XENU TV attended the 30th Anniversary CC Bash tonight in L.A. and lived to tell of it. Although if the Scientologists had their way, I would be in the hoosegow right now.
When I arrived, I met up with Jeff and his party and almost immediately a motorcycle cop came up to us.
"Are you Mr. Bunker?" he asked. Seems the cops were told all about me. He wanted to know what our plans were. Since I'm a guy that just shows up and videotapes stuff, I was surprised to see that I was considered in any way "in charge." Jeff and I assured him we were going to simply walk back and forth on the streets which weren't closed to us. The cop was fine with this and went on his way.
I had a handler assigned to me for most of the night who was very camera shy. He continued to follow me but constantly put his hand in front of the camera whenever I pointed it at him. Now...if I didn't want to be on camera...I wouldn't follow a cameraman everywhere he went. Go figure.
I saw no celebrities but Garry Scarff told me that kid from "The 70's Show" was sitting across the street. I wasn't going to race over for that footage. The closest I came to a star sighting was Scientologist handler J.R. who looked to me just like Wayne Newton. I had met him at the 4th of July event and he seems like a real nice guy. We disagree about Scientology but he was very civil and respectful.
J.R. and my handler also joined us at Sizzler for dinner. I thought it would be nice to get a shot of them dining with us but my handler freaked out and leapt out of his seat. I explained how it would make him look real good if we had a shot of us all eating together but he could not understand the P.R. value of that and continued to freak. J.R. had no problem at all. During dinner J.R. was polite as the conversation ranged across the board on many topics unrelated to Scientology but my handler simply wanted to pump me for information. "How much did that camera cost?" he demanded. I gave him the model number and told him to look it up.
The only other star I met was Mark Woodruff. Mark is famous in L.A. for not being a working actor. Every once in while someone like CNN will do a little piece about this guy who has plastered his picture and name all over his car and drives around town seeking acting jobs. Steve Martin used him in the opening sequence of "L.A. Story" as one of the wacky things about living in L.A.
Mark stopped to hawk his new self made video, "Mark Woodruff: The Movie!" I immediately bought a copy. At $10 bucks I figured there had to be a clip to use in my video report. I can write it off.
Then Mark tried to sell his video to the Scientologists. He crossed the rope onto CC property and gave his pitch to one surly looking woman. She said no and he tried to crash the party, barging past her toward the affair. He was immediately pounced upon and escorted out...all the while Mark was shouting various nasty comments about the clams.
It will make a nice contrast in my video between how we treated him and how Scientology treated him.
Lots of enturbulation ensued as the picket continued. It was rather low key. The clams brought out signs to block our signs. Jeff proved how he was at cause over one well dressed woman as he would lower his sign and make her lower her sign. Then he would raise his and she would have to raise hers. It's a fun wog game.
Lots of conversations went on between critics and Scientologists. It was largely a method to distract us from picketing but I didn't care. There was enough enturbulation to make the day worthwhile.
As we were leaving, a person who lives across the street from the CC invited us up onto the roof of the apartment building for some nice shots into the event. How could we pass this up? We went up onto the roof and got a lovely view.
I spotted one security head in a tux down below on the sidewalk. I have a nice shot of him looking up and seeing the red light on my camera. He freaks out and makes a mad dash to the corner to report the news. It was a moment you only see in the movies...or so I thought. Now, you'll be able to see it on XENU TV.
Soon a man with a flashlight appeared on the roof looking for us. It was the apartment building manager. He was woken from slumber by Clam security and told we were up here. We explained who we were and what we were doing and to our great surprise he said "Sounds great to me. As long as you're not from the Star or something and was trying to get a celebrity picture. Then I'd want half the money." We laughed and he warned us to stay away from a dangerous spot on the roof and let us continue.
We had a pretty nice view of the stage but little was happening there. There was a steady stream of people walking across the stage in what appeared to be a ceremonial march but we think may have just been the whole party relocating to the other side of the lawn. Did we chase them away or were they planning to move? We don't know.
Well, soon we grew weary and went into a nice little coffee shop across from the org and sat to rest. It wasn't too long before one of the handlers (Goatee Boy from the July 2nd video) came in and found us. Minutes later, another police officer came in to us and asked for Mr. Bunker. He invited me outside to chat.
Seems the church called and complained about me stalking them. Not stalking anyone in particular but..."them." I explained what was happening and why we were here and asked how on earth I could stalk a whole religion. The cop was concerned about the roof situation but I explained we had the permission of a resident and the manager and he thought that was fine.
I got to explain to the cops and the people around me all about Xenu, Lisa MacPherson, Operation Snow White and many other things. Later, people wanted to know the address of the sites to find out more. The cops were great and just told me to be careful as this group has a lot of money and power. I explained that I knew how crazy I was for doing this and assured him we would stay off church property and obey all laws.
After that we chatted with a few interested folks, spread more urls and called it a night.
Now, what amazes me is that I was only one of at least three critics there with a camera and yet I was the only one accused of stalking. Do you think XENU TV may be having an impact?
Stay tuned for the video.