Posted on 07/19/2007 12:01:19 PM PDT by null and void
Filming started Thursday on a movie starring Tom Cruise as the real-life mastermind behind a plot to kill Adolf Hitler, amid German grumbling about the high-profile Scientologist playing a national hero.
A spokeswoman for Babelsberg Studios outside Berlin told AFP that director Bryan Singer ("The Usual Suspects") had begun shooting "Valkyrie" on location in the region surrounding the German capital.
German officials have baulked at the choice of Cruise to play Count Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, who was executed by firing squad in 1944 after the failed assassination attempt.
They cite the actor's ties to the Church of Scientology, which is viewed here as a "totalitarian" group that exploits vulnerable people, as making him unfit to play a German martyr.
"I find that Stauffenberg stood for the most noble motives a person can have," Frank Henkel, the general secretary of the Berlin chapter of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union, told rolling news channel NTV.
"I consider Tom Cruise as a self-proclaimed ambassador of Scientology inappropriate for the role."
The remarks came after sharp criticism from a number of politicians and even Stauffenberg's eldest son Berthold, 72, who has told the German press that Cruise "should keep his hands off my father."
A spokeswoman for the Church of Scientology centre in Berlin, Sabine Weber, said the furore over Cruise's religion was discriminatory.
"The whole discussion about the faith or membership in a group of anyone should play no role in decisions of this kind," Weber said.
A spokesman for the finance ministry, which is responsible for granting permission to film at federal buildings, said that Singer had won approval for all the sites on his wish list with just one exception.
He said the Bendler Block, the former army headquarters in Berlin and now a memorial to the German resistance, where Stauffenberg was shot by the Nazis, would remain off-limits.
But he said Scientology had nothing to do with the decision.
"You can assume from the fact that we approved all the film location requests but one -- for reasons that all those involved consider reasonable -- that the beliefs of the actors are complet
Not exactly what scientologists believe.
They believe that the person themselves, the Thetan, is immortal and simple picks up another body when one dies. Knowing this, it would be evil to force one to be trapped in a hopelessly damaged and non-functional body. Far kinder to let that fleshly prison die, so the person can pick up a new, healthy body.
When you go pick up your new body can you have alterations done or are you stuck with what they give you? :)
It’s your body, you can do with it as you please. (after you get potty trained, learn to talk, go through puberty, and become an adult)...
Okay, I’m in...where do I sign up? :P
Take a “free personality test” at any Mall.
He is nutty as a fruitcake, but he is a good actor. I wonder if he will use a German accent for this role. I can’t think of any movie in which he has used a different accent or even a different American dialect. Maybe an Irish brogue in “Far and Away,” but it has been so long that I can’t recall.
It is a true shame that Tom Cruise should be playing a great man like this.
bump
On all my readings regarding Stauffenberg I can’t recall any of them spelling his first name with a ‘C’. It is usually Klaus, wonder why the change now?
Hm, I think I always saw his name with a “C” in my german history books. The fact that he was a count supports this spelling, since his name looks pretty posh written with a “c” :-)
Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg
Klaus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg
His full name was actually
Claus Philipp Maria Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg
Tom Cruise has been a pilot for quite some time. I have seen him on TV stunt flying his biplane, no pun intended. I think you are misinformed.
Just reports from the movie set that said he didn’t like flying and Anthony Edwards ate it up. The movie is pretty old so maybe Tom got into it later. Wouldn’t surprise me that someone warmed to something that initially caused them to be anxious.
Maybe they have--just not in English.
;-)
I’m thrilled that the Germans recognize von Stauffenberg as the hero that he was.
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