title: University of Michigan

text: The university is also home to several public and research museums including but not limited to the University Museum of Art, University of Michigan Museum of Natural History, Detroit Observatory, Sindecuse Museum of Dentistry, and the LSA Museum of Anthropological Archaeology.


title: University of Michigan

text: Kelsey Museum of Archeology has a collection of Roman, Greek, Egyptian, and Middle Eastern artifacts. Between 1972 and 1974, the museum was involved in the excavation of the archaeological site of Dibsi Faraj in northern Syria. The Kelsey Museum re-opened November 1, 2009 after a renovation and expansion.


title: University of Michigan

text: The collection of the University of Michigan Museum of Art include nearly 19,000 objects that span cultures, eras, and media and include European, American, Middle Eastern, Asian, and African art, as well as changing exhibits. The Museum of Art re-opened in 2009 after a three-year renovation and expansion. UMMA presents special exhibitions and diverse educational programs featuring the visual, performing, film and literary arts that contextualize the gallery experience.


title: University of Michigan

text: The University of Michigan Museum of Natural History began in the mid-19th century and expanded greatly with the donation of 60,000 specimens by Joseph Beal Steere in the 1870s. The building also houses three research museums: the Museum of Anthropology, Museum of Paleontology. Today, the collections are primarily housed and displayed in the Ruthven Museums Building which was completed in 1928.


title: University of Michigan

text: In addition to the late U.S. president Gerald Ford, the university has, produced thirty-four Pulitzer Prize winners, twenty-seven Rhodes Scholars, one Mitchell Scholar and nine Nobel laureates. , the university has almost 500,000 living alumni.


title: University of Michigan

text: More than 250 Michigan graduates have served as legislators as either a United States Senator (47 graduates) or as a Congressional representative (over 215 graduates), including former House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt and U.S. Representative Justin Amash, who represented Michigan's Third Congressional District. Mike Duggan, Mayor of Detroit, earned his bachelor's degree and J.D. degree at Michigan, while the former Michigan Governor Rick Snyder earned his bachelor, M.B.A., and J.D. degrees from Michigan. Former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson received his medical degree from the U-M medical school. Thomas E. Dewey, another Michigan alumnus, was the Governor of New York from 1943 to 1954 and was the Republican Party's presidential nominee in the 1944 and 1948 presidential elections. The 13th President of Pakistan, Arif Alvi, completed his master's degree in prosthodontics in 1975.


title: University of Michigan

text: U-M's contributions to aeronautics include aircraft designer Clarence "Kelly" Johnson of Lockheed Skunk Works fame, Lockheed president Willis Hawkins, and several astronauts including the all-U-M crews of both Gemini 4 and Apollo 15.


title: University of Michigan

text: Numerous U-M graduates contributed greatly to the field of computer science, including Claude Shannon (who made major contributions to the mathematics of information theory), and Turing Award winners Edgar Codd, Stephen Cook, Frances E. Allen and Michael Stonebraker. U-M also counts among its alumni nearly two dozen billionaires, including prominent tech-company founders and co-founders such as Dr. J. Robert Beyster, who founded Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) in 1969 and Google co-founder Larry Page.


title: University of Michigan

text: Several prominent and/or groundbreaking women have studied at Michigan—by 1900, nearly 150 women had received advanced degrees from U-M. Sarah Dix Hamlin was the first female student accepted to the University of Michigan. She graduated in 1874. Marjorie Lee Browne received her M.S. in 1939 and her doctoral degree in 1950, becoming the third African American woman to earn a PhD in mathematics. Many, however, were forced to leave the university to continue their studies or to become faculty in their own right elsewhere, like Katharine Coman—when U-M President James Angell offered her a "Dean of Women" position, she told him that ″′if the regents...wish to propose a chaperone for students, and propose to dignify that office by allowing the woman who holds it to do a little University teaching,′ she was not interested. If, however, the regents accepted women as equal partners and as faculty, and if she were one of several women given proper rank and authority, she would consider it.″ Michigan's Regents did not accept, so instead Coman became dean, founder of the Economics Department, and the first female statistics professor in the US at Wellesley College.


title: University of Michigan

text: Notable writers who attended U-M include playwright Arthur Miller, essayists Susan Orlean, Jia Tolentino, Sven Birkerts, journalists and editors Mike Wallace, Jonathan Chait of "The New Republic", Indian author and columnist Anees Jung, Daniel Okrent, and Sandra Steingraber, food critics Ruth Reichl and Gael Greene, novelists Brett Ellen Block, Elizabeth Kostova, Marge Piercy, Brad Meltzer, Betty Smith, and Charles Major, screenwriter Judith Guest, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Theodore Roethke, National Book Award winners Keith Waldrop and Jesmyn Ward, composer/author/puppeteer Forman Brown, and Alireza Jafarzadeh (a Middle East analyst, author, and TV commentator).


title: University of Michigan

text: In Hollywood, famous alumni include actors Michael Dunn, Darren Criss, James Earl Jones, David Alan Grier, actresses Lucy Liu, Gilda Radner, and Selma Blair, television director Mark Cendrowski, and filmmaker Lawrence Kasdan. Many Broadway and musical theatre actors, including Gavin Creel, Andrew Keenan-Bolger, his sister Celia Keenan-Bolger, and Taylor Louderman attended U-M for musical theatre. The musical theatre group StarKid Productions had their start at the university, and staged multiple productions there.


title: University of Michigan

text: Musical graduates include operatic soprano Jessye Norman, singer Joe Dassin, jazz guitarist Randy Napoleon, and Mannheim Steamroller founder Chip Davis. Well-known composers who are alumni include Frank Ticheli, Andrew Lippa, and the Oscar and Tony Award-winning duo Benj Pasek and Justin Paul. Pop superstar Madonna and rock legend Iggy Pop, attended but did not graduate.


title: University of Michigan

text: Other U-M graduates include former Dean of Harvard Law School Martha Minow, Dean of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania Erika H. James, current Dean of Yale Law School, Heather Gerken, assisted-suicide advocate Dr. Jack Kevorkian, Weather Underground radical activist Bill Ayers, activist Tom Hayden, architect Charles Moore, the Swedish Holocaust hero Raoul Wallenberg, and Civil War General Benjamin D. Pritchard. Neurosurgeon and CNN chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta attended both college and medical school at the university. Clarence Darrow attended law school at U-M at a time when many lawyers did not receive any formal education. Frank Murphy, who was mayor of Detroit, governor of Michigan, attorney general of the United States, and Supreme Court justice was also a graduate of the Law School. Conservative pundit Ann Coulter is another U-M law school graduate (J.D. 1988).


title: University of Michigan

text: Vaughn R. Walker, a federal district judge in California who overturned the controversial California Proposition 8 in 2010 and ruled it unconstitutional, received his undergraduate degree from U-M in 1966.


title: University of Michigan

text: Kenneth Marin, who became a professor of economics after he graduated from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, was appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson as a member of the White House Consumer Advisory Council where he served on Wage and Price Control in the mid-1960s. He went to Tanzania in the late sixties and worked as an economic advisor to the government of President Julius Nyerere until the early 1970s.


title: University of Michigan

text: U-M athletes have starred in Major League Baseball, the National Football League and National Basketball Association as well as other professional sports. Notable among recent players is Tom Brady of the New England Patriots and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Three players have won college football's Heisman Trophy, awarded to the player considered the best in the nation: Tom Harmon (1940), Desmond Howard (1991) and Charles Woodson (1997). Professional golfer John Schroeder and Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps also attended the University of Michigan, with the latter studying Sports Marketing and Management. Phelps also swam competitively for Club Wolverine, a swimming club associated with the university. National Hockey League players Marty Turco, Chris Summers, Max Pacioretty, Carl Hagelin, Dylan Larkin, Zach Hyman, Brendan Morrison, Jack Johnson, and Michael Cammalleri all played for U-M's ice hockey team. Baseball Hall of Famers George Sisler and Barry Larkin also played baseball at the university. Several team owners have also been alumni, including multiple-team owner Bill Davidson (NBA Detroit Pistons, NHL Tampa Bay Lightning, WNBA Detroit Shock, among others) and NFL owners Stephen M. Ross (Miami Dolphins), Preston Robert Tisch (New York Giants), and Ralph Wilson (Buffalo Bills).


title: University of Michigan

text: The university claims the only alumni association with a chapter on the Moon, established in 1971 when the crew of Apollo 15 (two of whom had engineering degrees from U-M; the third had attended for a year before transferring) placed a charter plaque for a new U-M Alumni Association on the lunar surface. The plaque states: "The Alumni Association of The University of Michigan. Charter Number 1. This is to certify that The University of Michigan Club of The Moon is a duly constituted unit of the Alumni Association and entitled to all the rights and privileges under the Association's Constitution." Several small U-M flags were also brought on the mission; a persistent campus legend claims at least one flag was left on the Moon.


title: David Miscavige

text: David Miscavige (; born April 30, 1960) is the leader of the Church of Scientology and, according to the organization, "Captain of the Sea Org". His official title within the organization is Chairman of the Board of the Religious Technology Center (RTC), a corporation that controls the trademarks and copyrights of Dianetics and Scientology.


title: David Miscavige

text: Miscavige was a deputy to Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard as a teenager. He joined the Sea Org, a management group for the Scientology organization, then later joined the Commodore's Messenger Organization, a group within the Sea Org that carried Hubbard's orders to subordinates. He rose to a leadership position by the early 1980s and was named "Chairman of the Board" of RTC in 1987, the year after Hubbard's death. Official Church of Scientology biographies describe Miscavige as "the ecclesiastical leader of the Scientology religion".


title: David Miscavige

text: Since he assumed his leadership position, there have been a number of allegations made against Miscavige. These include claims of human trafficking, child abuse, slavery, forced separation of family members, coercive fundraising practices, harassment of journalists and Church of Scientology critics, and emotional and physical abuse of subordinates by Miscavige. Miscavige and spokespersons for the organization deny the majority of these claims, often making derogatory comments and attacking the credibility of those who bring them.


title: David Miscavige

text: Miscavige has been investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation due to allegations of criminal activities within the Scientology organization. He is named as a defendant in numerous lawsuits involving his role in the organization. The most recent lawsuit, filed in April 2022, refers to repeated sexual assault of children by senior Scientology officials in the Sea Org during Miscavige's leadership. The case also involves allegations of human trafficking, forced labor, and other forms of child abuse.


title: David Miscavige

text: David Miscavige was born in 1960 in Bristol Township, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, to the Roman Catholic Polish-Italian family of Ronald and Loretta Miscavige. Miscavige and his twin sister, Denise, were raised primarily in Willingboro Township, New Jersey.


title: David Miscavige

text: As a child, Miscavige played baseball and football, but he suffered from asthma and severe allergies. His father, a trumpet player, became interested in Scientology, and he sent the younger Miscavige to see a Scientologist. According to both father and son, a 45-minute Dianetics session cured his ailments.


title: David Miscavige

text: Miscavige's family joined the Church of Scientology in 1971 and eventually moved to the organization's world headquarters in Saint Hill Manor, England. By the age of twelve, Miscavige was conducting Scientology auditing sessions. Saint Hill served as his own training ground as an auditor, and he is remembered by the organization as the "12-year-old prodigy" who became the youngest professional Scientology auditor. The family returned to Philadelphia within a few years, where Miscavige attended Marple Newtown High School.


title: David Miscavige

text: In 1976, on his sixteenth birthday, Miscavige left high school with his father's permission to move to Clearwater, Florida and joined the Sea Org, a Scientologist organization established in 1968 by founder L. Ron Hubbard. Some of his earliest jobs in the Sea Org included delivering telexes, groundskeeping, food service and taking photographs for Scientology brochures. Miscavige then joined an elite group of young Scientologists in the Sea Org called the Commodore's Messenger Organization (CMO), which Hubbard had established to carry out his personal errands and deliver executive directives to Scientology management, but as they grew into adolescence, their power and influence within the Sea Org increased.


title: David Miscavige

text: By 1977, Miscavige was living in La Quinta, California and working directly under Hubbard as a cameraman for Scientology training films. Hubbard appointed Miscavige to the CMO, responsible for enforcing Hubbard's policies within the individual Scientology organizations; Miscavige became head of the CMO in 1979. By 1980, Hubbard was no longer appearing at public functions related to Scientology, and by some accounts Miscavige took effective control of the organization at this time. In 1981, Miscavige was placed in charge of the Watchdog Committee and the All Clear Unit, with the task of handling the various legal claims against Hubbard. He also became in charge of Author Services, Inc., an entity to manage Hubbard's literary and financial affairs, which was established in the same year.


title: David Miscavige

text: By age of 19, Miscavige headed the Commodore's Messenger Organization, responsible for sending out teams to investigate problem areas within the Scientology organization. In 1987, the year after Hubbard's death, he became the Captain of the Sea Org, which gave him absolute authority over the Sea Org command structure and all Sea Org orgs.


title: David Miscavige

text: After the Guardian's Office's (GO) criminal involvement in Operation Snow White, Miscavige persuaded Mary Sue Hubbard to resign from the GO and purged several top GO officials through ethics proceedings. The "St. Petersburg Times", in a 1998 article "The Man Behind Scientology", says: "During two heated encounters, Miscavige persuaded Mary Sue Hubbard to resign. Together they composed a letter to Scientologists confirming her decision – all without ever talking to L. Ron Hubbard." She subsequently changed her mind, believing that she had been tricked. Despite this, Miscavige claims he and Mary Sue Hubbard remained friends thereafter.


title: David Miscavige

text: In 1982, Miscavige set up a new organizational structure to release Hubbard from personal liability and to handle the Scientology founder's personal wealth through a corporate entity outside of the Scientology organization. He established the Religious Technology Center (RTC), in charge of licensing Scientology's intellectual property, and Author Services Inc. to manage the proceeds. Miscavige has held the title of chairman of the board of the RTC since the organization's founding. The Church of Spiritual Technology (CST) was created at the same time with an option to repurchase all of RTC's intellectual property rights. In a 1982 probate case, Ronald DeWolf, Hubbard's estranged son, accused Miscavige of embezzling from and manipulating his father. Hubbard denied this in a written statement, saying that his business affairs were being well managed by Author Services Inc., of which Miscavige was also chairman of the board. In the same document, Hubbard called Miscavige a "trusted associate" and "good friend" who had kept his affairs in good order. A judge ruled the statement was authentic. The case was dismissed on June 27, 1983.


title: David Miscavige

text: In October 1982, Miscavige required Scientology Missions to enter new trademark usage contracts which established stricter policies on the use of Scientology materials. Over the two years following the formation of the RTC, Miscavige and his team replaced most of Scientology's upper and middle management. A number of those ousted attempted to establish breakaway organizations, such as the Advanced Ability Center led by David Mayo, a former RTC board member who had also been Hubbard's personal auditor. The Advanced Ability Center closed in 1984, two years after opening.


title: David Miscavige

text: When Hubbard died in 1986, Miscavige announced Hubbard's death to Scientologists at the Hollywood Palladium. Shortly before Hubbard died, an apparent order from him circulated in the Sea Org that promoted Scientologist Pat Broeker and his wife to the new rank of Loyal Officer, making them the highest-ranking members; Miscavige asserted this order had been forged. After Hubbard's death, Miscavige assumed the position of head of the Church of Scientology and, according to the organization, "ecclesiastical leader of the Scientology religion". Within the Scientology organization Miscavige is given the title of "Captain of the Sea Organization", and is its highest-ranking member.


title: David Miscavige

text: Since Miscavige assumed his leadership role in Scientology, there have been numerous accounts of illegal and unethical practices by the Church of Scientology and by Miscavige himself. A 1991 "Time" magazine cover story, "The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power", described Miscavige as "ringleader" of a "hugely profitable global racket that survives by intimidating members and critics in a Mafia-like manner". Miscavige stated in a 1992 interview on "Nightline"his only live televised interview to datethat the publication of the article resulted from a request by Eli Lilly, because of "the damage we had caused to their killer drug Prozac". The Scientology organization filed a suit against Lilly, J. Walter Thompson, Hill & Knowlton and the WPP Group. The case was settled for an undisclosed amount. The Scientology organization also brought a libel lawsuit against the piece's publisher Time Warner and its author Richard Behar, seeking damages of $416 million. All counts of the suit were dismissed by the court, and the dismissal upheld when the Scientology organization appealed. Similar lawsuits in Switzerland, France, Italy, the Netherlands, and Germany were dismissed as groundless.


title: David Miscavige

text: In 1987, the BBC "Panorama" program "Scientology: The Road to Total Freedom?" featured an interview with former member Don Larson, who described Miscavige's physical violence towards a staff member. In a 1995 interview for ITV, Stacy Young, Miscavige's former secretary and the ex-wife of Hubbard's former spokesman, Robert Vaughn Young, asserted that Miscavige emotionally tormented staff members on a regular basis. "His viciousness and his cruelty to staff was unlike anything that I had ever experienced in my life", she said. "He just loved to degrade the staff."


title: David Miscavige

text: Though Miscavige and Scientology have been the subject of much press attention, he has rarely spoken directly to the press. Exceptions include the 1992 interview on "Nightline", a 1998 newspaper interview with the "St. Petersburg Times", and a 1998 appearance in an A&E "Investigative Reports" installment called "Inside Scientology".


title: David Miscavige

text: In 1991, Miscavige, together with Marty Rathbun, visited the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) headquarters in Washington, D.C. to arrange a meeting with Commissioner Fred T. Goldberg, Jr. For more than two decades, the IRS had refused to recognize Scientology as a nonprofit charitable organization. Prior to this meeting, Scientology had filed more than fifty lawsuits against the IRS and, according to "The New York Times":


title: David Miscavige

text: At the meeting with Commissioner Goldberg, Miscavige offered to cease Scientology's suits against the IRS in exchange for tax exemptions. This led to a two-year negotiating process, in which IRS tax analysts were ordered to ignore the substantive issues because the issues had been resolved prior to review. In 1992 Scientology was granted recognition as a nonprofit organization in the U.S., which creates a tax exemption for the Church of Scientology International and its subsidiaries, and tax deductions for those who contribute to their programs. Senior Scientology officials and the IRS later issued a statement that the ruling was based on a two-year inquiry and voluminous documents that, they said, showed the organization was qualified for the exemptions.


title: David Miscavige

text: To announce the settlement with the IRS, Miscavige gathered a reported 10,000 members of Scientology in the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena, where he delivered a two-and-a-half-hour address and proclaimed, "The war is over!" The crowd gave Miscavige an ovation that lasted more than ten minutes.


title: David Miscavige

text: According to the Scientology organization, Miscavige initiated a long-term project of issuing unreleased and corrected editions of Hubbard's books and restoring L. Ron Hubbard lectures, including translating many works into other languages. Another initiative by Miscavige, launched in 2003, is to build new or remodeled Scientology locations, called "Ideal Orgs", in every major city in the world. Since then, over seventy new or remodelled locations have been opened, including facilities in Washington, D.C., Madrid, New York City, London, Berlin, Mexico City, Rome, Tel Aviv, Atlanta, Miami, and San Diego.


title: David Miscavige

text: As Chairman of the Board of the RTC, Miscavige works primarily from Scientology's Gold Base near Hemet, California. Scientologists often refer to him as "DM", or "C.O.B.", for chairman of the board. In their 2007 book, "Extraordinary Groups: An Examination of Unconventional Lifestyles", W. W. Zellner and Richard T. Schaefer noted that, "David Miscavige has been the driving force behind the Church of Scientology for the past two decades" and that, "Miscavige's biography and speeches are second only to Hubbard in dominating the official Scientology Web site."


title: David Miscavige

text: One of the largest projects of Miscavige's career is the Flag Building, originally called the "Super Power Building", which is described as the spiritual headquarters of the Scientology organization. It is the largest of Scientology's properties in Clearwater, Florida. The 377,000 square foot structure is reportedly outfitted with custom-built equipment designed to administer the supposedly perception-enhancing "Super Power Rundown" to high-level Scientologists. The building was scheduled for completion in 2003, but underwent ten years of delays and re-designs as Scientology completed two other major construction and restoration projects in the same area ahead of it, the Fort Harrison Hotel and the Oak Cove Hotel. Miscavige inaugurated the Flag Building on November 17, 2013.


title: David Miscavige

text: In 2009, the "St. Petersburg Times" published a series titled "The Truth Rundown", which featured allegations by former high-ranking executives of Scientology that Miscavige had repeatedly humiliated and physically beaten his staff, and had confined Church of Scientology staff members in degrading conditions in a property owned by the organization known as "The Hole". The series included interviews with Mike Rinder, former official spokesperson for the Church of Scientology and director of the organizations's Office of Special Affairs, and Mark Rathbun, the former Inspector General of the RTC. Rinder has said that he was physically assaulted by Miscavige on about fifty occasions. These allegations have been supported by other former Scientologists: Lawrence Wright, author of "Going Clear", interviewed twelve individuals who reported having been personally attacked by Miscavige and twenty-one people who say they have witnessed such attacks. Scientology denies all of these reports.


title: David Miscavige

text: "Inside Scientology: The Truth Rundown" was recognized with journalistic honors, including the 2010 Gold Medal for Public Service award from the Florida Society of News Editors. The series was cited as a basis for subsequent journalistic investigations, including a weeklong series hosted on CNN by Anderson Cooper. In an incident also witnessed and supported by Amy Scobee, Jeff Hawkins, a former marketing guru for Scientology, said he had attended a meeting where Miscavige "jumped up on the conference room table, like with his feet right on the conference room table, launched himself across the table at me — I was standing — battered my face, and then shoved me down on the floor".


title: David Miscavige

text: Scientology representatives have consistently denied abuse by Miscavige, insisting that the allegations come from apostates motivated by bitterness or attempting to extract money from the organization. Hawkins' claims were responded to by Scientology when he reiterated them in a documentary, saying they were "fabricated" and referring to him as "a discredited anti-Scientology media source". Scientology executive David Bloomberg said that it was Hawkins who attacked Miscavige. Miscavige sent an open letter to the newspaper challenging the integrity of the reporters and labeling their sources as "lying", after the persons in question had been removed from the Scientology organization for what Miscavige described as "fundamental crimes against the Scientology religion". Scientology also commissioned an independent review of the "Times"s reporting, but have not, to date, released those findings.


title: David Miscavige

text: Miscavige is portrayed within Scientology as "a servant of Hubbard's message, not an agent in his own right". Official Scientology websites describe him as Hubbard's "trusted friend". Miscavige uses Church publications as well as professionally produced videos of gala events, at which he acts as master of ceremonies, to communicate with Scientologists worldwide. According to the organization, as the RTC's chairman of the board his primary task is to "preserve, maintain and protect" the Scientology organization.


title: David Miscavige

text: In 2012, Miscavige opened Scientology's "National Affairs Office" in Washington, D.C., which he declared to be, "An office designed to give back to a United States government that steadfastly guaranteed our religious rights, the very freedom that allows us to do what we are doing today." Scientology says the National Affairs Office was built "to oversee programs around the country and the world dealing with human rights, drug addiction, literacy and disaster response".


title: David Miscavige

text: In his role as the leader of Scientology, Miscavige has been the subject of law enforcement investigations, including by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, into suspected human trafficking, and slavery. He is also the subject of ongoing lawsuits involving child abuse, human trafficking, and forced labor. He was investigated as part of wide-ranging investigation into Scientology by the FBI in 2009–2010. It focused particularly on criminal activities at the organization's de facto headquarters near San Jacinto, California, against which the FBI had planned a raid before the investigation was discontinued.


title: David Miscavige

text: Scientology launched the Scientology Network, a DIRECTV broadcast and OTT streaming service on March 12, 2018, with Miscavige introducing its inaugural broadcast in a rare on-camera appearance. The network is produced by Scientology Media Productions in Los Angeles, a facility opened by the organization in May 2016. Addressing the crowd at the SMP opening, Miscavige called the channel, "Our uncorrupted communication line to the billions. Because as the saying goes, if you don't write your own story, someone else will."


title: David Miscavige

text: An individual who was raised as a Scientologist and joined the Sea Org had been assigned as Miscavige's personal steward at the age of fifteen. She filed suit against the Scientology organization and Miscavige in 2019. The lawsuit also alleged kidnapping, stalking, libel, slander, constructive invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Lawyers for the Scientology organization convinced a judge to move the case to internal Scientology arbitration in January 2020.


title: David Miscavige

text: Miscavige is named in a lawsuit involving a series of alleged rapes by Danny Masterson, and subsequent efforts by the Scientology organization to harass the three women accusing Masterson. The organization's lawyers had tried to force the case into the organization's own arbitration, similar to the case in 2020, but this failed following a three-judge ruling in January 2022.


title: David Miscavige

text: Three former Scientology workers filed a lawsuit for human trafficking and peonage of children as young as six years old, against Miscavige and the organization in April 2022. The lawsuit also alleges repeated sexual assault of children by senior members of the Sea Org, of which Miscavige was leader at the time and remains so to the present. The court overseeing the case was told by lawyers for the plaintiff that Miscavige was evading service in the case over a period of months, with at least fourteen attempts being made to serve the summons. The evasion included Miscavige ordering security at his house to prevent the summons from being delivered. The court found the allegations sufficiently credible that it ordered that Miscavige be served through the office of the Secretary of State of Florida.


title: David Miscavige

text: Miscavige is married to fellow Sea Org member Michele Diane "Shelly" Miscavige, who has not been seen in public since August 2007. Multiple sources have alleged she disappeared from Gold Base shortly after she "filled several job vacancies without her husband's permission". In July 2012, responding to press accounts of speculation on Shelly's whereabouts, lawyers who said they represented her informed two UK newspapers that "she is not missing and devotes her time to the work of the Church of Scientology". In 2013, in the "Los Angeles Times", Andrew Blankstein reported, based on anonymous sources from the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), that the department had closed their investigation following a missing-persons report filed by former Scientologist and actress Leah Remini, having "located and spoke[n]" to Shelly Miscavige. The LAPD declined to answer questions about the details of the report. Lawrence Wright reports that "former Sea Org members" say Shelly is being held under guard at Gold Base.


title: David Miscavige

text: Miscavige's elder brother Ronald Miscavige Jr. served as an executive in the Sea Org for a time, but left Scientology in 2000. Miscavige's twin sister, Denise Licciardi, was hired by major Scientology donor Bryan Zwan as a top executive for the Clearwater, Florida-based company Digital Lightwave, where she was linked to an accounting scandal. Ronald Jr.'s daughter Jenna Miscavige Hill, niece of David Miscavige, remained in the Sea Org until 2005. She has since become an outspoken critic of Scientology, publishing a book about her experiences in 2013. In the book, titled "Beyond Belief: My Secret Life Inside Scientology And My Harrowing Escape", she stated that her grandfather Ronald Miscavige Sr. left the Church of Scientology in 2012 and is living with her father in Virginia.


title: David Miscavige

text: In July 2013, Wisconsin police confronted Dwayne S. Powell after a suspicious person report. Powell said he had been hired at $10,000 a week to conduct full-time surveillance on the elder Miscavige for Scientology, which he said he had been doing for over a year. "Los Angeles Times" reporter Kim Christensen reports that David Miscavige and Scientology denied any connection to Powell. Gary Soter, a Church attorney, stated that the allegations were "blatantly false". Powell told police that on one occasion, he witnessed what he believed to be Ronald Sr. undergoing cardiac arrest. According to Powell, after immediately reporting the perceived emergency to his superiors, he received a call for further instructions from a man who identified himself as David Miscavige. According to the police report, Powell was instructed not to intervene in any way. Church of Scientology spokesperson Karin Pouw asserted in an email that "no such conversation with Mr. Miscavige ever took place." Ron Miscavige and Dan Koon wrote "", which was published in May 2016.


title: David Miscavige

text: Miscavige is a close friend to actor Tom Cruise and served as best man at Cruise's wedding to Katie Holmes.


title: Bodyguard (British TV series)

text: Bodyguard is a British political thriller television series created and written by Jed Mercurio and produced by World Productions as part of ITV Studios for the BBC. The six-part series centres around the fictional character of Police Sergeant David Budd (Richard Madden), a British Army war veteran suffering from PTSD, who is now working for the Royalty and Specialist Protection Branch of London's Metropolitan Police Service. He is assigned as the principal protection officer (PPO) for the ambitious Home Secretary Julia Montague (Keeley Hawes), whose politics he despises. The series draws attention to controversial issues such as government monitoring of private information and its regulation, the politics of intervention and terrorism, and PTSD.


title: Bodyguard (British TV series)

text: The series began broadcasting on BBC One on 26 August 2018, achieving the highest viewing figures for a new BBC drama in the multichannel era and the highest BBC viewing figures since 2008. The BBC commissioned the series from the then-independent World Productions in 2016. Since ITV Studios Global Entertainment acquired the company in 2017, they have handled international distribution for the series. Netflix agreed to a distribution deal to broadcast the show outside the United Kingdom and Ireland.


title: Bodyguard (British TV series)

text: The series was met with critical acclaim, particularly for Madden's performance. The series received numerous award nominations including the Golden Globe Award for Best Television Series – Drama, with Madden winning the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Television Series Drama. At the 71st Primetime Emmy Awards, the series was nominated for Outstanding Drama Series.


title: Bodyguard (British TV series)

text: The series was largely filmed on location in London, including the Whittington Estate for Budd's flat and Battersea for Montague's flat. The bomb scenes in the final episode were filmed around CityPoint near Moorgate and Woburn Square and Senate House in Bloomsbury.


title: Bodyguard (British TV series)

text: BBC journalists including Andrew Marr, John Pienaar, John Humphrys, and Laura Kuenssberg appear as themselves.


title: Bodyguard (British TV series)

text: Viewing figures for the series were high, with 10.4 million (peaking at 11 million) viewers watching the overnight broadcast of the finale live on BBC One alone. As significant numbers of viewers watched the show on catchup service iPlayer after transmission, the series sparked a debate on how the media should handle spoilers. "Radio Times" revealed the fate of Montague in a cover story during the series's original transmission.


title: Bodyguard (British TV series)

text: The review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gave the series a 93% approval rating, with an average rating of 8.2/10, based on 70 reviews. The critical consensus reads, ""Bodyguard" maintains a palpable tension throughout its pulpy proceedings to create an absorbing and addicting psychological thriller." On Metacritic, the series has a weighted average score of 79 out of 100 based on 12 reviews, indicating "generally favourable reviews".


title: Bodyguard (British TV series)

text: In a positive review, "Variety"s Daniel D'Addario describes the series as "Both juicy in its delving into character psychology and rippingly ready to tear up its playbook as it goes, it’s a six-episode ride that demands, and rewards, a quick binge." D'Addario further states that the series "excels at both the daring, gasp-inducing twist and the methodical construction of slower-burning thrills", and that Madden's performance "by turns tripping on his own empathy, and angrily operating beyond rationality, makes us believe anything is possible — a wonderful asset for a show that seeks above all else to keep us watching". Allison Keene, writing for Collider, lauds the performances of the cast, describing Madden's as "enthralling" and "absolutely heartbreaking", and depicts the series as "an exhilarating ride that truly showcases Madden as a major talent". Writing for "Time," Judy Berman states that the series "subverts thriller tropes just often enough to earn its reliance on them", and in a five-star review "Guardian" critic Lucy Mangan expresses that "[Mercurio] has created something as dark and moreish as ever". Hanh Nguyen of IndieWire describes the series as "relentless", and the performances of Madden and Hawes as "mesmerizing". Robert Rorke of the "New York Post" writes that the series is "gripping" and that Madden "gives a magnetic performance".


title: Bodyguard (British TV series)

text: In a more mixed assessment, Robert Lloyd of the "Los Angeles Times" wrote that "Some elements of the series struck me as odd...and certain climactic revelations had me talking to the screen. But the action is well mounted and the tension tightly wound; it uncoils, when it does, with a satisfying snap". In a similarly mixed review, "The Atlantic"s Sophie Gilbert acknowledged that "Hawes is elegantly unknowable as Julia...she gives just enough nuance in her performance to make you question whether she has a heart or is extremely deft at emotional manipulation", however she laments that "To watch "Bodyguard"’s six episodes is to suspend disbelief and submit to its surprises. It helps not to expect too much more than that, particularly when it comes to the show’s lavish employment of archetypes, which inevitably leads to its more questionable elements."


title: Bodyguard (British TV series)

text: Intelligent Protection International Limited’s CEO Alex Bomberg on BBC Radio 5 Live said that the plot, in particular the personal relationship that Budd developed with his charge, would be frowned upon as both unprofessional and putting the charge at risk. Detective Chief Inspector Steve Ray, of the Royal and Specialist Protection Command (RaSP) told the BBC that “the relationship that we have with our principals is purely professional”, adding that anyone who crossed the line would quickly be identified and would not last very long in Protection Command or even in the police service”.


title: Bodyguard (British TV series)

text: A skit titled "Red Nose Bodyguard" was filmed in support of Comic Relief, featuring many cast members from the series as well as performances from Joanna Lumley, Adrian Dunbar and Sanjeev Bhaskar. The skit was first broadcast on "Red Nose Day 2019" on 15 March 2019.


title: The Visit (2015 American film)

text: The Visit is a 2015 American found-footage horror film written, co-produced and directed by M. Night Shyamalan and starring Olivia DeJonge, Ed Oxenbould, Deanna Dunagan, Peter McRobbie, and Kathryn Hahn. The film centers around two young siblings, teenage Becca and her younger brother Tyler who live with their single divorced mother, who had left home 15 years ago and is estranged from her parents. After finding their grandchildren online and wanting to meet them, the grandparents invite them to spend a week at their farmhouse, while their mother goes on a cruise with her boyfriend.


title: The Visit (2015 American film)

text: The film was released in North America on September 11, 2015, by Universal Pictures. It grossed $98.4 million worldwide against a $5 million production budget and received mixed to positive reviews from critics, with many calling it a return-to-form for Shyamalan's career.


title: The Visit (2015 American film)

text: Two siblings from Philadelphia, 15-year-old Becca and 13-year-old Tyler, prepare for a five-day visit with their grandparents while their divorced mother Loretta goes on a cruise with her boyfriend. Loretta reveals that she has not spoken to her parents in 15 years after marrying her high-school teacher, of whom her parents disapproved. Having never met their grandparents, the teens plan to record a documentary film about their visit using a camcorder.


title: The Visit (2015 American film)

text: Becca and Tyler meet their grandparents, referred to as "Nana" and "Pop Pop," at a train station. When they arrive at their isolated farmhouse, Becca and Tyler are instructed to never go into the basement because it contains mold, and that bedtime is at 9:30 every evening, after which they should not leave their room. Although at first, the grandparents seem pleasant, their behavior gradually becomes peculiar. The first night, an hour past curfew, Becca ventures downstairs for something to eat and sees Nana projectile vomiting. During the day, Nana creepily chases the teens who are playing hide-and-seek. Later, Tyler finds a pile of soiled diapers in the shed. In town, Pop Pop attacks a man he thinks is following them. When challenged, both grandparents are dismissive of each other's behavior. As the erratic behavior intensifies, Becca and Tyler's documentary-style film evolves into one of mystery-solving and evidence collection.


title: The Visit (2015 American film)

text: A woman Nana and Pop Pop helped in counseling brings a blueberry cobbler round to thank them, but following a confrontation, is not seen leaving. Concerned about her grandparents’ behavior, Becca checks the internet and concludes it is normal behavior for older people and a chat with Loretta reinforces this. Concerned about the events, Tyler decides to secretly film the living room during the night, but Nana discovers the camera and tries unsuccessfully to break into the children's locked bedroom with a knife.


title: The Visit (2015 American film)

text: Upon watching the footage of Nana with the knife, Becca and Tyler video call Loretta and beg her to collect them. Upon showing Loretta her parents while they are outside, she unnervingly declares they are not her parents. Realizing they have been staying with strangers, the teenagers try to leave the house, and suddenly discover Nana and Pop Pop hanged the woman from a tree, and forcefully encourage them to play Yahtzee. Later, Becca sneaks into the basement and finds the decomposed corpses of their real grandparents, along with uniforms from the psychiatric hospital at which they worked, revealing the impostors as escaped patients. Pop Pop grabs Becca and imprisons her in his bedroom with Nana, who tries to attack her in a psychotic fit. He then tortures Tyler by smearing his face with his dirty diaper. Following a struggle, Becca fatally stabs Nana with a glass shard from a broken mirror, then runs to the kitchen and attacks Pop Pop. As Pop Pop gains the upper hand, Tyler knocks him to the floor and kills him by repeatedly bashing his head with the refrigerator door. The teens escape outside unharmed, where they are met by their mother and police officers.


title: The Visit (2015 American film)

text: In the aftermath, Becca asks Loretta about what happened the day she left home 15 years ago. Loretta states that she had a major argument with her parents, during which she hit her mother and was then struck by her father. Loretta then left home and ignored their attempts to contact her. Loretta concludes that reconciliation was always possible had she wanted it. She then tells Becca not to hold on to anger over her father's abandonment, upon which she includes footage of him in the documentary after earlier saying she wouldn't do so.


title: The Visit (2015 American film)

text: After "The Last Airbender" and "After Earth" failed critically, Shyamalan funded "The Visit" by borrowing $5 million against his home. Filming began on February 19, 2014, under the preliminary title "Sundowning". Sundowning is the increased restlessness and confusion of some dementia patients during the afternoon and evening. Shyamalan's Blinding Edge Pictures was the production company, with Shyamalan and Marc Bienstock producing, and Steven Schneider and Ashwin Rajan as executive producers.


title: The Visit (2015 American film)

text: Although thousands of American children were auditioned for the film's two lead roles of Becca and Tyler, in what Shyamalan later characterized as a "total fluke", he eventually selected a pair of relatively unknown Australian juvenile actors, Olivia DeJonge and Ed Oxenbould, to portray the film's dual Philadelphia-native teenage protagonists.


title: The Visit (2015 American film)

text: Because Shyamalan wanted to avoid reinforcing his reputation for plot twists, "The Visit" was the director's first film in several years with such a surprise. Every Hollywood studio passed on the rough cut, and Shyamalan feared that he would lose the millions he had invested in the film. Shyamalan admitted that he had trouble keeping the tone for the film consistent during the editing phase, telling Bloody Disgusting that the first cut of the film resembled an art house film more than a horror film. A second cut went in the opposite direction and the film became a comedy. He eventually struck a middle balance and cut the film as a thriller, which, according to him, helped tie the different elements together as they "could stay in service of the movie". After revisions Universal Pictures agreed to distribute the film, and producer Jason Blum and his company Blumhouse Productions were included in the credits.


title: The Visit (2015 American film)

text: There is no film score for most of the film, as is common for found footage films. Paul Cantelon is credited for "epilogue theme". A few songs are heard during the film.


title: The Visit (2015 American film)

text: Universal began "The Visit"s theatrical wide release in the United States on September 11, 2015. On April 17, 2015, the first official trailer was released to theaters, attached to the film "Unfriended", and it was released online later that week. The film premiered in the Republic of Ireland on August 30, 2015, in a special screening that was attended by Shyamalan.


title: The Visit (2015 American film)

text: "The Visit" grossed over $65.2 million in the United States and Canada and over $33.2 million in other territories for a worldwide total of over $98.4 million, against a budget of $5 million. The film grossed $25.4 million in its opening weekend, finishing second at the box office behind "The Perfect Guy" by just $460,000. Shyamalan kept a list of Hollywood executives who had refused to distribute "The Visit", stating in 2018 that most had since been fired.


title: The Visit (2015 American film)

text: "The Visit" received generally positive reviews from critics. On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 68%, based on 231 reviews, with an average rating of 5.9/10. The site's critical consensus reads, ""The Visit" provides horror fans with a satisfying blend of thrills and laughs – and also signals a welcome return-to-form for writer-director M. Night Shyamalan." On Metacritic the film has a score of 55 out of 100 based on 34 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B−" on an A+ to F scale.


title: The Visit (2015 American film)

text: Scott Mendelson from "Forbes" called Shyamalan's film a "deliciously creepy and funny little triumph". He also wrote, ""The Visit" is the one we've been waiting for, folks. It's good. Oh my word, is it good. But more importantly, it is excellent in that specific way that reminds us why M. Night Shyamalan was once such a marvel. It is richly humanistic, filled with individually sketched characters that often sparkle with wit and surprising decency." In "The New York Times", Manohla Dargis described the film as "an amusingly-grim fairy tale". Shyamalan has gone back to basics, "with a stripped-down story and scale, a largely-unknown (excellent) cast and one of those classically-tinged tales of child peril that have reliably spooked audiences for generations". She, along with other critics, saw the film as a modern-day version of the classic fairytale Hansel and Gretel.


title: The Visit (2015 American film)

text: In his column for "The Observer", Mark Kermode panned the film, saying it may be worse than "Lady in the Water". He wrote, "Is it meant to be a horror film? Or a comedy? The publicity calls it 'an original thriller' but it is neither of those things. Only 'endurance test' adequately describes the ill-judged shenanigans that ensue." Mike McCahill gave the film one star (out of five) in his review for "The Guardian", and said it was "dull, derivative and flatly unscary."


title: Perfect Blue

text: The film deals with the blurring of the line between fantasy and reality, a commonly found theme in Kon's later works, such as "Paprika".


title: Perfect Blue

text: Mima Kirigoe, member of a J-pop idol group named "CHAM!", decides to leave the group to become a full-time actress. She gets stalked by an obsessive fan named Me-Mania, who is upset by her change from a clean-cut image. Following directions from a fan letter, Mima discovers a website called "Mima's Room" containing public diary entries written from her perspective, and which has her daily life and thoughts recorded in great detail. During her acting career, she is joined by manager and former pop-idol Rumi Hidaka, and her agent, Tadokoro. Mima confides in Rumi about "Mima's Room", but is advised to ignore it.


title: Perfect Blue

text: Mima's first job is a minor role in a television detective drama called "Double Bind", however, Tadokoro lobbies the producers of "Double Bind", and succeeds in securing Mima a larger part that involves a rape scene. Despite Rumi's objections, Mima accepts the role, although this leaves her severely affected. On her way home, she sees her reflection dressed in her former idol outfit. The reflection claims she's "the real Mima". Between the ongoing stresses of filming "Double Bind", her lingering regret over leaving "CHAM!", her paranoia of being stalked, and her increasing obsession with "Mima's Room", Mima begins to suffer from psychosis: in particular, struggling to distinguish real life from her work in show business, and having repeated apparently unreal sightings of her former self, "the real Mima".


title: Perfect Blue

text: Several people who had been involved in her acting are murdered. Mima finds evidence which makes her appear to be the prime suspect, and her mental instability makes her doubt her own memories and innocence, as she recalls brutally murdering pornographer Murano. Mima manages to finish shooting "Double Bind", the final scene of which reveals that her character killed and assumed the identity of her sister due to trauma-induced dissociative identity disorder. After the rest of the filming staff have left the studio, Me-Mania, acting on e-mailed instructions from "the real Mima" to "eliminate the impostor", attempts to rape and kill her, but Mima knocks him unconscious with a hammer.


title: Perfect Blue

text: Mima is found backstage by Rumi and taken back to Rumi's home, where she wakes up in a room modelled on Mima's own room, only to discover that Rumi was the culprit behind "Mima's Room", the serial murders, and the folie à deux that manipulated and scapegoated Me-Mania. Rumi previously developed a second personality who believed herself to be the "real Mima", using information from Mima's confiding in her as the basis for "Mima's Room". She also reveals her motives: she is displeased by Mima retiring from the idol industry and hence, seeks to destroy and replace her in order to 'redeem' her image. At wit's end, Rumi's "Mima" personality chases Mima through the city to murder her. Mima incapacitates Rumi with a mirror shard in self-defense but saves her from being killed by an oncoming truck. With that, Mima's hallucinations seem to be over.


title: Perfect Blue

text: Some time later, Mima is now a well-known actress and visits Rumi in a mental institution. Rumi's doctor says that she still believes she is a pop idol most of the time. Mima says she's learned a lot from her experience, thanks to Rumi. As Mima leaves the hospital, she overhears two nurses talking about her. They think she is a lookalike, as the real Mima Kirigoe would supposedly have no reason to visit a mental institution. As Mima enters her car, she smiles at herself in the rear-view mirror before declaring, "No, I'm real."


title: Perfect Blue

text: The following actors in the English adaptation are listed in the credits without specification to their respective roles: James Lyon, Frank Buck, David Lucas, Elliot Reynolds, Kermit Beachwood, Sam Strong, Carol Stanzione, Ty Webb, Billy Regan, Dari Mackenzie, George C. Cole, Syd Fontana, Sven Nosgard, Bob Marx, Devon Michaels, Robert Wicks and Mattie Rando.


title: Perfect Blue

text: It all started when Masao Maruyama, a producer at Madhouse at the time, who had appreciated Kon's work on the OVA "JoJo's Bizarre Adventure", contacted him to ask if he would be interested in directing in the fall of 1994.


title: Perfect Blue

text: The original author, Yoshikazu Takeuchi, allegedly first planned a live-action film based on his novel. However, due to funding difficulties, it was downgraded to direct-to-video and then direct-to-video animation.


title: Perfect Blue

text: When Kon received the initial offer, it was for an OVA project, so he made "Perfect Blue" as a video animation.


title: Perfect Blue

text: This work was originally made as a video animation for a narrow market, so it was expected to disappear as soon as a few people talked about it.


title: Perfect Blue

text: The fact that such a work was treated as a film, invited to many film festivals around the world, and released as a package in many countries was unexpected for those involved.


title: Perfect Blue

text: Psychological horror was not a mainstream genre in Japanese animation, and there was no precedent for it at the time, so it would normally have been rejected. So no one thought it would be a hit since it was just adopted by chance. That's why Kon was able to get the job.


title: Perfect Blue

text: By the time Kon was offered the job, the title "Perfect Blue" and the content, a story about a B-class idol and a perverted fan had already been set.


title: Perfect Blue

text: He hadn't read the original novel and only read the script for the film, which was said to be close to the original, and the script was never used in the actual film.


title: Perfect Blue

text: There is no play-within-a-play in the original story, nor is there a motif of blurring the boundary between dream and reality.


title: Perfect Blue

text: The first plot was a simple splatter/psycho-horror story about an idol girl that is attacked by a perverted fan who cannot tolerate her image change, and there were also many depictions of bleeding, so it was not suitable for Kon who does not like horror or idols.


title: Perfect Blue

text: This genre was overused, having already been dealt with in various works such as "Seven", "Basic Instinct", "The Silence of the Lambs", etc., and was also something that anime was not good at.


title: Perfect Blue

text: Since most of the works in that genre pursue how perverted or crazy the perpetrators, the murderers, are, Kon focused on "how the inner world of the protagonist, the victim, is broken by being targeted by the stalker" in order to outsmart the audience.


title: Perfect Blue

text: On the other hand, the play within a play, "Double Bind", is more like a parody than a straight psycho-horror, and he made it with the intention of criticizing Japanese TV dramas that are easily made by imitating Hollywood fads immediately.


title: Perfect Blue

text: Kon decided to take on the role of director because he couldn't resist the allure of directing for the first time, and because the original author allowed him to change the story as he liked as long as he kept three things in mind to make the film work: the main character is a B-grade idol, she has a rabid fan (stalker), and it is a horror film.


title: Perfect Blue

text: So he took some elements from the original work, such as the uniquely Japanese existence of idols, the "otaku" fans that surround them, and the stalkers that they have become more radical, and came up with as many ideas as possible with the scriptwriter, Sadayuki Murai, with the intention of using them to create a completely new story.


title: Perfect Blue

text: And the film needed a core motif, which had to be found not by the screenwriter or anyone else, but by the director, Kon himself.


title: Perfect Blue

text: So he came up with the motif of two things that should have a "borderline," such as "dream and reality," "memory and fact," and "oneself and others," becoming borderless and blending together, based on the short film Magnetic Rose (from Memories), for which he had written a script, and the suspended manga "Opus.


title: Perfect Blue

text: In the meantime, he came up with the idea that "a character more like 'me' than 'I', the protagonist, to the people around 'me' " is created on the Internet without 'my' knowledge.


title: Perfect Blue

text: The character is "the past me" for the protagonist, and this "other me" that should have existed only on the Internet has materialized due to external factors (the consciousness of the fans who want the protagonist to be like that) and internal factors (the protagonist's regret that she might have been more comfortable in the past). And then the composition that the character and the protagonist herself confronted emerged.


title: Perfect Blue

text: Kon decided to interpret the original story above as a story about an idol girl who broke down by a sudden change in her environment or by a stalker who targets her, and wrote a completely new script with Sadayuki Murai.


title: Perfect Blue

text: Initially, Murai wrote the first draft of the script, and Kon added or removed ideas from it. They spent a lot of time discussing, and many of the ideas came out of that.


title: Perfect Blue

text: The company that purchased the videogram and television rights to "Perfect Blue" before the film was completed advised the distributor to submit the film to the Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal, Canada, so that it could be released overseas first.


title: Perfect Blue

text: Since it was his first film, director Kon was still unknown. Therefore, the distributor introduced the film as the first directorial effort of a disciple of Katsuhiro Otomo, the creator of "Akira", which had already become a hit overseas.


title: Perfect Blue

text: Otomo is credited as a planning collaborator, but he never arranged for the company to ask Kon to direct the film, nor was he involved in the film. However, it seems that Otomo once advised the original author about the circumstances of the animation industry when he was touting around the animation project here and there.


title: Perfect Blue

text: At Fantasia, the film was so well received that a second screening was hurriedly arranged for those who could not see it, and it was eventually voted by the audience as the best international film.


title: Perfect Blue

text: Thanks to that, the distributor began to receive invitations from more than 50 film festivals, including Germany, Sweden, Australia, and South Korea.


title: Perfect Blue

text: The distributor began negotiations with distributors in various European countries and eventually succeeded in selling the film in major markets such as Spanish, French, Italian, English and German-speaking countries prior to its release in Japan.


title: Perfect Blue

text: The distributor was successful in obtaining permission from filmmakers Roger Corman and Irvin Kershner to use their comments in recommending the film free of charge worldwide. As a result, their comments were used on international theater flyers and in worldwide promotions.


title: Perfect Blue

text: Later, there was a rumor that director Darren Aronofsky had purchased the remake rights for "Perfect Blue". However, when he spoke with Kon in a magazine in 2001, he stated that he had to abandon the purchase of the rights due to various reasons.


title: Perfect Blue

text: He also said that it was a homage to the movie that his movie "Requiem for a Dream" had the same angles and shots as "Perfect Blue".


title: Perfect Blue

text: A live action film adaptation of the novel, "", was later made and released in 2002. This version was directed by Toshiki Satō from a screenplay by Shinji Imaoka and Masahiro Kobayashi.


title: Perfect Blue

text: "Perfect Blue" premiered on August 5, 1997, at the Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal, Canada, and had its general release in Japan on February 28, 1998.


title: Perfect Blue

text: The film was also released on UMD by Anchor Bay Entertainment on December 6, 2005. It featured the film in widescreen, leaving the film kept within black bars on the PSP's 16:9 screen. This release also contains no special features and only the English audio track. The film was released on Blu-ray and DVD in Region B by Anime Limited in 2013. In the U.S., "Perfect Blue" aired on the Encore cable television network and was featured by the Sci Fi Channel on December 10, 2007, as part of its Ani-Monday block. In Australia, "Perfect Blue" aired on the SBS Television Network on April 12, 2008, and previously sometime in mid 2007 in a similar timeslot.


title: Perfect Blue

text: The film had a theatrical re-release in the United States by GKIDS on September 6 and 10, 2018, with both English dubbed and subtitled screenings. GKIDS and Shout! Factory released the film on Blu-ray Disc in North America on March 26, 2019.


title: Perfect Blue

text: In an analysis of "Perfect Blue" and Kon's other works, professor Susan Napier states that ""Perfect Blue" announces its preoccupation with perception, identity, voyeurism, and performance – especially in relation to the female – right from its opening sequence. The perception of reality cannot be trusted, with the visual set up only to not be reality, especially as the psychodrama heights towards the climax." Napier also sees themes related to pop idols and their performances as impacting the gaze and the issue of their roles. Mima's madness results from her own subjectivity and attacks on her identity. The ties to Alfred Hitchcock's work are broken with the murder of her male controllers. "Otaku" describes the film as a "critique of the consumer society of contemporary Japan."


title: Perfect Blue

text: The film was well received critically in the festival circuit, winning awards at the 1997 Fantasia Festival in Montréal, and Fantasporto Film Festival in Portugal.


title: Perfect Blue

text: Critical response in the United States upon its theatrical release was also positive. , the film had an 83% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 52 reviews, with an average score of 7.3/10. The consensus stated, ""Perfect Blue" is overstylized, but its core mystery is always compelling, as are the visual theatrics." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 67 based on 17 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews." "Time" included the film on its Top 5 Anime film list, "Total Film" ranked "Perfect Blue" twenty-fifth on their list of greatest animated films, and /Film named it the scariest animated film ever. It also made the list for "Entertainment Weekly"s best movies never seen from 1991 to 2011. In 2022, "IndieWire" named "Perfect Blue" the twelfth best movie of the 1990s.


title: Perfect Blue

text: Dennis Harvey of "Variety" wrote that while the film "ultimately disappoints with its just-middling tension and underdeveloped scenario, it still holds attention by trying something different for the genre". Hoai-Tran Bui of "/Film" called "Perfect Blue" "deeply violent, both physically and emotionally", writing that "this is a film that will leave you with profound psychological scars, and the feeling that you want to take a long, long shower". Bob Graham of the "San Francisco Chronicle" noted the film's ability to "take the thriller, media fascination, psychological insight and pop culture and stand them all on their heads" via its "knowing, adult view of what seems to be a young-teenage paradise." Writing for Anime News Network, reviewer Tim Henderson described the film as "a dark, sophisticated psychological thriller" with its effect of "over-obsession funneled through early Internet culture" and produces a "reminder of how much celebrity fandom has evolved in only a decade". Reviewing the 2019 GKIDS Blu-Ray release, Neil Lumbard of Blu-Ray.com heralded "Perfect Blue" as "one of the greatest anime films of all time" and "a must-see masterpiece that helped to pave the way for more complex anime films to follow," while Chris Beveridge of "The Fandom Post" noted "this is not a film one can watch often overall, nor should you, but when you settle into it you put everything else away, turn down the lights, and savor an excellent piece of filmmaking."


title: Perfect Blue

text: Madonna incorporated clips from Perfect Blue into a remix of her song "What It Feels Like for a Girl" as a video interlude during her Drowned World Tour in 2001.


title: Perfect Blue

text: American filmmaker Darren Aronofsky acknowledged the similarities in his 2010 film "Black Swan", but denied that "Black Swan" was inspired by "Perfect Blue"; his previous film "Requiem for a Dream" features a remake of a scene from "Perfect Blue". A re-issued blog entry mentioned Aronofsky's film "Requiem for a Dream" as being among Kon's list of films he viewed for 2010. In addition, Kon blogged about his meeting with Aronofsky in 2001.


title: Perfect Blue

text: Seven Seas Entertainment has obtained the English-language publication rights for the original 1991 "Perfect Blue" story "Perfect Blue: Complete Metamorphosis" and the 2002 anthology sequel "Perfect Blue: Awaken from a Dream" in April 2017. They released them in February and April 2018, respectively.


title: J. D. Salinger

text: Jerome David Salinger (; January 1, 1919 January 27, 2010) was an American author best known for his 1951 novel "The Catcher in the Rye". Salinger got his start in 1940, before serving in World War II, by publishing several short stories in "Story" magazine. In 1948, his critically acclaimed story "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" appeared in "The New Yorker", which published much of his later work.


title: J. D. Salinger

text: "The Catcher in the Rye" was an immediate popular success; Salinger's depiction of adolescent alienation and loss of innocence was influential, especially among adolescent readers. The novel was widely read and controversial, and its success led to public attention and scrutiny. Salinger became reclusive, publishing less frequently. He followed "Catcher" with a short story collection, "Nine Stories" (1953); "Franny and Zooey" (1961), a volume containing a novella and a short story; and a volume containing two novellas, "" (1963). Salinger's last published work, the novella "Hapworth 16, 1924", appeared in "The New Yorker" on June 19, 1965.


title: J. D. Salinger

text: Afterward, Salinger struggled with unwanted attention, including a legal battle in the 1980s with biographer Ian Hamilton and the release in the late 1990s of memoirs written by two people close to him: Joyce Maynard, an ex-lover; and his daughter Margaret Salinger.


title: J. D. Salinger

text: Jerome David Salinger was born in Manhattan, New York, on January 1, 1919. His father, Sol Salinger, traded in Kosher cheese, and was from a family of Lithuanian-Jewish descent, Sol's father having been the rabbi for Adath Jeshurun Congregation in Louisville, Kentucky.


title: J. D. Salinger

text: Salinger's mother, Marie (née Jillich), was born in Atlantic, Iowa, of German, Irish, and Scottish descent, "but changed her first name to Miriam to appease her in-laws" and considered herself Jewish after marrying Salinger's father. Salinger did not learn that his mother was not of Jewish ancestry until just after he celebrated his Bar Mitzvah. He had one sibling, an older sister, Doris (1912–2001).


title: J. D. Salinger

text: In his youth, Salinger attended public schools on the West Side of Manhattan. In 1932, the family moved to Park Avenue, and Salinger enrolled at the McBurney School, a nearby private school. Salinger had trouble fitting in there and took measures to conform, such as calling himself Jerry. His family called him Sonny. At McBurney, he managed the fencing team, wrote for the school newspaper and appeared in plays. He "showed an innate talent for drama," though his father opposed the idea of his becoming an actor. His parents then enrolled him at Valley Forge Military Academy in Wayne, Pennsylvania. Salinger began writing stories "under the covers [at night], with the aid of a flashlight". He was the literary editor of the class yearbook, "Crossed Sabres", and participated in the glee club, aviation club, French club, and the Non-Commissioned Officers Club.


title: J. D. Salinger

text: Salinger's Valley Forge 201 file says he was a "mediocre" student, and his recorded IQ between 111 and 115 was slightly above average. He graduated in 1936. Salinger started his freshman year at New York University in 1936. He considered studying special education but dropped out the following spring. That fall, his father urged him to learn about the meat-importing business, and he went to work at a company in Vienna and Bydgoszcz, Poland. Surprisingly, Salinger went willingly, but he was so disgusted by the slaughterhouses that he firmly decided to embark on a different career. His disgust for the meat business and rejection of his father likely influenced his vegetarianism as an adult. He left Austria one month before it was annexed by Nazi Germany on March 12, 1938.


title: J. D. Salinger

text: In the fall of 1938, Salinger attended Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, and wrote a column called "skipped diploma," which included movie reviews. He dropped out after one semester. In 1939, Salinger attended the Columbia University School of General Studies in Manhattan, where he took a writing class taught by Whit Burnett, longtime editor of "Story" magazine. According to Burnett, Salinger did not distinguish himself until a few weeks before the end of the second semester, at which point "he suddenly came to life" and completed three stories. Burnett told Salinger that his stories were skillful and accomplished, accepting "The Young Folks," a vignette about several aimless youths, for publication in "Story". Salinger's debut short story was published in the magazine's March–April 1940 issue. Burnett became Salinger's mentor, and they corresponded for several years.


title: J. D. Salinger

text: In 1942, Salinger started dating Oona O'Neill, daughter of the playwright Eugene O'Neill. Despite finding her immeasurably self-absorbed (he confided to a friend that "Little Oona's hopelessly in love with little Oona"), he called her often and wrote her long letters. Their relationship ended when Oona began seeing Charlie Chaplin, whom she eventually married. In late 1941, Salinger briefly worked on a Caribbean cruise ship, serving as an activity director and possibly a performer.


title: J. D. Salinger

text: The same year, Salinger began submitting short stories to "The New Yorker". The magazine rejected seven of his stories that year, including "Lunch for Three," "Monologue for a Watery Highball," and "I Went to School with Adolf Hitler." But in December 1941, it accepted "Slight Rebellion off Madison," a Manhattan-set story about a disaffected teenager named Holden Caulfield with "pre-war jitters". When Japan carried out the attack on Pearl Harbor that month, the story was rendered "unpublishable." Salinger was devastated. The story appeared in "The New Yorker" in 1946. In the spring of 1942, several months after the U.S. entered World War II, Salinger was drafted into the army, where he saw combat with the 12th Infantry Regiment, 4th Infantry Division. He was present at Utah Beach on D-Day, in the Battle of the Bulge, and the Battle of Hürtgen Forest.


title: J. D. Salinger

text: During the campaign from Normandy into Germany, Salinger arranged to meet with Ernest Hemingway, a writer who had influenced him and was then working as a war correspondent in Paris. Salinger was impressed with Hemingway's friendliness and modesty, finding him more "soft" than his gruff public persona. Hemingway was impressed by Salinger's writing and remarked: "Jesus, he has a helluva talent." The two began corresponding; Salinger wrote to Hemingway in July 1946 that their talks were among his few positive memories of the war, and added that he was working on a play about Caulfield and hoped to play the part himself.


title: J. D. Salinger

text: Salinger was assigned to a counter-intelligence unit also known as the Ritchie Boys, in which he used his proficiency in French and German to interrogate prisoners of war. In April 1945 he entered Kaufering IV concentration camp, a subcamp of Dachau. Salinger earned the rank of Staff Sergeant and served in five campaigns. His war experiences affected him emotionally. He was hospitalized for a few weeks for combat stress reaction after Germany was defeated, and later told his daughter: "You never really get the smell of burning flesh out of your nose entirely, no matter how long you live." Both his biographers speculate that Salinger drew upon his wartime experiences in several stories, such as "For Esmé—with Love and Squalor", which is narrated by a traumatized soldier. Salinger continued to write while serving in the army, publishing several stories in slick magazines such as "Collier's" and "The Saturday Evening Post". He also continued to submit stories to "The New Yorker", but with little success; it rejected all of his submissions from 1944 to 1946, including a group of 15 poems in 1945.


title: J. D. Salinger

text: After Germany's defeat, Salinger signed up for a six-month period of "Denazification" duty in Germany for the Counterintelligence Corps. He lived in Weißenburg and, soon after, married Sylvia Welter. He brought her to the United States in April 1946, but the marriage fell apart after eight months and Sylvia returned to Germany. In 1972, Salinger's daughter Margaret was with him when he received a letter from Sylvia. He looked at the envelope, and, without reading it, tore it apart. It was the first time he had heard from her since the breakup, but as Margaret put it, "when he was finished with a person, he was through with them."


title: J. D. Salinger

text: In 1946, Whit Burnett agreed to help Salinger publish a collection of his short stories through "Story" Press's Lippincott Imprint. The collection, "The Young Folks", was to consist of 20 stories—ten, like the title story and "Slight Rebellion off Madison", already in print and ten previously unpublished. Though Burnett implied the book would be published and even negotiated Salinger a $1,000 advance, Lippincott overruled Burnett and rejected the book. Salinger blamed Burnett for the book's failure to see print, and the two became estranged.


title: J. D. Salinger

text: By the late 1940s, Salinger had become an avid follower of Zen Buddhism, to the point that he "gave reading lists on the subject to his dates" and arranged a meeting with Buddhist scholar D. T. Suzuki.


title: J. D. Salinger

text: In 1947, Salinger submitted a short story, "The Bananafish", to "The New Yorker." William Maxwell, the magazine's fiction editor, was impressed enough with "the singular quality of the story" that the magazine asked Salinger to continue revising it. He spent a year reworking it with "New Yorker" editors and the magazine published it, now titled "A Perfect Day for Bananafish", in the January 31, 1948, issue. The magazine thereon offered Salinger a "first-look" contract that allowed it right of first refusal on any future stories. The critical acclaim accorded "Bananafish" coupled with problems Salinger had with stories being altered by the "slicks" led him to publish almost exclusively in "The New Yorker." "Bananafish" was also the first of Salinger's published stories to feature the Glasses, a fictional family consisting of two retired vaudeville performers and their seven precocious children: Seymour, Buddy, Boo Boo, Walt, Waker, Zooey, and Franny. Salinger published seven stories about the Glasses, developing a detailed family history and focusing particularly on Seymour, the brilliant but troubled eldest child.


title: J. D. Salinger

text: In the early 1940s, Salinger confided in a letter to Burnett that he was eager to sell the film rights to some of his stories to achieve financial security. According to Ian Hamilton, Salinger was disappointed when "rumblings from Hollywood" over his 1943 short story "The Varioni Brothers" came to nothing. Therefore, he immediately agreed when, in mid-1948, independent film producer Samuel Goldwyn offered to buy the film rights to his short story "Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut." Though Salinger sold the story with the hope—in the words of his agent Dorothy Olding—that it "would make a good movie", critics lambasted the film upon its release in 1949. Renamed "My Foolish Heart" and starring Dana Andrews and Susan Hayward, the film departed to such an extent from Salinger's story that Goldwyn biographer A. Scott Berg called it a "bastardization." As a result of this experience, Salinger never again permitted film adaptations of his work. When Brigitte Bardot wanted to buy the rights to "A Perfect Day for Bananafish", Salinger refused but told his friend Lillian Ross, longtime staff writer for "The New Yorker," "She's a cute, talented, lost "enfante," and I'm tempted to accommodate her, "pour le sport.""


title: J. D. Salinger

text: In the 1940s, Salinger confided to several people that he was working on a novel featuring Holden Caulfield, the teenage protagonist of his short story "Slight Rebellion off Madison", and Little, Brown and Company published "The Catcher in the Rye" on July 16, 1951. The novel's plot is simple, detailing 16-year-old Holden's experiences in New York City after his fourth expulsion and departure from an elite college preparatory school. The book is more notable for the persona and testimonial voice of its first-person narrator, Holden. He serves as an insightful but unreliable narrator who expounds on the importance of loyalty, the "phoniness" of adulthood, and his own duplicity. In a 1953 interview with a high school newspaper, Salinger admitted that the novel was "sort of" autobiographical, explaining, "My boyhood was very much the same as that of the boy in the book, and it was a great relief telling people about it."


title: J. D. Salinger

text: Initial reactions to the book were mixed, ranging from "The New York Times" hailing "Catcher" as "an unusually brilliant first novel" to denigrations of the book's monotonous language and Holden's "immorality and perversion" (he uses religious slurs and freely discusses casual sex and prostitution). The novel was a popular success; within two months of its publication, it had been reprinted eight times. It spent 30 weeks on the "New York Times" Bestseller list. The book's initial success was followed by a brief lull in popularity, but by the late 1950s, according to his biographer Ian Hamilton, it had "become the book all brooding adolescents had to buy, the indispensable manual from which cool styles of disaffectation could be borrowed." It has been compared to Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." Newspapers began publishing articles about the "Catcher Cult", and the novel was banned in several countries—as well as some U.S. schools—because of its subject matter and what "Catholic World" reviewer Riley Hughes called an "excessive use of amateur swearing and coarse language". According to one angry parent's tabulation, 237 instances of "goddamn", 58 uses of "bastard", 31 "Chrissakes", and one incident of flatulence constituted what was wrong with Salinger's book.


title: J. D. Salinger

text: In the 1970s, several U.S. high school teachers who assigned the book were fired or forced to resign. A 1979 study of censorship noted that "The Catcher in the Rye" "had the dubious distinction of being at once the most frequently censored book across the nation and the second-most frequently taught novel in public high schools" (after John Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men"). The book remains widely read; as of 2004, it was selling about 250,000 copies per year, "with total worldwide sales over 10 million copies".


title: J. D. Salinger

text: Mark David Chapman, who shot singer-songwriter John Lennon in December 1980, was obsessed with the book. His main motive was his frustration with Lennon's lifestyle and public statements, as well as delusions he suffered related to Holden Caulfield.


title: J. D. Salinger

text: In the wake of its 1950s success, Salinger received (and rejected) numerous offers to adapt "The Catcher in the Rye" for the screen, including one from Samuel Goldwyn. Since its publication, there has been sustained interest in the novel among filmmakers, with Billy Wilder, Harvey Weinstein, and Steven Spielberg among those seeking to secure the rights. In the 1970s Salinger said, "Jerry Lewis tried for years to get his hands on the part of Holden." Salinger repeatedly refused, and in 1999 his ex-lover Joyce Maynard concluded, "The only person who might ever have played Holden Caulfield would have been J. D. Salinger."


title: J. D. Salinger

text: In a July 1951 profile in "Book of the Month Club News," Salinger's friend and "New Yorker" editor William Maxwell asked Salinger about his literary influences. He replied, "A writer, when he's asked to discuss his craft, ought to get up and call out in a loud voice just the names of the writers he loves. I love Kafka, Flaubert, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Proust, O'Casey, Rilke, Lorca, Keats, Rimbaud, Burns, E. Brontë, Jane Austen, Henry James, Blake, Coleridge. I won't name any living writers. I don't think it's right" (although O'Casey was in fact alive at the time). In letters from the 1940s, Salinger expressed his admiration of three living, or recently deceased, writers: Sherwood Anderson, Ring Lardner, and F. Scott Fitzgerald; Ian Hamilton wrote that Salinger even saw himself for some time as "Fitzgerald's successor". Salinger's "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" has an ending similar to that of Fitzgerald's story "May Day."


title: J. D. Salinger

text: Salinger wrote friends of a momentous change in his life in 1952, after several years of practicing Zen Buddhism, while reading "The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna" about Hindu religious teacher Sri Ramakrishna. He became an adherent of Ramakrishna's Advaita Vedanta Hinduism, which advocated celibacy for those seeking enlightenment, and detachment from human responsibilities such as family. Salinger's religious studies were reflected in some of his writing. The story "Teddy" features a ten-year-old child who expresses Vedantic insights. He also studied the writings of Ramakrishna's disciple Vivekananda; in "Hapworth 16, 1924", Seymour Glass calls him "one of the most exciting, original and best-equipped giants of this century."


title: J. D. Salinger

text: In 1953, Salinger published a collection of seven stories from "The New Yorker" (including "Bananafish"), as well as two the magazine had rejected. The collection was published as "Nine Stories" in the United States, and "For Esmé—with Love and Squalor" in the UK, after one of Salinger's best-known stories. The book received grudgingly positive reviews, and was a financial success—"remarkably so for a volume of short stories," according to Hamilton. "Nine Stories" spent three months on the "New York Times" Bestseller list. Already tightening his grip on publicity, Salinger refused to allow publishers of the collection to depict his characters in dust jacket illustrations, lest readers form preconceived notions of them.


title: J. D. Salinger

text: As "The Catcher in the Rye"'s notability grew, Salinger gradually withdrew from public view. In 1953, he moved from an apartment at 300 East 57th Street, New York, to Cornish, New Hampshire. Early in his time at Cornish he was relatively sociable, particularly with students at Windsor High School. Salinger invited them to his house frequently to play records and talk about problems at school. One such student, Shirley Blaney, persuaded Salinger to be interviewed for the high school page of "The Daily Eagle," the city paper. After the interview appeared prominently in the newspaper's editorial section, Salinger cut off all contact with the high schoolers without explanation. He was also seen less frequently around town, meeting only one close friend—jurist Learned Hand—with any regularity. He also began to publish less often. After "Nine Stories", he published only four stories in the rest of the decade, two in 1955 and one each in 1957 and 1959.


title: J. D. Salinger

text: In February 1955, at age 36, Salinger married Claire Douglas (b. 1933), a Radcliffe student who was art critic Robert Langton Douglas's daughter. They had two children, Margaret Salinger (also known as Peggy – born December 10, 1955) and Matthew "Matt" Salinger (born February 13, 1960). Margaret Salinger wrote in her memoir "Dream Catcher" that she believes her parents would not have married, nor would she have been born, had her father not read the teachings of Lahiri Mahasaya, a guru of Paramahansa Yogananda, which brought the possibility of enlightenment to those following the path of the "householder" (a married person with children). After their marriage, Salinger and Claire were initiated into the path of Kriya yoga in a small store-front Hindu temple in Washington, D.C., during the summer of 1955. They received a mantra and breathing exercise to practice for ten minutes twice a day.


title: J. D. Salinger

text: Salinger also insisted that Claire drop out of school and live with him, only four months shy of graduation, which she did. Certain elements of the story "Franny," published in January 1955, are based on his relationship with Claire, including her ownership of the book "The Way of the Pilgrim". Because of their isolated location in Cornish and Salinger's proclivities, they hardly saw other people for long stretches of time. Claire was also frustrated by Salinger's ever-changing religious beliefs. Though she committed herself to Kriya yoga, Salinger chronically left Cornish to work on a story "for several weeks only to return with the piece he was supposed to be finishing all undone or destroyed and some new 'ism' we had to follow." Claire believed "it was to cover the fact that Jerry had just destroyed or junked or couldn't face the quality of, or couldn't face publishing, what he had created."


title: J. D. Salinger

text: After abandoning Kriya yoga, Salinger tried Dianetics (the forerunner of Scientology), even meeting its founder L. Ron Hubbard, but according to Claire was quickly disenchanted with it. This was followed by an adherence to a number of spiritual, medical, and nutritional belief systems, including Christian Science, Edgar Cayce, homeopathy, acupuncture, and macrobiotics.


title: J. D. Salinger

text: Salinger's family life was further marked by discord after his first child was born; according to Margaret's book, Claire felt that her daughter had replaced her in Salinger's affections. The infant Margaret was sick much of the time, but Salinger, having embraced Christian Science, refused to take her to a doctor. According to Margaret, her mother admitted to her years later that she went "over the edge" in the winter of 1957 and had made plans to murder her and then commit suicide. Claire had supposedly intended to do it during a trip to New York City with Salinger, but she instead acted on a sudden impulse to take Margaret from the hotel and run away. After a few months, Salinger persuaded her to return to Cornish.


title: J. D. Salinger

text: The Salingers divorced in 1967, with Claire getting custody of the children. Salinger remained close to his family. He built a new house for himself across the road and visited frequently.


title: J. D. Salinger

text: Salinger published "Franny and Zooey" in 1961, and "" in 1963. Each book contained two short stories or novellas published in "The New Yorker" between 1955 and 1959, and were the only stories Salinger had published since "Nine Stories." On the dust jacket of "Franny and Zooey," Salinger wrote, in reference to his interest in privacy: "It is my rather subversive opinion that a writer's feelings of anonymity-obscurity are the second most valuable property on loan to him during his working years."


title: J. D. Salinger

text: On September 15, 1961, "Time" magazine devoted its cover to Salinger. In an article that profiled his "life of recluse", the magazine reported that the Glass family series "is nowhere near completion ... Salinger intends to write a Glass trilogy." But Salinger published only one other thing after that: "Hapworth 16, 1924", a novella in the form of a long letter by seven-year-old Seymour Glass to his parents from summer camp. His first new work in six years, the novella took up most of the June 19, 1965, issue of "The New Yorker", and was universally panned by critics. Around this time, Salinger had isolated Claire from friends and relatives and made her—in Margaret Salinger's words—"a virtual prisoner." Claire separated from him in September 1966; their divorce was finalized on October 3, 1967.


title: J. D. Salinger

text: In 1972, at age 53, Salinger had a relationship with 18-year-old Joyce Maynard that lasted for nine months. Maynard was already an experienced writer for "Seventeen" magazine. "The New York Times" had asked her to write an article that, when published as "An Eighteen-Year-Old Looks Back On Life" on April 23, 1972, made her a celebrity. Salinger wrote her a letter warning about living with fame. After exchanging 25 letters, Maynard moved in with Salinger the summer after her freshman year at Yale University. Maynard did not return to Yale that fall, and spent ten months as a guest in Salinger's house. The relationship ended, he told Margaret at a family outing, because Maynard wanted children, and he felt he was too old. In her autobiography, Maynard paints a different picture, saying Salinger abruptly ended the relationship, sent her away and refused to take her back. She had dropped out of Yale to be with him, even forgoing a scholarship. Maynard came to find out that Salinger had begun several relationships with young women by exchanging letters. One of them was his last wife, a nurse who was already engaged to be married to someone else when she met him. In a 2021 "Vanity Fair" article, Maynard wrote,


title: J. D. Salinger

text: While he was living with Maynard, Salinger continued to write in a disciplined fashion, a few hours every morning. According to Maynard, by 1972 he had completed two new novels. In a 1974 interview with "The New York Times", he said, "There is a marvelous peace in not publishing ... I like to write. I love to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure." According to Maynard, he saw publication as "a damned interruption". In her memoir, Margaret Salinger describes the detailed filing system her father had for his unpublished manuscripts: "A red mark meant, if I die before I finish my work, publish this 'as is,' blue meant publish but edit first, and so on." A neighbor said that Salinger told him that he had written 15 unpublished novels.


title: J. D. Salinger

text: Salinger's final interview was in June 1980 with Betty Eppes of "The Baton Rouge Advocate", which has been represented somewhat differently, depending on the secondary source. By one account, Eppes was an attractive young woman who misrepresented herself as an aspiring novelist, and managed to record audio of the interview as well as take several photographs of Salinger, both without his knowledge or consent. In a separate account, emphasis is placed on her contact by letter writing from the local post office, and Salinger's personal initiative to cross the bridge to meet Eppes, who during the interview made clear she was a reporter and did, at the close, take pictures of Salinger as he departed. According to the first account, the interview ended "disastrously" when a passerby from Cornish attempted to shake Salinger's hand, at which point Salinger became enraged. A further account of the interview published in "The Paris Review", purportedly by Eppes, has been disowned by her and separately ascribed as a derived work of "Review" editor George Plimpton. In an interview published in August 2021, Eppes said that she did record her conversation with Salinger without his knowledge but that she was plagued by guilt over it. She said that she had turned down several lucrative offers for the tape, the only known recording of Salinger's voice, and that she had changed her will to stipulate that it be placed along with her body in the crematorium.


title: J. D. Salinger

text: Salinger was romantically involved with television actress Elaine Joyce for several years in the 1980s. The relationship ended when he met Colleen O'Neill (b. June 11, 1959), a nurse and quiltmaker, whom he married around 1988. O'Neill, 40 years his junior, once told Margaret Salinger that she and Salinger were trying to have a child. They did not succeed.


title: J. D. Salinger

text: Although Salinger tried to escape public exposure as much as possible, he struggled with unwanted attention from the media and the public. Readers of his work and students from nearby Dartmouth College often came to Cornish in groups, hoping to catch a glimpse of him. In May 1986 Salinger learned that the British writer Ian Hamilton intended to publish a biography that made extensive use of letters Salinger had written to other authors and friends. Salinger sued to stop the book's publication and in "Salinger v. Random House" the court ruled that Hamilton's extensive use of the letters, including quotation and paraphrasing, was not acceptable since the author's right to control publication overrode the right of fair use. Hamilton published "In Search of J.D. Salinger: A Writing Life (1935–65)" about his experience in tracking down information and the copyright fights over the planned biography.


title: J. D. Salinger

text: An unintended consequence of the lawsuit was that many details of Salinger's private life, including that he had spent the last 20 years writing, in his words, "Just a work of fiction ... That's all" became public in the form of court transcripts. Excerpts from his letters were also widely disseminated, most notably a bitter remark written in response to Oona O'Neill's marriage to Charlie Chaplin:


title: J. D. Salinger

text: In 1995, Iranian director Dariush Mehrjui released the film "Pari", an unauthorized loose adaptation of "Franny and Zooey". The film could be distributed legally in Iran since it has no copyright relations with the United States, but Salinger had his lawyers block a planned 1998 screening of it at Lincoln Center. Mehrjui called Salinger's action "bewildering", explaining that he saw his film as "a kind of cultural exchange".


title: J. D. Salinger

text: In 1996, Salinger gave a small publisher, Orchises Press, permission to publish "Hapworth 16, 1924". It was to be published that year and listings for it appeared at Amazon.com and other booksellers. After a flurry of articles and critical reviews of the story appeared in the press, the publication date was pushed back repeatedly before apparently being canceled altogether. Amazon anticipated that Orchises would publish the story in January 2009, but at the time of his death, it was still listed as "unavailable".


title: J. D. Salinger

text: In June 2009, Salinger consulted lawyers about the forthcoming U.S. publication of an unauthorized sequel to "The Catcher in the Rye", "", by Swedish book publisher Fredrik Colting under the pseudonym J. D. California. The book appears to continue the story of Holden Caulfield. In Salinger's novel, Caulfield is 16, wandering the streets of New York after being expelled from private school; the California book features a 76-year-old man, "Mr. C", musing on having escaped his nursing home. Salinger's New York literary agent Phyllis Westberg told Britain's "Sunday Telegraph", "The matter has been turned over to a lawyer". The fact that little was known about Colting and the book was set to be published by a new publishing imprint, Windupbird Publishing, gave rise to speculation in literary circles that the whole thing might be a hoax. District court judge Deborah Batts issued an injunction that prevented the book from being published in the U.S. Colting filed an appeal on July 23, 2009; it was heard in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals on September 3, 2009. The case was settled in 2011 when Colting agreed not to publish or otherwise distribute the book, e-book or any other editions of "60 Years Later" in the U.S. or Canada until "The Catcher in the Rye" enters the public domain, to refrain from using the title "Coming through the Rye", dedicate the book to Salinger or refer to "The Catcher in the Rye". Colting remains free to sell the book in the rest of the world.