Build a movie plot around this: What were the drinks made with that Dodd liked? Paint thinner.
Freddie Quell is a sex-obsessed alcoholic World War II veteran from Lynn, Massachusetts, struggling to adjust to post-war society. By 1950, he has become a portrait photographer at a department store, but he is soon fired for getting into a drunken fight with a customer. Freddie then finds work at a Salinas, California cabbage farm, but his moonshine poisons one of the elderly Filipino migrant workers and he is chased off.One night, intoxicated, Freddie finds himself in San Francisco and stows away on the yacht of a follower of Lancaster Dodd, the leader of a nascent philosophical movement known as "The Cause." When he is discovered, Dodd describes Freddie as "aberrated" and invites him to stay and attend the marriage of his daughter, Elizabeth, as long as he will make more of his mysterious brew (made with paint thinner), which Dodd has developed a taste for. Dodd begins an exercise with Freddie called Processing, a flurry of disturbing psychological questions aimed at conquering Freddie's past traumas. Freddie reveals that his father is dead, his mother is institutionalized, he had an incestuous relationship with his aunt, and he abandoned the love of his life, a young girl named Doris, who wrote to him while he was at war. Freddie is enthralled by Dodd, who doesn't flinch from his abject revelations, and Dodd sees something in Freddie. Freddie travels with Dodd's family as they spread the teachings of "The Cause" along the East Coast. Dodd and his family, with Freddie tagging along, stay as guests in the homes of various women drawn to "The Cause." But when at a dinner party in New York, a man questions Dodd's methods and statements, Freddie pursues him to his apartment and assaults him that night.Other members of "The Cause" begin to worry about Freddie's behavior, despite Dodd's attachment to him. While they are guests of an acolyte in Philadelphia, Dodd's wife Peggy tells Freddie that he must quit drinking if he wishes to stay, to which he agrees. However, he has no true intention of keeping his...