Interview: Exclusive Internet Q&A

Written by Cigarettes & Red Vines
July 7th, 2002


This interview is based from questions submitted by internet fans.

>> What films (if any) did you use as inspiration when writing PDL?

....yeaah! to be able to answer the question which has been inside so long! I was watching tons of Astaire/Rodgers - Carefree/Gay Divorcee and of course ye old lads: Help! on repeat. remember watching tons of Tati...which RUN don't crawl and get. I recommend......the sound! the love! the affection!.........also music, must say: Joan Armatrading, Ferrante and Techer, Ernie Kovacs (!) lots of the Beatles and lots of Neil young 'silver and gold'. ever seen the moon is our home?

Couch (2003)

A very silly 2 minute black and white short featuring Adam Sandler as a man shopping for a couch. Originally premiered on Sandler's official site.

Interview: "Looking For Laughs"

Dallas Morning News, Written By Charles Ealy
May 30th, 2002


Director Paul Thomas Anderson, known for the dark and moody dramas Boogie Nights and Magnolia, was all smiles at a media conference for his new romantic comedy, Punch-Drunk Love.
The Europeans peppered him with questions, primarily wanting him to explain the American phrase "punch-drunk."

Mr. Anderson acknowledged that the title was hard to translate but said that the movie's main character, played by Adam Sandler, "feels stuff that he can't express, so he throws punches" at walls and bathroom stalls. And when you fall in love, it's even more complicated, and you literally become punch-drunk. "At least that's how I feel when I'm in love," Mr. Anderson said.

Interview: "Crazy For Love"

LA Times, Written By Kenneth Turan
May 20th, 2002


The filmmaker whose creative drive was seen in 'Boogie Nights' and 'Hard Eight' has taken on the romantic-comedy genre, and he's determined to push the limits.

CANNES, France--"It's so simple," Paul Thomas Anderson says, looking out at the rain from the marble-floored living room of the rented villa shared with about a dozen of his cast and crew just outside of town. "A camera, film, a microphone. Stuff comes in, stuff goes out. That's it."

Except that with Paul Thomas Anderson, nothing is ever quite like that. Simple is just not in the cards.

It doesn't take more than seconds in the presence of this gifted, aware 31-year-old writer-director to feel the intensity and creative zip that led to "Hard Eight," "Boogie Nights" and "Magnolia." He is, in the best sense, a filmmaker who is driving everything--the audience, the form, his collaborators, himself most of all--to go further than they have before. Which is how his latest film, "Punch-Drunk Love," which premiered at the Festival de Cannes on Sunday, came to be.

Interview: Paul Thomas Anderson Brings Adam Sandler, Emily Watson Together In Off-Beat Romance

Associated Press, Written By Jocelyn Noveck
May 19th, 2002


CANNES, France - It all started with pudding.

Paul Thomas Anderson, the talented young director of "Boogie Nights" and "Magnolia," read an article about a guy who bought a lot of pudding to take advantage of a frequent-flyer promotion.
Then he got Adam Sandler to be in his movie.

Thus was born "Punch-Drunk Love," starring Sandler and Emily Watson, a film that's described as a romantic comedy but has lots more edge than most romantic comedies.

Interview: "US Comic Adam Sandler Makes Splash At Cannes"

Variety, Written By Jodie Diderich
May 19th, 2002


CANNES, France - Adam Sandler, the accident-prone comic hero of simplistic U.S. hits like "Big Daddy" and "The Waterboy," gate-crashed the rarefied world of art house film Sunday.

Sandler performs a 180-degree turn in "Punch-Drunk Love," a romantic comedy with a twist directed by cult independent director Paul Thomas Anderson.

The New York-born Sandler is emotionally wrenching as Barry Egan, a small business owner brow-beaten by his seven sisters and unable to fall in love until he meets Lena, a mysterious woman played by Emily Watson.

It was also a complete change of direction for Anderson, whose last movie was the three-hour lyrical opus "Magnolia" with Tom Cruise.

The much shorter "Punch-Drunk Love" is competing for the coveted Palme d'Or at the world's biggest film festival, where Anderson said he was thrilled to surprise audiences with his unlikely choice for the lead role.

February 1-4, 2002

Archived update from Cigarettes & Coffee, run by Greg Mariotti & CJ Wallis from 1999-2005

I spoke to PTA recently & he had a few things to share. He's putting the finishing touches on his untitled Adam Sandler film. He's still not 100% sure on a title & a release date, but we should expect some additional news in the next few months. Be patient, I hear the film will be worth the wait! We should also have some new PTA DVD Picks shortly as well!

Our second installment of PTA Influences is up for reading pleasure courtesy of site reader Bob Ellis. It's an in-depth look at the movies of Martin Scorsese. Enjoy!

Here's an interesting tidbit. Adam Shankman, the director of the recently released film A Walk to Remember (as well as The Wedding Planner) is the same guy who choreographed the disco dancing sequence in Boogie Nights. Interesting career movie, but thought it might be of interest. (Thanks Chris!)

January 28-31, 2002

Archived update from Cigarettes & Coffee, run by Greg Mariotti & CJ Wallis from 1999-2005

Emily Watson talked Project X4 to the weekly magazine, The Georgia Straight, about Project X4 while promoting Altman's Gosford Park (Thanks Owen!):

Watson did say yes to Paul Thomas Anderson, the Magnolia and Boogie Nights director, when he was looking for a lead female for his first comedy, Punch Drunk Knuckle Love. The film's male lead: none other than Adam Sandler.

"I had the best time," she says, "and Adam is amazing. Paul pulls down something very different from what he has done before and so does Adam, and I guess so do I. I'll admit we're a strange threesome, but it was a happy meeting."

Musician Nick Cave (Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds) had this to say about Magnolia in a recent interview in the 2001 Winter issue of Mojo. (Thanks Ryan!)

He doesn't find that much to admire about recent movies - especially the Coen brothers - though he did like Michael Mann's Heat and The Informer, and thoroughly enjoyed Paul Anderson's Magnolia. "I love the way that it descends into misery," he says. "There's a section in the middle which goes on for ages, where everyone's just in agony, sitting there crying. You don't often get that from Hollywood: lengthy periods of sorrow just aren't welcome, you have a cry for two seconds and then everybody's happy again. And I liked the shower of frogs: to me it was like an apocalypse, God yawning at everyone's stupidity, and sending down a plague."

In case you missed it, the Boogie Nights DVD was listed among Entertainment Weekly's Essential DVDs of the Century. Here's their comments:

Boogie Nights (1997) (New Line, R, $29.95) Leave it to the leader of a ''funky bunch'' to star in a porn flick. Or rather, a flick about porn. But Mark Wahlberg proved to be the perfect choice to play Dirk Diggler, the well-endowed star of Paul Thomas Anderson's ode to the adult-film industry. And while size may indeed matter, it was Anderson's deft attention to detail that made ''Boogie Nights'' the defining cinematic look back at the glitzy, glamorous (and grimy) late '70s.

Here's an interesting article about the spirituality of Magnolia. You can read it here. (Thanks Nick!)

January 22, 2002

Archived update from Cigarettes & Coffee, run by Greg Mariotti & CJ Wallis from 1999-2005

A few mentions of Project X4 have surfaced in the past week. The Daily Texan lists the film as the #3 most anticipated film for 2002. Here's what they said (Thanks William!):

# 3 - P.T. Anderson Project

Of all the projects kept under wraps, none have done a better job of doing so than Paul Thomas Anderson's follow-up to Magnolia. But even if Anderson kept an online production journal of the shoot, describing every detail, the curiosity surrounding it would remain unfettered. With Anderson's choices for leading man being Adam Sandler (that's not a misprint) and Emily Watson for leading lady, the level of mystery about the film, which is supposedly a romantic comedy, has only heightened. For months, the film has had online film circles guessing about both the titles (everything from Punch Drunk Love to Knuckle Sandwich) and the plot. What is known, however, is that part of the film will take place in Hawaii, where Anderson took his cast and crew last January. Also, Anderson film regulars Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Luis Guzman have both taken supporting roles in the film. Anderson was also quoted recently that the film will be Adam Sandler's "$25 million arthouse movie," which could have easily been said by Quentin Tarantino after the two met on the set of Sandler's Little Nicky and struck up a friendship. 

Tarantino turned around and wrote a part for Sandler in his upcoming war film, Glorious Bastards. Unfortunately for Tarantino, Anderson was quicker to sign Sandler, who has a busy 2002 ahead of him with two other films, including Mr. Deeds, a loosely based remake of the Frank Capra classic, and 8 Crazy Nights, an animated film about the joys of celebrating Hanukkah. Regardless of Sandler's other projects, the untitled P.T. Anderson project should receive the most ink come awards time, when the film is suspected to be released.

UK film magazine Empire also high expectations for Project X4 in their 2002 film preview. They are still showing the name as Punchdrunk Knuckle Love & their plot synopsis isn't right, but oh well.

Rocky Horror Magnolia? Here's an amusing story from site reader (& assistant manager of the Nuart Theatre in Los Angeles) Marc Edward Heuck.

We show The Rocky Horror Picture Show Saturday night. We have a great house cast called Sins o' the Flesh that perform the live portion of the experience; they've won awards all over and should be considered the best Rocky cast in America. Anyhow, last Saturday, Jan. 12th, the cast did a "90's night" show, in which instead of dressing like Rocky characters--Brad, Frankie, etc.--they dressed as '90's icons. For example, "Brad" was Adam Sandler, "Frank 'n' Furter" was Ace Ventura, "Janet" was SNL character Mary Catherine Gallagher (Superstar), you get the idea. Also, at strategic points in the movie, we would cut out from the movie audio and drop in some 90's related audio for comic effect. For example, our "Eddie" came dressed as Cartman from South Park, and after the first verse of "Hot Patootie," we went out of that song and into "Kyle's Mom is a Bitch."

Anyhow, for the final scene of the movie before end credits, where the "Super Heroes" song number would be as Brad, Janet, and Dr. Scott crawl in the ruins of Frank 'n' Furter's castle, we dropped in Aimee Mann's "Wise Up," and as the performers lip-synched the song on stage, we proceeded to pelt the audience with tiny rubber frogs. I personally got on top of what would be the roof of the concession stand (the portion recessed into the theatre auditorium) and flung nearly 22 dozen of them into the puzzled crowd. Most people in the movie theatre, of course, had never seen Magnolia, so they were left wondering what the hell this was all about. In fact, most of the cast had never seen the film either, but just liked the bizarre idea of dropping frogs on the audience. The few people in attendance who had seen the film, though, loved it.