meet paul thomas anderson

For a lot of last year, I referred to PTA as my favorite film director. He had just come out with There Will Be Blood and I was excited. But the truth is that he’s not. The proof is in the fact that I still haven’t even seen the movie. I love PTA but his films are too intense, too raw. This worked for me with Magnolia for the most part but that film has segments that are SO long, boring, drawn out, and plain intense. He doesn’t wrap it all into a nice clean story for the viewer. I mean, he did with Hard Eight, his first and most coherent film. A Paul Thomas Anderson film is basically a heady, ethereal experience with flashes of brilliance. The flashes of brilliance are more like long drawn out segments of brilliance in Magnolia, but you can see what I mean most clearly in his other films, like Punch-Drunk Love, which has such a clear dichotomy between fun, interesting, moving and even romantic sections and parts that are just plain painful and which seem to represent PTA doing his thing, his way, though it doesn’t really add a sense of wholeness to the films and in fact takes away from this. Such is PTA though. I mean, the segment of Magnolia at the beginning, with the talk of coincidences and people being strangely connected: this theme is carried over very poorly into the film at large, and instead used in a very fickle, disjointed way. Yes- that’s the problem with PTA! He makes films like a confident student filmmaker rather than a confident Hollywood director! In some ways, this is a compliment, sure, but it gets irritating for a lot of his audience. I am of course terribly patient with PT but actually no, how patient AM I- I haven’t seen his last and most highly acclaimed film. I love his filmmaking style, I really do, but he doesn’t make the kinds of movies that I want to watch. Case in point: Boogie Nights. That’s so not my style.

So I wait and wait and patiently wait for something brilliant from him- which I KNOW he’s capable of, if he would only chill out a little with the self-indulgent crap and stick with the genius at work stuff.

The song Wise Up teaches me that I have to toughen up and get things done in life rather than always waiting, waiting, waiting for inspiration, for things to work out, for things to be better. It just isn’t supposed to work that way. If you want to a good life you have to go get it. Simple as that.

I would say that I first discovered PT when I watched the Making of Magnolia. He was so confident and relaxed and- I don’t know how to put it- uber-cool! But I quickly forgot about him until several years later, when I took up my current position as Obsessed PT-watcher. So it was the Making Of video that did it for me, and one other thing: Magnolia itself. I always describe Magnolia as exactly the type of film I would like to make if ever I had the chance to direct. It is so sentimental and open and passionate. People call it grand and pretentious but they miss something that’s very important: Magnolia is a personal film. It’s like a 8mm film that you make just for yourself, to get out raw emotions. It’s that emotionally honest and pure in its intentions. I hear that Paul Thomas wrote it not long after the death of his father- and it shows. The film has a certain purity about it, which I love and admire. Magnolia is also just so very moving! And I don’t think there is another movie out there that is more accepting of people- the characters- and their pain. I ♥ Magnolia for this reason.

...I really respect him and would love to meet him. He seems smart, together, unique, and simply amazing.