Interview: The Conversationalist

Paul Thomas Anderson
Source: The Conversationalist

TC: Hey. 

PTA: Hey there.

TC: I saw your movie [The Master] a few days ago, I had a couple hours before the movie, and I went and picked up some dvds: The Passenger and Barry Lyndon. I found a sort of strange correlation between all the films.

PTA: I don't know The Passenger very well, I think I saw it, maybe ten years ago maybe twelve years ago, no maybe more, I think I saw it in 99, I don't know it very well, but Barry Lyndon I know kinda deeply and I just love that film. I think it was probably the last Kubrick film I saw and for some reason when I was a kid and I just kinda was intimidated by it, maybe how long it was, and I didn't really like it at first, I didn't get it. And years later I came back to it again and I just saw how funny it was. I mean that was the first thing that struck me, how kinda side splitting a lot of it was, and then in recent years I picked it up again found myself really really drawn to it and that film, that story and what he did with it.

TC: What I know of you, through a distant lens, you seem to be not only a lover of film but a scholar of film.

PTA: Fuck no, no way.