Scientologists take a lot of crap, probably because they’ve dedicated their lives to a crazy story about alien spirits a science fiction writer made up to scam rich people. But what no one wants to talk about, is that if you pay L. Ron Hubbard enough money, you can heal the sick the sick with mind bullets like that dude from The Green Mile. Something like that. Anyway, that’s what John Travolta used to help a man with a broken ankle in Shanghai recently, this according to Scientology’s official paper.

The Saturday Night Fever star, who has been studying Scientology since 1975, spoke about the incident in the controversial religion’s latest edition of their publication, Celebrity Magazine.
“I was in Shanghai recently at a work event and the Master of Ceremonies’ best friend had recently gotten into a car wreck. He had broken his ankle and was in constant pain.”
“I asked him permission to do some Scientology assists and he said, ‘Okay sure’.
“People were standing around watching as I did them. You could actually see him confronting the pain and after a while he looked up at me and said ‘I feel better’ so I said ‘Okay end of assist.’
“He had gotten noticeably better and I was chomping at the bit for more.” [Celebuzz]

“He BLINDED me with SCIENCE!” added the man, boogieing down the street on his once-broken ankle.

Sometimes I pretend to be a powerful Scientologist, and I head down to the ICU at the local hospital, and I ask patients if I can do a Scientology assist. And then when they agree, I pull out my wiener and say, “here, hold onto the e-meter!” and everyone has a good laugh. Teaching patients to laugh again is the hardest part about treating a terminal illness.

Meanwhile, following his latest assist, Travolta is only 57 behind all-time assist leader John Stockton. Though some say Karl Malone was just carrying him all those years.

[banner pic is from John Travolta's Christmas album. Yes, this year's Christmas album.]

Last we heard about Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master, inspired by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, Anderson had already shown the film to Lord Xenu’s greatest living enemy Tom Cruise and gotten his blessing. But Scientology is nothing if not a cult of insane weirdos, and it turns out they aren’t all okay with it. Apparently The Weinstein Company (who’s distributing the film) have been getting harassed and receiving weird phone calls, prompting Harvey Weinstein to hire additional security guards.

Even though Anderson and star Philip Seymour Hoffman insist in interviews their film isn’t about the controversial religion, sources say Scientologists have been “inundating” the distributor, The Weinstein Co., with strange calls objecting to the film and are concocting plans to combat it when the film is released this week. “The Master” stars Hoffman as an enigmatic church leader and Joaquin Phoenix as an early disciple.

Sources tell Page Six that Scientology is countering the film’s marketing by running its own ads promoting its message in places where ads and stories about “The Master” appear.

Calls and mail from people believed to be Scientologists to Weinstein’s office have grown numerous enough that some on the film’s team have hired extra security, a source said. Weinstein had already been under close guard following a recent attempt to blackmail him by a man unrelated to the film. [NY Post]

Oooh, calls and mail, scary! Yeah, this one smacks of publicity stunt to me. A lot of us were hoping for some controversy between The Master and the notoriously litigious Church of Scientology, and maybe after that disappointing story about Cruise saying he was cool with the film, Weinstein is trying to provide it. I have a hard time believing Harvey Weinstein is scared of a few phone calls. I’ve heard Harvey Weinstein can choke you through the phone using only his mind, and when you wake up, all the money in your wallet is gone. He swallows rotisserie chickens whole and spits out the bones in baseball-sized pellets. Nothing scares that guy, he’s like Darth Vader and Jabba the Hutt combined, with more body hair.

Okay, so the bad news is that this story is about Tom Cruise.  The good news is that it involves a sci-fi project that isn’t a sequel or a remake.  Joseph Kosinski’s first feature was Tron Legacy for Disney. He had another project called Horizon set up there, but Disney wouldn’t do it unless it was PG rather than PG-13.  Now, Variety reports that Universal is close to picking it up with Tom Cruise still attached to star.

Story takes place in an apocalyptic future where most of the population lives in clouds above an earth surface that is now uninhabitable. An earthbound soldier, repairing drones that patrol and blast a savage alien life form, encounters a beautiful woman who crashed in a craft that forces him to question his world view. [Variety]

Just one question about this barren wasteland, mysterious beautiful plane crash lady: will there be gays in there?  Anyway, while I’m no fan of Tom Cruise, I must admit that he does do his best work in sci-fi (Minority Report).  Especially if it’s set in some futuristic space society which has evolved beyond the point of recognizable human feelings and emotions. That seems to be Scientology’s end game.

[picture source: Radar]

Fox columnist Roger Friedman was famously fired from his crappy column at Fox News for writing about watching a pirated copy of a Fox movie, Wolverine.  Like any rational person, Friedman blames his firing on Scientology. And he’s filing a lawsuit.

Friedman is convinced it was a cover story. Last August, Friedman went to Memphis for the funeral of his friend Isaac Hayes, who was a Scientologist. Kelly Preston was also in town for the funeral. Friedman says that when Preston saw him at the Peabody Hotel, she loudly blasted him for his columns criticizing Scientology.

Hmm, I don’t know how you call something that actually happened a “cover story,” but then again, this is the same guy who once wrote that Matt LeBlanc had “literally disappeared.”

The following month, says an ally of Friedman, Preston voiced her complaints about Friedman to Fox News chief Roger Ailes and his then-EVP, John Moody. “Moody talked to her on the phone,” says the source. “When she couldn’t get Moody to fire Friedman, she called him a [obscenity].”
Ailes and Moody later agreed to meet with Preston and Church of Scientology spokesman Tommy Davis (the son of actress Anne Archer), according to the source, who says Friedman’s editors forbid him from writing about the death in January of Preston’s son, Jett.
Meanwhile, Friedman says, 20th Century Fox chairman Jim Gianopoulos had been encouraging him to lay off Cruise’s movie “Valkyrie,” which Fox was distributing internationally.
Last month, Variety reported that Cruise was in advanced talks to star with Cameron Diaz in a Fox action comedy, “Wichita.” A source suspects that Cruise may have made Friedman’s ouster a condition of the actor appearing in “Wichita.”

The original story when he was getting fired was that 20th Century Fox and Fox News were totally separate companies, so it’s interesting that he’s now claiming that 20th Century Fox was pressuring him.  And by ‘interesting,’ I mean wow, what an [obscenity].

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Now that Tom Cruise has been nominated for a Golden Globe for his portrayal of Les Grossman (a nomination which, let’s face it, is entirely conceivable that Cruise bribed and/or lobbied for), everyone wants to know what the next step for the character is.  And by ‘everyone’, I mean people who get paid to kiss celebrity ass for a living.

“I’ve talked about doing different videos with the character,” Cruise said. “I’ve started working with Ben [Stiller] on it, and we’ve kind of talked about different things to do. We were gonna do some in our free time, but we haven’t found the free time…yet.” [E! Online]

Wow, is that a threat?  Look, I know there are actually lots of respectable people who thought Les Grossman was funny. But if you’re one of them, ask yourself what was funny about it: was it the character, the dialog, the makeup, a combination of the three; or Tom Cruise’s vacant-eyed stare?  I humbly submit that any idiot off the street would’ve been better.  And as for trying to do Funny or Die videos with it or whatever: dude, just stick to filming your Scientology ceremonies.  Those are hilarious!