“Do your eyes blink? Don’t blink.”
With those seven words, former Oscar rivals Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman locked eyes in a sweat-inducing stare-down – creating one of the most memorably uncomfortable scenes of 2012 in The Master.
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Prior to squaring off on screen, the two stars had famously gone head-to-head at the 2006 Academy Awards, both nominated in the lead actor category for playing real-life legends: Hoffman triumphed for his uncanny performance in Capote over Phoenix as Johnny Cash in Walk The Line. (Phoenix would eventually win his own lead actor Oscar in 2020 for Joker.)
The Master stands as a monument to their combined talent – and tragically, one of Hoffman’s last great, towering roles before his untimely death at the age of 46 in 2014.
This tense staring competition – and the film itself – is also notable for pulling back the curtain on the secretive world of Scientology. And one of the first people to clap eyes on it and grant his unofficial seal of approval was Scientology’s most famous devotee: Tom Cruise.
Before director Paul Thomas Anderson released his bold exploration into the fictionalised origins of the star-studded sect (which also boasts John Travolta, Nancy Cartwright and Elisabeth Moss as members), he arranged a private screening for Cruise. Having previously directed the Top Gun star to an Oscar nomination in Magnolia (alongside Hoffman), Anderson wanted his former star’s buy-in on the controversial material. When asked on CBS This Morning how Cruise reacted to the film’s take on his deeply personal beliefs, Anderson revealed, “It was a good reaction – and a healthy discussion.”
(The Master is available to stream on Tubi.)
That is likely because Anderson didn’t set out to make a hit piece on Scientology founder L Ron Hubbard. In fact, seeds of the story were planted years earlier on the set of Magnolia, where Anderson listened to harrowing real-life wartime stories from veteran actor Jason Robards (who played Cruise’s dying father in the ensemble movie).
“It is loosely inspired by L Ron Hubbard and Dianetics and the start of that – Scientology became something much different and larger – but yeah, for sure, the starting point was investigating what that movement was and how it began,” Anderson told Gayle King of the origins of The Master.
Asked if he came to any conclusions about Scientology, Anderson told Charlie Rose, “I probably thought about it initially how everybody thought about it, that it was kind of peculiar and I wasn’t sure what it was. Now, I think it’s no more peculiar or weirder than anything else out there. I think it’s helped a lot of people and … whatever it does for them, it works.”
The film follows Freddie Quell (Phoenix), a sex-obsessed, alcohol-ravaged World War II veteran and drifter who finds a sense of purpose when he falls into the orbit of Lancaster Dodd (Hoffman), the magnetic leader of a burgeoning philosophical movement known as “The Cause”.
As Freddie becomes increasingly enamoured with Dodd’s teachings, he surrenders himself to “processing” – a brutal, rapid-fire interrogation designed to strip away past trauma and break his mind open. In the sequence, Hoffman’s character bellows at Phoenix not to blink while peppering him with relentless, intrusive personal questions. It quickly became the film’s most talked-about moment – a terrifyingly intimate scene widely viewed as an exposé on Scientology’s infamous and controversial “auditing” techniques.
Phoenix, known for his extreme approach to method acting, noted to the Daily Actor how Hoffman’s entire body shook with power while portraying the fictional cult leader:
“I did not want him to look at me, I did not want to make eye contact with him, tried to stay away from him. I was terrified of him, because he was a f***ing volcano.”
And yet, Phoenix recalled that the excruciating interrogation scene also yielded an unexpected moment of levity: when Hoffman deadpanned the line about cigarettes, “I like Kools … minty flavour” both he and director Anderson broke down in fits of uncontrollable laughter.
To maintain the sharp power imbalance between the two men, Anderson mischievously called Phoenix “Bubbles” on set (a cheeky reference to Michael Jackson’s pet chimp) while Hoffman was strictly addressed as “The Master”.
Anderson later described directing Hoffman on the film as like “having the keys to a good car”.
“You just turn it on and let it go. It depends on what part he’s playing, and in this part you’ve got to call him the Master on set every day, and so he was full of life and energy and fun and the life of the party. But I have done films with him where it’s not all laughs.”
For his part, Hoffman insisted to ABC News that he was never trying to do a direct impression of Hubbard.
“In fact, I’m thinking of many other people who were actually in my mind,” he said.
“There’s a little Orson Welles, certain kinds of people that would have that kind of gravitas, really. You know, personality, that kind of ambience. That aura. And because the film is influenced or inspired by probably some of the events around Scientology but ultimately, it isn’t a film about it, so I didn’t want to err on that side because that would have been confusing.”
(The Master is available to stream on Tubi.)