Queer Projection
This is a movie podcast about finding queer themes damn near everywhere. Hosts Alethia St. Joan and Danny Carroll share a 30+ year friendship that has been bound together by a shared love for movies. A trans woman and a gay man respectively, Alethia and Danny explore what these movies meant to them while they were young and closeted, and what revisiting these movies means for the actualized, arguably maladjusted adults they’ve become. It’s a heady, often crass and sometimes crude blend - part nostalgia trip, part queer theory, part film criticism. Check it out!
Queer Projection
The Master
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Back again with PTA! Is this a Scientology movie? A war-trauma movie? A barely hidden gay romance? Do you drink paint thinner because you can't stop touching people? Have you ever built an entire cosmology to feed your ego (and your desire to touch people)? Well if you can't keep your hands, your mania, or your world-view to yourself, this is the movie for you. Enjoy (we sure did)!
Do you ever make thoughtless remarks? No, I usually put some thought into them. Do your past failures bother you?
SPEAKER_01I don't know. Like what?
SPEAKER_02Do past failures bother you?
SPEAKER_01No.
SPEAKER_02Anyway, here is The Master by Paul Thomas Anderson. It's the movie we're doing today.
SPEAKER_01Yes, this is Queer Projection. Paul Thomas Anderson's 2012 gay romance, The Master. Are you ready to be processed? Are you ready to um take a journey into the dark? Hell yeah. Hell yeah, let's go.
SPEAKER_03And now we're pleased to bring you our feature presentation.
SPEAKER_00I've had a lot of this story for the better part of ten years in various ways, and just got serious about writing it about five or six years ago. But the one thing that I always had was this character of a sailor coming back from the war. There's an attraction to me to that era. I mean, besides just the obvious, you know, great, great costumes, great music, you know, that's kind of food and drink, really, to if you get a chance to do this, to kind of time travel a little bit. And try to understand what was going on. You know, um, my father was around during that time, so you probably, and he's not around anymore. So probably in an effort to kind of understand better what his experiences were, I probably was sort of digging around to see what it was like, looking after the war, sort of all this optimism, but uh just a tremendous amount of destruction in the background.
SPEAKER_01Okay. Okay, welcome back, Danny. Uh, what do you how you feelin?
SPEAKER_02I feel I love this movie. I'm so excited to talk about this one today. Again, you know, I just I feel like we're so Paul Thomas Anderson obsessed on this podcast, and it's kind of Oh, we're Paul Pilled. We are Paul Pilled. We're Paul Pilled. So uh I just I have so much I want to say. And uh yeah, you know, so again, this is Queer Projection. Uh Alethe and I have known each other for 30 years. Um, sort of the glue of our relationship has been the movies we watched growing up. Uh, and on this podcast, we go and re-explore some of our favorite movies from childhood, our young adult days, um, and we fish around in them for queer themes that might not actually be there because none of the movies that we do on this podcast are ostensibly queer films. They're just films everybody's seen. But this one, as you said at the beginning, kind of is a romance between two men, one way or another, no matter how much you spin it. What do you think?
SPEAKER_01Uh yeah, absolutely. It is. Um, and it was even uh not so much marketed as, but it was definitely um described that way by um uh particularly PTA and a few of the other key players uh when they were when they were screening the film. Um I I also I also want to say, Danny, that this this film is all of those things. Yeah, and and it is also uh a movie about and for people who like to fuck sand.
SPEAKER_02It is incredible because you not only does it uh I didn't realize, so I hadn't seen this in ages, but they they close the movie out with sand titties. Yeah. You know, I did I after having a really intense and bizarre scene at the beginning of the movie with a uh sexy sand lady.
SPEAKER_01Oh my god. Um when he's going on and all the all those you know handsome sailors around him are like laughing at the joke, but it goes on too long and they all just like just like collapse into discomfort.
SPEAKER_02Good.
SPEAKER_01And then he has then he has to go and just jerk off into the ocean because he turned himself on too much. Unbelievable.
SPEAKER_02First 10 minutes, right away, you're like, okay, what the hell?
SPEAKER_01What's so what's so wonderful about that too is PTA was just coming off of uh, well, I mean, a few years had elapsed, but uh this was after There Will Be Blood, and that was considered like such like a, you know, uh not quite mainstream, but like as mainstream as he had like managed to get at that point, like triumph, you know. Really he didn't sweep the Oscars or anything, but like, you know, Daniel Day Lewis, it it's it somehow felt like the the arrival of the mature artist that the younger PTA like was pretending to be, some people would say who, you know, I think are wrong. But for him to go from that big important, epic Academy Award certified, but for him to go off that and then right away just uh you know zoom into the this like really aggressive and transaggressive like weirdness for for no like discernible purpose at first um is really is really excellent, I think.
SPEAKER_02But I mean, okay, so if there will be blood, alright, well so now let's compare some of these.
SPEAKER_01There will be blood is really weird and perverse too. Like people just kind of forget that. And also that movie is a fucking comedy, like Capital C.
SPEAKER_02But but the reception, you're right, the reception was very different. You know, the budget for There Will Be Blood, uh, you know, according to the information online, was 25 million and made 76 million at the box office. Whereas The Master had a budget of 32 million and only made 28 million at the box office. Oh yeah, the master The Master did not do well. It was a more expensive movie, uh, ultimately. Um, but you know, I don't know. The idea that he like completely went off in another direction, I think in so many ways he was trying to repeat sort of the thing. Like, so There Will Be Blood had fascinating period granularities and interesting period specific personalities and relationships that I think really made it pop for a whole bunch of different people. And I I think he was trying to approach the master in exactly the same way. He, you know, we saw in um Phantom Thread he sort of has this uh real affection for the aesthetics of like the 50s, especially in fashion and women's fashion and things like that. And I think he was trying to do the exact same thing as he did in There Will Be Blood, trying to do a psychological thing, you know, in a very specific time and place with time and place personalities.
SPEAKER_01And it's also it's a it's uh like There Will Be Blood, it's a two-hander. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so and you know, there will be There Will Be Blood, he described as kind of like, you know, uh a really insane like Tom and Jerry cartoon where this is you know more a quiet romance uh that can never be requited.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Well, so in terms of sort of like the queer projection stuff, the queer theory stuff, you know, we can really talk through this movie uh really sort of like step by step in some I don't know, like psychosexual stuff. But yeah. Because it does come on so strong at sort of setting him up as like sexually deranged in the first, you know, 20 minutes of the movie.
SPEAKER_01His first his l literally the first lines we hear him say are him uh giving this really cockeyed advice about how to get rid of crabs by stabbing them with an ice pick.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Just like everything on his mind is is sex. And he's he's also drinking rocket fuel, you know. Um it is funny how that was lost on me a little bit, at least in my memory of this movie. How I thought he was just like distilling strong liquor, but no, he really was like making a concoction that could kill you.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, you know where PTA got that element of the story? Where Jason Robarts told him uh his like crazy drunken navy World War II stories when they were on the set of Magnolia. Right.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, no, I remember hearing that. And and you know that again, so like uh I remember when this movie was getting marketed, we thought it was ostensibly about Scientology or that it was going to be about L. Ron Hubbard and cults and things like that. And it is, but I guess it it he did borrow so many things from so many different sources and sort of shoved them together in a way that it could never, I think, even from its inception, have been specifically about Scientology or even just the sort of like mystic cult stuff that was going on in the 40s and 50s, it's sort of like the pseudo-intellectualism of its time, you know, the wellness culture of its time.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, uh, and I think one of the initial um uh like light bulbs of inspiration that got PTA like interested in this general milieu and like actually writing for it is um he he had read some he had read somewhere uh that uh somebody remarked that uh the period after a war is a really fertile time for like spiritual movements to start to take place. Because what do you do when you're particularly in the circumstance of America after World War II, what do you do when you're ushered into an era of like unprecedented like middle class prosperity with such a uh a gigantic body count behind you?
SPEAKER_02Oh god, something about that makes my heart sink. Yeah. Uh yeah, I don't know, because I just, you know, we're gonna there's gonna be just so many things. There are gonna be so many like climate disasters and things coming up in the future, and I just it really bums me out to think what's gonna happen to all this PTSD as we respond to it with a bunch of um half-assed religiosity. I don't know. Anyway, that's a that's a whole different podcast. We are not the gray zone. Uh or not the gray zone. The uh uh yeah, wait, hold on. I feel like I watch it all the time. With Sean Elling. Alright, doesn't matter. We're not pitching somebody else's podcast here.
SPEAKER_01Um Okay. Uh Danny, uh, first of all, did you like my cameo in this film?
SPEAKER_02I have it in all caps in my notes. The fucking boat is named Alethea. And even says it out loud, but I spotted it the second it appeared on frame in frame. And I was like, oh my god, the boat. And that's the spelling I use as well. It that is so crazy. I had no memory of that. I think it's so funny.
SPEAKER_01It's also there's a fact, there's a piece of music from the score that Johnny uh from Johnny Greenwood's score um called Alethea, which is one of my favorite things as well. Really? Oh I've gotta look that up. It's really it it's music that sounds like like a very peaceful, like sinking into the deep warm ocean. That's is kind of what it reminds me of. It sounds like the the music sounds like the ocean to me.
SPEAKER_02For me, he's never gonna be able to top the Phantom Thread album. That one is just perfect. Yeah, but anyway. I I'm inclined to agree with you. Um another funny thing about the boat, fun fact, is that is uh Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidential yacht.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, the boat says Potomac. The Potomac, yeah. I have a friend, I have a friend who went on board a couple of months ago and sent me videos. He's like, I'm inside you. Oh my god, that's so funny. It's really that's really funny. Yeah, it was great. Um God, you know, I love I love a boat, you know? Yeah, no, no, no.
SPEAKER_02Those opening scenes, the evocative sensation of being like, oh my god, this is our boat. We're just gonna like have a party and take it to another city. There is something so uh intensely seductive about that idea.
SPEAKER_01Oh my god. And you know, and and there's that long wonder um right after like the the the opening, the opening, like itinerant portion of the story where we see you know various episodes from the adventures of Freddy after World War II before he meets Dod. Yeah. Uh and then um after all that it it it it dissolves to that wonder of him approaching the Alethea and that great music approaching in the background. And in the background, we see first out of focus, then come into focus. Everybody in the cause, like on deck having a party, um, way off in the distance, and we see Master and Amy Adams like dancing around each other, and they're not fully clear, but we can tell we can see just enough that we understand that they're the important ones in that circle, and that there's some kind of gravitas.
SPEAKER_02And it's so well composed.
SPEAKER_01And then he stows away like that. Long one is on a par with like the the opening wander from like Boogie Nights when we introduce all the characters, like it kind of achieves it kind of achieves the same thing, but in a less show-offy way. Um, and then just that gorgeous, gorgeous 70 millimeter shot of them going under the Golden Gate Bridge and off into the distance. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02But you know what? And that's because that I mean I mean, yeah, that shot sets up the draw. You as an audience are drawn to that boat, so you understand implicitly why he's drawn to the boat no matter what state he's in. But it's not just for the extravagant excess of it.
SPEAKER_01No, he's like, I can get I he's like, I know boats, I can get a job.
SPEAKER_02No, but a no even on a more basic level, in a non-conscious level, it just speaks to people who have their own freedom in their grasp. You know, if you have a boat, you are free in a way other people are not, who cannot just get on a boat and sail off somewhere, you know? Man, sometimes I just want to get on a boat.
SPEAKER_01Sometimes I just want to stow away in my drunken state. God, could you imagine being blackout and waking up on a fucking boat in the middle of the ocean though? Right. You'd be like, oh goddamn.
SPEAKER_02But now I gotta I gotta slow down. So, okay, so let's move through the movie this way. So, you know, so we have the we have their meeting, the meeting of the master.
SPEAKER_01Well, we we skipped over the beginning a little bit. As I said, we see the various like, you know, adventures of Freddy before he he he meets he meets Master. Right. We see we basically we see him discharged from the war, and we see brief scenes of him at like, you know, um like a VA hospital and getting treatment and stuff, which is all taken from this uh John Houston documentary called Let There Be Light, which was not which was which was banned from release by the government until like the early 90s or something because they didn't want people to see like what PTSD was actually like. Incredible. Uh like there's there's there's literally lines of dialogue just ripped ripped straight out of the movie. Like he didn't even bother to change like a word. Right.
SPEAKER_02Um But so he's you know we don't have to really describe all these scenes. They they basically show the way that he can't relate to regular society no matter how hard he tries.
SPEAKER_01He can't acclimate, and he seems to have he seems to have sort of a pench on for photography, but it's also because that get that jog gives him easy access to chemicals to make his weird booze.
SPEAKER_02Right. And now, okay, so let's get into because I I think the psychosexual drama is important to the themes of this podcast, whereas we could really talk about it scene by scene forever, because it is one of those movies that every single shot has some sort of beautiful, load-bearing, creative thing in it. But um, but so uh one of the things that I missed or forgot about the plot uh is that so much of their early sort of connection is simply cemented on the fact that the master really likes the the you know the concoction he brought on board. That he's like, wow, this gets me really fucked up. Um I I love this guy.
SPEAKER_01You know, it's the exact line of dialogue is actually I will forgive you all of your sins as a naughty or I will forgive you all your naughtiness as a stowaway if you um No, wait a minute, I gotta write okay, sorry. He goes, uh, and I have no idea the contents of this remarkable potion, what's in it?
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_01I will give you a reprieve from all your naughtiness as a stowaway if you make us some more. That's it. That's the line.
SPEAKER_02Right. But there is something so simple to get because I mean you you you are meant to ask throughout this movie and left asking after the movie, like really what is it deeply that drew these men to each other that made them so intensely in each other's lives and heads and and emotions and um but but I do like that it gives us an easy answer to their initial connection, which is just like he had the best booze and he happened to stumble upon the right party, you know? Yeah. I I like that. That is elegant and believable on such a such a in such an easy way that it makes all of the other sort of unbelievable stuff easier to palette. I don't know. It's just really he's so smart. P. D. Anderson just like understands humans in such a crazy way.
SPEAKER_01But see, the thing is, I don't know, I don't know that he understands how he understands it though. He just like he's like able to channel it.
SPEAKER_02Right. He knows how to run the right simulations and experiments to show us something, but what? You know? Yeah. Um yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. Um but so there is the vague argument could be made that the movie kind of flirts with, and it's it's kind of so opaque and open-ended that any that a variety of interpretations are valid. It's it's um it's that kind of story, and it's told in that kind of way. Um but uh there is a suggestion that they have known each other before in a past life or in many past lives, and you could you could make the argument that that's something that you know or master is like not sinisterly but like strategically implanting in his consciousness to like be able to control him in a sense or use him. Um but there's also the argument that I kind of like to make, uh, and that I take it all literally. Uh yeah. And right. I don't. I don't know. I love it. I'm not I'm not saying that's the right interpretation. That's just how I like to watch the film. It's better to me.
SPEAKER_02I think it's better to me if it isn't. Um we found our we found our our opposing view pan points here. Yeah. But no, uh okay, well let's talk about it.
SPEAKER_01I'm not saying I'm not suggesting I'm not suggesting you're wrong for feeling that way. I just it this is just this is just kind of a preferen uh like a uh a thought experimental preference for me.
SPEAKER_02Well, yes, okay. But so okay, this character, the master, um even going into it, you're meant to think like, oh, this is the El Ron Hubbard type, this is the, you know, whatever. You are supposed to understand on some level that he is a fraud, but at no point does it seem like he's ever consciously being fraudulent. He feels completely for real, completely 100%, and completely totally, you know, invested in it with his whole person. It isn't just a scheme. He's almost more Orson Wells than uh than L. Ron Hubbard. He really does seem to believe it so deeply, and yet at the same time, I think is uh my argument here is that the character is deeply, deeply, deeply troubled by the idea that perhaps I am a fraud. Like, like I, oh god, like I'm just I'm so deep in that it's impossible for me to wrap my own head around the fact that this is all bullshit. But what if it is? Like he's smart enough to entertain that in his frightened voids, and of course I think that's why he's portrayed in the movie as also a bit of an alcoholic. He's drunk in so many scenes, you know, um, along with Joaquin Phoenix's character.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Like they're inebriated together often.
SPEAKER_01It's just that he's like the only one who can take Freddy's booze.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_01We even drunk. Yeah, we even see it, we even see a man die early on because of his uh alcohol.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. But he's like, yeah, he's he's clearly somebody who indulges themselves and so has a high tolerance and really likes to get fucked up. And that of course, you know, I'm sorry, I do believe that on some level, people who just like there's just like stuff you um can't background process, and so you need to drink a lot in order to deal with the pain of having no background process on things like maybe I'm a frog.
SPEAKER_01Oh Danny, you know, Danny, do uh do you do you think I might have any experience with that?
SPEAKER_02Shut up. What about you know, listen? No, we are we are all what I uh I'm not throwing any stones here. I'm not the pod calling the kettle black in any way.
SPEAKER_01There are some very clear reasons why Danny and I would respond so immensely to a film like this.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, but we don't need to get into that.
SPEAKER_01Also, on that point though, this is this is this is one of the most realistic, uh yet like kind of subtle depictions of addiction that I've ever seen. Not only in what we see Joaquin do and see him in vibe and the way he behaves, but the way the film is structured almost haphazardly, um, it has certain like lulls and so and and certain ways that it like jumps through time without really indicating it to you that almost feel like the movie blacks out and wakes up again. Yes, it feels like a few different times. It feels exhaustingly like the fucking just dead-end like drudgery of the day-to-day existence of like a serious addict.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, no, it is elegant in that way. And not just with Freddy, like you know, with the master, you are seeing he's an addict too, but he's addicted to things that are more than just the poison. He's addicted to himself, he's addicted to um the he he he loves the party, he loves the center of attention, he gets such dopamine from holding court, you know? And you can see it, you can see it in just like the lustfulness in his eyes when he has the rooms full attention. Like that is also addict behavior, you know.
SPEAKER_01Um I also love during those early those early scenes too, like where where um Master has that speech aboard the Alethea about the dragon, which which uh you know. It becomes clear that he's talking about Freddy. Um, yeah, I think anyway. Um, but no, yeah, but also just talking about self-control. Yeah, but also, but the very subtle way like the the the cultish aspects of it are like just kind of woven through but aren't hammered on the head, like the way he speaks, like that's what where we're at with it now. That's like very subtle, but like mind control ish kind of code speak. Yeah. You know, like a shared, like a shared language. There's little things like that sprinkled throughout the script that are that are almost blink and you miss them, sort of details that I think are really are just part of what makes Paul Thomas Anderson such a great writer and director.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. But he's but it that's the con man stuff too. Like when he's telling the dragon story, like that is the charismatic language of t of somebody telling you, like, oh, you know, this this insanely difficult, totally esoteric task of of wresting control of your own desires, intentions, and behaviors. It's actually quite easy. It just like sounds hard, but I have the secret, you know. That is so that contrasts many different kinds of con men through history.
SPEAKER_01And that contrasts so nicely with that scene toward the end when Freddy, I think, finally realizes that Master's a fake, is when he's like, uh, I've unlocked and discovered the secret, uh, blah blah blah to existence, whatever, and he goes, and that secret is laughter. And it's the kind it's the kind of laughter thing where he's kind of like, oh man. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02No, that whole that whole section of the movie from the moment they like dig up his life. The Lor the Laura Dern section. Yeah. But no, no. I so to get back to this idea of like somebody who might deep down know that they're a fraud, watching him, like he's like, This is the most important thing I've ever written. This is the stuff that's like, this is the best stuff. And then for everybody to respond to it, like, no, this one isn't as good. We like the last one better.
SPEAKER_01I know, even his editors, even his editors, like, if it were up to me, I'd sh I'd I'd strip this thing down into a two-page pamphlet and hand it out at the subway. Right. And and and Laura Dern. Milwaukee's just like, can I talk to you? And he just like starts slapping him. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Sorry. You know it's coming. But the Low Laura Dern character, when she the the look she gives him, which is of course was only a look Laura Dern gives him a couple of things.
SPEAKER_01Oh my god, it's so sad. Yeah, because she's she you see the disillusionment. Yeah, you see. She's just it's it's that maybe maybe maybe she's gonna carry on for a little while, but that's the first break.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And how do you play that? I don't even know, but she communicates it so clearly. Oh, so clearly. God, she's she's just one of the best, isn't she? She is. He needs to write her a lead role.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I mean yes.
unknownYes.
SPEAKER_01Or like a Julianne Moran Magnolia role or something.
SPEAKER_02Are we here to state the obvious? Can we get back into it? Sometimes. Um but uh but I think also in that section, you know, uh uh in the famous Joaquin Phoenix on the motorcycle driving away from him, and and we have the total fracture of the relationship, you know, it is the hardest of this series of abandonments that the master is experiencing. In real time, he's seeing everybody just sort of back away from him. Um in in a way that he's just like barely able to contain, and sort of the way he walks back to his car head-hung after losing Freddy. I it just really does feel like somebody who is dealing with recognizing that oh, here's all the signs I am a fraud. Yeah, you know? Oh my god, how do I deal with it?
SPEAKER_01That is so sad, but that is also like a very, very sneaky PTA humor shot, though. Because like if you really consider what's happening, he's just like sulking through the desert and his daughter's following along worriedly, and her daughter's like really submissive son-in-law is just full following slowly in the car, just like waiting for him to get back in. It's incredible. It's so good. It's incredible. Um, so speaking, um I hate to be jumping all over like this, but are you aware that there is um the original that they shot much more material for this movie than is actually in the film? Oh, I'm sure. Well, I mean there is a feature I called back. A very early version of the script is, yes, that differs in a lot of notable ways. And many, many ways. And it gives a very interesting insight into PTA's process too, because there are early scenes that sort of resemble ish what we see, but there's like it doesn't open on the beach with him fucking a sandwoman or anything, it just opens at like the VA hospital. Um but there's literally uh him sitting there talking to uh you know a psychology uh therapist or something, and uh the lines are literally lines taken out of Moby Dick, and he's talked about if he he has an idea for a scene but doesn't quite have it in his head yet, he'll just take you know from classic literature and just like paste it in there until later.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Uh so anyway, that's in there. But um yeah, so there's uh a lot more about Freddie's backstory. Uh a lot of oh yeah, uh, a lot of footage of him during like wartime, um, just just all kinds of things. There's a lot of footage about um Master's work and the way like his first work or or you know the work that's now buried in the desert was regarded. He's like uh only 15 people got to read it, and every single one of them died after reading it. One person was was so overpowered that they that they jumped up from their desk and flung themselves out the window of a you know, a skyscraper.
SPEAKER_02Oh, they should have kept that uh whole idea because it does make the sort of thud of this work not landing well and everybody being like, ooh, that's not as good. That would have made it even better. The build-up.
SPEAKER_01It's more it's more it's more like pinchinee in that sense. Yeah, it's more sensational in that way. Um, but that footage exists. There's actually, I'll send this to you, but there's a featurette. Um, this was this was the first time. This is like fairly standard practice for him now, but this is the first time when he started cutting his own trailers, and he would he mostly cuts them out of uh materi uh out of unused material, which is really a really cool way to not only use good material that doesn't belong in the final film, but it's a really cool way of like expanding the world of the film in a sense. Yeah. Um yeah, you gotta send that to me. It's amazing. It's really fucking amazing. And then it all it also and it also ends with one of the funniest outtakes I've ever seen.
SPEAKER_02All right, send it to me. But there is, I think to your point, it is interesting how it is very much like a Paul Thomas Anderson to feel like there's plot missing that was there, or they just decided not to show it to you, you know? Um I think about you know, specifically in this, so you have uh so I love the arrest scene. That scene where where they arrest the master is so good, I had totally forgotten about it. When Freddie when Freddie starts flip, like starts flipping out like a like a like a bull, and he's like, do not hurt him. The blocking, the composition of that shot where he's being marched to the car, it's just so good. Um, but you know, the whole conceit there is that he, you know, robbed someone, he he he erroneously drained funds from somebody. And you are meant to understand that this is the woman whose house they were at in New York City, where he had that confrontation with the man. Oh, John Moore.
SPEAKER_01Excuse me. Yeah. Excuse me, excuse me. Yeah, excuse me. I love it. Oh, it's so good. Um but that scene That scene is so amazing because there's such like so much of the movie happens before that, and there's such a buildup, and that's such like a tonal shift into like into into like this this like downward turn in the story. Yeah. That's just so like riveting, like so like hair, just hair standing up in the back of my neck.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Um, but so but okay, so just like speaking about plot and how Paul Thomas Anderson can sometimes juggle plot in an interesting way, you were meant to believe that whatever happened at this house was um a disillusionment to his benefactors. So the boat was apparently this woman's. Um when they get into the house, he like thanks her for the boat. And up until that moment, you are meant to think it's his boat, you know, in a classic L. Ron Hubbard fashion, but it isn't. You know, that boat was provided to him to get him to New York. Um, and you know, it he is being brought in as a celebrity, um, you know in a way that it's like he seems like he has trappings and riches, but in reality it's all from benefactors.
SPEAKER_01And more celebrities and more famous people, I think, are like that than we probably know. Oh, yeah. Oh, I think a lot I think a lot of their wealth exists on credit or like just you know, random assets.
SPEAKER_02Totally. But I think in terms of plot, you are they kind of gloss over the idea that there was a great incident at this party, not just the Thomas More or the um yeah, the Moore scene, John Moore scene. Um but like I feel like they kind of skip out on the part where the New York benefactor is like, oh, you're full of bullshit. And like, and not only that, you but you embarrassed me, and yada yada yada. We just sort of skip forward in that sort of blackout way. But I I do know in this script, this original shooting script um that's available online, you know, that John Moore scene is even bigger because there's apparently a woman coughing during that scene. He calls her a disgusting woman.
SPEAKER_01Right, right, right. And basically, and then he crashes his motorcycle.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I I think in the original idea, you are meant to see the fraudster, quote unquote, come out a little earlier, and you are meant to see how the master is just as unhinged as Freddy. He's just more composed and able to control it more, and you're maybe supposed to think that these guys are exactly the same. It's just the master can do it. And and I think, I don't know, it strikes me that Paul Thomas Anderson in shooting it decided to move away from that.
SPEAKER_01Like he actually wanted to Well, he still he still makes the point just more succinctly with Pigfuck.
SPEAKER_02Yes, yeah, yeah, but it but it is not such a loss of control. It is just a frustrated person. It isn't somebody pulling off the mask and showing that deep down they are resentful and cruel and full of vitriol, you know.
SPEAKER_01I guess that would be the Laura Dern scene more. When he and when yeah, when he screams at her. And it's still a split second, like it's like it happens and then he pulls it back in and he's like, Ellen, oh fuck, you know? And then he pats her leg. Anyway. Sorry to keep bouncing around. I just this is a movie that I've thought a lot about and and you're excitable in the years that I've seen it. Yeah, you can tell, because like we're we're already we're already past 30 minutes and we're we're we're like not done talking about this. Well, I know.
SPEAKER_02But now hold on, let's let's reframe a little bit, okay? Um so when this let's talk about the movie a little bit when it came out. Um this was what year was this?
SPEAKER_012012. Uh 2012. All right, a little bet a little background. This was uh originally, this took a few years to get off the ground, despite the you know, uh ostensible success that There will be blood was. Um, this movie was like still still a weird enough proposition on paper that people were like, uh uh I don't know about this. Um it was originally set up at Universal. Uh it was always supposed to star Philip Seymour Hoffman. Um PTA, I I I I think wanted to, after not working with him for the first time on There'll Be Blood, he wanted to do something that really centered on him instead of just including him in the background or something. Um it's so sad that that's the last thing they made together. Ugh, don't get me started. I know. Oh my god. Um, but anyhow anyway, uh it was originally supposed to star Jeremy Renner as Freddy, which so glad that didn't happen. Uh he's he's fine, but like, no. Uh also James Franco is considered. Remember when we liked him? Ugh. God. Um completely different movies. And Reese Witherspoon was supposed to be in the Amy Adams role, which by the way, we have to talk about Amy Adams before we like uh end this because she's a very specific part of this movie. Oh yeah. And she uh she she is incredible, I think. Um so yeah, in the original version of this uh that never happened, that was supposed to be Reese Witherspoon, who wound up doing Inherent Vice instead, yada yada.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_01So anyway, um financing fell through. Uh they spent about uh another year like rewriting the script, and then Megan Ellison sort of uh swooped in. Uh, daughter of uh at the time seemed fairly benevolent billionaire Larry Ellison that we now know to be evil and trying to uh change the face of our country for the worst. Uh wait, they finance this movie? She did, yeah. Wow. She she yeah, she created Anna Purna Pictures. There was a there was a while there where she was like A24 before A24 became A24.
SPEAKER_02Wait, and now the other Ellis kid is trying to own Hollywood. All right, anyway, keep going.
SPEAKER_01Uh so yeah, she fully financed the film. Um they started shooting very quickly. She also financed Inherent Vice. I remember that at that at that time it was weird and it hasn't really happened since, but like PTA, the Master and Inherent Vice were always happening concurrently. Like when The Master was known to be coming, like it was also known that PTA had written an adaptation of Inherent Vice, was doing that as well. It was just a matter of which one happened first. Um they have a lot of similarities. Um yeah, no, they do in yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. Get me back on track. What am I uh oh, I was giving background context for the master. Yeah, we're just talking about the journey and the times. Okay, 2012. This is our early 20s. Yeah. Um yeah, this I was living in New Orleans when this was coming out. Um, another notable thing, this was the first film. You thought we saw this together. No, we did not. Oh I saw the I saw the I saw this with Clint and our roommate Sarah.
SPEAKER_02Oh god, then does this movie even qualify? No, I'm sure we watch it together again. But no, you know what? The reason why it qualifies.
SPEAKER_01You saw it in in New York City, and I remember you sent me a picture of the marquee with 70 millimeter on it, and they didn't have a 70 millimeter theater at that time in New Orleans, and so I I was angry at you.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Well, because again, Paul Thomas Anderson back then and still today was just so important to us. So this movie coming out, it was an event. Yeah, big time. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And so, yeah. Um, also, what is notable is uh this was the first film to shoot on 65 millimeter, um, which is 70 70 millimeter, uh, quick explanation. Uh is you project at 70, but you shoot at 65 millimeters, and the extra five millimeters are added to accommodate the audio track. That's why uh projected prints are 70 millimeter. Anyhow, so um so The Master was the first film uh to shoot almost entirely on uh 65mm film since Kenneth Brana's 1996 adaptation of Hamlet. Um, and 70 millimeter is much more back in vogue now than it was then. This is when it really started to like kind of come back into the conversation. So we have P we have PTA to thank for that and Christopher Nolan to thank for keeping it going. That's crazy. I didn't realize that. And I love um the way uh PTA has worked, starting with this film, but in subsequent films with bigger formats, like notably uh last year with uh One Battle After Another, he shot in VistaVision, and that had a VistaVision and also IMAX 70mm run. Um the way he uses the formats are really perverse. Uh it reminds me, there's a meme I saw recently where it compared uh Christopher Nolan's uh like grand magisterial use of IMAX and 70mm with like these great brilliant landscapes or like epic sweeping shots, and then it compared it to the way Pete Anderson uses it, and it showed Sean Penn's like grizzled face looking like an overcooked sausage.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, you know what? That is that's the deal. It's that's the deal.
SPEAKER_01And that's why we love him. Yeah. Uh and and and anyway, that's kind of um that's kind of how this film is photographed. Large format, but it's like mostly close-ups of people talking in rooms, which is uh my favorite kind of movie, maybe.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, no, it's definitely my favorite kind of movie. Um, but it's also uh it's still it it also gets time and place so right. The design uh choices on this movie, whoever his production designer was, just got implicitly what he wanted to look at.
SPEAKER_01Oh, it's the great, it's the great Jack Fisk, who also did There will be Blood. Um one of the great production designers, married to Sissy Spacek. Just beyond, you know, and then and and he has a very unique approach to period pieces where you don't feel like you're seeing like a digital version, or you don't feel like you're watching a period piece starring people who have like you know looked at an iPhone before because because of the care he takes and not only selecting the details and production design and costuming and you know, hair makeup and performance style, but also like he goes as far as like shooting in locations that are you know evoke that era, but also like shooting on formats from the era and like lenses from the era, like like evoking it on that depth of level and detail. Um I think he's I think he's I think he's better at it than anyone.
SPEAKER_02A perfect example is the uh early um department stores. That's exactly what I was gonna say. If you look at that from a production standpoint, it looks like they just found a feet like a few hundred square feet in a marble vestibule that could be anywhere in New York or Chicago or something, and then just dressed. It was somewhere in Vallejo, as far as I know. Okay, and but they the way they the camera and the blocking and the way they move through the space, it's so economical and yet completely evokes the time and place and feeling of a department store.
SPEAKER_01I think it feels like they dropped a 70 65mm camera into the 1950s.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, but I don't know, it's such elegant design, but I I it also just yeah, anyway.
SPEAKER_01Um especially that's that scene because the the film format and just the visual approach and the time period and all that, it feels like Alfred Hitchcock mech mixed with like Max Ophels or something. It's uh just just fantastic. And he's he summons that in kind of a slightly smaller scale way, but uh just it it just as rich in Phantom Thread. Wild. We gotta cover Phantom Thread. That movie is awesome.
SPEAKER_02He does love it so much, just the the the aesthetics of that period. You can tell something about it charms him.
SPEAKER_01It's the most he's the most romantic filmmaker, despite the ostensible dark and you know rough subject matter that he deals with sometimes. Yeah. Like you've you've always said nobody films a kiss like he does.
SPEAKER_02No. Yeah, no, no, no, not at all. There's something about every single moment. Uh he just he's great with intimacy and just finding the interesting stuff. Like even that creepy scene in the dark room where where um Freddy is feeling up the other, you know, the department store showgirl. Don't you love that her belly looks like a normal person's belly? Yeah, what did she say, like an apricot belly? Yeah. Strange thing. But anyway. Um well, so like okay, let's talk about you wanted to talk about Amy Adams' character. What is it about that character that is that you felt like you had a lot to say about?
SPEAKER_01Well, uh, there is a theory that the master of this film might actually just be Amy Adams, and um her arc in the story, you know, kind of um uh you know, allows for that interpretation, I would say, especially by the end, she seems to be running the show by the time they're in England. Um and the way she uh you know, one of the more memorable um scenes that uh I still remember uh the first time I I saw that. Uh the first time I saw this film, I remembered the feeling in the audience when people realized what was happening, the the hand job. Yeah. Because at first you're like, what's going? Oh. Unbelievable. And it's just yeah, it's so brilliantly performed, and it's like a it's like a very just the way she grabs the towel after.
SPEAKER_02I know.
SPEAKER_01Oh my goodness.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, PTA presents an easy interpretation.
SPEAKER_01PTA presented her with some kind of award that year, and he gave a speech saying, um, just praising her, but also like he I believe he ended it with uh, and if you ever need an uh an aggressive and hostile if you never need an actress to perform an aggressive and hostile handjob in your film, there's no expiration date in old Amy Adams. Oh my god, that's an unbelievable line. I I have I have stolen that many times that line. Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. Um the expiration date.
SPEAKER_02You know what? Yeah, I mean, uh, she's very well written as the type of person who knows how to manage an ego that is big enough to pay the rent.
SPEAKER_01You know, like you know what's she quite fascinating too is uh right after the John Moore scene, uh, when it suddenly cuts to them in the elevator and everybody's like awkward, and then it shows like Master furiously typing, and she's like, she's like barking orders at him, like we must attack. Like we will never dominate our environment unless we wait we attack. That's the first time we see her like not lose it, but she's she's losing it in her very like tight controlled way. Uh in the script, that's Master saying all that. Interesting.
SPEAKER_02And she and she's just like sitting nodding. I mean, I think I think again, in the sort of blackout nature of some of the skipping. Around that you pointed out. Again, I think something was something bigger was supposed to happen in that John Moore scene, so that when we got to that level of ferocity, uh it sort of made sense that these were people sort of under duress. But I think I think it takes you a while to realize watching it that they've sort of been cast out of New York a little bit. Um and and I think it really, really strikes you, or or maybe me, the idea that these are nomadic people who are sort of fleeing from uh safe harbor to safe harbor when they arrive at Laura Dern's house. I know being a shit.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, they're they're not so different from Freddie. Yeah. They're it they're itinerant. They're travelers, they're itinerant, yeah. Um, and uh Freddie's just Freddie's just unable to, you know, uh be deceptive on the level that they need to be in order to, you know, earn their dinner. Yeah.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_02Boy, this is a fascinating film, isn't it? Just so much fucking shoe up. You could talk about it so much. But uh, you know, uh to talk about the queerness of it, um, you know, there is I just I think it's so easy to see that what happens here is a romance. And it starts with uh you know, I I think the whole idea of you seem so familiar to me, you know, saying that to somebody, the way he sort of grabs Freddy with that line in the very beginning, it's such a pickup line, you know? It really is that sort of way that you want to say to somebody like, I like you in a way that we can't put into simple words because if we did, it would sound a little weird. So I'm just gonna say you're familiar to me, you know? And and and the fact that they are so wrapped up in each other and they want so much from each other, and I do think they want to be each other in different ways. They want to have each other's qualities that they see. Um I think it it ends on a romantic breakup. You have you have the dramatic exit on the motorcycle, and then you have that sort of um pitiful denouement with him singing on a slow boat to China to Freddie.
SPEAKER_01But also you're skipping like wait There's so much to talk about this movie.
SPEAKER_02Like, we haven't even No no no no have to skip, we have to skip all of that. We're at 45 minutes.
SPEAKER_01We have but we so like we haven't even talked about Doris, who I will I will I will say quickly. Yeah, I will say quickly. Oh, that whole flashback right after the uh processing scene is like just so beautifully filmed and just moving. Yeah. Um, but uh I I I say I I I I think that Dodd's technique worked a little bit for him. Just in the Oh, I think you're supposed to think that, yeah. Because he goes and he react he reacts to the news that she's moved on, obviously she fucking would. Um like fairly well compared to what we've seen. Well what we've seen before, and he's just like he's just like, oh yeah, duh, of course.
SPEAKER_02Um, but also I think the final scene with the woman that he picks up at the bar, okay, you're set up to believe this entire time he is sexually deranged. So, okay, this final scene, he's in bed with a woman. How is he gonna make it weird the way he has made every other scene in this movie weird? And instead he's just like kind of charming, still a little weird. He starts charming. He starts processing her. Exactly, but he does it in a way that that is that is um well adapted. He makes her comfortable.
SPEAKER_01Also, the the the closing lines of that scene, except for Joaquin Phoenix's funny little ad lib at the end, but um when um when he when he says maybe this isn't your only life, and she's she just kind of smiles sweetly and says, I hope it isn't. Like that's how the script that's that's how the script ends. And I think that is just my favorite ending to a film ever. I think about it, it makes me want to fucking cry. Um But no, you missed you miss the fact that what he says to her is you're the bravest girl I've ever met, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Which is what which is also a pickup line that the master used on him. Yeah, and then he and then he says, Now stick it back in, it fell out.
unknownOh yeah.
SPEAKER_02Which is in so many ways. Yeah, that is that is such a distillation about what that what the relationship is, you know, uh, between but like, yeah, the psycho-sexual relationship, the way that these two men were all up inside each other. You know, yeah, he yeah, but Dodd fucked his mind. Totally. And I mean that wrestling on the lawn stuff. Oh, I love that. And he gives him a little spanking, you know. It's just it's like he's his dog. It's almost on the head. It's almost like two nail on the head that you're supposed to see this like bromance as ha having gone a little too far.
SPEAKER_01Um, um one more thing, too. Uh yeah, one of the one of like this very subtle little thing the movie does that I think is so incredibly sweet is um when Freddie finds out that Doris has moved on, she married this man named Jim Day, who he's who he says, is he still ugly? Which I think is funny. So great. But uh, he's like, wait a minute. So her name's Doris Day now. Doris Day being a very famous uh film icon from the 50s who did movies with Rob Hudson. Um, sort of the, you know, kind of Sydney Sweeney of her time, maybe. Um he's like, wow, her name's Doris Day, like that Doris Day. And then he smiles like sadly, and then it cuts to him drunken asleep in a movie theater. It's kind of like it's kind of like he went there, like, maybe I'll see her. And then like that ghostly scene where like it might as well be like fucking Grady from The Shining hands him the phone and Dodd calls him in a dream. Right. How did you find me? Oh my god, that makes me cry. And he's like, Come to England. It sounds like a it sounds like a drunken phone call from your ex in the middle of the night, but at the same time, it's also no, that's because that's what it is.
SPEAKER_02It is what it is.
SPEAKER_01But it's a but it's also a dream. The script says uh uh it's it calls it says a dream moment that happens here, and then it literally says that. But um But it was still true, you know. He he communicated it's so sad tricks are real, it's so sad because he sounds loaded and he's like, Freddie, I believe I discovered something that will cure cure the insane for good and all or whatever. And he starts crying because it's just like it's like it's like he's giving him his bullshit and he's like, Oh, I miss your bullshit, you know? Yeah, like I need this. Oh, this movie's so good.
SPEAKER_02But it is, you know, it is so deeply like so many Paul Thomas Anderson movies about love. Okay, what is happening here is a love affair.
SPEAKER_01They're all about the fair to love. They're all about that.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah. I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah. Paul Thomas Anderson, okay. Maybe he'd he's experimenting in order to understand the human. Maybe he doesn't understand the human, but he seems to understand love pretty implicitly.
SPEAKER_01Even Theroby Blood about somebody who like cannot find or bring himself to love. It is about love in in and its examination of somebody who like lacks it or rejects it.
SPEAKER_02Completely. Yeah. Uh okay, you know what? I just I have a few more just small things I just want to say about the movie. We're not gonna go into them, just like lines, stuff that killed me. Okay. Uh this this when they're printing the second book and you see that it is presented as a gift to Homo sapiens.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's called the and it's called the split saber. Which is um which is classic which is like a classic PTA dick joke.
SPEAKER_02Died laughing. Um, but then also uh Amy Anderson's delivery of the this line of the line, you can't take this life straight, can you? That's sad. Queer projection. Yeah. Queer projection, we can't take this life straight either. It's gotta be a little gay. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01I know, I know. I also like I also I also love when she says uh you either do this for a billion years or you don't do it at all. This isn't fashion. This isn't fashion.
SPEAKER_03I just got to phantom thread.
SPEAKER_02They are they are linked. The movies are linked. Do you think this is PTA's best movie? Uh it's the movie that I think I feel provoked by the most. Like I feel like it gets inside of something in me and about just being a human being that makes me more uncomfortable than I think any of his other movies. Whereas Magnolia makes me sentimental, Boogie Nikes just makes me delighted, you know. Uh this like really makes me like a little afraid to be conscious, but also a little bit in love with consciousness. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Um it is his favorite. He said repeatedly over the years that this is his personal favorite of all the movies he's made. And I want to read a quote that he gave about it for uh quickly.
SPEAKER_03Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_01End us here with a quote, baby. 52 minutes, let's hear it. Let's close it out with a So here. This is in an interview with the Los Angeles Time, uh Los Angeles Times. Uh he said he considers it as his favorite of the films he has made. Uh so this is the quote. He says, uh, quote, for sure, I think that won't change. The amount of emotion I put into it and they put into it, they being Phil, Joaquin, and Amy. I'm not sure it's entirely successful, but that's fine with me. It feels right. It feels unique to me. I really hope it will be something people can revisit and enjoy in a way that equals my pride in it. And pride can be a dangerous thing, and I'm not being very quiet about my pride and saying all this, but I just feel really proud of it. And of course, there's a particular sentimentality attached to it for a number of personal reasons. It's all wrapped up. I love it. I love it. I love that he said repeatedly that he doesn't fully understand the his own movie, and that's part of why he loves it so much. Yeah. Because, like, as good as one battle after another is, I'm pretty sure he understands everything he was doing with that movie. Sure. You know, that movie, that movie is more that movie is more straightforward than a lot of his other films in a way that I think is very successful.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Uh well, we already did a podcast on that with that one, so if you want to go back to one of our early bonus episodes and listen to that. Yo, bitch, we could, but we could we could so go back to that movie and do a full episode on it. We can go back to all these movies, you know? Yeah, maybe we're gonna have to recut. We're gonna have to remaster our own.
SPEAKER_01No, what we should do is when we start doing commentaries, we'll just we'll do commentaries for all of his films. We'll just talk about them in real time.
SPEAKER_02Well, you heard it here, folks. We're gonna do commentaries if that's something you want from us. As if this wasn't already a whole lot of commentary.
SPEAKER_01Danny, isn't it? All right, isn't it funny how some sometimes, like, even if we love the movie, it feels like we're like we're kind of like forcing it a little bit. This, I could talk for a few more hours about this.
SPEAKER_02We can talk for days. Yeah, really. Some movies, well, that's a Paul Thomas Anderson movie. But we are gonna wrap it up here, everybody. Yeah, we got to. Um Thank you so much for joining us again. This has been Queer Projection. Uh, if you are first, if you are first timer, if you're first joining us, please go back and listen to some of our other episodes about Paul Thomas Anderson movies and other psychosexual dramas. Um, Alethea, this has been fun.
SPEAKER_01This has been really, really great then. That's what where we're at with it now. Okay. Thank you, everybody. Talk to you soon, Alethe. A tisket, a tasket, my past lives in a basket. Bye. Okay, bye.
SPEAKER_00If you already know the answers to your questions and why you ask big fuck!