Strange Days in LA: From Magnolia to Inherent Vice

"It is in the humble opinion of this narrator that this is not just 'something that happened.' This cannot be 'one of those things'...This, please, cannot be that. And for what I would like to say, I can't. This was not just a matter of chance.…These strange things happen all the time." ~Magnolia

A small tornado hit South Los Angeles on December 12, 2014

 

Frogs fall from the sky in Magnolia, an American drama film written, produced, and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, narrated by Ricky Jay, was released on December 17, 1999.

Meanwhile, what new film was released on 12.12.14? Something novel (as in a novel from Thomas Pynchon) turned into a movie from Paul Thomas Anderson, Inherent Vice:

Location of the plot of Pynchon's novel: "The setting is Los Angeles in 1970; the arrest and trial of the Manson Family is featured throughout the novel as a current event. Larry 'Doc' Sportello, private investigator and 'pothead,' receives a visit from his former girlfriend Shasta Fay Hepworth, now having an affair with the real-estate mogul Mickey Wolfmann."

Shasta Fay Hepworth links to the Fayette Factor, of course.

Someone wrote this about Magnolia at Wikipedia: "The film has an underlying theme of unexplained events, taken from the 1920s and 1930s works of Charles Fort. Fortean author Loren Coleman has written a chapter about the film, entitled "The Teleporting Animals and Magnolia," in one of his recent books [Mysterious America]. One of Fort's books is visible on the table in the library and there is an end credit thanking Charles Fort."

Several of the actual film prop frogs from Magnolia 

are at the International Cryptozoology Museum.

Of course, Los Angeles became the Z-target of sharks from the sky when Skarknado was released on SyFy, July 11, 2013.

The Master: L. Ron Hubbard?

The ultimate Fayette Factor movie is on its way. 

Coming sooner than you can imagine is The Master, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. The movie reportedly is about "The Cause," a seemingly disguised religion that has been compared to Scientology. 
It is due for release on October 12, 2012.
Philip Seymour Hoffman plays a character named "Lancaster Dodd." Dodd has a great deal in common with Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard (1911–1986).  One item being mentioned on locations such as Wikipedia is that Hubbard "served in the U.S. Navy in World War II and after his release from the hospital founded the belief system" today called "Scientology" in 1952. 
In The Master, 1952 is the year for the founding of the film's religion too.
That's L for Lafayette, by the way, in Hubbard's name.


How deeply will this film explore the amazing fabric that is there to examine?


Even one-third of the occult material available from the life of L. Ron Hubbard would be intriguing to view via Anderson's directing abilities:

In August 1945 Hubbard moved into the Pasadena mansion of John "Jack" Whiteside Parsons. A leading rocket propulsion researcher at the California Institute of Technology and a founder of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Parsons led a double life as an avid occultist and Thelemite, follower of the English ceremonial magician Aleister Crowley and leader of a lodge of Crowley's magical order, Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO). He let rooms in the house only to tenants who he specified should be "atheists and those of a Bohemian disposition."
Hubbard befriended Parsons and soon became sexually involved with Parsons's 21-year-old girlfriend, Sara "Betty" Northrup.

 

Paul Thomas Anderson is also the director of Magnolia, the 1999 film which has become a Fortean classic, complete with frog falls, Charles Fort book covers, synchronicity incidents, and more. My chapter examining the 1999 film more closely is entitled, "The Teleporting Animals and Magnolia," and is in my book, Mysterious America.