Magnolia (film)

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Magnolia
Movie poster
Directed by	Paul Thomas Anderson
Produced by	Paul Thomas Anderson Joanne Sellar
Written by	Paul Thomas Anderson
Narrated by	Ricky Jay
Starring	Jeremy Blackman Tom Cruise Melinda Dillon April Grace Luis Guzmán Philip Baker Hall Philip Seymour Hoffman Ricky Jay William H. Macy Alfred Molina Julianne Moore John C. Reilly Jason Robards Melora Walters
Music by	Jon Brion
Cinematography	Robert Elswit
Editing by	Dylan Tichenor
Distributed by	New Line Cinema
Release date(s)	December 8, 1999
Running time	188 min.
Country	USA
Language	English French German
Budget	$37,000,000
Official website
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

Magnolia is a 1999 American drama film, written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. It interweaves nine separate yet connected storylines, about the interactions among several people during one day in the San Fernando Valley, in Los Angeles, California. The film was distributed by New Line Cinema.

Magnolia was a critical and commercial success in 1999. Of the ensemble cast, Tom Cruise was nominated for Best Supporting Actor at the Academy Awards, and won the award in the same category at the Golden Globes of 2000.

Contents 1 Overview 1.1 Character relationships 1.2 Raining frogs and Exodus 8:2 2 Featured cast 3 Development 3.1 Screenplay 3.2 Casting 3.3 Production 4 Music and soundtracks 5 Reception 5.1 Awards 6 Themes 7 DVD 8 References 9 External links

[edit] Overview

Magnolia starts with an introduction (narrated by an uncredited Ricky Jay) describing three events that set the mood for the movie by urging the audience to think about supposed coincidences which occur "all the time." The events, which are well-known urban legends in the universe of the film, are as follows:

1. Sir Edmund William Godfrey, a resident of Greenberry Hill, London, is murdered outside his pharmacy by three vagrants by the names Joseph Green, Stanley Berry, and Daniel Hill. This was based on the murder of Edmund Berry Godfrey.
2. A blackjack dealer, Delmer Darion, while scuba diving is accidentally picked up by a fire fighting airplane scooping water to put out a forest fire, and dies of a heart attack during the flight. The pilot of the plane, Craig Hansen, had met Darion a few days prior at the latter's casino, starting a fight with him after losing a hand of blackjack. The guilt and the measure of coincidence provokes the pilot to commit suicide.
3. A 17-year-old boy, Sydney Barringer, attempts suicide by jumping off the roof of his apartment building; this attempt became a "successful homicide" when he was accidentally shot by his mother as he fell past his own apartment window. His parents regularly argued and threatened each other with a shotgun that was not normally kept loaded. Unbeknown to them, Sydney had loaded the gun a few days earlier hoping they would make good on their threats to kill one another. As a result, he unwittingly became an accomplice in his own murder. The irony here is that a newly installed protective netting for window washers on the building's exterior below their apartment, would have saved his life if he had not been hit by the shotgun blast that he himself had loaded.

The movie then goes on to introduce the main characters while Aimee Mann's version of Harry Nilsson's "One" plays in the background:

• Frank T.J. Mackey (Tom Cruise), author of Seduce and Destroy, a self-help book for men to get women to sleep with them. Mackey's character was inspired by Ross Jeffries.^[1]
• Linda Partridge (Julianne Moore), a woman dealing with her much older husband's terminal illness and feelings of guilt for her infidelity. She is Frank T.J. Mackey's stepmother.
• "Quiz Kid" Donnie Smith (William H. Macy), who won a large sum of money on the television game show What Do Kids Know? in the 1960s, but whose adult life has gone downhill after appearing as a celebrity spokesperson.
• Stanley Spector (Jeremy Blackman), a current contestant on What Do Kids Know?. His greedy father, an aspiring actor, capitalizes off of his son's success and constantly pressures him to win.
• Phil Parma (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a kind, sympathetic and lonely nurse working for the terminally ill Earl Partridge.
• Claudia Wilson Gator (Melora Walters), a young woman plagued by psychological problems and a cocaine addiction; daughter of Jimmy Gator.
• Jimmy Gator (Philip Baker Hall), host of What Do Kids Know?, who is dying of bone cancer. He seeks reconciliation with his daughter, Claudia.
• Earl Partridge (Jason Robards), a wealthy television producer with terminal lung cancer. He is the estranged father of Frank T.J. Mackey and husband to Linda Partridge.
• Officer Jim Kurring (John C. Reilly), a divorced, religious, and forthright police officer. While on patrol, Kurring often speaks to an imaginary camera, as if he were appearing on a reality TV series such as COPS.

The movie ends with the narrator urging the audience to think again about the coincidences mentioned in the intro, implying that the unlikely connections between the characters in the movie are similar.

[edit] Character relationships

Many of the characters have thematically similar stories:

	Jim Kurring (John C. Reilly)	Earl (Jason Robards)	Jimmy (Philip Baker Hall)	Claudia (Melora Walters)	Stanley (Jeremy Blackman)	Donnie (William H. Macy)
Linda (Julianne Moore)		Both have been unfaithful (Linda to Earl and Earl to his first wife)	Both make admissions of infidelity, and both unsuccessfully attempt suicide.	Both abuse drugs and suffer from psychological problems		Both suffer emotional outbursts
Donnie (William H. Macy)	Both are lonely and desperately seeking love			Both have a persecution complex	Both are "quiz kids" who feel unappreciated by their parents
Frank (Tom Cruise)		Both mistreat women		Both engage in self-destructive behaviors as a result of childhood trauma, as well as living under pseudonyms
Stanley (Jeremy Blackman)	Both feel like outcasts, Stanley from his teammates and Jim from his co-workers		Both suffer breakdowns on Jimmy's show (Jimmy physically, Stanley emotionally)	Both abused by their fathers, Stanley verbally and emotionally, Claudia sexually
Jimmy (Philip Baker Hall)		Both are dying of cancer and both cheated on their wives
Earl (Jason Robards)	Both had a troubled first marriage

The plot reveals all these relationships over a number of interlocking events, including:

• A crime that investigators think was committed by the Worm (played by Orlando Jones in scenes that were deleted).
• The broadcasting of a live episode of What Do Kids Know?, a quiz show that pits children against adults.
• A noise complaint that leads to an awkward conversation, and eventually a date between Jim and Claudia.
• Donnie's barroom conversation with an eccentric barfly, and his misguided attempts to woo the braces-wearing bartender, Brad. His love for him results in an attempt to steal money from the employer who fired him to pay for braces that he does not need.
• An interview in which a reporter attempts to penetrate the emotional wall that Frank hides behind.
• The last hours of Earl's life, which complicate Linda's life with a number of vital decisions and in which a desperate Phil attempts to fulfill Earl's wish to see Frank, the son who despises him.

[edit] Raining frogs and Exodus 8:2

Further information: Raining animals

At the end of the movie, a rare but precedented event occurs: frogs rain from the sky. While the plague of frogs is unexpected, there have been real-life reports of frogs being sucked into waterspouts and raining to the ground miles inland.^[2]

The movie has an underlying theme of unexplained events, taken from the 1920s and 1930s works of American intellectual Charles Fort. Fortean author Loren Coleman has written a chapter about this motion picture, entitled "The Teleporting Animals and Magnolia," in one of his recent books.^[3] The film has many hidden Fortean themes. The fall of frogs is merely one of them. One of Charles Fort's books is visible on the table in the library and there is an end credit thanking Charles Fort.^[4]

Another explanation could be the scene in which a boy named Dixon tells Jim that "when the sunshine don't work, the good Lord bring the rain in." A Bible verse frequently referenced and alluded to in the film, Exodus 8:2 (NIV), states that "If you refuse to let them go, I will plague your whole country with frogs" (In Exodus, the frogs are described as simply crawling out of the "waters of Egypt"). Many of the film's other strange occurrences, such as quotes that seem odd or out of place, can be similarly explained (see the link to Cigarettes and Red Vines' Magnolia page below for more information).

There are various references to Exodus 8:2, like when the humidity is recorded to be 82 percent. At the very beginning, the man being hanged bears a sign reading "82". The plane that kills Darion has "82" painted on the side, and at the poker table, the man asks for a two and gets an 8. In the "Jumping scene" of Sydney Barringer, to the left of Sydney along the roof border, "82" appears to be spelled out in some type of wire formation on the wall, his parents were arguing in room #682, and the forensics meeting is at 8:20. The phone number for "Seduce and Destroy" has 82 in it. At the beginning scene of What Do Kids Know, a fan is seen carrying a sign reading "Exodus 8:2" before an usher (Anderson in a cameo performance) removes the sign; one of the most concrete references towards that verse in the Bible. During the rain of frogs, a sign reading "Exodus 8:2" can be seen on the side of the street. Also, Jim's voice mailbox says that his automated answering machine number is "82." Anderson did not originally include these allusions in his screenplay; after Henry Gibson brought the passage to his attention, he worked it into the script.^[5]

Other repeated references to animal rain in the story include at least four different characters in different scenes using the cliché, "It's raining cats and dogs". The only character in the story who seems to be unsurprised by the unusual meteorological event is the child prodigy, Stanley. He calmly observes the falling frog silhouettes, saying “This happens”. This has led to the speculation that Stanley is seen as a prophet, allegorically akin to Moses, and that the "slavery" the movie conveys alludes to the exploitation of children by adults.^[6] These "father issues" persist throughout the movie, as seen with the abuse and neglect of Claudia, Frank, Donnie, Stanley and Dixon.^[7]

[edit] Featured cast

Actor	Role
Jeremy Blackman	Stanley Spector
Michael Bowen	Rick Spector
Tom Cruise	Frank T.J. Mackey
Melinda Dillon	Rose Gator
Henry Gibson	Thurston Howell
April Grace	Gwenovier
Luis Guzmán	Luis
Philip Baker Hall	Jimmy Gator
Philip Seymour Hoffman	Phil Parma
Felicity Huffman	Cynthia
Thomas Jane	Young Jimmy Gator
Ricky Jay	Burt Ramsey/Narrator
Orlando Jones	Worm
William H. Macy	Quiz Kid Donnie Smith
Alfred Molina	Solomon Solomon
Julianne Moore	Linda Partridge
Michael Murphy	Alan Kligman, Esq.
John C. Reilly	Jim Kurring
Jason Robards	Earl Partridge
Melora Walters	Claudia Wilson Gator

[edit] Development

Paul Thomas Anderson started to get ideas for Magnolia during the long editing period of Boogie Nights (1997). As he got closer to finishing the film, he started writing down material for his new project^[1] After the critical and financial success of Boogie Nights, New Line Cinema, who backed that film, told Anderson that he could do whatever he wanted and the filmmaker realized that, "I was in a position I will never ever be in again".^[8] Michael De Luca, then Head of Production at New Line, made the deal for Magnolia, granting Anderson final cut without hearing an idea for the film.^[9][8] Originally, Anderson had wanted to make a film that was "intimate and small-scale",^[10] something that he could shoot in 30 days.^[11] He had the title of "Magnolia" in his head before he wrote the script.^[12] As he started writing, the script "kept blossoming" and he realized that there were many actors he wanted to write for and then decided to put "an epic spin on topics that don't necessarily get the epic treatment".^[10] He wanted to "make the epic, the all-time great San Fernando Valley movie".^[12] Anderson started with lists of images, words and ideas that "start resolving themselves into sequences and shots and dialogue",^[10] actors, and music. The first image he had for the film was the smiling face of actress Melora Walters.^[10] The next image that came to him was of Philip Baker Hall as her father. Anderson imagined Hall walked up the steps of Walters' apartment and had an intense confrontation with her.^[13] Anderson also did research on the magnolia tree and discovered a concept that eating the tree's bark helped cure cancer.^[12]

[edit] Screenplay

By the time he started writing the script he was listening to Aimee Mann's music.^[10] Anderson used her two solo albums and some demo tracks from a new album that Mann was working on as a basis and inspiration for the film.^[14] In particular, Mann's song "Deathly", on her album Bachelor No. 2, features the lyric "Now that I've met you/Would you object to/Never seeing each other again", which was used as line of dialogue in the film.^[10] In addition, "Deathly" also inspired the character of Claudia.^[14]

The character of Jim Kurring originated in the summer of 1998 when actor John C. Reilly grew a mustache out of interest and started putting together an unintelligent cop character. He and Anderson did a few parodies of COPS with the director chasing Reilly around the streets with a video camera. Actress Jennifer Jason Leigh made an appearance in one of these videos. Some of Kurring's dialogue came from these sessions.^[10] This time around, Reilly wanted to do something different and told Anderson that he was "always cast as these heavies or these semi-retarded child men. Can't you give me something I can relate to, like falling in love with a girl?"^[15] Anderson also wanted to make Reilly a romantic lead because it was something different that the actor had not done before.^[10]

For Philip Seymour Hoffman, Anderson wanted him to play a "really simple, uncomplicated, caring character".^[10] The actor described his character as someone who "really takes pride in the fact that every day he's dealing with life and death circumstances".^[11] With Julianne Moore in mind, the director wrote a role for her to play a crazed character using many pharmaceuticals. According to the actress, "Linda doesn't know who she is or what she's feeling and can only try to explain it in the most vulgar terms possible".^[16] For William H. Macy, Anderson felt that the actor was scared of big, emotional parts and wrote for him, "a big tearful, emotional part".^[10]

While convincing Philip Baker Hall to do the film by explaining the significance of the rain of frogs, the actor told him a story about when he was in the mountains of Italy and got caught in bad weather - a mix of rain, snow and tiny frogs. Hall had to pull off the road until the storm passed.^[17] According to an interview, Hall said that he based the character of Jimmy Gator on real-life TV personalities such as Bob Barker, Alistair Beck, and Arthur Godfrey.^[18] The rain of frogs was inspired by the works of Charles Fort and Anderson claims that he was unaware that it was also a reference in The Bible when he first wrote the sequence. At the time the filmmaker came across the notion of a rain of frogs, he was "going through a weird, personal time", and he started to understand "why people turn to religion in times of trouble, and maybe my form of finding religion was reading about rains of frogs and realizing that makes sense to me somehow".^[1]

[edit] Casting

Tom Cruise was a fan of Anderson's previous film, Boogie Nights, and contacted the filmmaker while he was working on Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut (1999).^[19] Anderson met with Cruise on the set of Kubrick's film and the actor told him to keep him in mind for his next film. After Anderson finished the script, he sent Cruise a copy and the next day, the actor called him. Cruise was interested but nervous about the role. They met with Cruise along with De Luca who helped convince the actor to do the film.^[8] Frank T.J. Mackey, the character that Cruise would play in the film, was based in part on an audio-recording done in an engineering class taught by a friend that was given to Anderson.^[1] It consisted of two men, "talking all this trash" about women and quoting a man named Ross Jeffries, who was teaching a new version of the Eric Weber course, "How to Pick Up Women," but utilizing hypnotism and subliminal language techniques.^[1] Anderson transcribed the tape and did a reading with Reilly and Chris Penn.^[8] The director then incorporated this dialogue and his research on Jeffries and other self-help gurus into Mackey and his sex seminar.^[1] Anderson felt that Cruise was drawn to the role because he had just finished making Eyes Wide Shut, playing a repressed character, and was able to then play a character that was "outlandish and bigger-than-life".^[12]

Anderson wrote the role of Earl Partridge for Jason Robards but he was initially unable to do it because of a serious staph infection. Anderson approached George C. Scott, who turned him down. Eventually, Robards was able to do the film.^[20] Robards has said of his character, "It was sort of prophetic that I be asked to play a guy going out in life. It was just so right for me to do this and bring what I know to it".^[11] According to Hall, much of the material with Partridge was based on Anderson watching his father die of cancer.^[18]

[edit] Production

Before Anderson became a filmmaker, one of the jobs he had was as an assistant for a television game show, Quiz Kid Challenge, an experience he incorporated into the script for Magnolia.^[9] He also claimed in interviews that the film is structured somewhat like "A Day in the Life" by The Beatles, and "it kind of builds up, note by note, then drops or recedes, then builds again".^[12] The production designers looked at films with close, tight color palettes, films that were warm and analyzed why they did that and then applied it to Magnolia.^[11] They also wanted to evoke the colors of the magnolia flower: greens, browns and off-whites. For the section of the prologue that is set in 1911, Anderson used a hand-cranked pathe camera that would have been used at the time.^[11] Some of the actors were nervous about singing the lyrics to Mann's "Wise Up" in the film's climactic scene and so Anderson had Moore do it first and she set the pace and everyone else followed.^[10]

Anderson and New Line reportedly had intense arguments about how to market Magnolia.^[8] He felt that the studio did not do a decent enough job on Boogie Nights and did not like the studio's poster or trailer for Magnolia. Anderson ended up designing his own poster, cut together a trailer himself,^[8] wrote the liner notes for the soundtrack album, and pushed to avoid hyping Cruise's presence in the film in favor of the ensemble cast.^[20] Even though Anderson ultimately got his way, he realized that he had to "learn to fight without being a jerk. I was a bit of a baby. At the first moment of conflict, I behaved in a slightly adolescent knee-jerk way. I just screamed."^[8] In a Rolling Stone article, published around the time of Magnolia's release, Anderson said that he walked out of Fight Club after the first half hour and criticized its director, David Fincher, for making jokes about cancer, saying that he should get it as punishment. Afterwards, Anderson wrote Fincher a note apologizing and explained that he had lost his sense of humor about cancer.^[21]

[edit] Music and soundtracks

See also: Magnolia (album)

See also: Magnolia (score)

Anderson met Aimee Mann in 1996 when he asked her husband, Michael Penn, to write songs for his film, Hard Eight. Mann had songs on soundtracks before but never "utilized in such an integral way" she said in an interview.^[19] She gave Anderson rough mixes of songs and found that they both wrote about the same kinds of characters.^[19] He encouraged her to write songs for the film by sending her a copy of the script.^[11]

Two songs were written expressly for the film: "You Do," which was based on a character later cut from the film, and "Save Me," which closes the film;^[14] the latter was nominated in the 2000 Academy Awards and Golden Globes and in the 2001 Grammys. Most of the remaining seven Mann songs were demos and works in progress; "Wise Up," which is at the center of a sequence in which all of the characters sing the song,^[10] was originally written for the 1996 film Jerry Maguire. At the time Mann's record label had refused to release her songs on an album.^[14] The song that plays at the opening of the film is a cover version of "One" by Harry Nilsson.

Anderson produced a music video for "Save Me" that featured Mann in the background of what appeared to be scenes from the film, singing to characters. Unlike in many such music videos, there was no digital manipulation involved; the video was shot at the end of filming days with Mann and actors who were asked to stay in place. The video, which contains exactly seven cuts, won the Best Editing award at the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards and was nominated for Best Music Video from a Film.

The soundtrack album, released in December 1999 on Reprise Records, features the Mann songs, as well as a section of Jon Brion's score and tracks by Supertramp and Gabrielle that were used in the film. Reprise released a full score album in March 2000.

[edit] Reception

Magnolia initially opened in a limited release on December 17, 1999 in seven theaters grossing USD $193,604. The film was given a wide release on January 7, 2000 in 1,034 theaters grossing $5.7 million on its opening weekend. It ended up making $22.4 million in North America and $25.9 million in the rest of the world with a worldwide tally of $48.4 million, above its budget of $37 million.^[22]

While Magnolia struggled at the box office, it was well-received critically. It currently has an 85 percent rating (with an 82 percent "Cream of the Crop designation) on Rotten Tomatoes. USA Today gave the film three-and-a-half stars out of four and called it "the most imperfect of the year's best movies".^[23] In the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert praised the film, saying: "Magnolia is the kind of film I instinctively respond to. Leave logic at the door. Do not expect subdued taste and restraint, but instead a kind of operatic ecstasy".^[24] Entertainment Weekly gave the film a "B+" rating, praising Cruise's performance: "It's with Cruise as Frank T.J. Mackey, a slick televangelist of penis power, that the filmmaker scores his biggest success, as the actor exorcises the uptight fastidiousness of Eyes Wide Shut . . . Like John Travolta in Pulp Fiction, this cautiously packaged movie star is liberated by risky business".^[25] The Independent said that the film was "limitless. And yet some things do feel incomplete, brushed-upon, tangential. Magnolia does not have the last word on anything. But is superb".^[26]

In her review for the New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote, "But when that group sing-along arrives, Magnolia begins to self-destruct spectacularly. It's astonishing to see a film begin this brilliantly only to torpedo itself in its final hour," but went on to say that the film "was saved from its worst, most reductive ideas by the intimacy of the performances and the deeply felt distress signals given off by the cast".^[27] Philip French, in his review for The Observer, wrote, "But is the joyless universe he (Anderson) presents any more convincing than the Pollyanna optimism of traditional sitcoms? These lives are somehow too stunted and pathetic to achieve the level of tragedy".^[28]

[edit] Awards

Magnolia was nominated for two Golden Globe Awards in 2000, Cruise for Best Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture and Mann for Best Original Song for "Save Me". Cruise won.^[29] The film was also nominated for three Academy Awards, including Cruise for Best Supporting Actor, Anderson for Best Original Screenplay, and Aimee Mann's "Save Me" for Best Original Song. Magnolia failed to win in any categories it was nominated for.^[30] Anderson's film won the Golden Bear at the 50th Berlin International Film Festival.^[31]

The Toronto Film Critics Association Awards named Magnolia the Best Film of 1999 and gave Anderson Best Director honors. His screenplay also tied with the ones for Being John Malkovich and American Beauty as the best of the year.^[32] Philip Seymour Hoffman and Julianne Moore won Supporting Actor and Actress awards from the National Board of Review.^[12]

2000 Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards

• Nominated, Best Picture

2001 Grammy Awards

• Nominated, Best Compilation Soundtrack Album for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media
• Nominated, Best Score Soundtrack Album for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media
• Nominated, Best Song Written for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media: Aimee Mann, for the song "Save Me"

2000 Screen Actors Guild Awards

• Nominated, Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Theatrical Motion Picture
• Nominated, Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role: Julianne Moore
• Nominated, Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role: Tom Cruise

[edit] Themes

Many essays and other writings have been composed on the themes in Magnolia. Some themes that are often associated with the film include regret, loneliness,^[19] the cost of failed relationships as a result of fathers that have failed their children, ^[33] not all events and their results can be controlled, but an individual can control his or her own actions, mistakes of the past cannot simply be erased (We might be through with the past, but the past ain't through with us), exploitation, and the limits of forgiveness. Some themes also include familial violence. The opening murder of the boy by his mother, and the implied sexual assault perpetrated on Claudia by Jimmy are among the most obvious.

[edit] DVD

The Magnolia DVD includes a lengthy behind-the-scenes documentary, That Moment. It uses a fly-on-the-wall approach to cover nearly every aspect of production, from production management and scheduling to music direction to special effects. The behind-the-scenes documentary is an in-depth look into Anderson's motivation and directing style. Pre-production included a screening of the film Network, as well as Ordinary People. Several scenes showed Anderson at odds with the child actors and labor laws that restrict their work time. The character of Dixon has further scenes filmed but, from Anderson's reactions, appear not to be working. These scenes were cut completely and have never been shown on DVD.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Official website
• Magnolia at the Internet Movie Database
• Magnolia at Allmovie
• Magnolia at Rotten Tomatoes
• cigarettes and red vines: magnolia
• Magnolia at the Arts & Faith Top100 Spiritually Significant Films list

v • d • e Films directed by Paul Thomas Anderson Hard Eight (1996) • Boogie Nights (1997) • Magnolia (1999) • Punch-Drunk Love (2002) • There Will Be Blood (2007)

Awards
Preceded by The Thin Red Line	Golden Bear winner 2000	Succeeded by Intimacy