My Scientology Movie
| My Scientology Movie | |
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UK theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | John Dower |
| Produced by | Simon Chinn |
| Written by | Louis Theroux |
| Starring |
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| Music by | Dan Jones |
| Cinematography | Will Pugh |
| Edited by | Max Bygrave |
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Production
company |
Red Box Films
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| Distributed by | BBC Films |
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Release date
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Running time
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99 minutes |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Box office | $836,569 |
My Scientology Movie is a 2015 British documentary film about Scientology directed by John Dower, and written by and starring Louis Theroux. The film takes an unconventional approach to the subject matter, featuring young actors "auditioning" for parts playing high-profile Scientologists in scenes recreating accounts from ex-members about incidents involving senior church management. The Church of Scientology responded by putting the filmmakers under surveillance and denouncing the film.
My Scientology Movie premiered at the London Film Festival on 14 October 2015 before receiving a limited theatrical release in the United Kingdom on 7 October 2016 from BBC Films with a North American release scheduled for 3 March 2017 from Magnolia Pictures. The film received highly positive reviews from critics.
After the Church of Scientology refuses to cooperate in making a documentary, Louis Theroux teams up with former senior church official Mark Rathbun to create dramatic reconstructions of incidents within the church witnessed by Rathbun and other ex-Scientologists. They focus in particular on alleged violent behaviour by the church's leader David Miscavige at its secretive Gold Base facility in California, which Theroux visits. The church retaliates by putting Theroux and his film crew under surveillance, leading to camera-wielding confrontations with a Scientology "squirrel buster" team and with church officials outside Gold Base. Theroux raises questions about Rathbun's own former complicity in the church's "terroristic" activities, leading to tensions between the two men.
Theroux had long sought to make a documentary about the Church of Scientology from the inside but was repeatedly refused by church officials. In 2011 his producer, Simon Chinn, suggested making a 90-minute feature about Scientology. Together with director John Dower, they looked for ways to make a documentary – working title Stairway to Heaven: Louis Theroux and the Church of Scientology – without access to its subjects. They wanted to avoid formulae that had been used by previous film-makers, such as interviews with ex-members intercut with archive footage and re-enactments, or an "in search of" approach documenting the fruitless quest to gain access. They eventually hit upon the idea of "negative access", illustrating the church by provoking a reaction from it. As Tim Robey of The Daily Telegraph puts it, contrasting it with the more methodical Going Clear by Alex Gibney, "where Gibney circled the movement right from its beginnings, seeking to analyse its methods and impugn its motives, Theroux just gets right in there and jabs it in the ribs, that imperturbable mask of irony driving its partisans even more bananas than usual."
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