Paul Thomas Anderson
Paul Thomas Anderson (born June 26, 1970), also known by his initials PTA, is an American filmmaker. His accolades include nominations for eleven Academy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, and eight BAFTA Awards (winning one for Best Original Screenplay). He has also won Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival, the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival, and both the Silver and Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival.
For the similarly-named English filmmaker, see Paul W. S. Anderson.
Paul Thomas Anderson
June 26, 1970
Filmmaker
1988–present
Maya Rudolph (2001–present)
4
Ernie Anderson (father)
Anderson's films are often psychological dramas characterized by depictions of flawed, desperate characters; explorations of dysfunctional families, alienation, loneliness, and redemption; and a bold visual style that uses constantly-moving camera shots and long takes. After his directorial debut, Hard Eight (1996), he had critical and commercial success with Boogie Nights (1997), and received further accolades with Magnolia (1999) and Punch-Drunk Love (2002). His fifth film, There Will Be Blood (2007), is often cited as one of the greatest of the 21st century. It was followed by The Master (2012), Inherent Vice (2014), Phantom Thread (2017) and Licorice Pizza (2021).
Anderson is noted for his collaborations with the cinematographer Robert Elswit, the costume designer Mark Bridges, the composers Jon Brion and Jonny Greenwood, and several actors. He has directed music videos for artists such as Brion, Fiona Apple, Haim, Aimee Mann, Joanna Newsom, Michael Penn, Radiohead and the Smile. He also directed the documentary Junun (2015) and the short music film Anima (2019).
Early life[edit]
Anderson was born in the Studio City neighborhood of Los Angeles on June 26, 1970,[1][2] the son of Edwina (née Gough) and actor Ernie Anderson (1923–1997).[3][4] His father was the voice of ABC and played a Cleveland late-night horror host known as Ghoulardi, after whom Anderson would later name his production company.[3][4] Anderson has three siblings, as well as five older half-siblings from his father's first marriage.[5][6][7] He grew up in the San Fernando Valley[8] and was raised as a Roman Catholic.[9] He had a troubled relationship with his mother, but was close with his father, who encouraged him to become a writer or director.[10] He attended The Buckley School, John Thomas Dye School, Campbell Hall School, Cushing Academy, and Montclair College Preparatory School.[7]
Anderson was involved in filmmaking from a young age,[11][12] and never had an alternative plan to directing films.[13] He made his first film when he was eight years old,[6] and started making films on a Betamax video camera that his father bought in 1982.[12] He later started using 8 mm film, but realized that video was easier.[11] As a teenager, he began writing and experimenting with a Bolex 16 mm camera.[11][14] After years of experimenting with "standard fare", he wrote and filmed his first real production as a senior at Montclair Prep, using money he earned cleaning cages at a pet store.[12][15] The film was a 30-minute mockumentary about a porn star called The Dirk Diggler Story (1988), with a story inspired by John Holmes, who also served as a major inspiration for Boogie Nights (1997), the feature-length adaptation of The Dirk Diggler Story.[7][10][11][14]
Career[edit]
1990s[edit]
Anderson attended Santa Monica College,[16] before having two semesters as an English major at Emerson College, where he was taught by David Foster Wallace. Anderson spent two days at New York University before he began his career as a production assistant on television, films, music videos, and game shows in Los Angeles and New York City.[7][17][18] Feeling that the material shown to him at film school turned the experience into "homework or a chore",[19] Anderson decided to make a 20-minute film that would be his "college".[17]
For a budget of $10,000 (which was made up of gambling winnings, his girlfriend's credit card, and the money his father set aside for him for college),[17] Anderson made Cigarettes & Coffee (1993), a short film connecting multiple storylines with a $20 bill.[7][14][20] The film was screened at the 1993 Sundance Festival Shorts Program.[14] He planned to expand the film to feature-length, and was invited to the 1994 Sundance Feature Film Program.[7][14][20] Michael Caton-Jones served as Anderson's mentor. He saw him as someone with "talent and a fully formed creative voice, but not much hands-on experience", and gave him some hard and practical lessons.[12]
While at Sundance, Anderson had a deal with Rysher Entertainment to direct his first full-length feature film, Sydney, which was retitled Hard Eight.[10][12] After completing the film, Rysher re-edited it.[12] He had the workprint of the original cut and submitted the film to the 1996 Cannes Film Festival,[14] where it was shown at the Un Certain Regard section.[21][22] He had the version released, but only after he retitled the film, and raised the $200,000 necessary to finish it. Anderson, Philip Baker Hall, John C. Reilly and Gwyneth Paltrow contributed to the final funding.[12][14] The version that was released was Anderson's and the acclaim from the film launched his career.[14][7] The film follows the life of a senior gambler and a homeless man. Philip Seymour Hoffman worked with Anderson on five films.[23] In his review of the film, Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert wrote, "Movies like Hard Eight remind me of what original, compelling characters the movies can sometimes give us."[24]
Anderson worked on the script for his second film while working on the first one,[12] and completed it in 1995.[14] The result was his breakout film Boogie Nights,[25][26][27] which is based on his short film The Dirk Diggler Story and is set in the Golden Age of Porn. The film follows a nightclub dishwasher who becomes a pornographic actor under his stage name.[7][14][28] The script was noticed by New Line Cinema's president, Michael De Luca, who felt "totally gaga" reading it.[12] It was released on October 10, 1997, and was a critical and commercial success.[10] The film revived the career of Burt Reynolds,[29][30] and provided breakout roles for Mark Wahlberg and Julianne Moore.[31][32][33] After the film's production, Reynolds refused to star in Anderson's third film, Magnolia.[34] At the 70th Academy Awards, the film was nominated for three awards, including for Best Supporting Actor (Reynolds), Best Supporting Actress (Moore) and Best Original Screenplay.[35]
After the success of Boogie Nights, New Line told Anderson that he could do whatever he wanted for his next film and granted him creative control.[10] Though Anderson initially wanted to make a film that was "intimate and small-scale", the script "kept blossoming". The result was the ensemble piece Magnolia (1999), which tells the story of the peculiar interaction of several individuals in San Fernando Valley.[36][37] It was inspired by the music of the singer-songwriter Aimee Mann,[38] who wrote songs for its soundtrack.[39] At the 72nd Academy Awards, Magnolia was nominated for three awards, including for Best Supporting Actor (Tom Cruise), Best Original Song for "Save Me" by Mann, and Best Original Screenplay.[40] After its release, Anderson said that "Magnolia is, for better or worse, the best movie I'll ever make".[41]
Influences and style[edit]
Influences[edit]
Anderson attended film school for two days, preferring instead to learn by watching the films of directors he liked along with the accompanying director's audio commentary.[8][13][14] He has cited Robert Altman, Jonathan Demme, Robert Downey, Sr., Alfred Hitchcock, John Huston, Stanley Kubrick, Akira Kurosawa, Mike Leigh, David Mamet, Anthony Mann, Vincente Minnelli, Max Ophüls, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Frank Tashlin, François Truffaut, Orson Welles and Billy Wilder as influences.[11][27][95][96][97]
Themes and style[edit]
Anderson is known for films set in the San Fernando Valley with realistically flawed and desperate characters.[13][98] Among the themes dealt with in the films are dysfunctional families,[27][96][99] alienation,[96] surrogate families,[100] regret,[96] loneliness,[27] destiny,[7] the power of forgiveness,[6] and ghosts of the past.[27] Anderson makes frequent use of repetition to build emphasis and thematic consistency. In Boogie Nights, Magnolia, Punch Drunk Love, and The Master, the phrase "I didn't do anything" is used at least once, developing themes of responsibility and denial.[101][102][103][104] Anderson's films are known for their bold visual style[98] which includes stylistic trademarks, such as constantly moving camera shots,[41][98] steadicam-based long takes,[25][27][105] memorable use of music,[25][41][98] and multilayered audiovisual imagery.[25][105] Anderson tends to reference the Book of Exodus, either explicitly or subtly, such as in recurring references to Exodus 8:2 in Magnolia,[106] which chronicles the plague of frogs, culminating with the literal raining of frogs in the film's climax, or the title and themes in There Will Be Blood, a phrase in Exodus 7:19, which details the plague of blood.[107][108]
Within his first three films, Hard Eight, Boogie Nights and Magnolia, Anderson explored themes of dysfunctional families, alienation, and loneliness.[27][96] Boogie Nights and Magnolia were noted for their large ensemble casts,[26][98] which Anderson returned to in Inherent Vice.[109][110] In Punch-Drunk Love, Anderson explored similar themes, but expressed a different visual style, shedding the influences and references of his earlier films, being more surreal and having a heightened sense of reality.[96][105] It was also short, compared to his previous two films, at 90 minutes.[26]
There Will Be Blood stood apart from his first four films, but shared similar themes and style, such as flawed characters, moving camera, memorable music and a lengthy running time.[98] The film was more overtly engaged with politics than his previous films had been,[26] examining capitalism and themes such as savagery, optimism and obsession.[111] The Master dealt with "ideas about American personality, success, rootlessness, master-disciple dynamics, and father-son mutually assured destruction."[112] All of his films deal with American themes, with business versus art in Boogie Nights, ambition in There Will Be Blood, and self-reinvention in The Master.[113]
Personal life[edit]
Anderson is a vegan.[126]
Anderson dated musician Fiona Apple from 1997 to 2000. Apple said in 2020 that he had anger issues during their relationship, and once threw a chair across the room and another time shoved her out of his car. Apple said that aspects of the relationship had made her feel "fearful and numb".[127]
Anderson has been in a relationship with actress and comedian Maya Rudolph since November 2001.[a][129][130] They live in the San Fernando Valley[6][57] with their four children.