Forum legend Doug Sclar used to know Tom Cruise

Here is one, but please be careful to not hit me with a dart. Btw, this photo ran in the San Diego paper the day after the game. I had no idea it was taken but I got lots of calls the next morning to let me know. I called the paper and they got me a couple of prints.

Oh, I'm the guy in the Padre hat.

There is a pretty funny story that goes with this. I've known Tom since 1991. I had talked with one of his assistants a few days before this game. I told him I was going and he told me Tom would be there. I asked where he would be sitting. I was told that he didn't know but he had excellent seats. Well I had excellent season tickets at Qualcomm. He told me to try to find him and go say hi.

OK, I get to the game about 90 minutes early. First a bit of history. This was game 4. Games 1 and 2 were at Yankee Stadium. Many of the Padre fans who went to NY were terrorized by the Bleacher Creatures during Game 1 and most of them didn't even show up for Game 2. So here I am early in my prime seats, and I see this guy all covered up but with a Yankee hat come to the row in front of me. I just assumed he was some rich guy who paid a fortune for out of town tickets. I started a conversation with him and told him he wouldn't be tormented by the SD fans because we weren 't like the NYC fans. I even asked him how much he paid for his tickets since my friend sold his for $1500.00 each. All the time I'm talking with him he doesn't look at me.

A few minutes later one of my friends from the games gets my attention. He's motioning for me to get next to this guy so he can take our picture. I had no idea what he was up to so I left my seat to talk with him. He told me I was talking with Tom Cruise. I told him, 'That's not Tom, I know Tom', which, of course, I did.

I went back to my seat and tapped him on the shoulder and said "Tom?". He turned around and shockingly said, 'Doug?'. All the time I was talking to him I had no idea he was Tom. Once we figured out who we were we proceeded to have a great time for the rest of the game. He even shared some eats with me and my friend. He asked me how I got such good seats and was shocked to hear that these were my normal season tickets.

The great irony is of course that I knew him for years prior to this and had no idea I was even talking to him. Rememember that he was bundled up and talking real quietly and we never made face contact. Had I not know him, I would have likely met him that day. I could go on for a while talking about the events of the day, but you guys get the idea. Oh, I was on several TV magazines which shot him. One of them shows me video taping the interview. I did make a cool dvd with my video and the TV magazine video.

At Game 4 of the 1998 World Series I was with Tom Cruise and we were both on a bunch of news magazine shows, me only because I was sitting by him. I also had my pitcure in the paper the following morning for the same reason.

I was with him at Game 4 of the 1998 World Series. He's a huge Yankee fan.

I'm not sure if it's public record or not, but shortly after those incidents Tom made some major changes in his life. Before those incidents he had replaced his publicist, Pat Kingsley, with his sister. Things went downhill quickly after that as far as his image was concerned.

Shortly after he got asked to leave Paramount he replaced virtually all of his support staff, including his sister, and hired all new people. Many of his staff had been with him for a very long time. Unfortunately that was the end of me working for him as well.

It's kind of funny how things turn out, but when I worked for Tom I always wanted to go to one of his shoots. I finally was invited in 1995 and went to a handful of shoots for Jerry Maguire. I was kind of bummed at the time, because this seemed like a real dud of a movie. I mean there were no stars other than Tom and it seemed like a low budget boring film compared to what I was hoping to see.

I knew his driver well and heard so many stories about 'Far And Away' and that type of adventure shoot what I was really hoping for. I would have loved to have seen that land rush scene which was shot in Montana. They were there for well over a month. In fact, this is the first film he did after I started with him back in 1991. I almost got to go to Boston during The Firm, and also to Toronto for 'To Die For' but it didn't come to pass.

Who knew that Jerry Maguire would end up being one of his best films ever.

I actually got an up close live view of a naked female celebrity once.

Yes, it was Nicole. Tom got me up close tickets to her play, The Blue Room, in NYC, back in Jan 99.

I don't know how tall she is but she is much taller than me, and I'm around 5'8". I've seen her height listed as 5'11" but my guess is she is taller.

I'll probably see it just because Tom is in it.

I realize many here don't have good things to say about Tom, but he has been very good to me over the years.

Well towards the end of my time with him he replaced LeAnne as well though that was likely related to the major changes he made. IIRC he put her in charge of his charitable contributions and hired a new publicist. I think what you said is spot on, but that's just my opinion. I think he hired LeAnne as his publicist so he could be more free but it didn't seem to work out so well for him.

Ah, let's see. Risky Business, Far & Away, A Few Good Men, Born on the 4th of July, Top Gun, Days of Thunder, Rain Man, The Color of Money and of course Jerry Maguire.

I became friends with Tom's driver since I did so much work on his coach. He had so many great stories, especially about the land rush shoot from Far & Away. He said that was done in Montana and lasted about 40 days. He also told me that Frank Woodward prepared different meals 3 times a day and never had a repeat. He had so many great stories.

I told him how much I'd love to go on a shoot, preferably an action shoot like that one. When I got the call to show up for Jerry Maguire, I felt like they invited me to a sleeper. There were no known stars other than Tom, but they were also filming at the OC Airport, which was very close to me. As it turned out, it's one of my favorite of his films.

I was at four locations for that one. One was in Beverly Hills at the restaurant scene were he first get's fired. The other was at the LA Coliseum where they did a night shoot where Tom mainly talks with Cuba. The other two were both at the airport. The first time they shot their scenes there with a different kid. Somebody decided that they needed to replace him, so I went back again a few months later, this time with Jonathan. I watched them film the scene at the baggage carousel where Tom and Renee were swinging the kid while waiting for their luggage.

Btw, Tom insisted that Frank cater all his movies. I got to eat several of his meals and they were absolutely amazing. He had to prepare food for all the crew as well as the talent for three meals a day, and they staggered the seatings. There were literally hundreds of people that he had to feed. My favorite was Muscovy Duck breast, which was one of the best things I ever tasted. I can see why Tom insisted on him, though I believe he charged a lot more than most industry caterers.

When I was working for Tom most of his staff were Scientologists. I also did a lot of work for other Scientology entities, as a result of my work with Tom. I can honestly say that not one time has anybody pushed Scientology on me. Never in the slightest.

I won't say I haven't had any discussions about it with various people, but it's always been me asking questions due to my curiosity. I think mostly this was because of the nature of the work that I did for them. It was always pro audio or things related to that, and they surely didn't want to alienate me.

I mentioned that my work with Tom ran it's course quite some time ago, but I continued to get occasional work from some of the other entities. In fact, I almost always get a nice holiday card or gift basket from them including last year. So say what you may, I've never had any issues with them.

They're pretty demanding, but so am I. I always did what I said I would so we always got along just fine. They also paid well and I got to work on some pretty interesting projects.

Oh, yeah. I did a lot of work at Golden Era and quite a few other places similar to it.

I've also seen both sides of Scientology. I've dealt with their top executives and higher level personnel, so I'm sure that they have a different attitude and perspective than the general rank and file members.

I had to sign a non disclosure agreement with both Tom and the Church of Scientology so I have to limit the types of things I can say. That said, most of the stuff I know is well over 10 years old so much of it has long since lost it's relevancy.

I can say that the work I did for them there had to do with their state of the art studio and the design and installation of various pro audio and video solutions. I've been privileged to work in dozens of top recording studios at one time or another, but none of them came close to the technical excellence that I found at Gold. Back in the early 80s they were using Studer machines with Mark Levinson electronics. The gear that they used would have made most studio owners of those times drool.

Once again, I dealt with people very high up the food chain, so they had no desire ever to do anything that would lead me to stop working for them. For the most part my relationship with them was built on honesty and integrity. They asked me to do some pretty strange things, but I never questioned a single one of them. I did exactly what I agreed to and they did the same, and that was the basis for our relationship.

I surely appreciated that with few exceptions, but you have to expect that with any organization one might do work as much work as we did together. Any issue I ever had was with them making a change and expecting me to play along when they expressely told me the rules ahead of the game. For example, each and every thing I did had to be preapproved and there were NO exceptions. Well there were times when they asked me to go against their policies, and I wouldn't do that. Many of the higher ups understood that, respected it, and demanded it, but the individuals in charge of certain tasks expected me to bail them out regardless.

So for the most part the level of integrity and professionalism was very high, but you'd expect that from an organization that caters to Tom and others like him. The thing was that some of the things they asked of me seemed silly, but who was I to pass judgement. As long as I didn't violate any personal ethics, and I surely didn't and wouldn't, there were no problems.

I worked at many of their facilities including their international headquarters buildings in Hollywood. In those cases, once again I was dealing with pro audio or related projects, but I did come into contact with many of the rank and file members. These were what I'd call 'lifers' in that they all lived and worked together. I saw some unpleasant occurrences as the higher ups treated the beginners in a manner that I didn't like.

The thing is, I had also worked a show back in the 70s for the USMC training depot in Point Loma. The way the recruits were treated was pretty much the same way that Scientology was treating their recruits. In fact many of the Scientology principles were based on the Navy, so that stood to reason. If one didn't know better it would seem like many of the Scientology groups I encountered were very much like a military group, and not too many criticize their training techniques.

The only strange issues I've ever had with Scientology was when I once filled out a questionnaire for a local Scientology office that offered to do a free personality analysis for me. Since I already had the working relationship I did with them, I figured I'd go check it out just to see what they'd come up with. The honest truth is that they did a pretty good job with that and did discover one of my issues, but they didn't like my solution to it.

They told me that they could help me with this issue, which really had nothing to do with me as much as my trouble dealing with irrational people or liars. My solutions was to identify the situation and never give the irrational or lying person the power to hurt me with their actions. They told me that if I took a few classes they could help me overcome this problem.

Well I knew that they couldn't do anything about this because there is no way to trust a person like this, but I figured what the heck. I decided to answer their questions honestly and it eventually got to a point where one of their instructors told me I was full of crap and actually physically pushed me around a bit and made some unsavory comments which were actually racist though it surely didn't apply to me. I told him I knew some of the higher ups in his organization but he was unswayed.

As luck would have it, I got a call later that day from one of my contacts regarding a project they were doing. I decided to mention my experience and see if the way I was treated was typical or not. They assured me it wasn't and asked me for the name of the person who had mistreated me. I told them I wouldn't out the guy, but they did know the facility I had gone to.

A short time later I got a call from the person I had dealt with. Apparently they had searched him out and made him call me and apologize. Of course there was nothing to apologize for since there was no real harm done to me. I'm pretty sure this guy had hell to pay for his actions towards me and I did feel a bit bad about that.

Consequently, they did ask me to come in for some 'free' services. They brought in their top auditors and hooked me up to their e-machine which is somewhat similar to a lie detector test. I warned them that it would not work with me and they assured me that it would. Well it didn't get a single rise out of me and nobody there could believe it. It's all a matter of mind over matter and I have a very strong will.

Well that's pretty much the end of the story. I realize that they are an organization that has many good purposes and intents, but also like many large organizations they surely have their share of issues. One thing is apparent. They help a lot of lost souls or others that need help with specific issues, and many are so grateful that they devote their lives to the organization. Many people need help with issues that Scientology has had success dealing with and I see nothing wrong with that.

Of course I have the ability to solve these types of problems on my own, and many others do as well. Consequently we're not good candidates for Scientology. That's precisely why they valued me and treated me so well. It was because I had the ability to help them solve problems that they couldn't solve without me.

They were once telling me how LRH was so brilliant in that he could solve problems others couldn't. I told them that I could pretty much do the same. At first some of them were taken back that I was comparing my abilities to his, but they really couldn't deny that I was right. If he could do it, why couldn't I? We're both just people and not super beings as some may think.

Are they a cult with nefarious intent? I guess that's a matter of perspective. All I can say is that they're an easy target, as is Tom and many other celebrities who may or may not be misunderstood by the public. My experiences with them have been very good for the most part and I pay little attention to people who criticize them because everybody has a different perspective.

I'm pretty sure that much of the criticism of them is valid, but so are the vast benefits that many seem to get from them. As many know, Tom had a terrible problem with dyslexia which they helped him overcome. I'm not sure if that was his only issue, but obviously he is very grateful to them and I don't see any problem with that.

Tom trying to offer help to others, by referring them to Scientology, is really not much different than me trying to help others discover some the things I've discovered that I feel can change people's lives. See my frequent attempts to convince people of the benefits of hi-res audio as a prime example. Have I been targeted by some for doing this? Absolutely.

Btw, many of my dish installations are clearly visible from Google Earth, including several of Tom Cruises houses.

Here as some photos of a private cable company I built for a client in 1990, which is what got me the Cruise account.

You can't see them all, but we had 5 dishes as well as off air reception from both LA and San Diego.

When filming Interview with the Vampire, he put in 5 hours each day just for makeup. I installed a sound system in his combo workout /make up room which was a trailer that matched his coach and was towed behind it to many of the location shoots.

I first discovered this early on when Tom and Nic were filming Far And Away. Once I was there when he had an appointment with his voice coach. He had to learn to speak Irish and I believe this was something he did every day. It's amazing all the things that an actor has to do when working on a role. Tom is pretty much the only one I've ever known well enough to observe this, and I gather he puts in more time than most.

It seems to be a glamorous life, and it is, but there is a lot of work involved.

One of my few 'scoops' when working with Tom was about the Firm. Back in 91, my first year working with Tom, I had to go out to his place for some small matter, which escapes me now. I had my then girlfriend with me, but she had to stay in the car. I can't remember what I was doing, but it was in Tom's office and I noticed he had the script for The Firm open on his desk.

When I was back in the car I mentioned that to her. Of course I had no idea what The Firm was but she had just finished reading the book, so she was pretty excited about it.

Btw, Tom and Nic were still working on Far and Away at that time.

The only other scoop, if it was one, was about Eyes Wide Shut. I was in Tom's coach during the filming of Jerry McGwire when he got a call from Stanley Kubrick. Of course I had no idea what it was about but it seemed like a strange pairing at the time. It was about 4 years later that the movie finally came out.

My last dealings with him were for Cruise Wagner Productions back in July 2005. He pretty much replaced his complete staff soon after that, including many friends who had been with him since the early 80s.

That was also the end of me working for him, though it was not related to anything I did.

Did you see when he said he got the biggest TV he could for his NYC apartment and mentioned his sources?

I installed all that stuff for him.

I posted this earlier but when he talks about his gear in his NYC apartment I could relate. I installed that gear for him.

Very true. As I've mentioned here many times, I worked with Tom from 1991 to 2006.

I stopped pretty much when he had a major change in his life. He fired his publicist and eventually most of his long time staff, which ultimately included me, though I wasn't actually fired. He just hired new people to run his affairs, and they had their own people who they liked to use.

All of this happened at about the same time, and I'm sure much of it was related. He started using his sister as his publicist and apparently a lot of the control others had over him and his actions, was no longer there.

I personally had no issues with anything he has ever done. He's always been a great guy from my perspective, and much of his publicity trouble was not a concern for me. Sure I lost him as a regular client, but nothing lasts for ever. I remain grateful for my time with him and I have nothing at all negative to say about him.

Do I like him as an actor? I surely wasn't a big fan before I first met him, but became one mainly because I knew him. It's pretty hard to be objective regarding his public perception, since most of the people who believe it have never met him. Try walking a mile in his shoes, where every step you make or every single thing you say is reported on all over the world. Who among us could stand that kind of attention and pressure. (Actually I believe Steve is subject to a lot of that and to some degree I sometimes feel bad for him as a result.)

Funny but I've been to their facilities dozens of times and nobody ever came close to trying to recruit me. As many of you know, TC was one of my better clients in the 90s and 00s, and that led to much work for other church entities. In fact, the first work I did for him went through the church. It was them who paid me.

I guess part of my situation is that I was an outside contractor that they used because of my background in pro audio and electronics. Their recording studios and audio facilities were top notch and that is strictly why they hired me.

I am by no means a shill for Scientology, but a lot of what I saw was them being helpful to their minions. Yes, there are apparently a lot of well documented problems with this organization, but believe me, they do offer a lot of help to a lot of people.

Take Tom for example. He suffered from dyslexia and they helped him overcome that. They help many people overcome life problems. My own personal opinion is that most of the people that seek help from them are not able to help themselves with some of their problems for one reason or another.

There is no doubt that they offer a lot of courses for self improvement and many have been helped. OTOH there are obviously plenty of problems.

I would never be a candidate for Scientology or any of the other self help groups like EST and a variety of others. The reasons of course is that I'm pretty adept at solving my own problems. Basically what they hired me for was to solve problems that they couldn't and then teach them how to solve them. I ended up writing many procedures for them that they use to train their members.

I never pay much attention to any of my clients personal beliefs when they differ from mine, unless they are so reprehensible that I just couldn't to bear being around them. That was never the case for me with this organization. I was always treated like royalty by all the contacts I had, but there was one notable exception.

About 20 years ago, I got a questionnaire from the local Scientology field office. I figured, what the heck. I'll fill it out and see what they can come up with. It was a pretty comprehensive exam and they claimed that they could analyze my personality traits and come up with ways that they could improve my life.

Well I know that I"m in pretty good shape, mentally and spiritually. They really had to work to find something they thought was wrong with me and here is what they came up with. I have a hard time dealing with people who are irrational and lie. Well duh. Who doesn't.

The interesting thing is that they claimed if I took some of their courses they could help me overcome this problem. The problem is that IMO it is not a problem of mine. I know how to deal with these type of people, and it works well. My method is to never give them any power to hurt me by doing what they do. In other words, if I'm around a liar, just don't buy into anything they say and don't act on any of their lies. That way I can't get hurt. If I do, shame on me, because I should have known better.

I told them this, but they told me that was a flawed approach and that they could give me much better tools to deal with this.

OK, since I knew many of the higher ups in the organization, I figured I'd give it a shot. In my case it was a total waste of time. After being given a 3rd grade level book to read I had an church member come over to me to quiz me about what I read. I quickly got to the point where this guy didn't like my answers and started getting belligerent with me. He even insulted me, and made a racial comment telling me I was acting like a dumb ******. That got me, and I told him he was not going to get anywhere by that, and that his comment destroyed any credibility he may have had.

He even started poking me in the chest with his middle finger. I asked him is this was their normal practice and by that time he was extremely annoyed with me. I did tell him that I knew some of the top people in his organization but he apparently though I was making that up.

Finally, one of his higher ups noticed what was going on and this new guy came over and asked me to go with him to a private room. There he asked me some questions, and didn't like my answers. They hooked me up to their eMachine but I warned them that it most likely wouldn't work on me. They told me it worked on everybody. Well guess what? It didn't work on me. They brought their top guys at that facility in to try to figure out what was wrong with the machine. Uh, nothing was wrong. It worked on all of the other people they tried it on. I guess my free will and ability to control myself must have been too much for their testing. Finally, they gave up and asked me if they could do some research and get back to me.

OK. That was it for a while. I went home, and as fate would have it, one of my higher up contacts called me to ask me to do some work for them. I told her about my experience at the local office and asked her if that was typical of the type of treatment one might expect to receive after filling out one of their questionnaires? Of course she told me that that guy was totally out of line. She asked me his name, so she could reach out to punish him, but I refused to give it.

About 20 minutes later I got a phone call from that local guy that gave me the trouble. He called to apologize to me and offer me free courses. Obviously she had the ability to discover his identity without any further input from me. I told him I had no interest in any of that. He was almost crying while apologizing and apparently they sent him to some type of purgatory for his actions. I guess his biggest mistake was to not believe me when I told him of my connections.

I have one more fairly strange observation that I made. One time I was working on the roof of one of their LA buildings and they had a group of fresh recruits up there. I saw how they were treated and it was not pretty.

OTOH, I also did a show in the 70s at the Marine Corps Training Depot in Point Loma. They had recruits as stage hands to help set up our gear. Guess what? Those guys were treated almost exactly the same was the Scientology recruits were being treated. In fact, much of Scientology is patterned after the Navy, and many of them wear what look like Navy uniforms. So to criticize the things I saw the Scientology recruits being subject to, would seem to indicate that I should also criticize our military for how they treat recruits. Obviously studies have shown that that type of treatment brings the results they are after so who am I to complain.

I did get to talk to some of these people and for the most part they all seemed thrilled to be there.

I haven't done much work for them recently and may never again, but they still send me a nice holiday gift every year. Like Tom, they seemed to like to keep me happy just in case they ever need my services, and for the most part that worked with me.

Once again, I've never been approached by anybody at any of the facilities I worked at in any attempt to convert me. Not in the slightest. I think they were too afraid of alienating me and losing my services, but regardless that's how it was. I did talk to many of the members, while I was working, and did learn a lot about how they felt about the organization, and most were very happy with their decisions to become a member.

I remember several other things about the OJ case.

I was driving out to Telluride to work on TC's house with my worker, Brian. When we heard the first reports on the news, Brian wondered if it was Nicole before they mentioned her name. He knew her well because they were classmates at Dana Hills High School.

The other thing I remember is being in Vegas doing the final phase of the Hard Rock Hotel sound system installation, and it was right in the thick of the OJ trial. It was on everywhere, and it seemed that just about everybody was talking about it.

I haven't seen this show on FX but I probably will eventually.

I had a lot of time for Tom Cruise the person.

It's hard for me to judge his acting considering my 15 years with him as a client, but I've nothing but good things to say about how he treated me. No client has ever treated me better.

Funny, but when he was a client of mine (1991-2005), I never used his name when talking to his people over the phone. It was always 'the client'. I called him by his name when talking directly to him (in person or on the phone) but never when talking about him to others.

I have posted about him in threads here a few times here and I most likely referred to him as TC or just by his first name. Mainly this is out of respect, but I did once sign a non disclosure agreement for him, and I'm not sure it dealt with what to call him. Mainly I took my lead from his staff who also seemed to refer to him this way. The only exception was when we were behind closed doors.

Well I had to select TC. He was very good to me between 1991 to 2006.