An article by Shaun Sages
In my opinion, Paul Thomas
Anderson is the most exciting filmmaker to have emerged in the last decade. I
realize this claim may sound arrogant, especially since the last decade has
given birth to the likes of Wes Anderson and Darren Aronofsky, but it’s based
on nothing more than personal taste. Not to insinuate that most of the
filmmakers from the last decade are hacks. On the contrary, I love the films of
Alexander Payne, Kevin Smith and Spike Jonze. But in my view, their work lacks
the emotional resonance of a P.T. Anderson picture (Hard Eight, Boogie
Nights, Magnolia, Punch-Drunk
Love). What the 33-year old writer/director possesses and projects in every
frame of every film he has made is a rare quality among contemporary directors:
Love. He portrays a forgiveness and compassion that elevates all the bottom dogs
that populate his world. Even during the most heart-wrenching moments, when his
characters go through unbearable meltdowns, those rays of love flourish.
When it was announced that Anderson was going to attend a special screening of Punch-Drunk
Love at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, as part of their Village Voice Best
of 2002 series, along with actor and close friend Philip Seymour Hoffman, well,
you can imagine my excitement. I first saw Punch-Drunk Love at the 40th
New York Film Festival – a press screening filled with journalists. While the
film left a definite impact on me, there's a difference between watching PDL
with a crowd of critics and seeing it with a crowd of fans. The screening at BAM
was packed to capacity with fans of the film. Some were even self-proclaimed
"rabid-fans", such as the young-man sitting to my right. Even though PDL
was scheduled for release on DVD the following day, the 7pm showing sold-out
days in advance. Even the last minute addition of a 7:45pm show, which included
an introduction by Anderson and Hoffman (no Q & A), was sold-out.
As expected, the screening was fantastic. All three times I'd seen PDL in
theatres, it felt as though I was the sole member in the audience enjoying it.
It was an antithetical Adam Sandler comedy and it bombed at the box office. The
audience at BAM put PDL in a mainstream light. They were laughing so hard
it felt like I was watching Happy Gilmore with a bunch of drunken college
students. Despite my front-row seat, this fifth viewing of Punch-Drunk Love
was far and beyond the most fulfilling. Everyone seemed to get it. Then, 90
minutes later, the lights went up.
The seats and microphones were set. So was Jamie, dead center in the front row
with a mini-DV camera. The audience applauded wildly as Paul and Philip took
their seats. Once the clapping subsided, the moderator, Village Voice film
critic Dennis Lim, kicked off the festivities by asking the director and actor
to discuss the origin of their friendship.
"Well," Anderson started off, "I saw the Martin Brest movie, Scent
of a Woman, which was actually on TV the other night. Watching the movie
again was great because it reminded me of the moment when I first saw Phil. He
did this weird crazy movement with his hand and I just thought, 'God. That guy
is such a great actor. I'd love to work with him someday.'"
Hoffman was later cast in Hard Eight (also known as Sydney),
Anderson's debut, as an obnoxious gambler who antagonizes Sydney (Philip Baker
Hall), the film's main character. Their relationship continued off-screen, as
Hoffman explained: "We've been more friends than anything. The good thing
is that when he writes for me there is a certain knowledge he has of who I am
that he's trying to put there." (That certain knowledge has resulted in
Hoffman being the only actor to have appeared in all four of Anderson's
features.)
As fans of the film know, the primary inspiration for PDL stemmed from
the movies of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Another influence was Anderson's
frustration with the crop of bland romantic-comedies hitting theatres. "I
was sort of working more from a place of anger, like, 'If I fucking see one more
of these fucking movies…'" Still, working through the anger, his love for
those classic MGM-musicals is evident. When PT tells the audience, in a lovesick
tone, that the Astaire-Rogers flicks were real movies to kiss by, you can
almost picture the scruffy filmmaker tonguing his girlfriend as Fred and Ginger
tapped the night away on-screen.
When Mr. Lim asked Anderson if he thought Punch-Drunk Love was a good
make-out movie, Anderson's boyish charms revealed themselves. The director acted
like an embarrassed schoolboy summoned by his teacher to read in front of the
classroom. "I hope so,” he replied, twitching his nose. "It was
meant to be."
Anderson and Hoffman were more than willing to supply advice to aspiring
filmmakers. Asked by a Boston University film-major for tips on making his first
short-film, which, according to the student, will be funded by his parents for a
whopping hundred bucks, Anderson was quick to answer, "You're fucked."
On a more serious note, he told the kid to get good actors. "Yeah",
Hoffman chimed in. "You gotta get a bunch of people that also want to make
it. Then all of a sudden you have more than just your own head trying to figure
out how you're going to make it. Five people’s passion about something is
better than one."
In between answering questions from fans and aspiring filmmakers, some serious
talk about PDL was done. Coming off the throes of two sprawling epics (Boogie
Nights and Magnolia), Anderson told of how he committed to making his
next feature no longer than 90-minutes. "I think there's a reason why most
good movies, movies that I love, are 90-minutes long. That's a really good
length for a certain kind of movie. Especially a romantic-comedy with Adam
Sandler and Emily Watson", he said, clearly proud to have accomplished his
goal. "There's a reason why good pop songs are 2 1/2 or 3-minutes. They
fit. It's a great format. I think Magnolia and that's cancer. It's great
as a 3-hour movie. 90-minutes for cancer doesn't seem right."
Although Punch-Drunk Love is the shortest of PT's films, it took almost
two-years to complete. With three meticulously planned features under his belt,
the filmmaker decided to take a completely different approach towards his fourth
outing. "The first two or three weeks were really hard. We actually started
out trying to shoot the movie perfectly in order. The initial meeting of Adam
and Emily we shot on one of the first mornings. The car crash was shot on the
first day. Those scenes were great, but there were other scenes that were not
good. I was working with some new crewmembers and was desperate to try and fuck
myself up and do things differently for not only me but also everybody else
around me. And that kind of ended up resulting in some good things, but made
more trouble than it was really worth."
"There is nothing about the scheduling of movies that is conducive to any
kind of creative thinking. Just none of it allows you to fuck around, or scrap
yesterday and say, 'God. That kinda sucked.' It's just the way that movies are
normally scheduled does not allow for that. We sort of formulated a plan that
allowed for that kind of stuff. Maybe we were just sort of over-thinking things
and nervous. It all ended up eventually finding its footing and being
wonderful."
Anderson explained that in exploring the process he decided to shake up his
usual troupe of actors and use some non-professionals. "Originally, the
part of the four brothers was written as two guys. Phil and John (C. Reilly)
were gonna play those parts, but something just wasn't right about it. Phil and
John always knew that and I knew that. We had actually even started shooting the
movie without any real solution to the problem."
The soft-spoken Anderson, in between puppy-dog facial twitches, delivered his
ultimate solution: "I'd been to a town called Provo, in Utah, which is a
really bizarre place. You've never seen anything like Provo. It's gay and it's
Mormon and there are Mexicans and they're all racist a little bit. It's weird.
My casting director came to me one day and she said, 'Well I found this one
guy'. Then she showed me his picture and she said he's got three crazy brothers
(the Stevens brothers) that look bizarre and just like him. I thought it'd be so
great to have the guy with seven sisters being chased by four blonde brothers. I
thought it was a great concept. Almost like a fairy tale. It got to be like a
myth story at that point."
One collaborator that stayed on board for PDL was composer Jon Brion. Mr.
Lim asked his guest to talk about their relationship and how the two developed Punch-Drunk
Love's experimental soundtrack. "We had talked about doing a score that
had a lot of percussive stuff in it that would sound almost industrial,"
the director explained. "Like that warehouse phase. Just getting sounds out
of that warehouse, but also to do real lush romance music. So, we knew it was
gonna be a mix of those two factors."
Elaborating on the film's score, Anderson said: "I knew that from the
script that there would be this harmonium and it would be this five-note melody
that Barry played. So, it was important that Jon create whatever that five-note
melody was. Sort of like those five-notes in Close Encounters of the Third
Kind. You kind of have to have that before you go to shoot."
Those five-notes are played so loud that, during certain scenes, they overlap
the dialogue. As Anderson told the audience, "I don't know if I subscribe
to the theory that you have to hear every word (of dialogue). You feel that
you're going along for a ride and sometimes it's kind of exciting when you miss
a word. I always liked that on records when you couldn't exactly hear a word.
You'd then make up your own. It's important that the emotions are conveyed. Not
every single detail of what characters are saying."
That’s what I relate to so much in his films – the emotions. He’s not
interested in being concise and he’s not interested in burdening his films
with messages. PT Anderson moves me with images, sounds and characters that I
haven’t seen on-screen. It was great to hear him speak.
Once the Q & A wrapped, fans swarmed outside the theatre to bombard Paul and
Philip with compliments. The two posed for pictures and autographed everything
from DVD covers to DV-cameras. They smoked Camel Lights and stuck around to chat
with the people who admire their work. There was even a baby Hoffman cradled in
his father's arms.
Jamie and I went back into the lobby, as he began extracting the night's footage
from camera to laptop. He was nearly passing out from not eating, but he got
what he needed and we called it a night. A good night at that.
CHECK OUT THE PHOTO GALLERY OF PTA AND PSH @ BAM!
For additional information about the Brooklyn Academy of Music: BAM
-Copyright
2003 by
Shaun Sages