you are ever in engaged in…
Ominously, the same article from which the attack quote was taken in the red volume also included the following famous passage:
The purpose of the suit is to harass and discourage rather than win. The law can be used very easily to harass, and enough harassment on somebody who is simply on the thin edge anyway, well knowing that he is not authorized, will generally be sufficient to cause professional decease. If possible, of course, ruin him utterly. —L. Ron Hubbard, The Scientologist, a Manual on the Dissemination of Material, 1955
Anyway, good on Paul Thomas Anderson for having the balls to kick the hornet’s nest, but don’t be surprised if he wakes up in the hold of a cargo ship with an e-meter shoved up his ass one day. It’s hard to imagine Scientology not planning some kind of retaliation for this, and we need to start preparing now. I don’t know how, exactly, but I think throwing Danny Masterson into the ocean would be a good place to start.
Wait a second… The Master… Masterson… EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED!
[Yahoo]