Paul Thomas Anderson Movies
With his 1997 film Boogie Nights, then-27-year-old director Paul Thomas Anderson took his place on the list of Hollywood wunderkinds. A brash, ensemble-driven epic made as a tribute to the Los Angeles porn industry of the 1970s, the film was both an exploration of the industry and the '70s version of the American dream. Combining sharp humor, indelible poignancy, and painstaking detail, Boogie Nights was hailed by one critic as the first great film about the '70s to come out since the '70s. The wide acclaim surrounding it -- as well as Anderson's Best Screenplay Oscar nomination -- put Anderson at the forefront of young American filmmakers, establishing him as one of the most exciting talents to come along in years.The son of voice actor Ernie Anderson, he was born in Studio City, California, on January 1, 1970. Growing up in the Valley, where the porn industry thrived during the '70s, Anderson became obsessed with porn movies at a young age. He had a greater fascination with the medium than he did with school; by all accounts a poor student, he was kicked out of the sixth grade for bad behavior. Always interested in becoming a filmmaker, Anderson made his first movie in high school, a 30-minute mockumentary entitled Dirk Diggler. Inspired by an article he had read on porn star John Holmes, Anderson's short -- about a porn star and his 13-inch penis -- would later become the inspiration for Boogie Nights.
After a brief stint as an English major at Emerson College and an even shorter stint at the New York University Film School, Anderson began his career as a production assistant on various TV movies, videos, and game shows in Los Angeles and New York. In 1992, he made Cigarettes & Coffee, a short with five vignettes set in a diner. After it was screened at the 1993 Sundance Festival, Hollywood came calling, and Anderson made his first full-length feature, Sydney -- retitled Hard Eight. Released in 1996, the making of the film -- a crime drama set in the world of gambling and prostitution -- proved disastrous for the director, who was fired by the film's production company and not allowed to release his own version of the movie until it had been selected for competition at Cannes. Hard Eight ultimately earned a fair number of positive notices, but went virtually unheard of by audiences.
During the troubling production of Hard Eight in 1995, Anderson began writing Boogie Nights as a way to retain a hold on his sanity. The great success that surrounded the film's release all but ensured that the writer/director would be spared the kind of problems that had marred his previous effort. The recipient of numerous honors, including three Oscar and two Golden Globe nominations, Boogie Nights was widely hailed as one of the best films of the year, if not the decade.
Anderson remained mum on what he would do next, but in 1999 he resurfaced with Magnolia. Like Boogie Nights, it was an ensemble film of epic length, and featured performances by such Anderson regulars as Philip Seymour Hoffman, John C. Reilly, Philip Baker Hall, William H. Macy, and Julianne Moore. Centered around themes of love, death, abandonment, and familial estrangement, it served up a lavish helping of the sort of sweeping narrative, visual flair, and off-kilter insight that Anderson had made his trademark. Critics responded in kind, once again praising Anderson's touch with actors, particularly his ability to evince a full-fledged supporting performance from the usually-plastic Tom Cruise. Though it turned up on a slew of 10-best lists and secured Oscar nods for Cruise, Aimee Mann's original song "Save Me", and Anderson's screenplay, Magnolia's three-hour-and-twenty-minute running time scared off audiences, and the film failed to break even Boogie Nights' $25 million tally.
Scaling back his worldview somewhat, Anderson spent part of the next year honing his comic skills in the most unlikely of places: on NBC's venerable sketch show Saturday Night Live. Tagging along for an episode that featured then-girlfriend Fiona Apple as musical guest, Anderson was tapped for his writing talents as well as for a couple of pre-filmed mock-documentary segments. The comedy bug took hold, and it wasn't long before the auteur would team up with SNL alum Adam Sandler for a high-concept, low-budget (by Sandler standards, at least) romantic comedy. An off-kilter fusion of '50s Technicolor musical, extortion thriller, and the real-life tale of one man's pudding compulsion, Punch-Drunk Love premiered at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival, nabbing its creator a tie for the Best Director prize (shared with the legendary South Korean filmmaker Im Kwon-Taek). Though its fall release in the States was accompanied by ecstatic reviews and careful marketing, Punch-Drunk failed to connect with audiences -- who were perhaps expecting a conventional Sandler comedy -- and petered out at the box office after a promising limited-release run.
Allegedly suffering from some burnout after the lack of response to Punch Drunk Love, Anderson took a job assisting one of his idols, Robert Altman, while he directed what would turn out to be his final film, A Prairie Home Companion. This process reinvigoratd him to some degree and Anderson returned to screens in 2007 with There Will Be Blood, a loose adaptation of Upton Sinclair's novel Oil. The story of an oilman (Daniel Day-Lewis) whose misanthropy and desire for success costs him his humanity opened to thunderous critical praise and was one of the two films to dominate the year end critics and industry awards. Anderson was cited for numerous writing and directing awards including Oscar nominations for each of those categories.
With the exception of welcoming his third child with significant other Maya Rudolph in 2011, Anderson kept a low-profile for a few years. However, rumors continued to swirl about his next project. Though there was talk of Robert Downey Jr. joining him for an adaptation of Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice, word came early in 2012 that The Master, a religious drama supposedly modeled in part on Scientology, would hit screens in October of that year starring his regular collaborator Philip Seymour Hoffman as a cult leader.
~ Rebecca Flint Marx, Rovi
- 2014
Paul Thomas Anderson adapts Thomas Pynchon's celebrated detective novel in this Annapurna Pictures production. Joaquin Phoenix stars as a private eye at the tail end of the psychedelic 60s who investigates a kidnapping case. ~ Jeremy Wheeler, Rovi
Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master stars Joaquin Phoenix as a psychologically damaged war veteran who finds himself working for Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a charismatic figure building his own religion. As the alcoholic, self-destructive former soldier becomes more deeply involved with the leader of this cult-like organization, his natural instincts keep him from embracing his new position as strongly as others in the group would hope. The Master screened at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival. ~ Perry Seibert, Rovi
- Starring:
- Philip Seymour Hoffman, Joaquin Phoenix, (more)
Writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson steps outside his contemporary world of dysfunctional Angelenos to explore a very different dysfunctional man -- an oil pioneer whose trailblazing spirit is equaled only by his murderous ambition. There Will Be Blood is Anderson's loose adaptation of the novel Oil! by Upton Sinclair, and it focuses its attentions on Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis), a miner who happens upon black gold during a disastrous excavation that ends in a broken leg. Pulling himself up from the bowels of the earth, both literally and metaphorically, Plainview embarks on a systematic and steadfast approach to mastering the oil business. Using plain-spoken and straightforward language, Plainview launches a campaign to convince small-town property owners they should let him drill their land. Without him, they won't have the equipment to access the profit beneath their feet. He builds an empire this way -- and gradually becomes obsessed with the intrinsic value of power, growing increasingly irascible and paranoid in the process. Plainview meets his match in Eli Sunday (Paul Dano), a teenage preacher in the small California town of Little Boston, whose brother tipped Plainview off to the town's plentiful supply of untapped oil. To fully reap the benefits of the land, Plainview must suffer the opposing whims of this "prophet," whose legitimacy is questionable at best. And it's unclear if either man is prepared to pay the humiliating price the other wants to exact. There Will Be Blood features an anachronistic soundtrack by Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood, and it was shot in the same town where the James Dean epic Giant was filmed. ~ Derek Armstrong, Rovi
- Starring:
- Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano, (more)
In the late '60s, American culture experienced a period of change as the youth movement challenged conventional attitudes about politics, sex, drugs, and gender issues, while the advancement of the Vietnam War found many citizens questioning the actions and wisdom of their government for the first time. As American attitudes continued to evolve, so did the American film industry; as costly big-budget blockbusters nearly brought the major studios to the brink of collapse, smaller and more personal films such as Bonnie and Clyde, Easy Rider, and Five Easy Pieces demonstrated there was a ready audience for bold and challenging entertainment. As the '60s faded into the 1970s, American cinema moved into an exciting period of creativity and stylistic innovation, which led to such landmark films as The Godfather, MASH, The Last Picture Show, Shampoo, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Chinatown, and Taxi Driver, and new freedom for directors and screenwriters. Ironically, however, it was another pair of big-budget blockbusters directed by students of the new wave of filmmaking -- Jaws and Star Wars -- which brought the studios back to power and put an end to Hollywood's flirtation with offbeat creativity. A Decade Under the Influence is a documentary which explores the rise and fall of new American filmmaking in the 1970s, and features interviews with many of the key directors, screenwriters, and actors whose work typified the movement, including Francis Ford Coppola, Robert Altman, Martin Scorsese, Paul Schrader, Roger Corman, Dennis Hopper, Jon Voight, and Julie Christie. A Decade Under the Influence received its world premier at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival, and an expanded version of the film was later shown on the premium cable outlet The Independent Film Channel; the documentary was the final work of co-director Ted Demme, who died shortly before the film was completed. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
- Starring:
- Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, (more)
Adam Sandler and Emily Watson star in Punch-Drunk Love, an odd romantic comedy from gifted young director Paul Thomas Anderson. Sandler plays Barry Egan, a shy sad-sack with a great deal of repressed anger that occasionally bursts forth in sudden violent outrages, who falls in love with Lena Leonard (Emily Watson), a co-worker of one of Barry's seven sisters. After calling a phone-sex line, Barry is extorted by bad-guy Dean Trumbell (Anderson regular Philip Seymour Hoffman), who eventually sends four goons to assault Barry and get the money. This film was screened in competition at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival, where Paul Thomas Anderson was named Best Director. ~ Perry Seibert, Rovi
- Starring:
- Adam Sandler, Emily Watson, (more)
- 1999
Famous for his gargantuan anatomy, John Holmes led a bacchanalian high life surrounded by a bevy of beautiful porn starlets and a plethora of drugs. Veteran documentary director Cass Paley tells of the sordid and often bizarre rise and premature fall of Holmes, porn's most famous performer. Starting from his humble upbringing in the back woods of Ohio, the film chronicles Holmes' rise to fame from the notorious porn-noir Johnny Wadd series, to his 27 fan clubs and his reported $1500-a-day salary. Yet Paley is less interested in the sensational aspects of Holmes' debauched life than in exploring his character. Through interviews and clips from four of the most famous of his 2000 movies, a disturbing dark side emerges from his good old boy image. He had an abusive childhood, kept a wife secret from his porn colleagues for 20 years, pimped out his 15-year-old mistress for drug money, was questioned for his connection with a grisly mass murder, and eventually died of complications from AIDS. In the process, Paley paints a raucous portrait of the porn world during its '70s heyday. Wadd: The Life & Times of John C. Holmes was screened at the 1999 Toronto Film Festival and won the best documentary award at the 1999 South by Southwest Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi
- Starring:
- John Holmes, Paul Thomas Anderson, (more)
Writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson followed his critical and commercial breakthrough Boogie Nights with this wildly ambitious story of lives intertwining on a single day in California's San Fernando Valley. Earl Partridge (Jason Robards), a successful producer of television game shows, left his wife when she contracted cancer to marry the younger and more beautiful Linda (Julianne Moore). Now, Earl has cancer himself, and Linda spends her day fetching medicines and trying to deal with the imminent death of her husband, whom she has only now come to love. Earl asks his nurse Phil (Philip Seymour Hoffman) to arrange a meeting with his estranged son, Frank Mackey (Tom Cruise), known for his self-help program "Seduce and Destroy," in which he preaches the importance of male sexual prowess; he cared for his mother after Earl left her, and he has no desire to see his father again. Earl's best-known show is hosted by Jimmy Gator (Philip Baker Hall), who also learns that he is dying. Jimmy's show pits bright adults against unusually smart kids; one of Jimmy's child contestants, Stanley (Jeremy Blackman), arrives late for a taping after being left stranded by his father Rick (Michael Bowen), who is supported by his more successful son. Meanwhile, Donnie Smith (William H. Macy), who was a champ on Jimmy's show as a child, is not having as much luck as an adult; he's just lost his job and needs to pay for some expensive dental work. Jimmy wants to reconcile with his estranged and emotionally fragile daughter Claudia (Melora Walters), who despises him and who will become involved with well-meaning police officer Jim Kurring (John C. Reilly), who has been desperately lonely since his divorce three years ago. Magnolia reunites much of the cast and crew of Boogie Nights and features eight original songs by singer/songwriter Aimee Mann and a musical score by Jon Brion. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
- Starring:
- Jason Robards, Jr., Julianne Moore, (more)
While set within the milieu of the Los Angeles adult film industry, Boogie Nights is less a film about pornography than the serio-comic story of a group of misfits, losers, and lost souls who are embraced by Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds), a director who makes "adult films, exotic motion pictures." In 1977, while hanging out at a disco, Jack spots Eddie (Mark Wahlberg), the new busboy at the club, and tells him he's convinced "there's something wonderful inside those jeans waiting to get out." Jack knows his business well and his expert eye has not betrayed him; Eddie is a pornographer's dream -- good looking, remarkably endowed, and willing and able to do as many takes as might be needed. The product of a woefully dysfunctional upbringing, Eddie is not terribly bright but is very ambitious and eager to prove he has a "special something" to share with the world. Eddie changes his name to Dirk Diggler and quickly becomes the biggest star in hardcore. Working alongside "Dirk" in Jack's films are Amber Waves (Julianne Moore), a porn actress who applies her misplaced maternal instincts to anyone who needs nurturing; Rollergirl (Heather Graham), a cheerful but blank-faced high school drop-out who never removes her roller skates; Reed Rothchild (John C. Reilly), a none-too-bright actor, aspiring magician, and failing songwriter; Buck (Don Cheadle), a black actor fascinated with cowboy iconography who wants to open a stereo shop; Scotty J (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a stocky and awkward soundman infatuated with Dirk; Little Bill (William H. Macy), Jack's assistant director, who has trouble dealing with his wife's brazen infidelity; and Colonel James (Robert Ridgely), Jack's backer, who has a weakness for young girls. In the brief, late-'70s moment when porn was chic and sex films seemed poised to break into the mainstream, Dirk becomes a star and Jack a respected name. But a few years later, drugs and pride have taken their toll on Dirk and many of his friends, while the advent of the VCR radically changes the adult movie business; Jack goes from being a "filmmaker" to manufacturing and wholesaling videocassettes, a wealthy but emotionally broken man. In his second film, wunderkind director Paul Thomas Anderson juggled a broad range of characters in a manner reminiscent of Robert Altman's ensemble films, making Boogie Nights a sad but funny story of a makeshift family of damaged people and what happens before and after their brief moment in the sun. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
- Starring:
- Mark Wahlberg, Burt Reynolds, (more)
Before his commercial breakthrough with Boogie Nights (1997), writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson made this low-key drama. John (John C. Reilly), a half-bright loser stranded in Reno, is down to his last few bucks when Sydney (Phillip Baker Hall), taking pity on him, buys him breakfast and offers him a few tips on making money in the casinos. Two years later, John has become Sydney's partner, but his lack of common sense goes from problematic to dangerous when he falls in love with Clementine (Gwyneth Paltrow), a cocktail waitress who isn't above turning a few tricks when she needs to make money -- and isn't any brighter than John. Hall and Reilly, both first-rate character actors, are cast in rare leading roles, and Paltrow is cast strongly against type as a part-time prostitute with a serious lack of street smarts. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
- Starring:
- Philip Baker Hall, John C. Reilly, (more)
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