By Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest film wrapped shooting not too long ago, and a promo poster for it was available at the American Film Market. It’s slightly less black than a Spinal Tap record (which is, of course, none more black), and it’s much starker than the teaser poster they had at Cannes.
The film has gone back and forth between being called The Master and being untitled. Even the film’s production designer, Jack Fisk, referred to the again-untitled film as The Master in a recent interview with a weekly newspaper in Charlottesville. (Best line from that interview: “[David] Lynch is ‘like Jimmy Stewart from Mars,’ according to Fisk. ‘He’s not strange.'”)
The film centers around a charismatic intellectual named Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman) who starts his own religion after World War II. There was a lot of talk about the film’s allusions to L. Ron Hubbard and the Church of Scientology, though it’s unclear how much of the script Anderson reworked while the film was looking for a studio.
After the cut is a conversation between Harlan Ellison and Robin Williams about L. Ron Hubbard, because it’s somewhat appropriate.
[Via Collider, Indie Wire, The Hook]
After The Master/untitled, Anderson’s next film will be an adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s latest novel, Inherent Vice. This may lure the reclusive Pynchon out into the public just a bit more, leading to another guest appearance on The Simpsons and maybe a 33⅓ book on one of Lotion’s albums.
