Mark Bunker scores again, with a pristine 4K restoration of Scientology at sea!
A year and a half ago, we talked to Charlie Nairn about his two legendary Scientology documentaries that aired on British television in 1967 and 1968.
The first one, A Faith for Sale, was held up when Scientology managed to delay it temporarily with a court injunction. But it’s the second one, 1968’s The Shrinking World of L. Ron Hubbard, that especially interested us because of an incredible encounter Charlie had with Hubbard while making it, and that was recounted in Steve Cannane’s excellent book Fair Game.
Please take another look at that excerpt from Steve’s book if you haven’t seen it. It’s one of the great encounters with the Great Thetan ever described.
The reason we’re bringing up Charlie Nairn and his terrific documentaries today is that Mark Bunker, who has been doing such startling work at his YouTube channel lately (he’s working on even more projects, so please subscribe!), has a real treat for us: He has restored Charlie’s second documentary to glorious 4K resolution, and it has never looked and sounded better — it’s like watching it for the first time!
And not only that, he was able to restore and isolate special components from the film to give us some remarkable soundbites from the original interview. Here, we’ll let him describe it…
A few years ago, Charlie Nairn sent me a DVD of The Shrinking World of L. Ron Hubbard straight from the production company. The audio was unmixed, so I was able to isolate some audio from Hubbard and questioning from Nairn that has been buried under narration since it was first broadcast. I've encoded the show and a separate video of the sound bites and some B-Roll footage from the ship and at St. Hill with the natural sound isolated. I've captioned those moments of newly discovered audio to show which bites are "new."
OK, so here’s the full documentary, restored by Mark…
And here are those isolated moments that Mark was able to restore separately…
And more about the project from Mark…
Back in 2011, I was contacted by Charlie. He told me a little bit about the experience producing the show. I don't think he’d be upset if I shared a little bit of his story. He was 23 when he finally tracked down Hubbard.
“Doing that interview with Hubbard on his ship in Bizerte was the only time in my life I’ve ever been genuinely afraid. There our little three-man film-crew was, well after midnight, on that ship surrounded by all Hubbard’s disciples who [then] thought that Hubbard was God/The Salvation-of-the-Human-Race, and there was me asking increasingly nasty questions of their God – how could I, who was I, was I the embodiment of all evil out to destroy the Human Race’s one last hope, The Devil Himself suddenly arrived on their [tatty] ship?
“Things were getting increasingly shifty: Hubbard seemed OK, his acolytes around him started shifting, coughing, murmuring ..... scary. I knew that relatively innocent people had gone overboard, had been put in ships’ steel containers and left out in the full Mediterranean sun.
“I talked to Eoin McCann, our soundman, a few years ago and Eoin, who’s covered every nasty war and hairy situation that one can possibly imagine, said that for him, too, that it was the only time in his life when he was personally afraid – because of what it looked like that we were doing to their God.
“So scared, I failed to push Hubbard as I should have: I didn’t ask him about Xenu, didn’t ask him about people overboard and in containers, didn’t even really get him to, no bullshitting, even explain what Scientology is.
“I pussy-footed, is the truth. Thinking now, am I ashamed of that? Annoyed yes, but not quite ashamed ... it’s true, I was personally afraid. Does that make any sense?”
I assured him that no one thought he pussyfooted. You can hear in a couple of the unearthed questions I found under the narration track that he was pushing Hubbard pretty hard. And he did this as a crowd of Sea Org members gathered around, watching the interview take place, getting increasingly annoyed at the questions.
He was very happy to see that the show lived on decades later and even provided me with this copy of the show on DVD with the unmixed audio. When I published the new version of the video last night, I was happy to see that YouTube approved the video with a “the owner of the copyright allows this video to be online.” Any ads you see go to the rights holder which is as it should be.
The documentary Charlie is most proud of is about musician Earl “Fatha” Hines which YouTube forced me to take down in 2011. I posted it then on Vimeo but I told Charlie I’d love to put it back up on YouTube in better quality and I hope he can provide me with a new copy of the video. In the meantime, here is the Vimeo version:.
Thank you, Mark!
We know that Wise Beard Man has had some real challenges since his term as a city council member in Clearwater, Florida. And it’s been inspiring to see the ways he’s thrown himself into his filmwork to do startling things with new technology.
We hope you sign up at his YouTube channel to watch his work unfold, and please throw him a few sawbucks if you can.
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For the full picture of what’s happening today in the world of Scientology, please join the conversation at tonyortega.org, where we’ve been reporting daily on David Miscavige’s cabal since 2012. There you’ll find additional stories, and our popular regular daily features:
Source Code: Actual things founder L. Ron Hubbard said on this date in history
Avast, Ye Mateys: Snapshots from Scientology’s years at sea
Overheard in the Freezone: Indie Hubbardism, one thought at a time
Past is Prologue: From this week in history at alt.religion.scientology
Random Howdy: Your daily dose of the Captain
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There is nothing "pristine" about seeing those teeth in 4K