Magnolia is a 1999 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 well-financed by New Line Cinema. Stylistically, it has strong independent film influences, and its running time is relatively long, at 188 minutes (NTSC) / 180 minutes (PAL).

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.

Magnolia starts with an introduction 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, are:

Sir Edmund William Godfrey, a resident of Greenberry Hill, London, UK, is murdered outside his pharmacy by three vagrants by the names Joseph Green, Stanley Berry, and Daniel Hill. Based on the murder of Edmund Berry Godfrey.
A blackjack dealer, Delmer Darion, dies of a heart attack while scuba diving, as he is accidentally picked up by a fire fighting airplane scooping water to put out a forest fire. The pilot of the plane, Craig Hansen, had met Darion a few days prior at Darion's casino, starting a fight with him after losing a hand of blackjack. The guilt and the measure of coincidence caused the pilot to commit suicide.
A 17-year-old boy, Sydney Barringer, whose attempted suicide by jumping off the roof of his apartment building 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. Unbeknownst 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 awning 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:

Frank T.J. Mackey (Tom Cruise), author of "Seduce and Destroy," a self-help system for men to get women to sleep with them. Mackey's character was inspired by Ross Jeffries, according to Paul Thomas Anderson in the magazine "Creative Screenwriting".
Linda Partridge (Julianne Moore), a woman dealing with her much older husband's terminal illness and feelings of guilt for her infidelity. She is the stepmother of Frank T.J. Mackey.
"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?. He has a selfish showbiz father who capitalizes off of his son's success and constantly pressures him to win.
Phil Parma (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a kind, sympathetic nurse working for the terminally ill Earl Partridge.
Claudia Wilson Gator (Melora Walters), a young woman plagued by psychological problems and is addicted to cocaine; daughter of Jimmy Gator.
Jimmy Gator (Philip Baker Hall), host of What Do Kids Know?.
Earl Partridge (Jason Robards), a wealthy television producer with terminal lung cancer. Estranged father of Frank T.J. Mackey.
Officer Jim Kurring (John C. Reilly), a divorced 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.
Dixon (Emmanuel L. Johnson), an African American youth who raps and is the son of "The Worm."

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 general-knowledge 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 enigmatic and eccentric man, and his misguided attempts to woo the braces-wearing bartender, Brad. His love for him results in an attempt to steal money to pay for braces that he does not need from the employer who fired him.
An interview in which a reporter attempts to penetrate the emotional wall that Frank hides behind.
The last hours of Earl, 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.
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; see raining animals.
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.

The movie has an underlying theme of Fortean 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. 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. [ISBN 1-416527-36-2 Mysterious America']

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," (although 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%. At the very beginning, the man being hanged bears a sign reading '82'. The plane that kills Darion has '82' painted on the side. 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. At the beginning scene of the show "What Do Kids Know" a fan is seen carrying a sign reading "Exodus 8:2" before an usher removes the sign; one of the most concrete references towards that verse in the Bible. Also, the Officer 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.[3]

Other repeated references to animal rain in the story include at least four different characters in different scenes using the cliche "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 observed 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. These "father issues" persist throughout the movie, as seen with the abuse and neglect of Claudia, Frank and Donnie (as children), Stanley and Dixon (from the deleted scene).

Magnolia is a thematically rich film. Many essays and other writings have been composed on it. Some themes that are often associated with the film include:

Regret
The cost of failed relationships as a result of fathers that have failed their children. Jimmy to Claudia, Earl to Frank, Stanley to his dad, Donnie to his parents. (While crouched over a toilet Donnie mumbles another explicit Exodus reference saying, ‘The sins of the fathers laid upon the children. Exodus 20:5’)
Not all events and their results can be controlled, but an individual can control his own actions.
Mistakes of the past cannot simply be erased
What it means to be a man. (Earl and Frank define masculinity by their oppression of women. Stanley's father defines it by bullying. Jim the cop defines it by talking to others in a manner that parents talk to their children, and by not losing face in front of his fellow cops and is shamed that he lost his gun.)
Exploitation

A published version of the shooting script (Newmarket Press, 2001, ISBN 1-55704-406-6) indicates that there was substantial additional material to be incorporated into the film which did not make the final cut. In particular, the character of Dixon, the boy Jim Kurring met while investigating the shots in the first act, returns in a scene in the diner near where Donnie and Jim return the money, with his father (the Worm) in an extended dialogue exchange which indicates that Worm's father is abusive toward both Dixon and himself.

Paul Thomas Anderson has stated that the screenplay was written largely around the songs of Aimee Mann.

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; 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, 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. Paul Thomas Anderson had heard the demos while writing the screenplay. The song that plays at the opening of the film is a cover version of "One" by Harry Nilsson.

The song "Deathly" by Aimee Mann is also on her album Bachelor No. 2. It features the lyric "Now that I've met you/Would you object to/Never seeing each other again". This is used as line of dialogue in Magnolia, and the song was a major inspiration for the film.

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. 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.

Various spoken lines of the film were used as samples in the Dream Theater song "Honor Thy Father", from their album Train of Thought.

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. As Magnolia is arguably Paul Thomas Anderson's most ambitious work to date, the behind-the-scenes documentary is also an in-depth look into his motivation and directing style. Pre-production included a screening of the film Network. 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.