Paul Haggis isn’t just the bald film director responsible for writing the worst James Bond film ever, you know.

He’s also a Scientologist. Or at least he was a Scientologist. Paul Haggis has just decided to leave Scientology, and he’s decided to do it by basically writing a letter to Scientology spokesman Tommy Davis saying that Scientology is stupid and it doesn’t like gay people and it’s awful and that all Scientologists have stinky bums, or something.

So there goes any hope of Paul Haggis working with John Travolta or that terrible woman from King Of Queens in the future. He’ll probably survive.

We wouldn’t like to be in Tom Cruise’s shoes this morning. That’s mainly because Tom Cruise probably has tiny impish feet and wearing such ridiculously small shoes would no doubt result in us developing an outbreak of bunions, but it’s also because Paul Haggis has just left Scientology – which means that everyone’s going to talk about Tom Cruise and his crazy made-up religion again.

You might not know who Paul Haggis is, but there’s a very good chance that at some point you’ve rolled your eyes during one of his films and muttered “Christ, this is all a bit bloody heavy, isn’t it?” to yourself. Paul is the writer of Crash, Million Dollar Baby, Letters From Iwo Jima, In the Valley of Elah and Quantum Of Solace – which should warn you that, if Paul Haggis has a point to make, then he’s going to repeatedly bludgeon you over the head with it for two hours until you’re a weeping wreck begging for forgiveness.

And the point Paul Haggis is making now is roughly “Boo, stupid Scientology”. Despite being a member of the Church of Scientology for 35 years, Paul Haggis has decided to leave over the religion’s support of Proposition 8. And, like all people when they leave a position, Haggis decided to write a great big angry letter explaining why he was leaving and sent it to just about everyone on the planet. Here’s an excerpt:

“As you know, for ten months now I have been writing to ask you to make a public statement denouncing the actions of the Church of Scientology of San Diego. Their public sponsorship of Proposition 8, a hate-filled legislation that succeeded in taking away the civil rights of gay and lesbian citizens of California – rights that were granted them by the Supreme Court of our state – shames us… The church’s refusal to denounce the actions of these bigots, hypocrites and homophobes is cowardly. I can think of no other word. Silence is consent, Tommy. I refuse to consent.”

What’s more, Paul Haggis also claims that Scientology told his wife to break off all contact with her parents “because of something absolutely trivial they supposedly did twenty-five years ago when they resigned from the church”. But that’s not important. What’s important is that Paul Haggis has quit Scientology, and that means that the church will probably end up leaking his darkest secrets to the world before long.

Or maybe he has a worse fate in store. Maybe he’s going to be the subject of some of Kirstie Alley’s batty old barely-comprehensible Twitter entries. Then he’ll be done for.

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