Despite comparisons to scientology, Philip Seymour Hoffman has gone on record in an interview saying ‘The Master’ is absolutely not a movie about scientology.
In an interview with EW to promote the movie (which is in limited release now and is expected to go into wide release soon), Hoffman says it doesn’t bother him that people are calling it a Scientology movie, but he does have to keep answering questions on the comparisons.
The interviewer then asks Hoffman whether once people see this movie, they will still think of it as a Scientology movie, and he replies, “There’s nothing to answer. It’s not a Scientology movie. It’s something else.”
The interviewer again tries to get something out of Hoffman, and talks about some of the similarities such as auditing and the timeline of the film, and Hoffman’s reply was, “Sure. If people are going to be that literal about it then they are. But it’s not something to be taken literally or my character would be called L. Ron Hubbard. People do this all the time. Films are like that all the time. They are inspired by things but they are not those things. Every season there are films like that. But because it’s around that thing people are paying attention to it.”
He then adds that people are creating hype about the comparison even when it’s not true. “It’s because you guys [the media] are paying attention to it. To be honest it’s because of you guys. If I did interviews and it didn’t come up then it wouldn’t come up. But it comes up because there’s an appetite for it, from you guys. It’s a good story.”
