NOTHING IS LESS FUNNY THAN SCIENTOLOGISTS DOING COMEDY
All the great men of history have had their escape valves, their private passions. Einstein played the violin. Disraeli wrote romantic novels. Napoleon used to rub two ferrets covered in sulphur together until one of them caught fire. So it is with the head of Narconon International, Scientology’s notorious drug-rehabiliation wing.
His name is Clark Carr, and when he isn’t fooling around with e-meters, he's part of Laughworks, which claims to be a comedy group of some kind and also features the woman who used to voice Cubbi in Gummi Bears.
The guys and gals in Laughworks have been taking their laugh-an-hour routines around the Scientology world for the last decade, but of late they’ve gone quiet. Clark in particular has been busy defending his organization from charges that it routinely took out credit cards in the names of people it was supposed to be helping. All that changed last Tuesday, when Stand Up for Valley Org took to the stage in LA. As the name suggests, it was an entire evening of Scientologyl comedy devoted to raising money for the San Fernando Valley Scientologists' plan to build an Ideal Org, which is a deluxe kind of church.
Scientology comedy means no swearing and no sexual references, just a bunch of high-ranking Scientologists standing in a hall trying to tickle your funny bone. Happily for them, the San Fernando Valley Scientologists had a trump card: the voice of Bart Simpson, Nancy Cartwright. Plus the mediocre standup Elvis Winterbottom, the downright awful comedy songster Evan Wecksell, and, of course, Laughworks.
Laughworks isn't just not funny; the sketches are so unfunny that they achieve a kind of power in their unfunniness. They deliver what addicts would call a moment of clarity—moments when you can see not only the futility of your own choices, but the futility of your personal universe, and you resolve to change yourself at an atomic level. They continue performing, and recording and sharing, their "comedy" when most people would have quit many times over. It's sort of awe-inspiring, but also awful to watch.
How unfunny are they?
This unfunny:
It's as if aliens with no conception of how human humor works had decided to mimic Saturday Night Live. Like aliens, the participants have a kind of emotional impermeability to them. The motivations of both the characters and the performers are totally mysterious, which makes it fascinating to watch, but also completely unwatchable. There’s just nothing human inside to feast on. Not a morsel of self-doubt, no flickering pilot light of human engagement. They load the program. They execute the program. Program executed.
What else is in the Laughworks repertoire?
Well, there is a sketch about their witness-protection program:
It seems that along with curse words and nudity, punchlines have been banned by the church's authorities. But skits that remind people of the most common media tactic for interviewing cult survivors are perfectly OK.
Also OK by the church, but not OK with anyone else, is this:
Clark Carr is a tall bald man you can see in this picture from way back in the day. It features Clark telling an addict that he has a scientific method that will liberate him from his drug prison.
His sketches are less funny than that:
If comedy is the ratcheting up of a superficially logical paradigm toward a counterintuitive end, then this is certainly comedy.
If comedy is funny, then this isn’t that.
Unfortunately even Laughworks’ pièce de résistance is stranded in similar territory. It strives to blow your mind, but instead lands in that awkward and very underpopulated place midway between Jean-Paul Sartre and Larry the Cable Guy:
“Any resemblance with the human condition is purely coincidental.” The audience of Scientologists knows that pseudo-profound zinger only too well. Note the knowing chuckle they offer: not so much laughter as collective affirmation that they’ve cracked it, that they've figured out what the really big secret to it all is, buddy. Theyknow how to escape the box, thanks to the teachings of Hubbard, and I guess... that's... humor? To them? Maybe?
Follow Gavin on Twitter: @hurtgavinhaynes
More Scientology:
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Although this is an old stort now The UK's Sun has just put this up:
Read more: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/film/4965167/will-smith-after-earth-scientology.html#ixzz2VySlIkww
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2339916/Katie-Holmes-displays-legs-peasant-dress-carries-flowers-lunch-date.html#ixzz2Vy1wbqpw
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Although this is an old stort now The UK's Sun has just put this up:
Does Will Smith’s new film prove he’s a
scientologist?
Clues in superstar's flop sci-fi movie 'link
him to cult'
Pals ... Will Smith with scientologist Tom Cruise
Rex Features
Published: 3 hrs ago
WILL SMITH was the most bankable star in Hollywood – his movies were surefire smashes.
But not now — and questions are being asked if the jug-eared one’s latest turkey has flopped because of its apparent references to SCIENTOLOGY.
Some critics believe sci-fi snore After Earth has effectively outed Men In Black star and rap icon Smith as a follower of the controversial cult.
Will came up with the story idea and produced the £84million movie. Co-starring his son Jaden, 14, it is about their spaceship crashing on a post-apocalyptic, abandoned planet Earth.
Will, 44, who plays General Cypher Raige, lies dying in the cockpit and relies on 13-year-old son Kitai (Jaden) to go off in search of the rescue beacon which broke off their craft.
But the intrepid lad must first fight off a ferocious alien Aura monster.
Futuristic uniforms ... costumes are similar to those some followers wear
Columbia Pictures/LMK
Gripping stuff. Or maybe not, judging by the disappointing £17million the film took on its first weekend in the US.
And some reckon the reason for the flop is that it appears to be less science fiction than scientology fiction.
The film’s tag “Danger is real, fear is a choice”, a line Cypher tells Kitai, may be a first clue to the scientology sub-plot.
For bottling up fear and emotion is something that former scientologists admit they were encouraged to do.
Samantha Domingo, 46, from Kent, was a member of the cult for 20 years and says: “In my opinion After Earth is about scientology.
“Suppressing your true emotions is part of the church’s very powerful indoctrination process.”
But the religious ramblings may not end there. At the centre of the wasteland Kitai tackles is a volcano — just like the cover image of scientology bible Dianetics.
Keeping it in the family ... Will Smith and his sonJaden in After Earth
Kitai, meanwhile, is an eager-to-impress member of the fictional Rangers Corps commanded by his dad — and Samantha observes: “This is an organisation where kids are expected to take on adult responsibilities from a young age.
“It mirrors activity in scientology’s elite wing, the Sea Org, which has its own cadet branch. Youngsters are told to aspire to being the perfect recruit.
“Likewise, Kitai wants nothing more than to join the Rangers and be just like his dad. In the fantasy scientology family that’s what happens — kids follow their parents into the organisation and become perfect members.
“I also noticed Kitai has to call his father Sir — this is a convention in Sea Org, where superiors are addressed as Sir whether male or female.”
Last but not least, Will and Jaden’s futuristic costumes have been said to resemble the tailored uniforms worn by some branches of scientology.
There have long been rumours Will is a supporter of the church, whose followers include Hollywood royalty Tom Cruise and John Travolta.
Explosive clue ... a volcano is featured on cover of Dianetics
Columbia Pictures Industries
Now After Earth is being compared to Travolta’s notorious scientology-themed flop Battlefield Earth, released in 2000. Will’s actress wife Jada Pinkett Smith is more open about her association with scientology and, while Will denies he is one of their number, four years ago he gave £80,000 to three projects linked to the church.
Poster ... After Earth
Capital Pictures
He also gave £600,000 to a private school that teaches elements of the creed.
He first learned about the faith, founded by the late US sci-fi writer L Ron Hubbard, from Hollywood pal Cruise ten years ago.
But never keen to be associated with a particular church, Will insists he is interested in many religions — and his foundation has made larger donations to Christian groups.
When asked about scientology, he said: “I was introduced to it by Tom and I’m a student of world religion.
“I was raised in a Baptist home, I went to a Catholic school, but the ideas of the Bible are 98 per cent the same ideas as scientology, 98 per cent the same ideas as Hinduism and Buddhism.”
But questions of scientology are not the only ones being asked of Will’s latest film after it limped to No3 in the box office behind action flick Fast & Furious 6 and thriller Now You See Me.
He tried to laugh it off by saying: “Here’s how I think about it. Three is the new one.” But it will be harder to smile at the reviews, as it was released in the UK at the weekend.
Controversial ... scientology
Alamy
The Sun’s Alex Zane called it “very dull”. Time Out magazine found it “tedious” and The Wall Street Journal in the US asked: “Is After Earth the worst movie ever made?” It also got a dismal 12 per cent rating on review comparison website Rotten Tomatoes.
The brickbats certainly will not have helped Will’s already ailing career. Last year’s film Men In Black 3 took £115million in American Will’s homeland, which was less than the previous two films in the franchise. Before that, 2008 drama Seven Pounds — which it was also suggested had scientology undertones — banked only £45million Stateside.
His superhero film Hancock that same year did well at the box office and a sequel is on its way — but the reviews were again poor.
Between releasing Seven Pounds and Men in Black 3, Will took time out to help his kids Jaden and Willow build their showbiz careers.
He produced a 2010 remake of Eighties flick The Karate Kid, in which Jaden took the lead role.
Sign ... symbol of scientology
Rapper Will has also been supportive of 12-year-old daughter Willow’s singing.
She is signed to Jay-Z’s Roc Nation label and in 2010, aged only nine, had a No2 single in the UK with Whip My Hair. But she said recently: “If I had to change one thing about my life, it would probably be, I wouldn’t be famous.”
Will has also expressed concerns about his kids and showbiz. He said recently: “The business has almost a narcotic quality. It’s almost as if you are introducing a narcotic to your kid’s life.”
But if success is a drug, Will may have to change tactics.
He can’t blame anyone but himself for After Earth. He even picked the director, M. Night Shyamalan who has failed to match the success of 1999 horror hit The Sixth Sense, which he also helmed.
Will has confirmed a Hancock sequel and there has been talk of a second I, Robot and a third Bad Boys.
But they would be big-budget action films which Will has said he wants to keep away from.
Speaking about After Earth, he said: “It’s been a necessity that the movie be a blockbuster but I think I’m going to start moving out of that and finding more danger in my artistic choices.”
Maybe there is no greater risk than mixing scientology and movie-making.
myView
By SAMANTHA DOMINGO, Anti-cult activist
THE bottom line of After Earth is that the secret to overcoming the enemy – the Aura monster chasing Jayden – is to achieve a state of “ghosting”.
It is where you conquer fear and become invisible to the monster. Fear, Will’s character says, is only in the mind.
I believe this is a reference to whats scientologists call “misemotion” – undesirable emotions existing only in the mind, which can be overcome.
Fear is conquered in the film by Will telling his son to “rest yourself in the present”, while being asked what he can see, smell and feel.
Scientology’s Dianetics books will tell you all you need to know on this. Dianetic Auditing, the foundation of their teachings, uses all of these techniques.
Read more: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/film/4965167/will-smith-after-earth-scientology.html#ixzz2VySlIkww
Blooming lovely! Katie Holmes displays her legs in peasant dress as she carries flowers after lunch date
|
She is usually spotted doting over her seven-year-old daughter Suri.
But it was Katie Holmes' turn to be pampered on Tuesday.
The 34-year-old looked thrilled as she carried a bouquet of flowers after having lunch with a friend in the New York City, showing off her legs in an embroidered peasant dress.
Beaming: Katie Holmes showed off her legs in a peasant frock as she carried flowers after lunch with a friend in New York City on Tuesday
The mother-of-one appeared jubilant, grinning widely as she made her way to her waiting car.
Katie wore navy trainers with the white frock and shielded her eyes with brown sunglasses.
She wore her brown hair back in a messy low bun and appeared to be wearing no makeup, opting to allow her natural beauty to shine through.
Keeping it casual: The 34-year-old wore blue trainers and and shielded her eyes with brown sunglasses
Positively giddy: The actress appeared to go makeup-free as she grinned widely while leaving the low-key establishment
Katie is currently filming Mania Days in New York, alongside costar Luke Kirby.
The film is a romantic comedy about two manic depressives who meet in a psychiatric hospital and begin a romance.
The costars are rumoured to be dating off-screen.
In mid May Luke was spotted taking Katie to dinner in the Big Apple and the duo were clearly enjoying one another's company.
Who are they from? It wasn't clear who had given Katie the flowers, but she was clearly very happy to be spoilt
It is thought the pair, who are very ‘flirty’ on set, were ‘almost holding hands’ but when Katie noticed she had been seen she reportedly jumped in a cab leaving Luke on the street.
Other reports from the set of her film suggest that if she’s meeting Suri on her breaks she will go to great lengths for them not to be seen together.
She’s also apparently trying to prevent her ex husband Tom from being photographed so much with Suri as she attempts to provide the little girl with more of a normal life.
New romance: Katie was spotted on a dinner date with her Mania Days costar Luke Kirby in Mid-May in New York
Doting mother, Katie is regularly spotted doting on her seven-year-old daughter Suri, pictured at LaGuardia airport in late May
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2339916/Katie-Holmes-displays-legs-peasant-dress-carries-flowers-lunch-date.html#ixzz2Vy1wbqpw
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