Anderson, Paul Thomas 1970-

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ANDERSON, Paul Thomas 1970-

PERSONAL: Born January 1, 1970, in Studio City, CA; son of Ernie (an actor and television host, under name Ghoulardi) and Bonnie Anderson. Education: Attended Emerson College and the Sundance Lab.

ADDRESSES: Agent—John Lesher, Endeavor, 9701 Wilshire Blvd., 10th Floor, Beverly Hills, CA 90212; publicist: Bumble Ward, Bumble Ward and Associates Public Relations, 9393 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 340, Beverly Hills, CA 90211.

CAREER: Director, producer, screenwriter, and cinematographer. Director of films, including (and cinematographer) The Dirk Diggler Story (short film), 1988; (under the name Paul Anderson) Cigarettes and Coffee (short film), 1993; Sydney (also known as Hard Eight), Samuel Goldwyn Company, 1997; (and producer and executive music producer) Boogie Nights, New Line Cinema, 1997; Flagpole Special (short film), 1998; Lennon, 1999; (and producer and executive music producer) Magnolia (also known as mag-no'lia), New Line Cinema, 1999; and (and producer) Punch-Drunk Love, Columbia/New Line Cinema/Revolution Studios, 2002. Also director of the video Blossoms & Blood, 2003, and the television movies Couch, 2003; and Mattress Man Commercial, 2003. Appeared as himself in films, including WADD: The Life and Times of John C. Holmes (documentary), 1998, VCA Pictures, 2001; and A Decade under the Influence, 2003; and in the video That Moment: Magnolia Diary (also known as That Moment: Magnolia Diary October 1998-March 2000), 2000. Also appeared in an episode of the television series Independent Focus, Independent Film Channel, 1998.

AWARDS, HONORS: Best movie award, Toronto Film Festival, 1999, for Magnolia; best director award, Cannes Film Festival, 2002, for Punch-Drunk Love; Punch-Drunk Love was chosen as the "Centerpiece" film for the 2002 New York Film Festival.

WRITINGS:

SCREENPLAYS

The Dirk Diggler Story (short film), 1988.

Cigarettes and Coffee (short film), 1993.

Sydney (also known as Hard Eight), Samuel Goldwyn Company, 1997.

Boogie Nights, New Line Cinema, 1997.

Flagpole Special (short film), 1998.

Magnolia (also known as mag-no'li-a), New Line Cinema, 1999.

Punch-Drunk Love, Columbia/New Line Cinema/Revolution Studios, 2002.

Mattress Man Commercial (video), 2003.

Blossoms & Blood (video), 2003.

SIDELIGHTS: Paul Thomas Anderson is one of the hottest young writer/directors in Hollywood. Although he only made his first feature film in 1997, Anderson has already gained a reputation as someone who is not afraid to tackle big, difficult subjects in lavish, epic films, and who generally does a masterful job with them.

Anderson's first successful feature film, Boogie Nights, follows a group of professionals in the San Fernando Valley pornography industry from its heyday in the late 1970s until the rise of video causes its decline in the early 1980s. The central figure is Eddie Adams, a teenager (played by Mark Wahlberg) who is recruited by porn producer Jack Horner (played by Burt Reynolds). In the group of men and women with whom he works, Eddie finds a surrogate family to replace the loveless one in which he grew up. But his new family, if more caring in some respects, is no less dysfunctional than the old. This dysfunction most clearly shows through in the latter part of the film, which is set in the 1980s. As Robert C. Sickels noted in the Journal of Popular Culture, "Boogie Nights is commonly cited as the film that most adeptly reveals the hollowness behind the perceived freedoms of the ME decade," the 1980s. But the film is also solid in its treatment of the 1970s, as Brian D. Johnson pointed out in Maclean's: "Without showing a lot of nudity, Anderson succeeds in evoking the deliciously cheesy atmosphere, and manic delusion, of the '70s porn industry—which starts to look like a pop-culture concentrate of the decade as a whole," he wrote.

Although more compressed in time than Boogie Nights—the action takes place over a period of hours rather than years—Magnolia is considerably more epic in terms of story. In this film, "Anderson is out to prove the obvious, that we live in a chance universe, that coincidence and mishap play a larger role in our destinies than we like to think," Richard Schickel wrote in Time. Once again, Anderson's setting is his native San Fernando Valley. His characters, who take part in four intertwined tales, include a man dying of cancer who wants to reconcile with his son (played by Tom Cruise), a misogynist who runs seminars teaching men how to seduce women. The man's wife (played by Julianne Moore) originally married him for his money, but now that he is dying she realizes that she truly loves him, and seeks to prove it by having herself written out of his will before he dies. Another set of characters revolves around a quiz-style game show for children: the host is dying, also of cancer; one of his current contestants, a young boy, is cracking under the pressure that his father is putting upon him; a former contestant, now in his forties (played by William H. Macy) has never moved past his childhood successes; the host's estranged daughter, struggling with her own demons, is comforted by a police officer who knocks on her door. Anderson takes "infectious pleasure . . . in choreographic grand-scale chaos," Lisa Schwarzbaum noted in Entertainment Weekly, as the movie's tangled three-hour running time and Biblical climax proves. "Asking for and granting forgiveness in modern life is . . . risky business," Schwarzbaum concluded, "but oh, this overblown, exotic bloom of a movie says, how beautiful it can be."

Anderson's film Punch-Drunk Love first garnered attention for its counterintuitive casting: Anderson chose Adam Sandler, formerly known for his generally mindless comedic roles, to carry this serious film by playing a complex, conflicted, and even violent character. But, as a reviewer wrote in the Economist, Sandler's and Anderson's "magical fusion of eccentric comic talent and eye-popping cinematic hubris" in Punch-Drunk Love "proves that Mr. Anderson has a heart and . . . that Mr. Sandler can act." Sandler plays Barry Egan, a man whose spirit has nearly been crushed by the harassment of his seven sisters. He lives for his job, managing a San Fernando Valley company that sells novelty toilet plungers, although he occasionally lashes out against the world in random acts of violence. One night, lonely, he calls a phone sex line, a choice which comes back to haunt him when he falls in love with a British beauty (played by Emma Watson) and the operators of the line try to blackmail him. "It's a romantic comedy on the verge of a nervous breakdown," David Ansen decided in Newsweek, "one dark, strange-tasting sorbet, its sweetness shot through with startling, unexpected flavors." Or, as Richard Schickel phrased it in Time, Punch-Drunk Love "keeps gnawing at your mind—if only for its almost perfect lack of conventional sentiment."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Advocate, October 14, 1997, Robert Hofler, review of Boogie Nights, pp. 119-120.

Artforum International, November, 2002, Andrew Hultkrans, review of Punch-Drunk Love, p. 53.

Cineaste, summer, 1998, Thomas Doherty, review of Boogie Nights, pp. 40-41.

Commonweal, December 5, 1997, Richard Alleva, review of Boogie Nights, pp. 12-13.

Daily Variety, August 19, 2002, Lily Oei, review of Punch-Drunk Love, p. 6; January 6, 2003, "Jon Brion: Composer Sticks with P. T. Anderson," pp. A12-A13.

Economist (U.S.), November 9, 2002, review of Punch-Drunk Love.

Entertainment Weekly, March 14, 1997, Owen Gleiberman, review of Hard Eight, p. 60; April 25, 1997, Rebecca Ascher-Walsh, review of Boogie Nights, pp. 26-27; November 14, 1997, Chris Willman, review of Boogie Nights, p. 90; January 7, 2000, Lisa Schwarzbaum, review of Magnolia, p. 40, interview with Anderson and Aimee Mann, p. 67; October 18, 2002, Owen Gleiberman, review of Punch-Drunk Love, p. 87; November 1, 2002, Owen Gleiberman, review of Punch-Drunk Love, p. 52.

Film Comment, March-April, 1997, Richard T. Jameson, review of Hard Eight, pp. 11-12; September-October, 1997, Chuck Stephens, review of Boogie Nights, pp. 10-13; January, 2000, Kent Jones, review of Magnolia, p. 38.

Film Journal International, November, 2002, Erica Abeel, review of Punch-Drunk Love, pp. 36-37.

Interview, January, 2000, Graham Fuller, review of Magnolia, p. 32.

Journal of Popular Culture, spring, 2002, Robert C. Sickels, review of Boogie Nights, pp. 49-60.

Library Journal, March 1, 2003, Rachel Collins, review of Punch-Drunk Love: The Shooting Script, p. 91.

Maclean's, October 20, 1997, Brian D. Johnson, review of Boogie Nights, pp. 89-90; February 7, 2000, Brian D. Johnson, interview with Anderson, p. 43; October 14, 2002, Brian D. Johnson, review of Punch-Drunk Love, p. 84.

Nation, November 10, 1997, Stuart Klawans, review of Boogie Nights, pp. 35-36; February 7, 2000, Stuart Klawans, review of Magnolia, p. 34.

National Review, November 24, 1997, John Simon, review of Boogie Nights, p. 62.

New Leader, December 1, 1997, Raphael Shargel, review of Boogie Nights, pp. 20-21.

New Republic, November 10, 1997, Stanley Kauffmann, review of Boogie Nights, pp. 32-33.

New Statesman, March 20, 2000, Jonathan Romney, review of Magnolia, p. 45.

Newsweek, October 6, 1997, David Ansen, review of Boogie Nights, pp. 74-75; October 14, 2002, David Ansen, review of Punch-Drunk Love, p. 61.

People, October 20, 1997, Leah Rozen, review of Boogie Nights, p. 21.

Time, October 6, 1997, Richard Corliss, review of Boogie Nights, p. 88; December 27, 1999, Richard Schickel, review of Magnolia, p. 165; October 21, 2002, Richard Schickel, review of Punch-Drunk Love, p. 72.

Vanidad, February, 1998, Javier Cortijo, interview with Anderson, pp. 40-41.

Variety, December 13, 1999, Emanuel Levy, review of Magnolia, p. 105; May 27, 2002, Todd McCarthy, review of Punch-Drunk Love, pp. 23-24.