Christopher Smith has been a writer for Golden Era Productions and Scientology Media Productions for more than 20 years. His extensive credits and work on award-winning documentaries and ads have been aired around the world and seen by millions of individuals.

I look at Ron Miscavige as somebody who turned his back on the gift that he was given. I consider myself very fortunate and I never take that gift for granted. I’m not sour grapes about Ron. I’m sour grapes about anybody who doesn’t actually take that responsibility.

I’ve worked with the Golden Era Musicians and when you’re working on a project at Golden Era Productions, because audiovisual and film is a collaborative process, you do rub elbows with the rest of your team. And so I worked with Ron Miscavige many times.

Ron presented melodies to me for videos that I was working on. And in one particular instance he brought me a melody, I listened to it against the video that I had just created and I said, “Ron, it doesn’t work.” The melody had nothing to do with the video that was there. One of the basic rules about music is that it has to enhance the message of the video.

“He is a rather crude guy, somebody you’d expect to meet in a bar…”

So Ron’s melody didn’t enhance it—it distracted from it. And more than that, it was just a meandering sort of—it wasn’t even a melody. If you want to call a melody a bunch of notes thrown together, then that’s a melody. If you want to call a melody an arrangement of notes that actually have some communication to them, that’s a real melody. And that isn’t what Ron presented. So I told him in this one instance, “The melody is terrible, it just doesn’t do anything.”

“Ron was a guy who was kind of like a garage band trumpet player.”

 

Ron Miscavige is a rather crude guy, somebody you’d expect to meet in a bar and tell you a joke. Ron’s the uncle that you cringe about when it comes to the family reunion, because you know he’s going to be a little too loud, and a little off color and probably say the wrong thing to your family.

Ron was the Third Trumpet, and he never really excelled to be the First Trumpet. Ron was a guy who was kind of like a garage band trumpet player.

Ron is the cheap beer, and he’s kind of the six-pack that you can get for a buck and a quarter. That’s Ron Miscavige.

Christopher Smith
Writer