Ghost of a flea: The Master

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December 04, 2009

The Master

Paul Thomas Anderson is set to direct The Master featuring Philip Seymour Hoffman as the Master, a "charismatic intellectual" who starts up a new religion in 1952. While Variety is careful to suggest this is not a film about Scientology (or the Mormons?) but "the need to believe in a higher power, the choice of which one to embrace and the point at which a belief system graduates into a religion" New York Magazine is less sanguine, citing Philip Seymour Hoffman's physical resemblance to L. Ron Hubbard - and that Scientology (and not Mormonism) was founded in, for example, 1952.

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).

Posted by Ghost of a flea at December 4, 2009 07:53 AM

Comments

Oh man. Not another one!

Posted by: agent bedhead at December 4, 2009 03:02 PM