Paul Anderson - Biography

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From the debut of his short film "Coffee and Cigarettes" at the 1993 Sundance Film Festival, Paul Thomas Anderson was on a trajectory to success. An ambitious featurette that focused on five characters interacting in a Las Vegas diner, "Coffee and Cigarettes" set the mold for his later films: multiple storylines, dazzling camerawork and a detailed emphasis on character. A brash, gutsy moviemaker, Anderson has tackled big themes but paradoxically allowed them to unfold via intimate moments onscreen. As Chris Vognar of The Dallas Morning News pointed out in his January 9, 2000 profile of the wunderkind writer-director, "Remorse, regret and redemption, played out in a family or surrogate-family setting, have been key elements in all three of Mr. Anderson's films [to that date]. The stakes get higher, and the canvas grows wider, with each one."

The son of TV host and voice actor Ernie Anderson (perhaps best remembered as the announcer on the long-running ABC series "The Love Boat"), Anderson spent his formative years in Studio City, California. The admittedly poor student had begun making amateur movies after his father purchased a Betamax camera in 1982. He has said in interviews that when he was about he discovered a stash of pornographic tapes belonging to his father and the lasting effect could be seen in one of his amateur films "The Dirk Diggler Story" (1988) and its feature incarnation "Boogie Nights" (1997). Despite a self-admitted contempt for film schools, Anderson briefly attended Boston's Emerson College and New York University before leaving academia in favor of obtaining practical experience. Upon his return to Southern California, he found employment in various production capacities on independent films as well as TV programming (including a stint on the short-lived syndicated "Quiz Kid Challenge" in 1990). While working as a production assistant on a PBS special on political correctness, he met character actor Philip Baker Hall and promised to write something for him. The result was the character of Sydney, one of the coffee shop denizens in 1992's "Cigarettes and Coffee". After the short screened at Sundance, Anderson fielded offers, including one to expand it into feature length. Concentrating on Hall's character, he fashioned "Sydney", a drama of love, revenge and ultimately redemption set against a seedy Las Vegas backdrop. Because he insisted on Hall for the lead, raising the financing was a bit problematic until Gwyneth Paltrow accepted the role of a cocktail waitress who becomes a part of Sydney's world. The film premiered at Cannes in 1996 to mixed to positive reviews (particularly for Hall's central performance). The distributor, however, re-cut the film and released it under the title "Hard Eight" (1997). Despite it not being exactly his vision, it earned respectful reviews although it wasn't a big box-office hit.

The fight over the control of "Hard Eight/Sydney" left the writer-director with a somewhat dim view of the Hollywood suits. ("It was the most painful experience I've ever gone through," Anderson has been quoted as saying.) While waiting for the financing for his first film, Anderson wrote a sprawling 300-page script that served as the basis for his second feature, "Boogie Nights" (1997), which expanded on ideas he first addressed in his short, "The Dirk Diggler Story" (which in turn owed its inspiration to real-life porn star Johnny Holmes), Anderson was invited to participate at the Sundance Institute's Filmmakers Workshop and was mentored by Michael Caton-Jones. The script eventually found its way to New Line Productions, where it was greenlit by executive Michael De Luca. Although ostensibly set in the world of pornography, "Boogie Nights" was more of a coming-of-age drama centered on an unhappy Southern California youth named Eddie Adams (rapper-turned-thespian Mark Wahlberg) who happened to blessed with a large physical endowment. Working under surrogate father Jack Horner (played by Burt Reynolds) and co-starring with the maternal Amber Waves (Julianne Moore), Adams re-christens himself Dirk Diggler and enjoys fame within the industry yet descends into a personal maelstrom fueled by drugs. Extremely well-acted (both Reynolds and Moore snagged supporting Oscar nominations) and well-written (Anderson too garnered an Academy nod), the film did suffer some diffusion. In following numerous characters, it paid some (like Don Cheadle's Buck) short shrift and there were several subplots that either went nowhere or bogged the proceedings down. Stylistically, Anderson paid his due to Robert Altman, particularly in the long opening shot that recalled Altman's first scene in "The Player" (1992), but he also demonstrated a command of the camera that was an improvement over "Hard Eight". "Boogie Nights" for all its faults, clearly announced the arrival of an intriguing new voice in film.

Anticipation rode high as to how Anderson would follow his first flush of success. In an almost unprecedented move, New Line practically offered him carte blanche. Inspired by the songs of Aimee Mann (he even used one of her lines, "Now that I've met you, would you object to never seeing me again?" as a jumping off place for the story), Anderson penned "Magnolia" (1999). Again like Altman, the filmmaker hired many of the same actors (Philip Baker Hall, John C Reilly, William H Macy, Julianne Moore, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Melora Walters) and undertook the ambitious idea of telling nine stories, some of which interconnect, (not unlike several of Altman's films) that transpire over the course of one very unique day. In addition to his stock players, the script attracted the likes of Oscar-winner Jason Robards and Oscar nominee Melinda Dillon. But the biggest coup was landing Tom Cruise for a pivotal role as a foul-mouthed, cable TV sex guru. "Magnolia" was Anderson's most ambitious work to date and although it dealt with similar themes of parent-child relations and redemption, they were tempered with more humanity. In an essay in The Washington Post (January 23, 2000), Stephen Hunter deconstructed the religious imagery and undertones to the film, calling it "a God-mad chunk of pure American magic realism" and "a meditation on the intricacy of whimsical patterns". Like Julio Medem's "Lovers of the Arctic Circle" (1998), "Magnolia" owed much of the thrust of its plot to odd coincidences. (Anderson sets this up in a brilliant prologue in which he reconstructs three strange but true examples of the capriciousness of fate.) Because he employed a biblical deus ex machina and refused to tie up the loose ends neatly, "Magnolia" polarized critics and audiences; one either wholeheartedly gave in to it or one resisted and despised it. For his part, Anderson used bold camerawork that kept the three hour opus moving and incorporated one of Mann's songs in a moving and audacious coup de cinema. If nothing else, this brash moviemaker established a level of personal best that would challenge his future work, begging the question of how he would top himself.

Anderson's next move was certainly a bold one, refashioning the well-established sad sack image of hugely successful comedian Adam Sandler, whose familiar shtick was beginning to bore audiences. Anderson specifically wrote the lead role in his 2002 film "Punch-Drunk Love" specifically for Sandler, casting him in a romantic comedy with dark overtones about a soft-spoken man beset by seven domineering sisters who's involvement in a phone sex scheme leads him to find love in the form of Emily Watson. Anderson scored critical kudos, including a Best Directing award at the Cannes Film Festival, for the atypically restrained and whimsical film, and Sandler earned high marks for segueing near-seamlessly into a more mature role.