Paul Thomas Anderson

• 1. Introduction

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  Paul Thomas Anderson, the American filmmaker known by his initials PTA, earned a C+ on his very first film school assignment. The task at New York University was simple: write a single page of screenplay. Anderson handed in a page from Hoffa, a film script by the Pulitzer Prize winner David Mamet. The grade told him all he needed to know. He dropped out after two days.

  That exit raises the questions this documentary will follow. Where does a director learn his craft when he walks out of the classroom? What does a boy who picked up a camera so young build once nobody is grading him? And why do so many actors, composers and cinematographers keep returning to work on his films?

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• 2. Ghoulardi's Son

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  Studio City, in Los Angeles, is where Anderson was born on the 26th of June 1970, to Edwina, whose maiden name was Gough, and the media personality Ernie Anderson. His father was the voice of the ABC network. He had also played Ghoulardi, a late-night horror host on Cleveland television, and his son later borrowed that name for his own production company.

  Anderson grew up in the San Fernando Valley in a Catholic family. He has three siblings, plus five half-siblings from his father's first marriage. His relationship with his mother was troubled, while his father was the closer parent and urged him toward writing or directing. The schools he attended include the Buckley School, John Thomas Dye School, Campbell Hall School, Cushing Academy and Montclair College Preparatory School.

  Anderson was making films at the age of eight, and he never had a backup plan. In 1982 his father bought a Betamax video camera, and the boy began shooting with it. He tried 8 mm film for a while, then concluded that video was easier. In his teens he moved on to a Bolex 16 mm camera.

  His first real production came in his senior year at Montclair Prep. He paid for it with money earned cleaning cages at a pet store. The result was The Dirk Diggler Story, a 30-minute mockumentary from 1988 about a porn star, inspired by the real performer John Holmes. The idea would wait nine years before it became a full feature.

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• 3. Fighting for Hard Eight

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  Santa Monica College came first, and then two semesters as an English major at Emerson College, where the novelist David Foster Wallace was one of his teachers. After his brief stay at New York University, Anderson took a job as a production assistant. He worked on television shows, films, music videos and game shows in Los Angeles and New York City.

  Film school had made the craft feel like homework, so Anderson decided to make a 20-minute film as a college of his own. His budget was $10,000. It came from gambling winnings, his girlfriend's credit card, and money his father had set aside for his education. The result was Cigarettes & Coffee, released in 1993. A $20 bill links its several storylines, and it screened in the 1993 Sundance shorts program.

  A year later he was invited to the 1994 Sundance feature program, where Michael Caton-Jones became his mentor. Caton-Jones saw a young man with talent and a fully formed creative voice but little hands-on experience. He gave Anderson some hard, practical lessons.

  At Sundance, Anderson also secured a deal with Rysher Entertainment to direct his first full-length feature, then called Sydney. When he finished it, Rysher reedited the film. Anderson still had the workprint of his original cut, and he submitted it to the 1996 Cannes Film Festival, where it played in the Un Certain Regard section.

  Getting that version released took a new title, Hard Eight, and $200,000 to finish it. Anderson put in money, and so did Philip Baker Hall, John C. Reilly and Gwyneth Paltrow. The film follows an older gambler and a homeless man. Critic Roger Ebert wrote, "Movies like Hard Eight remind me of what original, compelling characters the movies can sometimes give us." While the first film was still in progress, Anderson was already writing his second.

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• 4. Valley Ensembles

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  New Line Cinema president Michael De Luca read the script for Boogie Nights and felt "totally gaga" about it. Anderson had finished that script in 1995. It follows a nightclub dishwasher who becomes a pornographic actor in the Golden Age of Porn. The film opened on the 10th of October 1997 to critical and commercial success.

  Boogie Nights revived the career of Burt Reynolds and gave breakout roles to Mark Wahlberg and Julianne Moore. At the 70th Academy Awards it earned three nominations: Best Supporting Actor for Reynolds, Best Supporting Actress for Moore, and Best Original Screenplay.

  Success bought freedom. New Line told Anderson he could do whatever he liked next, and it gave him creative control. He meant to make something small and intimate, but the script kept growing. The result was Magnolia, released in 1999, an ensemble story about the odd collisions between several people in the San Fernando Valley. The songs of Aimee Mann inspired it, and she wrote music for its soundtrack.

  Magnolia earned three nominations at the 72nd Academy Awards. They included Best Supporting Actor for Tom Cruise and Best Original Song for "Save Me". Afterward, Anderson declared, "Magnolia is, for better or worse, the best movie I'll ever make".

  His answer was a sharp turn. Anderson promised a film of about 90 minutes with Adam Sandler. Punch-Drunk Love, from 2002, follows a beleaguered entrepreneur who falls for his sister's co-worker. A subplot drew on the civil engineer David Phillips. Sandler won praise for his first dramatic role.

  At the 2002 Cannes Film Festival, Anderson won the Best Director Award and was nominated for the Palme d'Or. Karina Longworth called it "Anderson's cracked ode to the transformative power of love in a world that actively mocks sensitivity" and perhaps his most original work. His next film would leave love behind for oil.

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• 5. Blood and Faith

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  Upton Sinclair's 1927 novel Oil! supplied the loose starting point for There Will Be Blood, Anderson's fifth film, released in 2007. It follows a ruthless oil prospector who exploits the Southern California oil boom of the early twentieth century. Against a $25 million budget, it earned $76.1 million worldwide.

  At the 80th Academy Awards it received eight nominations, tying with No Country for Old Men. Anderson was nominated for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay, and the Coen Brothers beat him in all three. Daniel Day-Lewis won Best Actor, and Robert Elswit won Best Cinematography. Paul Dano received a BAFTA nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

  Critics pushed the praise far beyond awards season. David Denby of The New Yorker wrote that Anderson had done work comparable to the greatest achievements of Griffith and Ford. Richard Schickel called it one of the most wholly original American movies ever made. In 2017, New York Times critics A. O. Scott and Manohla Dargis named it the "Best Film of the 21st Century So Far".

  In December 2009 Anderson was working on a story about a charismatic intellectual who founds a new religion in the 1950s. An associate said the idea had lived in his head for twelve years. The Master opened in North America on the 14th of September 2012. It follows an alcoholic veteran of World War II who meets the leader of a religious organization.

  The film never names the movement, but it has long been widely assumed to be based on Scientology. At the 85th Academy Awards it earned three acting nominations: Joaquin Phoenix for Best Actor, Philip Seymour Hoffman for Best Supporting Actor, and Amy Adams for Best Supporting Actress.

  Inherent Vice began production in May 2013 and wrapped in August. It adapted a 2009 novel by Thomas Pynchon, and it was the first time Pynchon had allowed his work onto the screen. Phoenix returned for a second collaboration, joined by Owen Wilson, Reese Witherspoon, Jena Malone, Martin Short, Benicio Del Toro, Katherine Waterston and Josh Brolin. Released in December 2014, it received two nominations at the 87th Academy Awards: Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Costume Design. Anderson would return to Pynchon a decade later.

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• 6. Film Stock and Obsessions

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  Say the words "I didn't do anything" and a Paul Thomas Anderson fan may smile. The line is spoken at least once in Boogie Nights, Magnolia, Punch-Drunk Love and The Master. Anderson uses repetition like this to stress his themes, and here it points toward denial and avoided responsibility.

  The subjects return too. Dysfunctional families, alienation, surrogate families, regret, loneliness, destiny, forgiveness and the ghosts of the past recur across his work, mostly in stories set in the San Fernando Valley. His characters are flawed and often desperate.

  The Book of Exodus keeps surfacing. Magnolia returns to Exodus 8:2, which describes the plague of frogs, and the film's climax features a literal rainfall of frogs. The title There Will Be Blood echoes a phrase from Exodus 7:19, where the plague is blood.

  Punch-Drunk Love shed the references of his earlier films for something more surreal and heightened. There Will Be Blood engaged more openly with politics, examining capitalism, greed, savagery, optimism and obsession. All of his films carry American themes: business against art in Boogie Nights, ambition in There Will Be Blood, and self-reinvention in The Master.

  The look matters as much as the ideas. Anderson favors moving cameras, long steadicam takes, memorable music and layered images. He prefers shooting on film over digital, because he likes its textured image. Most projects use 35 mm anamorphic, particularly with Elswit. He has also used 65 mm film on The Master and VistaVision for One Battle After Another. He favors traditional photochemical colour timing over digital intermediates.

  His education came from other directors' work. Rather than classes, he watched films by directors he admired, along with their audio commentaries. His cited influences include Robert Altman, Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, Akira Kurosawa, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg and Orson Welles, among others. Many of the people who help build his images have worked with him for decades.

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• 7. The Rep Company

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  Anderson calls his regular actors "my little rep company". The group includes John C. Reilly, Philip Baker Hall, Julianne Moore, William H. Macy, Melora Walters and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Luis Guzmán is also counted as a regular. Hoffman appeared in Anderson's first four films and again in The Master.

  There Will Be Blood broke the pattern. Apart from Paul F. Tompkins, Kevin Breznahan and Jim Meskimen, who had all played small parts in Magnolia, its cast was entirely new. Day-Lewis is one of only three directors' regular collaborators in his career, alongside Jim Sheridan and Martin Scorsese. He worked with Anderson twice.

  Behind the camera, Robert Elswit shot Anderson's films through Inherent Vice, except The Master, which Mihai Mălaimare Jr. photographed. Elswit was absent during production of Phantom Thread, and no official cinematography credit was given despite claims that Anderson acted in that role. On the 16th of February 2019, Elswit said he would not work with Anderson on his next films.

  Music has its own lineage. Jon Brion composed Hard Eight, Magnolia and Punch-Drunk Love. Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead has scored every film since. Dylan Tichenor edited Boogie Nights, Magnolia, There Will Be Blood and Phantom Thread. The producers he works with often include JoAnne Sellar, Scott Rudin, Michael De Luca and Daniel Lupi, and Cassandra Kulukundis casts his films.

  Anderson's music connections run well beyond features. He has directed videos for Fiona Apple, Haim, Aimee Mann, Joanna Newsom, Michael Penn, Radiohead and the Smile. In 2015 he made Junun, a documentary about an album by Greenwood, the producer Nigel Godrich, the Israeli composer Shye Ben Tzur and a group of Indian musicians. Most of it was recorded at the 15th-century Mehrangarh Fort in Rajasthan.

  In 2019 he directed Anima, a short music film starring Thom Yorke. IMAX theatres screened it on the 26th of June, and Netflix released it the next day. It was nominated for Best Music Film at the 2020 Grammys. In 2017 he made Valentine, a short film for Haim, and in 2023 he returned to Yorke and Greenwood for the Smile's videos for "Wall of Eyes" and "Friend of a Friend".

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• 8. Late Triumph

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  Phantom Thread arrived in December 2017 as Anderson's eighth film, set in the London fashion industry. Day-Lewis starred, following Lincoln, and the cast included Lesley Manville and Vicky Krieps. Focus Features distributed it in the United States, and Universal Pictures handled the international release. It earned six nominations at the 90th Academy Awards and won Best Costume Design.

  Licorice Pizza followed in December 2021. It follows a teenage actor, played by Cooper Hoffman, who falls for a photography assistant, played by Alana Haim. It was nominated for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay at the 94th Academy Awards.

  In 2022 Anderson quietly helped on another director's film. Joaquin Phoenix threatened to leave Ridley Scott's Napoleon, and Anderson rewrote portions of it.

  On the 10th of January 2024, Warner Bros. announced that Leonardo DiCaprio, Regina Hall and Sean Penn had joined Anderson's tenth film, One Battle After Another. It loosely adapts Pynchon's novel Vineland. Anderson said that, with Pynchon's blessing, he "stole the parts that really resonated with me and started putting all these ideas together." He had first wanted to adapt the novel around the time of Inherent Vice.

  Production began in California with a reported $100 million budget. The following February, Alana Haim and the singer Teyana Taylor joined the cast. The film opened on the 26th of September 2025 to critical acclaim. It earned $22 million in its opening weekend and reached a $200 million total, his highest gross. At the 98th Academy Awards, Anderson won Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Picture.

  Those wins fit a long record of praise. Anderson is the only person to win the Best Director Academy Award and the director prizes at Cannes, Venice and Berlin. In 2007 the American Film Institute called him one of American film's modern masters. In 2012 The Guardian ranked him first on its list of the 23 best film directors in the world.

  Other directors have joined in. Ingmar Bergman cited Magnolia as an example of the strength of American cinema. Sam Mendes called Anderson a true auteur, and in 2013 Ben Affleck compared him to Orson Welles in a Golden Globes speech. Across his ten features, Anderson's films have gathered 41 Academy Award nominations and nine wins.

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