Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

The Bare-Faced Messiah Interviews
Interview with Nancy Dincalci,
Oakland, California, 29 Aug 86
I got involved [in Scientology] in '74 when I first came to California. I worked as an auditor at ASHO,
joined the Sea Org and went to La Quinta in '77. I had quit a job in Washington DC and wanted to
travel.
I was expecting a very wise person who had overcome a lot of the limitations of being a human
being. the idea of going to be an auditor training under him was almost in the cast of meeting
someone superhuman. It was every auditor's dream. When I was first there he came down to
speak with us and he seemed pretty charming. He'd been hiding out for a while and had long hair
down to his shoulders and a big beard. He'd come down to talk to us for about an hour at a time. I
was still pretty taken in. His hair was white grey. He was wearing a cowboy hat. He looked a little bit
like a cowboy, wearingg pretty casual clothes.
The movies hadn't started when we arrived. There weren't that many people at La Quinta, it was still
getting set up to some degree. People were doing different projects. Our little group, maybe 12 of
us, were doing auditing training, with a lot of sec checking because of security. There were a lot of
drills - what if a reporter came, what if someone came to serve a subpoena? We all had alibis,
different identities. Others were doing building projects, communications, setting up a household
for him and so on.
It went on for about 4 months. He left and came back. There was a bit of a scare. That FBI raid was
then and he took off in the night very suddenly. We spent a lot of time going through everything,
cutting out any reference to him or Mary Sue or the GO [Guardian's Office], there was a lot of fear
they had found out the location of this place. He was a fugitive. He was gone for 6 months or so,
Mary Sue was there but he wasn't, so it was a pretty laid-back period. It was an easy going
schedule. There was still a bit of tension about security, if anyone wanted to leave you had to try and
talk them out of it.
Then he came back and started movies. I was a make-up artist. Everyone given a job. He controlled
everything, there was really not a detail he wouldn't get into. On the make-up, he would be into the
exact shade of pancake make-up on a person's face; should the hair be a little mussed up, every
aspect of the shot would involve him. He had a great time sitting there in his director's chair giving
everyone orders. Everything about him was taken seriously. It wasn't always sombre, there could
be light moments. When - if - he was in a good mood he'd tell stories or someone would make
jokes. But you could never be frivolous around him. Most of time there were a lot of upsets.
In my opinion it was impossible to please him. He saw things that were not there, and changed his
mind. If something was a certain colour he would scream and yell about why it was that colour.
I did quite well with him, but had a couple of problems. He got annoyed with the messengers for
something they'd done wrong, so he re-wrote the script so they would be cast as African
negresses. It was not very pleasant for them, as they had cotton stuffed up the nose and cheeks.
There was a pic in a book of the colour of skin tone. I didn't have any colours quite like that, I didn't
assume it had to be taken literally, I mean literally. That was the big major thing. The colour was
wrong. Are you colour blind? Can you get it right? He started to go, "You, you..". I looked him in the