The Church Of Scientology Allegedly Conspired To Prevent Tom Cruise From Being Pranked at 'Mission: Impossible' Premiere
According to the Church of Scientology, the only mission that’s truly impossible for Tom Cruise is “Operation: Take a Joke.”
Late last week, Daily Mail claimed that documents passed along to them to a former senior official from the Church of Scientology included internal communications indicating that, in 2006, the religious organization attempted to convince the FAA to restrict airspace above the premiere of Mission: Impossible III, where their brightest star, Cruise, was in grave danger of being on the receiving end of practical joke. Shortly after the birth of Cruise and Katie Holmes’ daughter Suri, Stephen “Josh” Schofield, a 21-year-old college student from Florida, raised roughly $3,300 from his friends in the online forum offtopic.com to pay for a skywriting company to scrawl the message “The Baby Belongs to Xenu” across the sky above the Hollywood opening.
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When the Church of Scientology caught wind of Schofield’s plan, they allegedly attempted to ruin the joke before he could tell it, supposedly putting pressure on the FAA, the Los Angeles Police Department, the California-based airplane company, Arnold Aerial Advertising, and even the plane’s pilot. Despite Scientology’s best efforts, none of them were able to spoil Schofield’s bit – then the weather did it for them.
“We got the idea probably after the South Park episode (mocking Scientology) came out, to try to prank Tom Cruise for being a Scientologist,” Schofield told Daily Mail, “One plane was going to carry a banner that said 'Hail Xenu'. It was right after Cruise had a baby, and the other one said: 'The baby belongs to Xenu.'”
Upon receiving word that Schofield and offtopic.com were planning to spoil their golden child’s big night, the machinations of the mysterious organization began frantically searching for ways to foil Schofield’s plan. Daily Mail claims to be in possession of, among other documents, a letter from the organization’s “Watchdog Committee” ordering an officer from another division of the church to “find out everything you can” about Schofield, a note that included his phone number and home address.
A number of other documents published by Daily Mail suggest that significant effort was made by numerous different divisions within Scientology to convince government officials and the private company to prevent the prank. In the end, the Scientologists were unable to convince any of the parties involved to pull the plug, but cloudy weather on the night of the premiere prevented the planes from delivering the prank messages, thus ending Schofield’s reign of terror.
Either Cruise was spared from minor embarrassment by dumb luck, or God’s working for Scientology.
