I had written a movie that was very small and intimate. I knew that I loved both sides of the spectrum. I knew that my sensibility wasn’t incredibly art house, and I knew that my sensibility wasn’t incredibly Batman. Q: In what areas did you need ass kicking? They were advisors and just so dedicated to kicking my ass. The best part of it for me was the Screenwriters Lab, because that’s where I got to meet three friends, three people who are very very close to me now, Richard La Gravenese, Todd Graff, and Scott Frank. I remember Jeremy Kagan saying, “You’re here to fuck up, and then fuck up better the next day.” When someone says that, you’re ready to go. I mean, I met all these directors that I admired, like Michael Caton-Jones and John Schlesinger, and that was really quite a big deal. I was very fortunate to have the actors who were going to be in the movie-Philip Baker Hall and John C. Then I got there, and I just fuckin’ went crazy. I was initially kind of skeptical about it. So my thinking in writing Sydney was that it was a kind of love letter, trying to figure out this man I didn’t really know. And I wanted to get to know more about him. Philip Baker Hall was an actor who was in my short, who I really admired. Q: Did the idea for Sydney grow out of your short? In my egotistical, insane way, I was just sure that someone like her was going to come along. It was January, and I figured I’d be getting a job or something. I really, literally, didn’t have anything to do. And Michelle Satter read it and she really liked it, and she saved my life by inviting me to the Lab. I had just written Sydney, or Hard Eight, rather. I put everything into this short, and then it was shown at Sundance. for a long time, so I had a lot of access to people and camera packages, and I had some money and my girlfriend’s credit cards, and when I came up with the short Cigarettes and Coffee, essentially it was kind of an all or nothing situation. In this interview, part of a series with Lab alumni, Anderson talks about his start as a director, the lessons he’s learned from making two features, and his plans to make many more: “Either like thirty, if I continue to smoke maybe forty if I quit.” At twenty-seven, Paul Thomas Anderson has been compared to Robert Altman for his ensemble work, and to Martin Scorsese for his anthropological detail. Sydney, later renamed Hard Eight, initiated Anderson into the challenge of retaining directorial control amid the promises and pitfalls of The Business.Īnderson’s second feature, Boogie Nights, documents the makeshift family of a porn production empire from the excesses of the 1970s into the changing climate of the 1980s. At the Lab, Anderson took portions of Sydney through a dress-rehearsal process, working with actors, workshopping his script, and learning about film industry politics. Cigarettes and Coffee inspired Anderson’s feature film script, Sydney, which he brought to the 1993 Filmmakers Lab. To make the film, Anderson pooled friends, acquaintances, and resources from his years as a production assistant. In January of 1993, Paul Thomas Anderson’s first film, a short called Cigarettes and Coffee, screened at the Sundance Film Festival. The Emerging Filmmaker Conversations with Sundance Lab Fellows Paul Thomas Anderson Sundance Online, Written By Saida Shepard
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