Director Insists Hit Film Is Not About Scientology

Controversial American film director Paul Thomas Anderson (Boogie Nights, Punch-Drunk Love) is adamant that his new film The Master is not about Scientology, despite all the media and online chatter that says otherwise.

Anderson told theMusic.com.au, "It was said that we were making a movie about Scientology and that was frustrating because we knew we were making something else."

Anderson single-handedly gave the world's most famous Scientologist acting credibility when he cast Tom Cruise as a demented motivational speaker in 1999's Magnolia. The role made many filmgoers begin to see Cruise as more than just a modern day matinee idol (the cred wore off half-a-decade later after the Oprah couch-jumping incident though). So, many film pundits have speculated that Anderson's involvement with Cruise led him to make his new movie The Master about that actor's religion.

While the film does look at an idea that Anderson wanted to explore about research he found that shows spiritual movements flourish after a war, the main story in The Master, he says, is that of a WW2 veteran's post-traumatic stress disorder and his attempts to find a way out of it. He's long-insisted that the film's not a story about the religion the veteran takes an interest in (although Anderson did research Scientology's dianetics in preparation for the film).

“There's no elephant in the room,” he says. “I've been nothing but forthcoming and forthright about what this film is inspired by. I've said it over and over again; you've probably read it. It's completely clear, what we've done. If it was about Scientology it wouldn't be called The Master and it wouldn't be this story.”

Anderson sounds exacerbated when he contrasts the interest to back story of The Master with the lack of interest in the inspiration for his previous film There Will Be Blood – a tale of a ruthless oil tycoon loosely based on Upton Sinclair's novel Oil!, itself also loosely based on a real oil tycoon's life story.

Anderson sprays: "When I made There Will Be Blood, no one wanted to talk about [oil tycoon] Edward Doheny. How come? How come you didn't want to find out what was similar or dissimilar there? Nobody fucking cared. But this word [Scientology] comes up and people get curious, people get spooked."

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