Chicago Tribune, Written By Mark Caro
October 25th, 2002
Paul Thomas Anderson likes to stick actual phone numbers into his movies instead of those phony "555" ones, and if you called the ones mentioned in Magnolia, you heard phone messages related to the movie.
So when Adam Sandler's character recites his phone number in Punch-Drunk Love, you can imagine all of the Anderson cultists taking out their pens.
If you call the number, you hear a male voice saying, "Hi, this is Paul. Please leave a message."
Is that Anderson?
"No, it's not," the filmmaker said. "It's a funny story, actually. That's a phone number that we bought for Magnolia. You're supposed to just kind of own it forever, and it turned out New Line (which released Magnolia) gave up paying this really small bill per month. So I called the number just to check and see if they still had it, and it was some guy named Paul. So I guess he might get a lot of phone calls."
The number, in fact, is the same one that the Philip Seymour Hoffman character dials in Magnolia. A message for "Paul" from this reporter went unreturned.
"I think that Columbia contacted him," Anderson said. "My producer called to try and figure a situation out, so I don't know what the latest is on it."
Showing posts with label chicago tribune. Show all posts
Showing posts with label chicago tribune. Show all posts
Friday, October 25, 2002
Wednesday, October 16, 2002
Interview: "Paul Thomas Anderson Casts Wider Net With Punch-Drunk Love"
Chicago Tribune, Written By Mark Caro
October 16th, 2002
Here's a theory that doesn't particularly apply to "Punch-Drunk Love" director Paul Thomas Anderson, but since we're talking about a filmmaker who approaches everything from odd angles, you'll just have to roll with it:
When rockers such as Talking Heads, R.E.M. and Elvis Costello started out, they occupied their own strange planets, and their fans gravitated toward them to get a handle on Heads front man David Byrne's jittery alienation, R.E.M. singer Michael Stipe's mumbled lyrics or Costello's venom.
But as these performers grew in popularity, they became more aware of their impact on audiences and began to tailor their works accordingly, choreographing their stage moves (particularly Talking Heads and R.E.M.) and making their material more accessible. They were meeting their audiences halfway, sometimes with better artistic results than others.
The 32-year-old Anderson established a loyal cult following with his first three highly personal films, "Hard Eight" (1997), "Boogie Nights" (1997) and "Magnolia" (1999), the last being a three-hours-plus mosaic of troubled father-child relationships that supporters found mesmerizing (this writer included) and detractors deemed interminable. After "Magnolia," Anderson told interviewers that his job is to "communicate" and that he'd love to connect with a broad audience a la Steven Spielberg.
Then he made "Punch-Drunk Love," a 90-minute romantic comedy starring Adam Sandler, the childish, highly marketable star of such popular low-brow comedies as "The Waterboy" and "Big Daddy."
October 16th, 2002
Here's a theory that doesn't particularly apply to "Punch-Drunk Love" director Paul Thomas Anderson, but since we're talking about a filmmaker who approaches everything from odd angles, you'll just have to roll with it:
When rockers such as Talking Heads, R.E.M. and Elvis Costello started out, they occupied their own strange planets, and their fans gravitated toward them to get a handle on Heads front man David Byrne's jittery alienation, R.E.M. singer Michael Stipe's mumbled lyrics or Costello's venom.
But as these performers grew in popularity, they became more aware of their impact on audiences and began to tailor their works accordingly, choreographing their stage moves (particularly Talking Heads and R.E.M.) and making their material more accessible. They were meeting their audiences halfway, sometimes with better artistic results than others.
The 32-year-old Anderson established a loyal cult following with his first three highly personal films, "Hard Eight" (1997), "Boogie Nights" (1997) and "Magnolia" (1999), the last being a three-hours-plus mosaic of troubled father-child relationships that supporters found mesmerizing (this writer included) and detractors deemed interminable. After "Magnolia," Anderson told interviewers that his job is to "communicate" and that he'd love to connect with a broad audience a la Steven Spielberg.
Then he made "Punch-Drunk Love," a 90-minute romantic comedy starring Adam Sandler, the childish, highly marketable star of such popular low-brow comedies as "The Waterboy" and "Big Daddy."
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