The Master - Spoiler-Free Thread

[MacGuffin]

It's all part of our elaborate April Fool's Day joke.

[Ravi]

I don't. I hope PTA works with Elswit for the rest of his career. They are perfect together. 

You wouldn't be curious to see PTA work with, say, Roger Deakins?

[Stefen]

Nope.

Maybe Christopher Doyle, but only if Elswit wasn't available. I just think they're too good together. The days when they stop making my favorite looking films is the day they should part.

[Derek]

I think he could still make great looking movies without Elswit. Another DP but bring something quite new and really inspired.

I don't want this to be seen as I'm in favor of dumping Elswit, especially coming off the Oscar. But I won't deny that I'd be really interested in what a PTA picture shot by a Deakins, Richardson, Spinotti, etc.. would look like.

[Pubrick]

how many PTAs can dance on the head of a pin?

[72teeth]

82

[Stefen]

lol.

[Find Your Magali]

I wonder if the movie's era and setting would lend itself to having Jack Fisk aboard again.

And I wonder if that could dovetail to a nice supporting role for Sissy Spacek, when the time comes. Would be cool to see her in PTA film.

[modage]

PROBABLE SPOILERS

Script Review: Untitled, by P.T. Anderson

January 31, 2010 at 8:37 pm (Film News, Script Reviews)

Heyo, I’m back. Computer is fixed and I’ve quite a few things to review (The Last Station and some classics I caught over the past week+). I’ve also gotten into the habit of reading scripts and fortunately for me, I have connections and was able to read the Untitled Scientology script by Paul Thomas Anderson. One of the few in the world, I believe, so I’m quite content with myself.

PLOT SYNOPSIS: Freddie, a young man in his mid-20s, has his appendix burst. Not very much a man too concerned for family, he found his calling in the Navy. With a burst appendix, he can no longer handle the rigorous tasks the Navy calls upon their men. Isolated and looking for his calling, Freddie becomes an alcoholic at the snap of finger; so much so that he brews his own ale — an ale so strong that, when in southern US, a poor immigrant worker drinks ‘an unbalanced quantity’, goes into convulsions and is assumed to have died while Freddie scampers away from the site.

Afraid of being caught, Freddie hops aboard the first vessel he spots. Half drunk out of his mind, half worried for his life and half looking for work, this type of calculation indicates the mess that is Freddie. Aboard the ship, a man that goes by Master (the role Philip Seymour Hoffman is set to portray) begins to guide Freddie. He asks him odd questions and tries to rid the young man of his dependencies. Master is an allegorical L. Ron Hubbard, for the curious.

Master has a family — a wife and four children (three daughters, one about to get married, and a son) — and a group of followers that adhere to everything he says. He’s also skeptical of strangers, which allows for quite a frantic… but usually composed character. It will be vastly interesting to see what Philip Seymour Hoffman does with the role — it’s his most varied and unique to date.

OVERALL IMPRESSION: The script was mashed together rather haphazardly. There’s plentiful segments that say “Insert Dialogue at a Later Date” or varients of that. The composition of it all is rather amateur as well. If one were to pick this script up, they’d assume this person had no script writing program or spell check (there are a fair share of spelling errors).

The story itself is very peculiar. There’s sexual perversion in parts, extreme moments of eccentricity from Master, lots of interesting theories about life and the purpose of it, and even some humor slighting Scientology. If one expects this story to completely laugh at Scientology, think again. It’s more demonstrative of loneliness and why someone would find solace in the least likely of religions as opposed to a flagrant foul against the belief. It’s partially jumbled in what it means to preach, script-wise, but I believe that this will all find further clarity with a the script revisions that follows and the inevitable direction of the feature.

For the lead role of Freddie, I imagined a Paul Dano type. Perhaps a little bit bulkier as one would imagine a slightly bloated gut to accompany alcoholism and a burst appendix. Someone mostly scrawny and who can play off drunkenness well will do favorably in this part. Hoffman as Master is a wicked choice — expect a second Oscar win for what he puts himself through. The rest of the cast is rather plain… it’s like a The Last King of Scotland in that sense: two major characters and everyone else just, well, there.

It reads at 124 pages. If you go the traditional minute per page, you get just over two hours. Of course, I think that’s too simply a strategy, so I go by what I feel it is. The first 10-15 pages are heavily descriptive, so I imagined them slightly longer. I figure this will be about 135 minutes long without credits. So perhaps 140 minutes overall.

FINAL WORD: Poorly written, but excellently constructed, Untitled Scientology is one of the better scripts I’ve ever read (not too big a feat, but…). In addition, it has an ending that will keep you thinking — I know it has for me, and I read it two days ago. So I suppose I’ll toss this script an 8/10. PTA’s assembling of it all might raise it to a 9 when all is said and done. Yeah, it’s good. And no, you may not have the script.

http://forizzer69.wordpress.com/2010/01/31/script-review-untitled-by-p-t-anderson/

via The Playlist: http://theplaylist.blogspot.com/2010/02/paul-thomas-andersons-untitled.html


Is this a fake?

[Pubrick]

that guy's a fucking idiot.

the only way to know if the script is legit (cos god knows this retard has no idea what he's talking about) is at the very least to see if it contains some PTA trademarks. even tho it's easy to fake, little things like when he capatlises the first letters of a key phrase, "What Can We Forgive?" that kind of thing.

the only usable bit of information to be had from this scumbag of a reviewer is that there exists a script out there and we should find it.

 if it turns out to be fake, which it may very well be, based on the evidence highlighted by theplaylist (that it has the word SCIENTOLOGY in the title --- uhh pta wouldn't be that fucking obvious), then it brings up an interesting rhetorical question: how easy is it to just post some fan fiction and watch everyone go nuts over it? better yet -- how cool is it that PTA might actually read it or have someone give him the gist of it, cos he wants to know if it really DID leak? that's awesome. he might actually steal your idea.

[hedwig]

better yet -- how cool is it that PTA might actually read it or have someone give him the gist of it, cos he wants to know if it really DID leak? that's awesome. he might actually steal your idea.

another idea stolen. 

another awesome film in the making. 

[modage]

He updated the article with more details (slightly better writing) and a scan of a page from the script.

http://forizzer69.wordpress.com/2010/01/31/script-review-untitled-by-p-t-anderson/

[picolas]

He updated the article with more details (slightly better writing) and a scan of a page from the script.

http://forizzer69.wordpress.com/2010/01/31/script-review-untitled-by-p-t-anderson/

not sure if that scan's a big spoiler though.

[Pubrick]

the scan isn't a spoiler, it's half a page out of a conversation. the information revealed has already been alluded to in his synopsis.

the dude remains a douche bag. not because he's refusing to leak the thing (LETS FIND OUR OWN COPY) but because he claims to legitimize his opinion by constantly trying to outguess PTA. his new rundown of "What PTA drives at" is completely irrelevant. he may as well hav been writing his own fan fiction. he clearly fails to understand even the basic plot of the story since everything he writes is random at best. there's just very little useful information in there.

if he didn't want to spoil anything but wanted to prove the thing is real, why not just post the first few pages? that would not only show whether this thing actually has the word "scientology" in the title - INSTANT INVALIDATION - it would also give us more adept readers of anderson a chance to see if the thing has any real trademarks. his idea of a trademark "leaves you thinking" is fucking idiotic.

[Derek]

It's kind of like the pudding. Meh right now, but I trust PTA. Seems like its about two pretty ugly characters which I suppose TWBB was too but at least HW was there to root for.

If its real....


 When he speaks, the leaked page has 'The Master' identified as the character speaking. That can't be right. Surely the character has a name?