Isn't it odd how things happen? How people affect one another in ways that can't be seen until you take a step back. How so called coincidences aren't really coincidences, but things that were meant to happen because there was no other route to take. This is what the movie Magnolia is based upon. The people that we meet and greet everyday affect us monumentally in the long run. It tells the story of eight people and how their lives are affected by each other's actions. The major characters in the movie are Earl, the dieing TV producer, Frank T.J. Mackey, the chauvinistic televangelist, Donnie, the former quiz kid, Jimmy Gaiter, the quiz show host, Jimmy's daughter Teresa, Jim, the LA cop and Stanley, the next quiz kid.

I will give a brief, but incomplete, breakdown the story from each characters track in life. I will write of Earl because without Earl, the story wouldn't be possible. Earl is a dying man with an odd vocabulary. All that is known of him is that he had once been a television producer and produced a very successful q

Now we'll talk about Jimmy's daughter, Jenny. She seems to be about 28 years old, an avid cocaine user and doesn't seem to care too much for her life. Her life takes a turn for the better when she blasts her music and does a few lines.

Next comes Donnie, the grown up quiz kid. Donnie had won quite a bit of money in the sixties and became very famous, but celebrity and poor money management had turned him into a loser. He hates the fact that everyone knows who he is, but at the same time he enjoys it. He is one of the more complex characters of the movie, because he represents what Stanley, the current quiz kid, can become.

Next comes the host of the kid's quiz show, Jimmy. Jimmy is around 65 now and is reaching his last season on the show. He has a beautiful wife, two daughters and one grandchild. You learn in the movie that Jimmy has a daughter that doesn't particularly like him and that Jimmy has always been unfaithful to his family. After you are shown this, he finds that he is going to die very soon. He decides to try and make amends. He shows up at his daughters place and tries to tell her that he is dieing and that he is very sorry for what has happened. She freaks out and kicks him out.

Stanley is an extremely intelligent kid. In the movie it shows him rifling off answers on the show. What it also shows is a father who really doesn't love him. Stanley's father is verbally abusive and unsupportive. This in effect makes Stanley a very quite and coquettish child.

Next comes the televangelist for single men, Frank T.J. Mackey, played by Tom Cruise. He is seen as this smart, sexy and desirable human being. Women and men want to be around him. He is often the target of many women's rights organizations because of his chauvinistic attitude towards women. One day, at a break in his "How to pick up women" seminars, he is

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Approximate Word count = 1256
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)