TORONTO -- Oscar-winning director Alex Gibney didn't have to wait for anyone to actually see his new documentary "Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief" before Scientologists were already denouncing it.

The Church of Scientology officially dismissed the eye-opening doc as a "one-sided false diatribe," built on the testimony of "bitter, vengeful apostates." The church has also claimed that Gibney and HBO "stonewalled 14 requests by the church to offer relevant information, with more than 25 individuals with first-hand information eager to speak."

Prominent church member John Travolta, meanwhile, told the Tampa Bay Times he wouldn't even bother watching something "so decidedly negative."

"Most of the criticism has been from people who have heard about (the movie) but refuse to see it, which I find much more interesting and much more in line with the prison of belief," Gibney said this week in Toronto.

"John Travolta came out and denounced the film but said at the same time that he hadn't seen it and had no intention of seeing it.

"To me, that's very much like somebody who doesn't want to leave the confines of his cell even though the door is open."

While "Going Clear" aired in the U.S. on HBO in March, it's only finding a Canadian release this Friday -- in select theatres, on VOD and iTunes.

The film was based on a detailed tome by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Lawrence Wright, which was never available for sale in Canada over lawsuit concerns.

Certainly, the film caused a stir south of the border. HBO reported that 6.8 million people watched "Going Clear," making it the network's second-most watched documentary of all time.

CP: How has the church changed since David Miscavige took over after L. Ron Hubbard's death in 1986?

Gibney: A lot of people think it's changed for the worse, and that David Miscavige became more ruthless than L. Ron Hubbard. I'm not sure that's really true.

A lot of members of the church speak fondly of Hubbard in a way that they never spoke fondly of David Miscavige -- he's not a very likable character.

But all the ideas that are most destructive, that Miscavige has followed so ruthlessly, were Hubbard's ideas: the idea of disconnection, the idea of (critics being) "fair game." It was Hubbard who was throwing people overboard (on church ships), sometimes their hands and feet bound, to punish them.

Baked into the theology of his religion was the idea of cruelty. And Miscavige just rationalized that.

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CP: The film documents intimidation tactics the church uses against dissenters. Were you worried?

Gibney: You'd have to be crazy not to be.

Since the film has come out, I have been on the receiving end of a lot of verbal abuse, and some documentaries that they made about me. But it's the people who are in the film who have really been subject to the more aggressive stuff: threats upon their physical person; a number of them, particularly the women, are being followed by private investigators who are intimidating them; threats of property being taken away, lives destroyed.

They took out full page ads in the New York Times and the L.A. Times with my picture in the ad.

They've made bold statements critical of me in language that is so full of vitriol and hate. I often wonder what kind of religion is so prone to that kind of hate?

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CP: The abuse you allege took place in the church -- would big celebrity followers like Tom Cruise know about that happening?

Gibney: He knows about it. Cruise claims to have read (Wright)'s book and says he found it "boring."

But we know he knows because Cruise's lawyer received a very detailed breakdown of the abuses inside the church, and Cruise's lawyer has an obligation to pass that onto him.

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CP: You've spoken out against the church's tax-exempt status in the United States. Can you realistically expect change?

Gibney: There's a possibility. But somebody in the IRS would have to grow some balls, because it'll be a fight. The church will take them on hammer and tong. And it'll be expensive.

But it seems wrong for them not to take it. I'm told that a lot of people inside the IRS were deeply embarrassed by what was revealed in the film.