The Bill Simmons Podcast - Paul Thomas Anderson on Pursuing Filmmaking, Loving Adam Sandler, and Making 'Boogie Nights' (Ep. 306)

Episode Date: December 27, 2017

HBO and The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson and Ringer editor-in-chief Sean Fennessey to discuss the changing landscape of selling movies (10:00), dropping out of college to pursue filmmaking dreams (20:00), working with Burt Reynolds (35:00), the art form of DVD commentary (45:00), the comedic genius of Adam Sandler (54:00), the intense setting while shooting 'The Master' (1:07:00), and writing scripts on Microsoft Word (1:18:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of the Bill Simmons Podcast with the one, the only, Paul Thomas Anderson on the Ringer Podcast Network is brought to you by SeatGeek. That's our presenting sponsor for $20 off your first SeatGeek purchase on NBA tickets. Use promo code BSNBA. Download the SeatGeek app or go right to SeatGeek.com. We are also brought to you by Larry Wilmore's Black on the Air podcast. I made a stop by in there last week to talk about Kobe. He had an awesome year for us.

I urge you to subscribe to it. Lots of interesting conversations. If you like some of the interesting conversations we've had here, he's had a ton of them on that podcast. Check that out. Also, check out One Shining Podcast where Mark Titus, Tay Frazier, and I tried to figure out the 12 college basketball schools that should just be better, that should be awesome at college basketball.

This is really fun. We had to split it into two parts. You should be subscribing to their podcast anyway. But if you're not, check that one out. It's a really good one. It's a fun one for the holidays. Coming up, ringwriter-in-chief Sean Fennessey, the one and only Paul a fun one for the holidays. Coming up, ringer editor-in-chief Sean Fennessy, the one and only Paul Thomas Anderson.

First time ever on the podcast. I've been waiting forever. I knew it was going to happen at some point. Sean Fancy here as well, editor of The Ringer. Hello. He's way more excited than he seems. He tries to play everything cool. I'm playing it real cool.

I'm very excited. He saw Phantom Thread twice. He went to a screening two weeks ago and then I went on Monday and Sean was there again you ran it back I did nobody's seen this you kind of hid it for a while right well we just finished it yeah to the right two weeks ago so um it's been hidden until then yeah so when you say just finish it are you talking about just like the tail end of it or was there actually real things you were trying to fix?

No, the actual, in terms of fixing anything, we gave up on that like months ago because you need to make your decisions about what the film's going to be as you go into mixing it and as you cut the negative of the film. So those kind of choices had been made, you know, in late August, early September.

We'd kind of decided, but the actual proper, like, just drudge of finishing it, like, you know, mixing it and getting the film prints and doing the color timing and all that kind of stuff, that's kind of occupied every space. All the volume of our day has been occupied with just like technically finishing the film until a couple of days before we had our premiere, which that,

that run at the arrow and the final. I was there on the first night. Was it a mad dash? No, no, no. We knew we were going to make it and we scheduled it within an inch of its life.

So, so we kind of knew like we'd be all right. Do you, when did you reach a point where people just left you alone with these movies? Cause I know boogie nights was, um, you know,

obviously you're 27 at that point and they're, they're meddling all the time. But when, when did the meddling stop? Um, after, right after that. Yeah.

Yeah. Um, that was a success. And I went to work again with new line and Mike DeLuca, who was running the studio at the time. And they were like, just go ahead and do your work. And when they said that, and when there was a sort of feeling that you weren't going to get messed with,

somehow the collaboration became even more sweet. And then you start looking for people's opinions. Because you want to do right by them. But you said that you almost wish somebody had battled more with Magnolia, right? You have like conflicted thoughts. Well, that was like exactly the first time that somebody says, okay, go ahead and do what you want. And I think that there were two things that worked there.

Number one, there was a rush to finish it and I wasn't skilled enough at that time to realize like, okay what I would do now is like let's stop. Stop for a week. Don't do anything that has anything to do with this movie and come back and look at it. And nine times out of

ten you look at it, even after a few days but it should be more. It should be like a week. And nine times out of ten, you look at it, even after a few days. But it should be more. It should be like a week. And you can kind of see it just at a wider angle, and you start going, my God, when you're in the thick of it, you really can't find your way out. And I think that happened a little bit on Magnolia.

And no, I don't really mean I'd change anything, because you want it to kind of be preserved from that time. Your vision. But certainly I think, yeah, three hours and 15 minutes is a tiny bit too long. Writing's kind of like that too, right? Sometimes... You tell me. Well, sometimes when you're so deep into it, you just kind of lose sight.

I remember when my book was too long um probably longer than magnolia since it was like 700 pages but um i hit a point right in that when i was just in too deep i couldn't see it anymore and it was like this giant jigsaw puzzle that i was the only one who knew what the pieces were yeah and they didn't even necessarily make sense in some ways but nobody else could have helped me with it yeah and i'm sure magnolia was probably like that a little bit, right? I suppose to a certain extent. I mean, yeah, it was really my editor Dylan and I together in that editing room.

Yeah, we still have that. And we had that relationship going. But also, it's probably sort of maybe a bit of ego at the time where you just think, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, that's precious. Or you're nervous. You like the state it's in and you get nervous about removing any piece of it for fear, a false fear that it all may crumble. But that's like too precious. And that, I think, kind of went away when we started to get into the next film. It was just like, right, okay, I think I realized some things that I did that were good

and some things that were bad. How can we just shake it up and make sure this doesn't, you just keep moving on. But that writing thing, I know that really, really well. And it's painful. You really want somebody to come throw you a life preserver, don't you? Sometimes you're like, just somebody rescue me from this. It becomes unhealthy at a certain point.

How long was the original Boogie Night script? It was like a hundred and... A couple, maybe 160, 170 pages, something like that. But I think it got down pretty quickly. How long was Phantom Threat? Not long. Not long. I don't even remember.

110, 115? It's your shortest film in a long time. Sure don't even remember. 110? 115? It's your shortest film in a long time. Sure. It sure is. Was that purposeful? No. There wasn't enough there to support a longer movie. The shape of it was going to be like, this should be between 90 minutes and two hours.

And I knew 90 minutes was a bit of a stretch, because the way I thought something should play out. But two hours was what we were aiming at. I think we were just over that. It's like 208 or something like that. I went into it knowing nothing.

Zero. Had you seen the trailer? My new strategy with movies is I don't want to know anything. I want to sit down, and I just want to take me where I'm supposed to go. So I knew Daniel Day-Lewis was in it, and I knew it was set in the past. And other than that, I avoided everything. And it was really good to do that. Well, is that strategy that you have born out of just how much fucking blubbery information is coming at you all the time? So you've kind of created like...

Well, think about it. If you go on a date, if you go on your first date with somebody... This is a tricky first date movie. I just want to put that out there. I think it's a tricky 10th date movie. If you go on a date and somebody told you, here's what's going to happen in the date. And here's what's going to happen in the first hour, she's going to say this, then, I don't know, you lose something.

I really like, I avoid trailers. I hate trailers. Yeah. I try not to read reviews until after I've seen the movie. Yeah. And I don't know. It's just what I've settled on. I don't know if it's right or wrong.

Is that what you want as a filmmaker? You're pretty secretive. Well, I don't know if we're secretive. I mean, well, two things. First, I can't help, I realize, back to that thing, I can't help but think it's like you've got, it's great, I think, what you're doing, but it's like a natural reaction to, like,

too much information coming at you, you know? Maybe it's like, if you, if I, look, if I hear, like, Greta Gerwig wrote and directed a movie and it's called Lady Bird. I'm in. I don't, that's it. That, that, you know, and that's, that's kind of, but on the other side of that is how do you going to find those things that

doesn't have her name to it? You have to count, I suppose, on somebody on coming across the trailer. You have to run your own multimedia website and trust the people that write for it. Well, exactly. Yeah. That's the thing thing i have real advantages like ladybird i stayed away everyone's like you got to see this i'm like okay right i thought greta gerwig was in it i had no idea she just wrote directed it and stayed out of the camera so it was kind of thrilling to watch i had no idea it

was gonna be i still haven't seen it so yeah i won't tell you yeah um but wait what did we say we said well are you but do you try to maintain a mystery around that um i'm so it's a delicate thing because you know there's like if you don't say anything about something that you're working on that can somehow be misconstrued as mysterious when it's just really like do not disturb still under construction is actually the sign that's on the door I think going back to that I think there's too much I kind of get

there's too much yapping about things before they're even done you know sometimes yeah well next trailer oh here it is oh a trailer for the trailer a trailer that for the trailer for the trailer i think it's like tmi man tmi i i don't know when it started but it was definitely the last 20 years of movies where um they give away 70 of it they they don't do it like with the movies you're

making i think there's probably a little different but when you're talking about like action movies or any sort of plot you almost feel like you don't even have to see it by the time you saw the trailer yeah but i also think that that is that i think we feel i think that's true when we feel that way but i don't think it's a new thing if you watch any old trailers like go on youtube and find like the 70s going back even further go back to the 30s go back to the 40s they've been selling selling you the entire, you know, probably trailers made right here in this office on this lot. Yeah. They've been selling movies pretty much the same way for a long time, you know.

I hate it. You've been involved in the trailers of your movies, though. Specifically what's revealed. Are you still doing that? Yeah. I mean, because I love trailers. I grew up loving trailers, loving the good ones, certainly.

And I'm like an aficionado, I suppose. I collect them. What do you think is the best trailer of all time? Let's go last 40 years. Well, certainly the Shining trailer with the blood coming out of the elevator is probably one of the great ones. Also, the scariest 30-second commercial, I think. I was probably 10 when that movie came out that summer.

So we were around the same age. And when that would come on, I would change the channel. I was so scared. It was just Nicholson in the snow limping with an axe right what is this i never want to see this movie of course i saw it immediately yeah but yeah it was that's probably yeah i agree that that was a good one i'm trying to think what else was great nobody ever has the great trailer conversation yeah it's a little bit of a lost art because there has to be, like you said, seven trailers for every film. There's also not that one iconic one that you stick to that you're just like, well, that was the best one for that.

You know, some filmmakers still care about it, obviously, but it's much more of an all-out assault, right? Right. I mean, listen, I love it. I know... Have you been to the New Beverly Quentin's Theater? it's a great theater and he does a great job I think we share an affection for these things and it's really fun to see trailers

put together with a certain kind of film I do it for my kids at home we sort of put together trailers that might excite them and lead into a film that we're going to watch, something like that. And yeah, there are some really shitty trailers. And those can be just as much fun as the really good ones. Do you think you like trailers because of what your dad did for a living?

It could be. It could be. It may contribute to it, but... You realize the importance his dad had for kids in the 70s, right? Yeah, I've heard. I've read. I wasn't there. contributed to it but you realize the importance his dad had for kids in the 70s right yeah i i've heard i've read i wasn't corolla adam corolla who's yeah another california guy he was i never knew that was your dad he didn't and he told me once we were talking about those things i said i used to love those and kid and charlie's gonna have the angels and they do these little thing

and then on vegas and he was like, that's Paul Thomas Anderson's dad. I was like, what? I almost had a heart attack. Yeah. But there are, a lot of them are on YouTube now. Yeah. And they've held the test of time. Yeah.

The outtakes and things like that. Have you heard those things that he does? For what? Well, the out, he was sort of, he had a really, really, really foul mouth. And so there's, but I knew I would go to work with him at ABC, and I'd watch it happen. And then somebody, an engineer that he worked with, cut together a kind of compilation of his greatest hits.

I'm sure we can find it on YouTube. It's on the internet? Oh, yeah. It should be out there somewhere. It's fantastic. It's him. Shitballs. Cocksucker. Fuck it's him shit balls cocksucker fuck fuck me you cocksucker fuck fuck me you know it's just like endless and it goes on it goes one of those great things that goes on like 45 seconds longer than it should so it just actually keeps rising how funny it is great was that so that was like his full-time

job that was all he was doing? That was all he did. Yeah. And there was like him and two other guys and that was it? Yeah, there was kind of the more, my dad did more TV spots, less movie trailers. He wasn't really a trailer guy, although he did do some of those. Before I can really remember, he was made the voice of ABC. Important job.

At that time, it was like the love boat you know happy days what's happening charlie shirley oh my god fantasy island welcome back hotter welcome back hotter did you have a lot of awareness of that as a kid where you're like this is a big deal that my dad is this voice or was it just normal workaday stuff it was normal workaday stuff? It was normal workaday stuff because he wasn't like, because it was such a behind-the-scenes kind of job. It wasn't like your dad was a famous actor or something like that. He walked down the street.

None of the kids at school knew what your dad did and were like, oh, yeah, that's... Unless they were over your house and he said something. They're probably like, what? Get the fuck off my phone. Would you like a grilled cheese? Yeah. A friend of mine did come over and started using the phone and my dad said to say what you got to say and get the fuck off my phone and it was like we always still quote that um so do you think but my but but he was also part of the carol burnett show too that's the

thing he was the booth announcer at the carolett show. Oh, wow. Because he was best buddies with Tim Conway and those guys. And so, you know, I was kind of around those, you know, parties at our house with like, Tim Conway was there, Harvey Korman,

really funny guys. But more than that, all these kind of creative engineers and directors, audio guys, sound guys, stuff like that

that worked at the Carol Burnett show and worked at ABC, those are the guys I grew up with. So were you doing this if you grew up in Kansas City and your dad was like a welder? yeah, I would think so I mean, it's hard to play that game but I can't imagine

the way that I feel about my life is that I can only do one thing and it was this, I'm only be obsessed with one thing since I was a child. Maybe it was a Spielbergian. I'm eight making the films of the smashing fire trucks. Exactly.

Yeah. Yeah. Well the, I mean the story about a boogie nights became boogie nights. The fact that you were working on that when you were, were you like 16? Yeah. You're making the Dirk Diggler story.

Yeah. What kind of camera did you have? We had terrible cameras in the 80s. It was a Sony. I'm trying to remember the model number. If I looked it up online, I could tell you it was an 8mm, Video 8. Heavy? Not too, it was at the time when it started to become a little bit more compact.

And actually, you could hold the whole thing on your shoulder. You didn't have the side pack. I started out doing the Betamax one. I remember the side pack. was at the time when it started to become a little bit more compact and actually you could hold the whole thing on your shoulder. You didn't have the side pack. I started out doing the Betamax one with the side pack and that was really heavy. And the camera and the core, even the cords were heavy. The eighties were brutal. I was,

I always had the camera in my group of friends and it was the side pack. It was like 20 pounds of stuff. So were you the ringleader who was like, right, we're going to make the movie. Let's go. I was in the high school and college. I was always the guy who's like, that guy's drunk. Let's start filming himleader who was like, right, we're going to make the movie, let's go? I was in the high school and college. I was always the guy who's like, that guy's drunk, let's start filming him.

We made a 40-minute movie in high school. We made a parody. Remember that show, The Hitchhiker? Oh, yeah. On HBO? Yeah, yeah. That was my senior project, a parody of The Hitchhiker, using everyone in our school. But I quickly realized I wasn't, you know, you, you realized,

I'm sure you were like, I'm meant to do this. I realized that was probably meant to do something else. Because it was, because it was, it was just too much of a pain in the ass to get, get everybody going to do it or. No, it just wasn't a cool, as cool of a thing in the East coast. I think here you have probably role models for it and stuff right or you're growing up especially in the 70s and you can be like oh i see this path i'm reading

about these other directors that did it this way so i'll do it this way yeah i don't think it was like that yeah but i i that's exactly what it is but then you i mean it takes a long time to realize that trying to follow somebody else's path is not going to work. I mean, I remember coming out of high school, I was like, well, okay, you got to go to film school. You got to go to film school at either USC or NYU. And short of that, you're a failure because what other way could there be? But when you don't get into those places, you're like, still know i want to do this there's no way i'm not going to do this so how else can i do it so it's not going to happen to me like i've read in

these magazines here's how steven spielberg did it and all these other people right so he's just for me it was like galvanizing it was like okay change course and then then you're like 23 and it's not really happening for you and you start feeling like a failure. Why isn't Hollywood calling? I'm 23. Don't they know I should be there by now? Did you ever consider throwing it in?

Not pursuing it? No. Opportunity came shortly thereafter, right? Yeah, it wasn't long after that that I was able to make my first movie, but I never ever considered anything else. I mean, sure, panic and fear of how this might go, but never did I have the thought, like, I should really learn how to do something else.

Aside from stick with it, what would you have told your 23-year-old self? Settle down. You know, just settle down. I'm still telling myself to settle down, you know, just settle down. Um, I'm still telling myself to settle down. We grew up in a weird generation. Sean's younger than us. Our generation was like,

you graduated college. There was no internet yet. And there were these just certain paths that you followed. It's like, if you want to be a writer, you have to get a job at a newspaper or a weekly, right? If you want to be a director,

you have to go to film school. And if you want to an actor you move to hollywood and try to be an actor and it was like it wasn't the malleability that i think we have now not at all but i also were products of our parents as well i mean they were they were handing off to us pretty much the exact same thing they've been handed to them yes i? I suppose, unless, I mean, I don't know, you know, there are people my age who, my dad was older. My mom was pretty straight-laced, Midwest kind of gal, so there was that kind of thing, but people our age, too, whose parents were complete fucking pot-smoking hippies,

who actually said, like, you don't have to go to school, you don't have to go to school you don't have to go to college but i know less of them than i do the other thing but i think you and i had which is like right yeah that's why i love uh kicking and screaming by the noah bomb back because i feel like that was like the movie that i never saw that one oh really that was like what my life was like where you graduate college and you're like, what do I do now? Yeah. Things are supposed to happen, right? And then six months passed and you're in the same spot you were in six months before. And I think now, you know, if you were 21 years old now trying to do this, you would have all these different ways to at least have people see what you were doing.

Yes, for sure. And when you're, what was it, you're 22, 23, you're walking around with your cassettes, giving them to different people and hoping one person watched them? Yeah, probably. Yeah, yeah. Quick break to talk about our friends at Rocket Mortgage by Quicken Loans.

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30 and now back to Paul Thomas Anderson and Sean fantasy what actually happened that allowed heartache to happen a series of events that got me to the Sundance Lab, and those series of events were, I think, making a decision to not go to college. Like, full stop. Like, I have to leave college, which I had barely enrolled in. I sort of, like, worked my ass off to get to NYU, quickly realized I don't want to be here.

The only thing I want to be doing is doing it. I cannot sit in a classroom. I can't actually, I can't take it. So I need to do what I've been doing on a larger scale and make up like a proper short film, which is crazy too because, you know, and that was kind of, that was all I seemed capable of writing, but I was writing features, so I wasn't, I don't you know that and that was kind of um that was all I seemed capable of writing but I was writing features so I wasn't I don't know I don't I couldn't I've got to do some more research

back into my own head at that time and see what turns up but attacking making that short film attacking wanting to get it done and just feel like right okay I'm proud of this thing and let me try to get it into film festivals and let me get it out there and let me try to sort of just keep moving and it was the first opportunity to work with proper actors it was like you that thing of like getting your friends to do the hitchhiker anything else i was just like before then and it's not it hasn't changed at all you you're like this like ring leader who's just like right come on guys Don't we all want to do this thing? And some people do more than others.

But you're just endlessly talking people into stuff or galvanizing the troops. But that was the first time I worked with actors who had something and really deeply invested in it as well, who were starting out. A great actor named Kirk Baltz and Philip Baker Hall, who I met, who was in the short. And it was like a proper collaboration. It wasn't just like talking your fucking mates into coming to help you out. So that became a really important thing. Like, oh, God, this feels so good.

This is more than just scrounging. We're doing something together. And we're all wanting to get it out into the world that was really exciting too so and then it went to Sundance or the

yeah I played at the Sundance Film Festival in shorts and from there I was invited by a woman named Michelle Satter to join the Sundance Labs and I'd written a screenplay and it was just

getting on that road like where can I find the cash to do this that was a really fun time to be an up andand-coming filmmaker. You and I just both read the Down and Dirty Pictures again.

Yeah. I mean, that was like the heyday of people actually trying to find young filmmakers and work with them. Totally. Totally. Because there was all this home video cash floating around, you know? It was like, if you had an idea and a pretty good cast and you could make it for a million bucks, it was there to be had, you know, and it was a lot of great filmmakers came out of that time. Was it intimidating or fraternal at that time? What was it like for you? Because you're always

defined as a very like singular working force writer director, but do you make a lot of friends with all, do you have like a whole cadre of people you were around at that time at Sundance? Um, well, the people that I met through that process were, you know, Philip and John Riley. And John and I became really close, still incredibly close. And that collaboration, that friendship was like born out of that.

I mean, I knew his work and I wanted to find him. The only kind of access I had was actually through the Sundance Lab. Like, right, they're legit. I'm not legit. He's legit because he's done some movies. So can two legit parties get to me? And they introduced me.

I sort of sent the script to him. And that was one of those crazy situations when you find somebody too, because you don't think they're looking for you, but in their way they are you know he's been in like he'd been in 10 films at that point which seemed like my god he's been in 10 movies yeah he's like an old man he's been around the block but he he was looking for parts you know he was looking for somebody that to write with to be with to do something with other

than just being like a supporting player to Sean Penn or something like that. So just the stars came our way for that relationship to happen. We were running in our own lane, trying to just get that work done. I don't really remember meeting other filmmakers at that time, exactly. Yeah, I watched a Spielberg documentary, and I had forgotten thisberg documentary and it was,

I had forgotten this or even not known it, that those guys considered themselves like almost like a class, like in college. Yeah. Well, that's what we were talking about. You know, that the movie Bratz being pals.

And then there's some association from people coming up between 90 and 95 or something that everybody's all friends, but it's always unclear if that's actually true or not. I don't think so. I mean, I became friends with Quentin. And that's who I got to know. James Gray is another director

I got to know around that time. And, you know, there are more, but there were friendships that were formed. But it wasn't like we were all part of a club or something like that. Right. Do you feel competitive with those guys? No, not at all.

I think Quentin does. He feels competitive? A little bit, maybe with you. With me? Yeah. He doesn't have anything. He doesn't have anything to worry about. No. anything he doesn't have anything to worry about no you I mean this is

probably will sound I think this will sound like the horse instance was so true like somebody does something good it's exciting it's really exciting and especially when something is successful it's exciting you know because it's just it's just if it's good it's another notch towards like, right, because you always feel somehow at any moment that somebody's going to like put the handcuffs on you and they're like, right, we figured this all out. You're totally full of shit. And you know, this is, you've kind of had us going for a while.

That feeling is always kind of there. And when something hits, like, I remember when The Revenant was coming out, and it was sort of talked about in Hollywood circles as like, this movie's gone way over budget, it's been shooting forever, and this is potentially a disaster. And I was like, right.

How much competition could you feel to somebody? You're like, I'm rooting for you. I want, you know, all, all you want is the, all that horse shit kind of stuff that you're having to read about this film. You're thinking about the filmmaker. Like he doesn't need to know that this is out there by his film. He's working his ass off. And when it came out and it was so amazing and it made so much money and it was such a success,

it was like fucking cheers, you know, like, right. Okay. Because the other side of that would have been something really horrible, which is like, right, you're not getting any more money, or your budget's going to go way down, everybody cool out.

Because no one's allowed to go out into the snow and make another movie for a long time. You know, that kind of stuff can happen. It's funny how that's a recurring theme in the history of Hollywood, is people freaking out about some movie that's way over budget, and oh my God then that's the heaven's gate story right yeah well it's also the godfather right right but it's it's like that was jaws it's great it's jaws it's a lot of times it works out titanic was another one that's right that was gonna be another oh my god just where's gonna be over it became the biggest movie ever right but. But. You know, that probably, there's a lot of people rooting against you, or there's a lot

of people with too much time on their hands that want to snarky. Have you had a movie where you felt that? No. I mean, our budgets never get, our budgets are never big, and we don't. It's another, look, it's another advantage of not trying to be secretive, but just trying to quietly go about your own work i mean you know i mean when you finish a film you want the entire world to know that it exists that's what i would hope for our new film that literally everybody knows it but i think there's something when you start it for me personally the the process of

finishing writing it and going out into the world and having to make it is something that's very sacred and that you want to try to keep as close to you for as long as you can. It just keeps it intimate somehow. Are you still working through ideas that you were working on when you were at Sundance Labs? Are you making films that are taking 20, 30, 40 years to happen? I think I'm fresh out of ideas from that period. Those have been spent, I think. There might be a few in old notebooks that I would find or go back to,

but I have a feeling all the good ones from that time were spent on Boogie Nights and Magnolia and a little bit into Punch Drunk Love. When you did Hard Eight, that didn't seem like it was a totally satisfying experience for you what did you learn that you took to the other movies um maybe change the name oh that was that oh god it was that was just a nightmare scenario the all-time nightmare scenario of um somebody coming in and taking your film from you, you know, um,

worst case scenario, worst case scenario. Um, when you say taking it, what'd they do other than change the title? They, for a time we, for instance, we shot the film in a widescreen format. They came in and made sure to reformat every single shot so that it was actually more of a box oh no so literally every frame has changed then um so you know it's funny it was one of those things that they don't teach you is just like you have 10 weeks to try and put this movie together and so you have all this bluster all this thing we've been talking about like right i can make a movie i can make a movie i can make a movie and then you go and you make a movie and there's something that you're just not ready for just like i've got all this footage i've bluffed my way into this and now how do i cut this into a 90 minute movie

i was i fucking had no idea how to get that you're like 24 25 yeah 25 and like my bluff had caught up with me i think and if i'd had a lot of time, maybe I could have figured it out, but I had ten weeks less. They sort of came knocking at the door at about five weeks in, and I was like scrambling to figure out what to do with this film. I knew I had good material, good performances, but

I didn't have the wherewithal. I didn't have the chops at the time to figure out how to get it done. So they took it away from me, which I suppose I can see their point now. But actually, I can't see their point now. Fuck them. But it was a trial by fire, certainly.

You're like, right. And I think the worst part about it is just feeling burned or feeling like this is what it's going to be like to try to make movies here. So I've got to put some armor on and I guess go back out and try and do it again. really just made me so defensive and so um kind of blindly protective of myself that i couldn't see that that was a one-off that that was a kind of complete unique experience yeah and then boogie nights was ready at that point or almost ready almost ready and it was kind of the solution to the big question mark was will i ever get this film back which eventually i did to a certain extent i was able to complete the film using boogie nights as kind of the collateral i had big question mark was will I ever get this film back which eventually I did to a certain extent I was able to complete the film using Boogie Nights as kind of the collateral I had to take

some of the money that I made from Boogie Nights and pay to finish the first film myself um and I was finishing I was preparing Boogie Nights while finishing the first film where are you living in LA at this point I'm living in an apartment over on Tujunga and Moore Park. Wow. It's like the full Swingers era. Just everybody out here in different apartments going to the same. Everybody's in cars. There's no Uber.

No, yeah. No, no, no, no. You drive. You drive. You drive home. You got to weigh the... You find a way. Keep one eye closed and make it. What was your big Boogie Nights battle?

Because I remember there was stuff like... Was there one? Leo versus Mark Wahlberg was a thing at one point, right? No, there was no... Urban Legend. That's Urban Legend. There was no VS, Leo VS Mark because Leo just decided not to do the film.

Oh, so he just turned it down. He did. That's one of the great what-ifs in movie history. I think it's for the best. That's my take. I re-watched it this week. I was like, well, it works great. He's amazing.

I think so, too. I think it might be for the best, too. I don't know Leo as Dirk Diggory. It's a little different. Yeah. I love Leo, and I loved him then then because I was obsessed with Gilbert Grape, which John Reilly was in. It was a great, great movie.

But backing up before that, This Boy's Life was this fucking amazing film, right? That's when I bought all my Leo stock. I was in. I bought a little during Growing Pains because he had a couple great scenes with Kirk Cameron and I was like, who's this guy? Wow Pains because he had a couple great scenes with Kirk Cameron. I was like, who's this guy? Wow, so you were in on the ground floor. I bought my Leo stock on This Boy's Life.

He went toe-to-toe with De Niro. I know. So from that point on, I was obsessed with him. But I think you're right. I think looking back, I mean, it's impossible to play this game. I hate playing it, but Mark was great, and he was right. I'd like to learn'd like to well leo and i will work together one day and it'll be the right it's never happened right no but it will come on leo um burt reynolds was that always always the uh guy for that it was a first idea and then i think it was an idea that i was, I kind of, my memory, which is like a sewer dump, is saying that I thought of it and then rethought it.

And then I think at the time to try to boost the appeal of the film to the financers, tried to find who would be a bigger name that could help support what we were asking for in terms of the money and stuff like that. And that was kind of in the comeback era of like Travolta had the comeback with Pulp Fiction and You Bring the Star. Bert Routh had just done a great turn in striptease with Demi Moore.

Yeah, so that Jack Nicholson seemed like a really good idea, but we could never really get him to read the script. That's the other what if that we've discussed. I thought that would be interesting, but maybe, maybe might've overwhelmed it a bit. I mean, Jack's such a big presence. You need him to maybe be the, the, the thing of a movie. I don't know if the porn and the seediness would have resonated with Jack Nicholson.

I just, I don't, I don't see it. I don't think it would have been with Jack Nicholson. I just, I don't see it. I don't think it would have been. We got to see them together, though, in The Departed. So we got what we needed there on Leo and Jack. Oh, yeah. Was that? And Mark. There's always a story about you and Burt Reynolds went at it on the set.

And it was right during the famous scene when Wahlberg versus Burt Reynolds, which it really seems like they're arguing. And you battled with Burt first. And there was like an intensity on the set for those three days. Is that true, or is that urban legend? That's almost true. I think that when Burt and I kind of got into it, it may have been the day before or the day after, but it was a really tense three days on the set of Boogie Nights, which the other 57 days were really

fun and a lot of laughs. But there was three tense days there in the middle where Mark was fighting with Bert in the film. Yeah. And it was really in that kind of like, and then looking back, it was really in the nasty part of the movie, too, when really everything's kind of going wrong. You think in the movie that infects the actual set a little bit? I do.

I absolutely do. Absolutely. You know, when it's the good times and everybody's got their silk disco pants on and everything, it's like we're having a ball. It's really fun. But when it starts to get, like, cocaine glossy and hangovers and like... Guy shooting himself on New Year's Eve. There's all that.

There's blood. It's just like the fun of it all was wearing off. And it was like the middle of summer. It was really hot. And it was just... We were all stuck together in that house for a long time. And things were just like... They were heated. It was Covina. It's for sale for like a house for a long time. And things were just like, they were heated.

It's for sale for like a year. I saw that. And I think it just sold. I saw that on Curb LA. It was his biggest dream for our offices to be operating out of that house. He has raised it five times. I got to be honest. I did ways to see exactly how many miles it was away.

Because I was like, could we make this the video audio hub of the ringer? And it was too far. It's just too far. It's like 50 minutes away. If it was 25, it was like could we make this the video audio hub of the ringer and it was too far it's just too far 50 minutes away if it was 25 it was conceivable but I was like can you imagine we're shooting like NFL previews by the boogie nights pool like how weird that would be incredible it's not a good idea it's not a good idea there's a lot of karmic energy in that house too you know what's amazing is they didn't change it they didn't touch one thing it looks exactly the same it looked from the pictures it looks exactly the same to me as well oh i have such fond memories of that time of and it was really like right at the edge of there's a thing called the zone do you know the zone like if you if you shoot outside of the zone you have

to pay people to travel there you have to put put them up and all these kind of union rules. And it was right at the edge of where you could shoot in Los Angeles without incurring those kinds of costs. And I did see that that house was for sale. I would love to go back there again. I wonder if the bad thing will happen. Somebody's going to buy it, and they're going to tear it down, and they're going to do something about it.

I thought you were going to end up buying it. I just figured you would just take care of it. High fives. Keep it off the market. You know, even if I had that cash lying around, which I don't, West Covina, it's just too far. I think you're right. I've had some youth soccer games in the West Covina area.

It's not very close to LA. No. Unfortunately. No. Do you ever go back and watch Boogie Nights? Or any of your films? If they're on, yeah, for sure. If you're flicking channels?

If you're flicking channels. Do you have the, I would have done this differently feeling? Not really. I mean, yeah, for sure, but not in any serious way, because that game is a terrible game to play. I think you more kind of hypnotize yourself into believing that you didn't even make it or you just sort of enjoy more of the memories of it.

I would imagine it's like watching a home movie where you're like, oh, this scene. I remember John C. Reilly threw up that day and then he filmed anyway. I think that's a better way of saying it, that you look at it more as a home movie and you so that helps you kind of ignore any like kind of obsessive filmmaker flaws bullshit that you might do because that's just that would then your day is ruined and then you're gonna worry about that

all afternoon and that that no i think it's more of a fun thing like um boogie nights is probably on more than other things um it's been a 20-year cable rewatch it's yeah that's right it's always in the mix um inherent vice is making a run on hbo these days it's on it's on a lot oh that's good to hear that's good to hear that's a good movie for right now so you're 27 you, you're making Boogie Nights, and you've got like 50 actors on the set at all times, basically. Yeah. I mean, going from heartache to that, that had to have been education, I would guess.

You're managing all these different egos. You become like the dad of this gigantic family. You haven't made a movie with that many people that many characters that you're juggling over a short course of time like that since right no well i mean magnolia had that same kind of sprawl and ensemble thing but it was contained with different pieces right um yeah it's funny to look back at it i never i, I guess you're right. I think I was coming out of that experience on a heartache with like ego or that focus, all that stuff, I was in a world that I really felt comfortable in. I was in my backyard, you know, not West Covina, but I was in the valley. I was with people that were close to my own age.

I was with Riley and Marky and Cheadle and all those guys. So I felt at home. I was really like, right, this is going to come to me. And I think it was such a team feeling. Like we were all kind of let loose a little bit. And it was our shot. We weren't going to blow it either. We were going to kind of take our opportunity.

And it all felt so good to us at the time. You know what's interesting about after when it came out? It was right during the era when DVDs had deleted scenes. That's right, yeah. And it was one of the first. When DVDs came out, it was so primitive that I remember, like, Goodfellas, you had to flip it halfway through. That's right.

And then by about 96 97 they started getting better and then eventually they started putting extra stuff and i remember thinking like extra stuff like i'm in boston i'm bartending i'm like there's scenes that weren't in the movie what like i'm just confused by it and yours came out i'm gonna say there was a normal dvd and then a dvd that had a whole bunch of stuff. You went all in. It seemed like you were involved with it. Yeah.

It's a very... And there's like 40 minutes of content that could have been in the movie. Like my head almost exploded. It's a very important director's commentary for a lot of people too. Yeah. You were very honest about like, I stole this from Goodfellas. I stole this from that. That was like an education for people who didn't understand how movies actually worked. Right.

So did Laserdiscs skip you by? Did that kind of not get your way? I blew it on Laserdiscs. I have no defense. Because that was where, to me, that was where that started. And it started through, we all know and love now, Criterion was doing those Laserdiscs. And you mentioned that to dvd well remember when boogie nights is coming out i was talking to the guy from criterion i was like aren't you

aren't you gonna make dvds he's like that's not gonna last we're sticking with laser discs i was like gulp i don't know i think there's dvd things but that format of material and commentary track stuff that was a laser disc that was that stuff, that was a Laserdisc. That was where it was born. Because you could get all that information on there, and it was like, this is great. And it was also the golden years of director's commentaries before people actually realized that these were going to be on the DVDs for the rest of their lives.

Yes. There's like a three-year window where it's like, hey, why don't you do this DVD commentary for a movie? Just talk as the movie goes. And people are like, great. And then it's on the DVD. Like Ben Affleck had the Good Will Hunting one. And he's like crazy in it.

And really funny. But I'm sure he would take back like half the stuff he said. I think I just had an idea just now. And obviously it's too late. Maybe for the next film, is that it seems to me that you could do, a new way to do a commentary would be in the editing room. By the time you get to the finish of the film, at least where I am right now, the last thing you want to do,

I've seen this movie so many times, I do not want to sit down and watch that movie again. The only thing, I'll just start snoring. But you could have like a little you know just talking to your phone as you're editing or something like this is pretty and then you could chop it up and so you can kind of track like a produced director's commentary what do you mean produced like if you do if you're talking in little bites as it's going along somebody could string that together yeah maybe that's a way to do it so that you're they got really polished too they got kind of like now they're two we want you to now come down to this studio and and then it became like signing waivers so and then these big disclaimers at the beginning like the sony doesn't believe anything

that this guy's saying on the commentary track and it was like the best ones are the ones that are more obsessed where you can hear the person smoking and eating doritos and just being like i gotta get all my jokes in now you know i got all my lines i've been thinking about with this movie but the the boogie nights one is particularly were you like excited about doing all that stuff back then about saying like i've got a whole slew of you know cut scenes that i want to show people. For sure. Yeah. I mean, we still, I still get excited about that. That hasn't gone away.

I think on that movie, there were actually pretty good scenes too that were cut. Less and less, like more and more now you're like, the bad, like bad scenes get cut. And you, and at this point you're like, I don't need any. It's deleted for a reason. Absolutely. Except the Boogie Nights one, there's a couple of classics, but there's a scene that you cut that I'm still bitter about. Which one was that? Which one?

The second time Dirk wins the awards. I've done a good job of not going full nerd on Boogie Nights. Sean was worried. Paul might disagree, but we'll see. He might disagree. The second time he wins the award, he just goes up and up and says thank you and then it goes to the next scene which i assume you did for pacing but you film the scene of him winning the second time and you cut to everybody in the crowd reacting to it and i always thought it was amazing because it captures each character

in like whatever their reaction was and it's like two and a half minutes long and i always thought it was amazing because it captures each character in like whatever their reaction was and it's like two and a half minutes long and i was always like that should have been the movie but yeah i'm sure you had your reasons i i just did awesome two minutes you know what i'm talking about i know exactly what you're talking about and it came into my mind the other day i don't apropos of i don't know what and i was remembering don cheetle sitting there with the wig in one of his wigs on one some outfit so i can't i was trying to remember what outfit he was in maybe it was like an earth wind and fire kind of outfit or something and then and then i started and then for whatever that image came into my mind driving around in my car and then of course the floodgates

open you start remembering everybody else i really started smiling and i wonder if i don't think i thought oh that should have been in there but i just had that kind of warm fuzzy memory of doing that definitely been the commercial for the movie they just could have cut to everybody celebrating because it was really did capture each person's true yeah the little bill and his and his wife little bill and his wife making it somebody yeah i remember some she's making it somebody. Yeah, I remember. She has, I think I remember in hers, doesn't her, don't her eyelashes get stuck together? Let's take a breath and talk about SimpliSafe. The holidays can be a crazy time.

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Like for where you want it to be, where you can just be like I'm making a movie. I'm just good at this. Every detail is going to be perfect. And I know I'm just going to nail this. Well, I mean, if I admitted to feeling that, wouldn't that make me psychotic?

No, no, no. I'm not saying you're perfect. I'm just saying, like with a baseball pitcher, at some point a baseball pitcher is like, I know what I'm doing. I have these four pitches. I know how to throw them. And I can do this. Confidence.

Well, yeah, confidence came for sure after Boogie Nights. During Boogie Nights and during the editing of it and feeling like, looking at it and feeling like, this is, I aimed it this way and I'm kind of meant to do this. Oh my God. It worked. It worked. There was definitely a confidence boost from that.

Big time. It's magnolian. And then to feel that way, but then turn around and have other people feel that way and sit in a big theater. I never had that opportunity for my first film, sit in a big theater and watch people watch it and laugh and really get into it. It was like, right, okay. Not only like, not only the confidence boost, but

more just a wider understanding of like, okay, so I think I got the job. I think I know how to, I think I can do this, but let me figure out what more I can do with it. What else can I do? And then I wrote Magnolia, which that was just like too much confidence, probably, but that's okay. That was going to be my question. Was it supposed to be a challenge for yourself?

I think it was just a challenge. It didn Was it supposed to be a challenge for yourself? I think it was just a challenge. It was a challenge to write so personally and to write so nakedly about my life at the time and just, blech, like, throw it all up and put it out there. But that seemed like the right thing to do at that time. It just seemed like I had no other experience except the one right in front of me which had just happened

or dealing with the last couple years of my life and like it all just came out did you know Cruz had that in him? oh yeah what movie made you think he had it in him? you know Rain Man for sure Rain in him? You know, Rain Man. For sure, Rain Man.

He's the MVP of Rain Man. That's one of my Oscar redos. Cruise has way harder role in Rain Man. Way harder. Yeah. Because he's an asshole, but I have to like him by the end of it. He's got so many,

he has got so many more moves he has to pull. Yeah, I'd always loved Tom Cruise like everybody else loved Tom Cruise, but Rain Man, I think I love Tom Cruise more than anybody loves Tom Cruise. And then Born on the Fourth of July was an amazing performance, and Color of Money. Yeah. I mean, those three, those were strong, you know. There's a little Frank T.J. Mackey

in all three of those characters, too. A little dickish, something that you're attracted to. He's funny, too. Yeah. Cruise is funny. But, you know, I was thinking about it. I mean, Cruise, when you see Tom Cruise on screen, name anybody else that can do that right now,

that can do what Cruise can do, whether it's in his action films or whether it's in his dramatic stuff. Cruise is the fucking king. If you, like, step back a little bit, you're like, right, come on. Game's on. It's fucking Cruise.

I love watching those Mission Impossible movies. The body of work, if he was an athlete, we would be wondering what the hell was going on. Totally. Risky Business was 1982. Right. He was a kid in the movie,

but he was probably a tiny bit older than that. Edge of Tomorrow. Was that one with Emily Blunt? Yeah. It's a good movie. Yeah, but in that sports analogy, too, I mean, as he gets older, if he loses his ability to jump off buildings and stuff like that, I'm not nervous about that at all because he's got so many moves to fall back on because he's got a big bag of tricks.

A couple months, maybe a month ago, I wrote about what Cruise's next move is because he saw the great actors that we grew up with. Like Paul Newman, when he made The Verdict, it was an important moment for his career because he kind of aged. And it was a character that you don't really play when you're trying to be the A-list action hero actor. You play it when you're moving into the next part of your career.

And I think Cruise is ready for one of those. He's ready for his verdict. Just you wait. That could be your next challenge. Just, I think, right around the corner, you're going to see that. It's going to be, yeah, Cruise's. Don't bet against Cruise. What made you

what made you want to do a movie with Adam Sandler what'd you see in him well I particularly loved Big Daddy that was my number one I mean

and Happy Gilmore I suppose more than I liked Billy Madison I liked Billy Madison but when I by the time I got to Happy Gilmore

I was like, oh. That's Kate's favorite. Kate enjoyed that. And then I think I really graduated to obsession level, like I said, with Big Daddy. What about Big Daddy? That one is a little lost in time. My kids love Big Daddy, if there's any. My kids think Sandler is the greatest actor of all time. They love Sandler. They're in on anything Sandler.

They have great taste. They have great taste. I think Big Daddy was trying to, was kind of, it was a little bit more polished. It was trying, it sort of seemed a little bit more able to kind of be sincere and the crazy fucking dirty shit that Sandler likes to do. And he sort of got the mix really right. And I think he looked to me like, he just looks like a goofball in Happy Gilmore. But in Big Daddy, you start to see, like, there's actually kind of a handsome guy in there, you know? There still is. As a matter of fact, I haven't seen the Meyerowitz stories yet, but I've been seeing these pictures of him lately.

I haven't seen him in a while. We talk all the time, but I haven't seen him in a while. He's getting really, he's so good looking now as he gets older. And that's not what people would normally say about him, but his face is getting even now as he gets older. I know that's not what people would normally say about him, but his face is getting even better as he gets older. I thought he was really good in Funny People. Yeah, me too. I thought that was the one where it's like,

if somebody's having it, it's saying how good of an actor is the argument. The first hour of Funny People, I think he's excellent. I'm also not sure how many people could have pulled that movie off i think it's true in meyerwitz too if you see meyerwitz it it reminds me a lot of punch drunk love but um he's a really good actor and you know it's kind of cliche at this point to be like but he's a good actor because if you've seen punch drunk love or have you seen you know one of those other movies but he's he's really good in this movie well what's interesting one of the things that fascinates me about you is, like, you love Midnight Run.

Midnight Run's like a formative movie for you. Big time, yeah. Like, Heartache was named Sydney. Mm-hmm. Which, I mean, Midnight Run. That's inside baseball for sure. Yeah, that's super inside baseball. You love Sandler. Boogie Nights has so many, like, really genuinely funny, hilarious moments in it.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, since then, you've never gone've never gone full scale into just trying to make a funny movie. Would you ever make Midnight Run, that type of movie? Would you ever want to do that? Or have you just passed that? Well, I'm not past anything. It's like...

It doesn't really work that way. i'm gonna make a midnight run type of movie you know i mean an action a buddy action comedy on the road kind of you know the formula works it sure does i love it i haven't seen that done in a while Wait I must I did see some of Central Intelligence I thought there was some pretty good stuff in that That actually was See I think you're thinking about it You're playing coy

He's studying all these different buddy comedies You're not running You can do good stuff with The Rock Think about it I love The Rock But I think The Rock Because Boogie Nights is basically a buddy movie in a couple weird ways. With Brock and Chest?

Yeah. For sure. And there's father-son stuff with Brock and, with Dirk and Jack Horner. Right. But Brock and Dirk, like, that's some of the most fun stuff. I think you have it in you. You just went to 1950s England. Are you trying to say that my movies aren't funny anymore?

They haven't been funny in a while? Kind of the Woody Allen thing? Your earlier, funnier stuff. I thought Phantom Threat had some really funny moments, which I was not prepared for. Because it seemed so serious in the beginning. I was like, oh, all right, serious movie coming. And then there's some laughs in it,

which I wasn't prepared for. Maybe that's a problem that we've had lately. I mean, I remember watching the master um and feeling like maybe we have a problem here because i was i i i'm i'm one of those people that if they start laughing they cannot stop there's probably two types of people in the world there's the people that can just laugh and that's it and then there's people that once they start they're crying and they can't stop. I'm in that. I'm the latter.

And I found the master to be very, very, very funny. And I don't, but somewhere along the way, we didn't really get the laughs that I think. Yeah, I don't think it gets better for that. I think it was that maybe I find when somebody is so serious, I find that funny. When somebody is so dedicated to what they believe, I find that funny. So kind of every word that comes out of Phil's mouth, I find pretty funny. Yeah, when he says you're a scoundrel. I was cracking up when I watched that.

Every last word somehow feels like absolute bullshit. And I find it funny. Somehow, I think there was a seriousness. There was an overall heaviness to that film anyway because of Joaquin's that somewhere, hopefully over time, some of that humor will reemerge to an audience or something like that. But those are those funny things.

You make something and you think, God, it was funny to me. And then it's just fucking crickets. I feel like people are afraid because they're not sure if they're supposed to laugh i felt that watching phantom thread people are like that's a very serious work but there's you know daniel day lewis is funny he's very funny but we have that same phenomena on there will be blood a lot you know where we we've done some score. Like, they play the movie again with a live orchestra and Johnny Greenwood plays. Really?

And it plays like a comedy. I'm not kidding. Just the character is so, it's very well known now to these audiences and they know what's coming and they know every last kind of look and question mark that looms behind his eyes as he looks at Eli or how he deals with him, somehow knowing the film and knowing where it's headed, it becomes a lot funnier to audiences, at least the ones who know it. Can we talk more about that movie? Sean's ready to nerd up on There Will Be Blood. What do you remember most about making it? Being in the desert.

Being in the desert with a great group of people. Being in the desert with... I just had a baby, so I had like a... At that time, an eight-month-old. Living in Marfa, Texas. And feeling like completely... Talk about going to West Cov, and feeling like completely... Talk about going to West Covina and feeling like you're outside of town.

We were in the middle of West Texas, hours and hours away from anything. So it really felt like no adult supervision, the world's greatest actor, a really good script, lights, cameras, film. It was exciting. You know, when we had that train coming down those tracks and sort of like go through all this work to get that train coming down those tracks, you're like pinching yourself. Like, this is a dream come true. This is really like, this is like fantasy land stuff.

And that was all kind of at the beginning and then as it went on my memories were of just the joy of watching daniel work really like knowing that i was watching something front row that was pretty spectacular i felt really confident about like sports Sounds like sports. Right. Like you're watching LeBron in his prime or something. Well, we had an actor come to the set one day, had to do this confrontation scene with Daniel. It's a great actor named David Wachowski.

It's the guy in the scene where he says, Daniel ends up saying, one of these nights I'm going to come in and I'm going to cut your throat from wherever you live. I'm going to cut your throat. So anyway, this actor has to do this scene with Daniel all day, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth back and forth back and forth and at the end of it he stood up and he said

I just feel like I went 10 rounds with Federer and it was exactly that it was that sports thing it was like just that feeling of the energy

between him and other actors that would come on fucking great to watch so like I could name the three great things that LeBron does or Federer or whatever. What are the three things that Dana Day-Lewis does

that make him the best? What are the three things you would say, the three traits that he has that you just haven't really seen? Every word that comes out of his mouth feels like it just came out of his brain and to his lips and out into the air

it doesn't feel like a line that you've written on the flip side of that when he gets a good line he can chew it up and like serve it up as a fastball with so much stink on it that you just, you're like, it's theater you know and the other thing is the physicality that he has with so much stink on it that you just, you're like, it's theater, you know?

And the other thing is the physicality that he has, the way he can, like, hunch his shoulders or move into something or chew on his lip or just seeing him walk down a hallway a certain way. I mean, you think of that Bill the Butcher stuff, think of him walking out in that Gangs of New York and just, like like planting his foot and some piece of physicality that he does where you think like nobody else would have come up with that

nobody and those kind of defining moments that you're like right now you settle in and you're like right I'm watching a movie now in the best way like turn the lights down this is a movie at the same time though that I'm watching a movie now in the best way, like, turn the lights down. This is a movie.

At the same time, though, that can imply that it's theatrical, which is good, but there's that balance that he can do the small stuff really, really well and make it seem simple, which is something we always talk about. It's like whenever we'll come across a performance, something that we like, I think we've always said like god fucking did you how the fuck did they do how they make it look so simple god damn it

we gotta keep working it's like one of those things that you it's not jealous we were talking about jealousy earlier it's like

you're like fuck how'd they do it they crack the code they fucking crack the code they make it look so easy we're trying too hard god loosen up

loosen up you know the phantom thread was definitely like that where i was watching it i thought it was great um and it felt like a movie only you could have made and it also felt like a movie only he could have been in you know what i mean i can't even imagine who else would have played that role well i was wondering about that because i saw you talk about the movie a little bit and you said that this was really collaborative with daniel yeah the new one was that there will be blood similar where there was a lot of conversation about who this person was and you unlock new stuff from talking to him yeah it was exactly like that the only difference I had more written of There Will Be Blood. And there was a book, which we didn't use much, but, you know,

but in both instances, there was a kind of, there was a thing to latch onto outside of whatever emotional things we were going to deal with, which is really comforting to kind of occupy your day with, like, let's learn how to get oil out of the ground. What are the realities of these guys looking for oil? It's just historical stuff that you can spend your day dealing with, even though you know you're not making a film that's really about that, right? So you can spend your days learning how to sew. You can spend your days learning about making dresses in the 1950s. You have to get the dialogue and the lingo perfect too, right?

But we got to get all that shtick down and make sure we don't look like fools, right? But, you know, it's all that kind of work that he likes to do and I like to do of trying as deeply as you can to live inside a 3D model of the thing, you know, and really kind of look around at all sides of it and try and figure it out. And doing that with him is fun.

I mean, it's elaborate. Does it ever scare you? It's described as being very intense. No, it doesn't scare me. It's only intense in that the level... It's intense on set the level of concentration he has is really severe

it's tops sports metaphors like there's no reliever when it comes when Daniel's pitching a game he's going the full nine the bullpen just didn't even come in that day

and that's intense don't even the bullpen just didn't come in that day yeah you know and that's intense that level of concentration is intense because usually sometimes even the most intensive actors i've worked with it's like right it's lunch let's just take a break but it's not it's it's strong all day with did you know that was coming when you did there will be blood yeah you'd heard the stories i'm sure i'd heard stories but i i did i was trying to make up my own mind but we were clear with each other. Just getting to know each other and working on it beforehand, you know you're like, right, it's not going to drastically change.

It's not like we're going to get out on the road and it's going to be wildly different. Is that more fun for you, or is it more fun to be like, when the set's more jovial? Getting a balance. I mean, getting a balance. It's fun to have fun, but, you know, we do have, on our sets, we do fuck around.

We do have laughs and things like that, but it's not, you know, we're there to work. We're there to work. So there's a way to do it. You can have a good time and get on with the work, but it depends. It's like, you know, Daniel was a different character in There Will Be Blood.

That person was living outside, and there was a sort of team of people that he worked with, and he had his space and all that kind of stuff. And this one, we were all just like right on top of each other and space is never any bigger than this the very exacting character noises were particular that typing over there would be like i mean i get rid of that guy you know tate maybe you should leave so but that's remittance woodcock and so we were living inside that world and that was that was the fun and the pain of it for for three and a half four months

were we gonna say sean i interrupted him no you got at it um the master you were saying that was pretty is was funny and fun to do with phil and and joaquin but was the set very intense given that some of the exchanges in the movie are very intense? Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. The days that are intense are intense. They're quiet. They're quiet.

You can hear a pin drop. And those are always good days, because everybody's on their game. No one's wandering. Everybody's focused. There's a big scene at the end of The Master that we shot for one day, when Joaquin comes back to see Phil, and they have a very long conversation at a table. That was one of the most intense days I've ever been a part of, too,

just from stepping on the scents, from the energy that both of them were giving off, and Amy as well, who was there. It was like the air was was thick and the air you could smell it and the smell said don't fuck around in here like and then it was good it was really nice it was a really you know what happens you're in this big room it boils down to probably like five or six crew members and the actors everybody else is outside and you just get on with it and you what happens when it starts is you just know like right

we've started and we can't stop we can't break this concentration you know we didn't break for lunch you don't you just get in it and you do it and you do it as quickly and swiftly as possible so that you can't you don't break concentration. One more break to talk about our good friends at Squarespace. They have been our good friends now. This is year three of my friendship with them. Make it easy to build beautiful websites. Who does that?

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Start a free trial at squarespace.com. Use offer code BS to get 10% off your first purchase. What a deal. Again, that's squarespace.com. Offer code BS. Back to Paul and Sean. You became addicted to Philip Seymour Hoffman because of Scent of a Woman, right? Mm-hmm.

You watched that one and you were just like, I want to work with that guy. Yeah. That's my guy. How many movies did you do with him? I don't know. Six. If this is eight, I've, I've, I've only ever made one movie without him. Two movies without him. Six. So six. What do you miss the most about him everything everything yeah what um how aware are you of the conversation that is happening around your movies i was thinking about this with there will be blood in the master the conversation started to be this is a movie master this is like every movie now is an event that's obviously something that's happening in that tmi world that we were talking about before but like are you aware of that stuff do people come up to you and they say like you're the greatest you're the best ever tell me how you

do it i get i get people recognize me sure on but you know usually it's you you maybe you might know where it might happen you know if you go to the movies. Right. Hey, hey, you know. And then it happens randomly at places you'll never expect, something like that. And that's always kind of, that's great. It's really exciting. Like, what the fuck? How the fuck do you know who I am?

It's exciting. I mean, I love the idea. I mean, look, what better situation could there be that if you're going to make a film and go about it and people are anticipating it and people are into it? It's amazing. It's so exciting. But then you can also have that thing in reverse where somebody comes up and gets really scared.

They're like, somebody came up to me. I think it was a valet guy who was like, it gets really scary. I'm like, somebody came up to me. I think it was a valet guy. He was like, oh, man, Magnolia is my favorite movie of all time. And I was like, great, well, come see the new one. He's like, you got a new movie coming out? Like, hmm, got to work on our marketing. That's why you're sitting here. Exactly, like, come on.

So, yeah. Do you think at all about the peak levels of directors and how long a director can stay at a certain level and what the history of that is? Because sometimes some people feel like seven, eight years and that's it. And that's when you have your run. And then it's really hard to put together a couple decades, which you've now done. Well, thanks.

That's great. But it reminds me that I never saw this letter, but apparently, I want to find out if this is true or not, that there was a kind of health report that went out to the Directors Guild of America members, which really includes first assistant directors and second assistant directors. And it said something to the extent of the average life expectancy for a DGA member is

57 years. Oh, my God. That's not good. Like, I think the assistant directors, with all the stress they had, brought the medium age way, way, way down through, like, you know, premature heart attacks from being screamed at probably by producers and directors. But I think it can take a lot out of you, and you'll see other filmmakers that you like whose best work is here or there or in the middle

or sometimes towards the end. But, you know, yeah, you become aware. I know Quentin likes to say, I'm making 10 movies and then I'm quitting, that kind of thing. But I don't know how he could say that or if he could take himself seriously when he's saying that. Like, this is what I want to do. As long as I'm able to do it i'm gonna keep doing it and i think things can become peculiar maybe

when directors don't act their age maybe you know or seeing seeing them try to um keep up with the kids or do something that's, you know, maybe trying to be hip or something like that. That never is a good look. They don't age with their age. Right. So I don't know. I had a friend who was a director say that he became obsessed with,

as he was going through a divorce and he was saying how he became obsessed with how hard, how many directors got divorced and how many of them had whatever like hard family stuff because when they made movies everyone on that movie became their family for nine ten months and you almost it's really hard to also juggle your real family and be able to just go back and forth between those two worlds and he was like he's like people have no idea how hard this is especially when it's done and you got to shut it off and now it's like all right say goodbye to my 120 person family they're gone i've seen that happen a lot um to a lot of people that i've worked with i've seen it i see it happen a lot with cinematographers who really kind of go from film to film um we joke

we joke there should be like a um a divorce fund at the ASC clubhouse you know just because it's a kind of a common thing um and divorce and that kind of stuff can be common you see like really difficult films I you know I remember on Avatar there's some people that I knew that worked. It just went on for so long, so long. And there was a long road of really kind of damaged lives of people really unable to balance the requirements that were being put on them for that job and the fucking real thing that they're working for with their family. Yeah, I knock wood.

I could be failing miserably, but I try to steer clear of that problem. How many kids you have now? I have four. You have four? What are the age ranges? 12, 8, 6, and 4. How many do you have? I have a 12 and a 10.

Great. With 12, a boy or a girl? It's a girl. Three girls and one boy I have. 12-year-old Great. With 12, a boy or a girl? It's a girl. Three girls and one boy I have. 12-year-old girls. That could be a second podcast. Do you have a girl, a 12-year-old girl? Yeah.

Yeah. 12, 12 and a half now. Yeah. It's interesting. I know. In a good way. As long as I can stay her hero for another six months, I'm good. But I know it's going to end soon. Well, I suppose it will end soon won't it

but then it'll come back right come back yeah that's what they say they come back at some point but you know so have you thought about you you know you four kids have you thought about how does that work for a movie potentially or do you what like a movie about four kids or wait just about a family movie. A family movie? Yeah, I don't know. I got in trouble today from my son. I had to look at some commercial spots, and they were on my computer,

and I was looking at them this morning, and it came over just at the very end, and it said, rated R. And he went, ah, come on! I said, it's not up to me. It's not up to me. I said, the Motion Picture Association made it rated R. He said, why?

I said, there's a couple of bad words in it. There's a couple of bad words. He said, which ones? I said the F word, and my four-year-old said, fucking asshole? Yeah, fucking asshole. Phantom Threads rated R? For fucking asshole. Seriously? For fucking.

You can say one fuck, but you can't say two. You're intimately familiar with these. You have a lot of experience with these. I do. With Boogie Nights, you had to take out like 40 seconds? That was the difference to an NC-17? I don't know if it was 40 seconds, but I know it had to do with

humping and talking at the same time. That was my memory of the conversation with the woman from the MPAA. She says, look, we had a scene when Nina Hartley is fucking this guy on the bed. She's sitting on top of him. Bill Macy comes in. She says, what are you doing? scene when Nina Hartley is fucking this guy on the bed. She's sitting on top of him. Bill Macy comes in.

She says, what are you doing? And I can't remember the dialogue. And we shot it that she continues to hump up and down and say the dialogue. And ultimately, she became very clear. She said, look, you can have her keep fucking him, but she can't talk. Or you can have her stop fucking him and then talk. Did I just say the same thing twice? So we had to reshoot it.

She was available. She was available. And so she's humping away. She stops. She says her line of dialogue to him. He closes the door, and then she continues to hump. And we shopped that, inserted that, and that got us the NC-17. It's hard to believe that's what broke the NC-17, that little thing.

That would not have been my first guess. There were other things along the way, though, that had been negotiated and taken out already. And they were usually just trims usually just trimmed quite honestly and there were it was never anything i have a nerdy writer nerdy writer question we like phantom thread i have no idea how you even come up with that and i'm sure it's like the seed of something but at some point you're staring at i don't know final draft document that's just empty and you have to start to write it.

What's your process for that? Do you have an outline or are you one of those people that just wings it? Well, I'm a winger for sure, at least initially. And I don't use final draft. Okay. I still use,

I mean, the all-time worst program, which is Microsoft Word, which to anybody who's ever used it. I still use Microsoft. I mean, the all-time worst program, which is Microsoft Word, which to anybody who's ever used it. I still use Microsoft Word. Wow. Sean can attest. Great.

Okay. I still have a ThinkPad, too. I have to translate it every time you write something. I'm 22 years with a ThinkPad and Microsoft Word. Yeah. See? This is our generation. God bless you guys.

And it is the dumbest. It doesn't make any sense. So you write scripts in Microsoft Word? I do. I do. That's's amazing that's really weird i do it's very strange and it doesn't it doesn't and it drives everybody mad because they eventually have to transfer it over into final draft when we do our schedule and it's a fucking headache and a half but um maybe that allows you to see the stuff i hate final draft maybe it allows

you to see the i don't like final draft either i i think it does i mean and i do i think that's a great point um but i always try i don't ever i try to avoid that moment of like sitting down and looking at a blank piece of paper ever you know that kind of that you have to put chips in something um so you never get to that spot. And what I mean is, I think that's funny. I'm just remembering this pretty consistently somehow. The energy after I've finished shooting a film has led me, you have this false kind of energy. I've had it a few times now where you don't collapse at the end of it you actually feel like i could do this again and and and what it is is you're stepping back into normal life but you're still sort of firing on all these cylinders a couple times now i've gotten up gone to gone

to the coffee maker sat down and really started to write what I felt I would want to make next. Even as vague and bizarre or unclear as it was, it was a story of a man and a woman, a relationship, a this, a that, a this. Somehow the dialogue starts coming. Okay, now, days later, the energy that you've been spending making a film and the physical reality of what you've been through, you just sort of but it's really it's happened to me a couple times now where i've gotten a lot of kind of residual energy absolutely so there's like foothold into something that was obviously nagging at me or all this and it happened on this one i think after inherent vice um i started to sort of write a bunch of things down straight away that had occurred to me.

And that during the course of editing that film, I was daydreaming about what this movie would be. And trying to write things down, but not trying to write too much. And I think it was, back to this thing that we talked about before, it was wanting to not get to a mess that I have been in before, which is writing 600 pages and having to bring it down. So I had enough ideas on this where I felt like daydream and daydream and think about it and turn it over in your mind and write a little bit here and there, but never get to that spot where you've overwritten it

or you haven't figured a few things out before you really jump in to attack it. So does that mean you've started the next thing? I have an idea. I think you just announced it. It's with Adam Sandler. It's a family comedy. It's an action movie family comedy.

I have, well, no. What I will probably try to do next, foolishly, is go back to that 600-page thing that I have and try and see if there's anything to carve out of it. But again, I would probably start approaching it in the next couple months the same way that I just described. I think I would probably try to daydream about what I know is in there And wonder how much I can get away with not looking at it and just write from what I know that's in there is good. Because when you go back into those 600 pages, it's a briar patch, isn't it? Right? You start to see something.

Well, this is not a bad idea. And maybe I should follow that thread. And the next thing you know, two hours later, you've really pissed the day away, right? Is this in the mornings? You start right in the mornings? I do. Cup of coffee and you're off? Yeah. You have mornings? You start right in the mornings? I do. Cup of coffee and you're off? Yeah.

You have your own place? Everybody leaves you alone? I do. I have a little barn that I go to next to our house. Are the kids allowed to come into it? Yeah, they come in. They come flying in? Oh, yeah.

But I don't go down there. At first, I usually just stay up at the kitchen table. That's my spot right now. But I get up before anybody else gets up so I can get some work done. Yeah, it's a great feeling, though, when they come walking. Do you have to wake your kids up,

or do they wake up? No, my son is up before everybody. But you have to wake your daughter up. Call my son the CEO. He's in charge? You read those stories about Bob Iger, how he gets up at 4.30 in the morning? Yeah.

Yeah, that's my son. He's just ready to start the day. He's just as powerful, too. He's almost as powerful of a presence. He's my kind. Can I buy stock in him? You could. So when you did Phantom Thread, you start out this idea you have about a guy in the 50s who's really great at making dresses or making clothes, whatever,

and his life is this routine, and it's an obsession, that's all he has, and then somebody comes in and uproots it. Boy, I wish it was even that specific. It was more like, and the initial thing was more like, man and woman, you you know this kind of thing not even 1950s? no

I was probably if anything trying to stay away from going back to another period piece there was such a fucking pain in their chore the cars everything and it's limiting you can't just run down the street and start shooting so that becomes a headache if anything I was probably trying to avoid that

I don't know if you do this but write everything then just put a question mark next to it that kind of lets you off the hook like man or woman sister question mark you know then you've you've still got limitless possibilities but you're writing your ideas down um um and then when does like daniel-Lewis become involved? Soon, soon. You talk to him on the phone or in person, and you're like, here's the framework of what I'm thinking, and then he starts mulling it over?

Yes, exactly. Is there anybody else you could do that with, or is he a unique animal? He is unique in that way, and then he'll probably take longer than anybody else does to go over the material. But I would do that with anybody else that I had in mind. Cruise. Cruise, yeah.

You've got to write Cruise's verdict roll. Okay. This is it. That's a challenge. That's a good idea. Second phase of Cruise. Any other film nerdy question? I know you have one.

You got one more. I can feel it. Is there anything that you haven't been able to make that you still want to make? Have you ever been told no? And also, is it hard to make movies for you at this point because of what's going on in the industry? I have never written something that I then tried to make that I couldn't get made. It was very hard to get the master made,

but that ended up being great and worked out exactly right. It depends on what the budget for the movie is, and it depends on who's in it. You know, I don't have a blank check waiting for me in the next room at all. I think it's who's in it, what's it going to cost, okay. And those are the questions that I have to answer. And how long is it?

They all want to know how long it is because I got a bad reputation. This one's easy though. This one's easy. Yeah. My last question is what's the greatest thing you've ever seen an actor do? Yeah. You haven't been asked that one. He's going to take his time

because it's an important answer understandable Phil Hoffman in The Master that would be the greatest thing I've ever seen an actor do. Like the entire performance? Yeah. Right alongside Joaquin Phoenix in The Master.

That would be the greatest thing I ever got to watch. Do you feel like they elevated each other because it became competitive? Not competitive at all. Like Partners in Crime. That's what I mean. Yes.

Oh, yeah. The guy was bringing it, so they had Crime. That's what I mean. Yes. Oh, yeah. The guy was bringing it, so they had to bring it. Absolutely. Absolutely. Interesting. Last question, Sean? Last great thing you've seen. You know, it's a plug for a really small movie that I really, really enjoyed that no one seems to have seen.

And it's called Track Town. And I should get all the, maybe you can help me with the info on this. Because I don't even remember the girl's name. It's about a runner, a girl who's a runner up in, where's Nike? Oregon, right? Oregon, yes. Yeah. And she, it's a, Rachel Dratch has a small part in it.

She plays the girl's mom. And I think the girl is even the co-director of it. I see you over there typing on that computer. Do you have info that we can... Alexi Pappas? Alexi Pappas. She does this fantastic performance as a runner in this film. Is it streaming?

I don't know. I saw it on an airplane a couple weeks ago. And I love watching people run track. I love watching girls run track in particular. I mean, I just... And this kind of... Yeah, she's got... It's a great performance.

Are you without limits or pre-Fontaine? There's only one answer to this. Without limits. Yeah. Superior. Crudup. It's a great movie. It's Robert Towne. Without limits is, I think. Do you disagree? No, I'm a Robert Towne person. Yeah.

Without limits is rising the rankings of the sports movie thing, because some of the sports movies, like the greatest of all time, some of them are now dated, so they start falling down. What are those? So 15 years ago, it was Hoosiers or The Natural. That was the argument. Okay, yeah.

It was one of those two. It had to be one of those two. And I'd accept arguments for both, ultimately say Hoosiers. I think as the time has passed, I don't think either people would have either of them in. I don't even know what the answer is now. You might have to go all the way back

to Rocky now. I think Rocky's regained because it was so influential. It's slow is the only problem. Rocky's slow? Rocky's slow. Rocky's slow. I know you're not allowed to touch the past of movies but could you it could use a boost it could i believe i believe that i mean i think everything has a

different pace but i'm surprised to hear that actually but um you know what film i thought about the other day that i haven't seen since it came out was eight men out was that was that any good i don't remember yeah yeah it was john sales i don't remember um isn't it isn't it uh robert elswood no richardson no no it's haskell wessler i watched okay i watched with my son because my son is it could have been bob richardson actually richardson my son's ripping through every baseball movie so we watched that one it's it's kind of timeless because it's set in the past and that thing was crazy. And it's not really dated because it was already dated when they made it.

And how's Major League hold up? Well, Major League's the king. Major League is pretty great. Major League's the prince for my son. Sandlot is the king. Yeah, I've never seen a Sandlot. Sandlot is the most important. It's more to seen a Sandlot. Sandlot is the most important. But better than the, more than the Bad News Bears?

Yeah. Bad News Bears is a little dated. But Bad News Bears has good swear words in it that you, that when you're eight, it's like, you can't believe that they're saying this. Bad News Bears has, I mean, that, you know, when he throws the beer in her face, all that kind of stuff. It's like. Some of the stuff has not aged well. But Bad News Bears and Breaking Training has aged better. How about Vic Morrow?

That's the Tony Curtis one, right? When they go to Japan? No, that was Japan. Bad News Bears, Breaking Training, they steal a van, they drive to the Astrodome. That one's held up nicely. William Devane is dead. That's William Devane.

That's right. It's a good one. They let them play Astrodome. That's right. I just remember, that's right. It's a good one. They play Astrodale. That's right. I just remember, what's his name? Not Linus, but the kid who's beating up everybody. Tanner. Tanner.

I remember Tanner looking up. Doesn't the camera kind of go like that and spin around? Yeah, it's good. The late 70s was a nice little glory run of sports movies. Basically, the Rocky momentum led to all these. The fast break. Fast break. Fish that saved Pittsburgh.

Fish that saved Pittsburgh. Slapshot. Every genre kind of had a movie. It's the fish that saved Pittsburgh. Yeah, classic. Whoa, whoa. When did your movie officially come out? It comes out Christmas Day in New York and Los Angeles.

And January 12th, other places in America. Okay, I think we're holding this podcast until the world can see it. It was an awesome movie, though. I really enjoyed it. Congrats. I really hope Daniel Day-Lewis doesn't retire. You've got to talk him out of that. I'll give him a little time,

and then maybe I'll try and talk him out of it. Are we 100% sure he's going to retire? I can't imagine just stopping doing that when he's that good at it i can't either but it's not up to me and i but i could see it i could see this sticking i feel like actors are like boxers where they almost have to not be good once to really officially retire. It's so hard to leave when you're at the top. What great athlete has done that? And same thing with actors. That's not going to be the issue on this one.

What do you mean? Nobody's going to be like, he's cooked. He should step away. No, but I'm sure. Is there an athlete who has ever done that? Jim Brown. Jordan did it, but then he came back. Usually the pride and the ego makes him come back,

but in his case, he really seems like he's done. He doesn't want to... It's too grueling for him or something, or he feels like he's done everything. For Daniel. Yeah. I don't know what the answer is. Has there ever been another actor who just walked away when they still had their fastball? He's done everything. For Daniel. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know what the answer is, but it's just kind of,

has there ever been another actor who just walked away when they still had their fastball? Not like this. That I know of. Not that I can think of. Ron Howard. Ron Howard directed it. Ron Howard. Paul Thomas Anderson.

This was a pleasure. Thank you. Great, Bill. Thanks for having me. Thanks, Paul. Thanks, guys. Thanks so much to Paul and Sean. Paul Thomas this is a pleasure thank you great Bill thanks for having me thanks Paul thanks guys thanks so much to Paul and Sean thanks to SimpliSafe

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because Mike Francesa wants to keep making NFL picks. I had such a good time last week with him. We're doing it again. So look forward to that one. Until then. I don't want to see them On the wayside That I once said

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