Interview: Newsweek

Secrets of ‘The Master’

Inside director P.T. Anderson’s ‘Scientology movie. 

by David Ansen Aug 20, 2012 1:00 AM EDT
 

Scene for scene, shot for shot, Paul Thomas Anderson may be the most exciting American writer-director of his generation. He’s a kind of cinematic chemist who works with unstable, dangerously flammable human particles. At any moment his characters—and his movies—are capable of exploding, and there’s no telling which way the shards will fly, or, as in Magnolia, the frogs will drop. Think of the seething ambition of Daniel Day-Lewis’s power-hungry oil magnate in There Will Be Blood; the powder keg of anger underneath the shy Adam Sandler in Punch Drunk Love; the cold, narcissistic fury behind the cocky surface of Tom Cruise’s sex-guru in Magnolia; the coke-fueled desperation of the porn-world denizens in his exhilarating Boogie Nights. There are rarely conventional heroes and villains in Anderson’s emotionally charged sagas, and that’s one of the reasons his movies feel so alive; he keeps us out of the comfort zone of predictable Hollywood formulas.

Interview: "Lights, Cameras, Oscar"

Newsweek
January 26th, 1998


It's January. Have you written your acceptance speech yet? Newsweek's David Ansen and Corie Brown ask some of Hollywood's hottest directors to vent about studios, statuettes and Titanic.

It is awards season in Hollywood, and the only talk is of Oscars. Shall we listen in? Newsweek invited four of 1997's most celebrated directors to a round-table discussion at Hotel Bel-Air in Los Angeles. Two of the filmmakers seem sure to get Best Director nominations; one's a long shot and the other doesn't have a chance in hell. Still, from the moment they met they all bonded marvelously. Curtis Hanson, who directed "L.A. Confidential"; Gus Van Sant, who made "Good Will Hunting," and Paul Thomas Anderson, of "Boogie Nights" fame, all exchanged apparently heartfelt compliments. Barry Sonnenfeld, who gave us "Men in Black," arrived enthusing about the movie he'd just seen, "Wag the Dog." The directors posed for pictures, dissing difficult actors and sleazy agents. ("They're just guys who sleep with hookers--it's disgusting," one said about a particular agency.) And then they sat down for the interview.

James Brooks, who directed the highly nominatable "As Good As It Gets," couldn't make it to Hotel Bel-Air, but he called in from Australia to say that one of the highlights of awards season is finally meeting some of his fellow directors. "You're herded into the same parties, you go to the same events," he said. "You get to know each other for the first time." He missed quite an afternoon in L.A. Excerpts:

Does "Titanic" change anything in Hollywood? It cost $200 million, and it's a huge hit.