♪ ♪
MAN: This is a tale of a mad scientist.
And the last time I tried to solve
the mysteries of the universe.
(heart beating slowly)
I think it hit the ground 37 minutes ago,
but my mind hasn't caught up to that yet.
For me, it's still falling.
Falling for that second.
Or falling for an eternity.
I can't tell anymore.
♪ ♪
(glass shatters)
Tried to solve the mysteries of the universe?
Succeeded.
The last time I succeeded
and broke through time and space into another dimension.
But that's the end.
And I'm a fool, starting at the end,
when I should begin at the beginning.
My beginning.
That kid right there?
That's me.
Jack Parsons.
Age eight.
I liked math.
And I was damn good at it.
But I loved magick.
Honest-to-God magick.
Breaking dimensional barriers,
infusing power and summoning demons.
Choronzon be.
Vessal I.
Choronzon be.
-(indistinct whispering) -Vessal I.
Choronzon be.
JACK: I know. It sounds crazy.
Would it make you feel better knowing that I helped create
the first rockets made for space exploration...
...at a time when even saying that would get you
laughed out of a room full of scientists
as fast as saying I summoned the devil?
(cackling)
Both equally science fiction in 1922.
(radio signal warbles)
Not good enough?
Give me 30 seconds and I will prove it to you.
Scientifically.
A demon.
Cha El mi.
-Cha El mi. -(indistinct whispering)
JACK: The thing is, I don't have a lot of time right now,
because I dropped the beaker.
So I need you to open your mind
and listen just a little bit deeper
to the tides that roll across the universe.
Step inside my mind.
And though this story starts in hell...
(creature roaring)
...it ends in heaven.
♪ ♪
Hey, Jack. How much longer?
I prefer not to blow myself up when it launches.
So maybe give me five more minutes, Eddie?
FORMAN: Hey, hey, hey, hey, if I could blow myself...
Edward, language.
We're not sailors.
You sure about that, Frankie? Huh?
Space sailors.
Huh. Is that what we're gonna call them?
FORMAN: You got a better idea?
Well, cosmos travelers, maybe.
Space sailors, man.
Meh. Jack's right. Cosmonauts.
Oh, you, Frank? Really?
Thought you didn't believe
we could go from the Earth to the Moon.
MALINA: I didn't say I wanted to go.
I want a rocket that will.
And just because Jules Verne says
we can travel through space doesn't mean we can.
Yeah, well, I tell you what, pal, when I get to the Moon,
I'll send you a postcard.
We're doin' this today, right?
Yeah, yeah, you jackass.
-Yeah. -All... done.
You're a little close there, Jackie boy.
That's all the cord I could sneak out of Caltech.
At least shield your eyes, Parsons.
Shield my eyes?
If I did that, how could I see this beaut take flight?
(chuckles)
JACK: It was a beautiful sight.
Flying higher and higher.
I knew then that we'd make it to the stars.
It looks like an angel.
An angel?
Jesus Christ, man, what the hell are you drinking?
(chuckles)
JACK: My first angel at age 22.
Still 14 years behind my first demon,
but my friends didn't need to know that.
From the Earth to the Moon.
♪ ♪
JACK: I grew up in the age of Jules Verne,
Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers.
And I helped birth the space program.
You see, in the '20s, rocket science had a faith problem.
Funny, right?
A lot of very smart people didn't believe
that we could create a combination
of solid and liquid fuel, fused with metal,
that could bust through the gravity well.
But I knew we could.
So did those two guys bumping gums back there:
Edward Forman and Frank Malina.
But we couldn't even tell the scientists
at Caltech the truth:
that we wanted to launch rockets into space.
Because those learned men would've laughed at us
the way you laughed at me when I told you I summoned a demon.
So how did I get my job at Caltech?
We had an in.
Frankie worked for Theodore von Kármán,
a leading rocket scientist.
Von Kármán lived in Hungary,
but in 1930, he got worried
about the rise of anti-intellectualism
and took off for America.
-(cheering) -Good for us.
Not so good for the Nazis.
(gunshot)
Von Kármán ran Caltech's aeronautical lab,
which became Aerojet,
which then became the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
JPL.
If we ever get something out probing the universe,
you gotta give us boys at JPL some credit.
Once we launched Frankie's angel in the canyon,
they stopped laughing and told us to start launching
at a test facility outside Caltech.
Most of the time, our rockets blew up on the launchpad.
So they started calling us the Suicide Squad.
(chuckles)
I liked that.
(laughing): Oh, my God, man.
That is-- No, that's not cool.
-Ridiculous. -Okay.
Come on, let's do this. We gotta go.
(sighs) Ay, yep.
MALINA: That's the third one down.
We should call it a day.
Fourth rocket's just gonna blow up, too,
so what's the point?
Because we can. Jack?
Hold on, let me try something.
Oh, uh, Jack... maybe... maybe not now.
♪ ♪
My will is manifest.
My will is flight.
My will is manifest.
My will is flight.
-(indistinct whispering) -My will is manifest.
My will is flight.
My will is manifest.
My will is flight.
It-It's a spell. (sniffs)
Yep, that's, uh... that's his thing.
Just let him.
-Seriously? -FORMAN: Yeah.
(laughs)
When we started this, did anybody believe
we could launch a rocket? Huh?
(breathing heavily) Come on.
(exhales)
JACK: My will is manifest.
My will is flight.
-(indistinct whispering) -My will is manifest.
Nuit, I beseech you!
If it works, boys, it works.
JACK: And, boy, did it work.
Right up until it didn't.
Like I said, I was still learning my spellcraft.
But then, 100 feet up...
Did you see her?
Who?
Her. I-In red.
Her who?
JACK: Her...
Th-This is crazy.
There's no such thing as magick.
And five years ago, there was no such thing as rockets.
Fiction becomes fact.
(stammers) E-Eddie.
Look, man, all I saw
was a rocket go up, explode,
then come back down. You know, gravity.
Gravity. W-We can all agree on gravity, at least, right?
MALINA: I'm not so sure about this whole spell thing.
It's childish, Jack.
You know, maybe you should find something else for your magick.
JACK: I only saw red, but I felt...
her.
I was only eight.
I knew science was part of what I was looking for.
And science fiction that would become science fact.
But still, something more was needed...
magick. Spells.
There was truth in those pages.
Truth in magick.
But that wasn't enough.
I had opened a window and seen a devil and an angel.
But I needed more than a window.
At the time, I didn't know what that meant.
A window to what? To where?
I was missing something
and couldn't figure out what.
My home. The Parsonage.
A haven for artists, followers and believers.
After I read my first Equinox magazine,
I started writing letters
to the leader of the Thelema Church,
Aleister Crowley.
(groans)
Aleister Crowley was known as the wickedest man in the world.
"Do what thou wilt" was his driving mantra.
He believed that all people had to follow their true Will
with a capital "W."
He believed it so much that he created an entire religion
around that simple concept,
taking ideas from a bunch of other religions:
Judaism, Christianity, Classical Grecian
and a whole ton of Paganism mixed with Egyptian gods
to create his brand-new spiritual philosophy
called Thelema.
He presided over a Gnostic mass,
which was a lot like Roman Catholic mass
but aimed at different gods.
And sex was a sacrament.
Better than eating a piece of bread
that was supposed to be the flesh of God, if you ask me.
Press didn't know what to make of the guy
and his new religion,
so they named it devil worship and called it a day.
But it was so much more than that.
Thelema was more Egyptian philosophy
than Satanic sex cult.
I officially converted when I was 24.
Easy choice. Sex over of cannibalism.
"Thrice Illuminated,
"Thrice Illustrious
and very dear Brother."
I never actually met the guy,
not even once in my entire life,
but we corresponded so many times
right up until he died in 1947,
that I felt like I was there in London
or he was here in Hollywood with me.
(gasps) Magick.
CROWLEY: Is that your Will, Jack?
Magick?
And science.
Together. They must be together.
Magick is Will.
Thelema is Will.
Science is held to different laws.
You cannot Will a rocket into space.
Oh, but I did.
Go on.
Just like when I was eight and summoned the Choronzon.
Something.
You summoned something.
When I was a young man, I summoned Satan.
But your demon looked nothing like that.
Yours was different.
Is that what you want, a demon?
No. I-It, I mean, when I was eight, yeah.
Dimensional portal into another universe.
Like this one, but different. I-I think that's what I did.
I opened a window, a-a hole, a wrinkle into the multiverse.
Newton posited that God made worlds of various sorts.
Ah, a God thing.
Uh, no. Actually, a-a science thing.
-And it's gaining in popularity. -God and science.
Make up your mind.
What about her?
The Scarlet Woman. She was there, when I was eight,
and yesterday, in the explosion after my spell.
-That is magick and science. -Hmm.
Aleister.
Magick is just science we haven't figured out yet.
There's no difference.
No "and," no "but." T-They are the same.
Is that what your engineers tell you, too, Jack?
You know they don't.
Do they laugh at you when you bring your spell book
to the launchpad?
They are men of logic. Logic...
...is a really good way to be wrong with confidence.
I made you the leader of my temple
because you are a soul on the path to true Will.
Do not waste yourself on blind men.
My dear fellow,
I think the key to your salvation is not science,
not held within your conscious mind.
These three beings:
you, your Scarlet Woman and your devil.
The Great Mother Nuit
has opened a door at your knocking.
All you have to do is walk through it.
W-What?
D-Door... I don't...
Find your Scarlet Woman.
She is the tool you need to open your True Will.
♪ ♪
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.
CONGREGATION: Love is the law.
Love under Will.
JACK: Crowley was right.
I had to go back to the desert and try again...
...but not with science.
With candles...
...and blood.
This time...
with magick.
And drugs.
To help me find my visions,
sex magick, powerful, feminine in origin,
which makes it the stuff of life and renewal.
When I orgasm, it allows me to harness
the raw energy of the universe
to produce the outcome I desire,
my Will. What they don't tell you--
you can never quite get all the sand out.
Ischuros.
(chanting in foreign language)
(yells)
(retching)
(coughing)
(panting)
WOMAN'S VOICE: I am here, Jack Parsons.
Who are you?
Who...?
Who are you?
(panting)
(upbeat big band music plays)
(music shuts off)
What-What's happening here?
Tried to tell you, Jack.
It's the magick and your lifestyle,
the girls, the guys,
the what-do-you-call-it, bigamy.
Polyamory. It's different.
Poly isn't illegal.
It's different.
We don't need different right now, we need rockets.
What about me?
MALINA: You're out, too. Sorry.
You fired Eddie?
No, not fired. Bought out.
$11,000 each.
Okay.
Who bought us out?
General Tire and Rubber Company.
We couldn't keep up with the demand from the Navy.
Needed the cash. It's still JPL, Jack.
Yeah, okay.
Sell your stock, buy the lease to your homes.
Hey, Frankie.
I realize that this may come as a shock to you,
but rockets don't even use tires.
Idiot.
(car horn honking)
JACK: Hard to believe, but I was fired from science.
(laughter and loud conversation)
Not right now, darling.
-Okay. Maybe later? -Maybe.
Maybe means no, by the way.
(Mozart piece playing)
Hello?
Is this the Parsonage?
A friend said I might stay here for a few days.
You don't turn people away, she said.
I'm an artist.
She said this was a place for artists and whatnot.
This isn't the place for you.
I'm sorry?
Eh, you seem... boring.
Well, you seem like an asshole.
-Really? -Mm-hmm.
What, you into sex magick? Drugs? We have all sorts here.
My friend said this was a safe place.
You are Jack Parsons, right? Are you?
My friend said that
the great Jack Parsons was the most beautiful,
open-minded angel of a man.
Well, your friend sounds like a terrible fucking poet.
All right. You're definitely not an angel.
My apologies for having wasted your time.
(door slams shut)
JACK: Sometimes the universe gives us everything we want,
and then, most times,
because at heart we're self-destructive monkeys,
we spit right back in its face.
This was the piece Crowley told me about,
the tool I needed to break through into heaven or hell
or wherever dimension existed outside our own,
and I was too caught up
in myself to realize it.
But when science closes a door,
magick opens a window.
Hey.
Hey, come on, stop.
Please stop.
I don't even know your name. You forgot your sketchbook.
(out of breath): It's... it's really good.
-Really? Won't even turn around. -Just give it back, please.
-Just turn around. -Just give it back.
Please.
I don't understand you at all.
(indistinct whispering)
-You were so, so, so... -Mean.
-What's your problem? -So many.
Pick one.
You. You're my problem.
That you aren't in my life.
(chuckles)
Really? Laughing?
God, Schrodinger's cat.
Yeah, that's-that's you right now.
What?
It-- Thought experiment.
I-Imagine a cat in a box. It could be dead or alive,
but you don't know until you open the box.
Right now, I... I don't know if I'm alive or dead.
It's up to you.
How long ago was that experiment?
(chuckles) Ten years? Yeah.
Well, then, I can tell you
what's in that box without even looking.
You can?
A dead cat. (chuckles)
That's a long time to be in a box, Jack Parsons.
♪ ♪
I really did it.
I summoned a goddess into my life.
(laughs) Goddess, huh?
You know what?
That's a pretty damn good apology.
JACK: Crowley was right.
Marjorie Cameron was muse and tool,
goddess and puzzle piece.
34A...
Wait, what's this symbol here next to the "A"?
Looks like a cross?
(moaning)
(laughs)
We'll never finish if we can't even get started.
How much work have you actually done since I got here?
Everything I've ever dreamed of. That is a... dagger.
and it's used to denote the Hermitian adjoint.
-In this case... -Of "A." Got it.
So, you use daggers in math...
Well, in physics, really, but yeah.
And your spells?
Well, that's the best way to draw a pentagram in the air.
Hmm.
Your equations are amazing.
Your math-- Sorry, your physics,
almost feels like magick to me.
But it's not magick, right? That's the point.
You can prove a Hermitian adjoint,
just... why the other stuff?
Why?
'Cause I've already launched a rocket into space.
I've done it. I don't need to do it again.
(Marjorie laughs)
You seem to be making a fine living
doing explosions for the movies.
That's just to pay the bills. That's not a life's work.
What is your life's work?
All this math and your spells.
Are you trying to bust through
some dimensional doorway
into some other place or something?
I've done it, once.
You were there, I was there,
and some demon,
or a being from another dimension was there.
But I need to do it again because of you.
Crowley said it himself, you are the key.
You are the final tool I need.
-Tool? -Muse.
So I'm your thing?
What? N-no. You're the... you're the goddess,
the-the summoned.
Maybe you're my tool, Jack. Did you ever think of that?
Perhaps your entire purpose on this planet
is to help me make better art.
(chuckles) What? Of course not. I mean, that-that's ridiculous.
Exactly.
Right. Sorry.
JACK: I wish I had a lifetime to show you
how wonderful Marjorie was,
but even that wouldn't be enough.
But her art? Maybe she was right.
Maybe I was born to be her muse.
-(film reel whirring) -♪ ♪
Marjorie joined the Navy as a WAVE during the war.
Her father and brother both worked at JPL,
but she heard about me from a friend, not from them.
I always found that funny.
She was an actress
and an artist--
such an artist.
Even if she didn't know it yet, she was a creature of magick.
And I was sure she would grow into this part of her soul
with me.
Come with me.
-Where? -To mass. To my mass.
I'll show you the world I want to create.
I like this world perfectly fine.
But if it's important to you, it's important to me.
JACK: And it was so very important to me,
which made the ending so much worse.
ALL: Ateh.
Malkuth.
Ve-geburah.
Ve-gedulah.
(echoing): Amen.
(echoing): Take this cake of light and eat it.
CONGREGATION (echoing): There is no part of me
that is not of the gods.
JACK: Take this cake of light and eat it.
(indistinct whispering)
JACK: I was having the best trip of my life.
There is no part of me that is not of the gods.
Marjorie was having the worst.
(chuckles): Marj. That was incredible.
I saw you again tonight in all your glory.
What's this? What are you doing?
I'm going, Jack.
But-but I saw you.
Tonight, I-I really saw you.
You can't.
Please, I... I need you.
I-I can't... I can't finish this without you.
-You're... -I'm your tool, Jack.
Yes.
I know.
And my love. That, too.
That only.
No one person can be
both tool and lover.
You have to pick.
-I-I... -I saw your demon tonight, Jack.
It was consuming you.
And it will kill you.
And I can't be here for that.
No. No, you... you saw the demon.
I-I saw you tonight.
Marj, I-I... I saw your soul.
Oh, Jack Parsons...
I saw yours, too.
(birds singing)
♪ ♪
-Jack. -Dahlia.
-I think it's time... -To go.
Yeah.
Are you the last?
(Dahlia sighs)
♪ ♪
JPL, Marjorie,
sex, rockets and magick...
gone.
She told me to get back to my roots.
Well, at least I did that.
I was just as I was right after my first spell.
Nothing. Nobody.
♪ ♪
(indistinct, echoing whispers)
(whispers fade)
Here again.
The beginning.
The moment when I figured out
that magick and science were the same thing.
What am I missing?
I needed to see what my eight-year-old brain,
unencumbered by expectation or Crowley or Forman,
or even Marjorie, had seen.
Not surprising.
I first drew the demon.
But that's not the answer.
There she was.
My goddess,
in all her glory.
My eight-year-old self knew the truth,
and it took me almost 30 years to remember.
Marjorie Cameron. Room 382.
(panting): Please don't hang up.
You were right.
(chuckles): You-you weren't a tool.
You were the answer, what I was looking for.
-Th-The end of my search. -The end of your search?
Like the Holy Grail?
Just a thing to be found?
No. I don't think I can come back, Jack.
I never actually went to Paris,
but we talked so many times, with me trying to win her back,
that I felt like I was there, with her.
I know what we have to do.
But I need your help; I-I can't do it alone.
I tried that once, and failed.
We must confront my demon,
a-and then we can finally leave this world.
Together.
Science and magic are one.
You and me, we are one.
We were the beginning, and now we can be the end.
That's the secret.
It wasn't the secret; I was wrong.
But it was so very close.
No, it-it's all too much, Jack.
All this talk of...
Will and-and... demons
and beginnings and endings?
Destiny?
I only want to be with you, Jack.
Not all the rest of it.
Okay.
-I mean, I can't... -No, yeah, okay. Everything.
I'm done with that, then.
You are my life's work.
Only you.
Hey, come back. Be with me.
We-we can go to Mexico,
or... or move to Israel and join their rocket division.
-Whatever you want. -Really?
Just us, together?
(softly): Two bodies, one soul...
a Sphinx.
MARJORIE: Two bodies, one soul?
I only want to be with you, Jack.
None of the rest of it matters.
Wait, wait, wait. No, no.
-That's not... -When you're ready for just me,
let me know.
♪ ♪
Creating pyrotechnics for film sets
gave me the power I needed...
to go bigger.
(bell rings)
Apo...
Pantos...
(echoing): Kakodai Mones!
♪ ♪
Mercury fulminate,
a simple but efficient propellant...
and explosive,
as I was about to learn firsthand.
Or no hand.
You'll see.
♪ ♪
(takes deep breath)
(echoing): Nuit. Babalon. Hadit.
The Scarlet Woman,
the Goddess,
Marjorie.
The Scarlet Woman,
the Goddess,
Marjorie... fly to me.
You know how when you make one dumb mistake,
like keeping your eyes closed while holding an ungodly amount
of highly explosive substance,
time seems to slow down?
♪ ♪
Yeah, that's a real phenomena.
(explosion)
(low grunting)
They say when you die,
your entire life flashes in front of your eyes.
I could see myself from when I was eight and summoned...
myself, I suppose.
This exact moment I made happen almost 30 years ago.
I didn't realize it when I was eight,
but the creature wasn't roaring;
I was laughing.
With joy.
Such joy.
(laughing)
(echoes): Oh, Jack.
I knew she'd come back.
It didn't work out in this body, this life,
but this is the real secret,
the spell, the scientific theory
that I finally learned:
The first law of thermodynamics states
that matter cannot be created or destroyed,
so pieces of both Marjorie and me
will float around the universe for all time.
These exact same molecules will come together
in this exact same form again.
That was the secret.
There is no beginning.
There is no end.
It's an infinite loop.
She never actually came to the garage I blew up.
It wasn't even at the Parsonage anymore, I don't think.
She never saw these last gasps,
me dying.
But she did.
She's here.
She'll be here.
We're always together.
(echoing): I love you, Jack Parsons.
♪ ♪
JACK: I love you, too, Marj...