Oscar-Winning director Paul Haggis has a new movie out, The Next Three Days. Metro asked him about his exit from the Scientology cult:
It’s tempting to read the jailbreak plot of The Next Three Days as a metaphor for Haggis’s escape from Scientology. Is it the sinister cult we all think it is? ‘How would you define sinister?’ he hedges. ‘The philosophy seems fine to me but there was a lot of stuff that I found increasingly disturbing.
‘The thing is you get inside and you really have this feeling of being in a cocoon and that you’re part of a minority group and that everyone else is out to get you.
‘There’s a lot of bigotry and intolerance in this world and I saw the organisation — with all its warts, growing pains and problems — as an underdog. And I have always had a thing for underdogs. I’ve always loved the idea of being part of a group that everyone reviled.’