baby it's cold outside

P.T. Anderson vs. Scientologists →

You would think that Paul Thomas Anderson, the mensch responsible for the best movie in recent memory (There Will Be Blood), would have zero fuckin’ problemo getting his next masterpiece impregnated by reality.

Allow me to rephrase: You would have thought that last year, before the entire project was nearly killed by Hollywood’s reigning Scientologist wackjobs. Anderson’s new project, The Master, already has a real-life conspiratorial back-story stricken by paranoia and cult madness that could rival the film itself – which is widely referred to as a “thinly veiled” damnation of L. Ron Hubbard and his entire crackpot sci-fi gospel. But before we get into round two of Scientologists vs Anderson, let’s remember what allegedly happened last year:

Before Anderson’s screenplay was leaked all over the web, The Master was set up at Universal Pictures. Let it be known that Universal Pictures is the studio responsible for funding the upcoming $250 million adaptation of the ’80s boardgame Battleship starring Rihanna, another upcoming $250 million movie starring Keanu Reeves as a Samurai and a recent $50 million Zac Efron flop. These stupid numbers are stupid but important, since Anderson’s movie was budgeted at only $30 million, with Phillip Seymour Hoffman in the lead as Hubbard’s facsimile. Not only was it going to be cheap to make, it was triple-sure to make that money back and would definitely win Oscar nominations.

But something weird happened. Suddenly, Universal had cold feet. The budget was much too high. It needed to be lowered, to say, $10-15 million. Then, Universal outright refused to make the movie at all, even when Reese Witherspoon and Jeremy Renner (fresh off Best Picture winner The Hurt Locker) joined the cast as Hoffman’s wife and his drifter-convert protege, respectively. Luckily, the film was saved by a smaller studio called River Road, who knew paydirt when they saw it.

But then shit got really, really weird — weirder than taking an E-meter reading while high on bath salts.

Almost simultaneously, Witherspoon and Renner both jumped ship. Maybe they had Oscar allergies — except, if you looked at their reasons/excuses for bailing, the fingerprints of Tom Cruise and Black Tom Cruise (Will Smith) were all over them. Renner cited scheduling conflicts after he was handpicked by Cruise to costar in his extremely unnecessary third sequel to Mission Impossible. Why would Renner, already set to star in The Avengers, want to play sidecar in a beat franchise? Well, Cruise also offered Renner the reins to the entire franchise in subsequent sequels.

Witherspoon also cited conflicts. Suddenly, her production company, Type A Films, had a lucrative new deal with Overbrook Entertainment, a production company at Sony that’s conveniently operated by Will Smith. (If you didn’t know, Tom Cruise is the second coming of Scientology, but his buddy Will Smith smartly pays it closer to the vest. Still, Smith oversees a gigantic Scientology Academy in Calabasas, California.) For a while there, it looked as if Anderson would not be able to make a single film in the time that Kevin Smith has made two or three. Even in Hollywood, a religion semi-openly putting the kibosh on a well respected director’s work is unheard of.

And cut to the present: A billionaire heiress named Megan Ellison has decided to personally finance Paul Thomas Anderson’s Scientology film. The cast quickly filled up again, with Amy Adams and Joaquin Phoenix taking the place of Witherspoon and Renner. But rumors of the persistent interference and pressure of Scientologists on the production continues and is slowing becoming a media talking point. The producers and crew of Anderson’s film are said to be so sketched out that Cruise and Smith’s nutty religious connections will kibosh the film a second time, that they are now publicly denying any similarity between the movie and Scientology.

Well, that’s all! Gotta go! I think I just saw John Travolta’s face in my window!

Via YMFY