Brianland

I recently stumbled on a Paul Thomas Anderson (PTA) interview about Boogie Nights from 1997 and began revisiting of his work.

I’ve now seen all of his nine written-&-directed films, most more than once, and he’s certainly up there with the greatest of the active mid-career contemporary filmmakers.

Since Boogie Nights he’s been compared to Tarantino, and they became best friends through the process.  I think Q is still number one, and PTA is an absolute master, but there’s also Edgar Wright, the Coen brothers, Damien Chazell and others I’ll make a point of seeing anything they make.

Upon its release, Boogie Nights was so often compared to Pulp Fiction that PTA reached out to Tarantino to make sure he knew that the new director wasn’t planting this idea or anything.  They became and remain close friends with Q saying that PTA is his competition and that he pushes him to be better, including specifically that Inglourious Basterds was a better film because of There Will Be Blood.

Q and PTA are two of the most influential, respected and successful of contemporary auteurs, with most of their movies getting multiple Oscar nominations including usually Best Picture.  It’s no wonder they ended becoming close friends since they share such similar cinematic sensibilities.

One thing I really like about both of them is how wholly original each film is — that they don’t keep plowing the same ground.  Of PTA’s most recent films — Licorice Pizza was set in 1973 in the San Fernando Valley, Phantom Thread in the early ’50s in London, The Master after WWII in various U.S. cities, and There Will Be Blood in the early 1900s in oil country in the midwest.  Similarly Tarantino’s last few were set in L.A. in 1969, Wyoming in 1877, the slave states in 1858, and war-torn Europe in 1941.

Both grew up in L.A., and I love how neither went to film school, but each simply started writing and making their own movies.  In fact, PTA said he learned how to make movies by listening to director’s commentaries on DVDs!

Both are real writers who love the process of isolating themselves away and creating their scripts, and both are masters of the art of ‘mundane’ conversations revealing characters’ identity.  Both are known to be sticklers for the execution of their precise dialog — yet both are wise enough collaborative creators to allow for improvisation and incorporating actors’ ideas during shoots.  Of the precise scripts, PTA says — “the script is the director” — which I love.

Besides both being word-centric screenwriters they’re also known to be “actor’s directors” in that they respect the process & profession and create an environment where actors feel empowered and can stretch and take chances.  Oscar-nominated or winning actors like Tom Cruise, Sam Jackson, Sean Penn, Bradley Cooper, Phil Hoffman, Amy Adams, Reese Witherspoon, Gwyneth Paltrow etc. don’t sign on to PTA’s movies because they’re big paydays — it’s because they’re great scripts.

And speaking of actors, both directors show an eye for older actors Hollywood has cast aside — Tarantino famously with John Travolta, Robert Forrester and Pam Grier, and PTA with Burt Reynolds (leading to his one & only Oscar nomination), and Philip Baker Hall who he used in three major films plus his early short Cigarettes and Coffee. 

And both have an eye for unrecognized talent.  Tarantino is famous for the career-springboard casting of Samuel L. Jackson, Christoph Waltz, Eli Roth, Margaret Qualley, Austin Butler, among many others, and PTA hired John C. Reilly, Philip Seymour Hoffman & Mark Wahlberg before they were household names, and most recently gave Hoffman’s son Cooper his first starring role (in Licorice Pizza) which has launched him onto the A-list.

One other quirky commonality — they each made one now-classic film about aspects of the film industry — Boogie Nights and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood — and in both cases chose to make a movie (or TV show or documentary) within the movie.  They both seem to love making movies so much they just couldn’t help themselves but to make another movie by the moviemaking characters within their movie movie.

It’s fun to appreciate greatness when it’s in the present and not the past.  Maybe Q is only going to make one more film, but PTA has no such limitations, and besides, most of the great work by these two auteurs has come in the last 20 years.  This isn’t Hitchcock or Billy Wilder we’re talking — these guys are very much part of our 21st century world.

And not fer nuthin but PTA’s next film (in theaters Sept 26, 2025) called One Battle After Another stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Benicio Del Toro and Sean Penn.

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Here’s a great conversation between the two of them (filmed in Q’s screening room at his house) talking about The Hateful Eight, 70mm film, and filmmaking in general . . . 

Or here’s another great conversation between the two of them right after Once Upon a Time … In Hollywood came out . . . two brilliant directors discussing how a masterpiece was made.

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Here’s my master movie page with over 900 great films listed and sorted by Comedies, Dramas, Biopics, Documentaries, Movies About Making Movies, Movies About Politics, Music Movies, Beat Generation Docs & Dramas, Trippy Movies, Disturbing Movies, Made-For-TV Exceptions, and here’s the link cued to the Auteur section.

My scene-by-scene time-coded breakdown of the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown has proven to be one of the most popular pieces on this site with tons of people reading it every single day since it was posted.

And it was created after the success of my scene-by-scene time-coded breakdown of The Beatles: Get Back which has been used in classrooms from high school to college from the U.S. to the U.K.

Or here’s a piece I wrote as I was beginning my deep-dive into movies . . . An Autodidact Meets a Collaborative Form. 

Or here’s the movie section of my website with all the reviews and features over the years.

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by Brian Hassett

karmacoupon@gmail.com   —  BrianHassett.com

Or here’s my Facebook page if you wanna join in there —

https://www.facebook.com/Brian.Hassett.Canada