Announced last night and already pretty much the upcoming movie we’re most looking forward to, Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master will star Philip Seymour Hoffman in the title role as a charismatic dude who founds his own religion in 1952. The film’s primary action will allegedly revolve around the clash between Hoffman’s character and his second-in-command, a twentysomething guy named Freddie who comes to question what his boss is selling. So, even though Scientology’s Wikipedia entry makes no mention of any troublemakers named Freddie, can we safely assume that the film will be a thinly veiled, Bowfinger-y slap at L. Ron Hubbard?
We wonder if, to any degree, the idea for Master was inspired by Anderson’s friendship with Jeremy Blake, the visual artist with whom he collaborated on 2002’s Punch Drunk Love. As you’ll recall, Blake and girlfriend Theresa Duncan took their own lives in 2007 under mysterious circumstances, with Duncan alleging they’d been harassed by Scientologists after the couple’s friend Beck told them he was thinking about leaving the religion (Beck, of course, denied this). So we guess we probably shouldn’t look for “Devil’s Haircut†on The Master’s soundtrack.
We wonder if, to any degree, the idea for Master was inspired by Anderson’s friendship with Jeremy Blake, the visual artist with whom he collaborated on 2002’s Punch Drunk Love. As you’ll recall, Blake and girlfriend Theresa Duncan took their own lives in 2007 under mysterious circumstances, with Duncan alleging they’d been harassed by Scientologists after the couple’s friend Beck told them he was thinking about leaving the religion (Beck, of course, denied this). So we guess we probably shouldn’t look for “Devil’s Haircut†on The Master’s soundtrack.
Anderson working on ‘Master’ [Variety]