Writers On Writing: Paul Thomas Anderson

he's been doing events for us for 12 years and now our special guest the one and only paul thomas anderson you jim planet here best gaffer in the business paul welcome i you know the the last time you and i uh had a conversation you know we were well there was a time a few years back you had just finished there will be blood and we were at some banquet and we were just talking about writing and you we were both dealing with a similar thing and i i thought it would be a good place for us to start now because you you didn't say what you were working on i kind of in retrospect i think it might have been the master but it was right after there will be blood and you said that you had been working on something and you were very excited but there there was something new that was taking over inside it and you were puzzling over whether to follow it or not you're basically you know just catching your breath to kind of jump in and i just i guess the first place to talk about it just about writing is about surprising yourself and going with the surprise and uh does that relate to the master am i am i because it seems it must have been it must have been i don't i mean that sounds exactly right that sounds exactly like something that i'd say particularly at that time that the kind of i don't remember it exactly but i do know that feeling when you're done with something and just enough time has passed that you're clearly moving on to something else and it's a great time because in some ways you just you get your um you get your energy back you get your excitement back and anything becomes possible it's not you haven't you've been working so long finishing a film you're finishing something and it's a kind of it can be depressing actually towards the end because it kind of is done and it's out and there's a sadness that happens and then you get to writing and you're there's just a world of possibilities that any turn something could inspire you or get you get you excited again and or you just get you're working with something that maybe you've had pieces of which it sounds like that's exactly what was going on and something happens some you write something down or somebody says something and and there's a world of possibilities suddenly again it's a great time as as madden as as maddening as it can be it's it's a wonderful time and particularly because yes there's a road in front of you but it doesn't it's not costing anything you know there's no clock ticking there's no people sort of yeah there isn't it's it's private which is a great thing yeah it i mean watching the master i mean it part of the excitement for me i mean maybe a hint of that conversation but it seems to be something that i when it happens in any movie i trust it i mean you in the master uh you get get us involved with freddie quell you know played by joaquin phoenix and it and you don't know where it's going or who because he he he manages to surprise me in each new scene i i the previous scene does not predict the next one and then when he wanders by that boat and then he gets involved with lancaster dodd okay this is even anticipating he was going to meet the guy because you know this promotion of who's in it it's like okay this is not following the way i you know i mean he's he's on the boat and he doesn't have the conversation with me and i just you know could you talk about i mean i think well a lot of the arguments people have about the movie is you know who's the protagonist and i think i'm wondering how how much was that your argument even with yourself um well yeah god it's funny you should say that it reminds me of um i mean there's like a voice the kind our voice of reason tends to be dylan titchener who's the editor he didn't end up doing the master fully but um i give him things that i'm writing and he'll say things like really strong classical screenwriting things to me all the time like well who's the protagonist you know and usually i'll like you know throw the pages at him and storm out and say you know but he but he's there to kind of provide these these questions sort of push pushing if i'm pushing a direction that's less kind of classical he's probably there to push back and the same thing i think with joanne so um and i think it's it's about hearing those questions enough and knowing that you've provided enough thought to them that you are ready to dismiss them you know that you can feel confident saying yeah but that's not what i want to do you know and i know that maybe that's a more a more traditional way to take the story or perhaps i should answer that question and until you can kind of reach the spot where you you feel enough confidence to sort of that you've genuinely thought it through to say no i don't want to do that and i know that perhaps that's what we should do or perhaps that's a great kind of classic screenwriting question to ask you know what's the plot who's the character you know that if you can get to the place where you say it and and but but with enough with enough um i guess with enough authority and confidence it doesn't it just means that you're trying to listen to some other part of yourself it's at work and yeah so yeah i don't know well you know it it's it's it's it's an interesting problem and it it you know it's it's great that well let's take i mean lancaster dodd for instance i mean in a you know well if you say what is a protagonist who's the protagonist it's like who's going to transform the most that's that would be the classical thing and so okay here's here's freddie quell he's he's transforming becomes a salesman in a store but he's already working on that girl getting her to drink with him in the in the dark room and so it's like you think it's gonna be about them because he's asking her to transform in some way but then what was what really surprised what took me aback just as a viewer i mean i'm not trying to formulate it but in trying to understand my reaction later it surprised me about lancaster dodd that he wanted to get in on that liquor that this guy's brewing right see that it's like he's inv it's like okay that's why who's the protagonist because who's going to transform here i mean and and it remains the kind of question throughout the movie so that you know it's a so yeah i'm but you know but then again um god you're making me think more about this film than i probably thought about it which is good um but if you but maybe part of the story that we were telling is a is is somebody selling transformation and the possibility of transformation and and maybe how either impossible that is or how possible it is so there's a rub there you know if you have if you have a character who um who maybe fundamentally is is not going to change or then you've got a real screenwriting problem on your hands yeah yeah you know um and i guess the only thing to do is to invest in that in and of itself yeah you know invest in in in that you have a character who cannot change who may be the most he can change is to put a suit on and hand out flyers on the street and not wallop somebody in the back of the head for not taking the flyer right that's enough of a change and i suppose it's probably sort of taking stock and realizing that you're making maybe you're going to tell a story that requires an investment for the audience um solely on the characters and at the expense of any possible plot that they might be expecting and if they do invest with them then hopefully ideally every nuance of their struggle is what makes it dramatic um right that every nook and cranny of of how that goes is can be worth two hours to some people it probably isn't you know it's it's not enough well it is true too though that each of us i mean you know we were talking about uh we were naming a couple of movies i mean fullmetal jack and other films that that come up in people's estimation maybe because they give them a second try and it seems like i i wonder if you're not conscious of aiming for that second try hoping that that there's enough enough mischief in the movie that that people actually oh i'm going to take another look at this thing is that does that ever enter your thoughts while you're formulating no it does i mean no no no i mean god it's great you know that peop we've had sort of a weird thing with this film people were really not liking it the first time they saw it but for some gravity took them back to it again and they sort of say i loved it the second time which is weird i mean we never could never attack something feeling like it was obligatory to see it twice you know i mean it should you should attack it feeling that it can it can it can work successfully you know whether it's on a big screen or whether it's on a phone or whatever it is but perhaps the way that the story navigates and and twirls around is not um as traditional as um it should be so i i don't know well it you know off of something you said a little earlier you're saying that you know if maybe if the people are there enough you watch them for two hours and it's like i feel like that when people come back to something it's not that you're obliged to see it twice but that maybe the character was so damn alive you actually reacted to them as if you met them you're not seeing the movies i hate that guy right you know and so it's like and he's like oh you know what was he right you know it's like you meet someone you're thinking about you get to meet the characters again anyway that's the sort of weird physics of of somebody changing their opinion on a movie after the fact it's usually there was something that hooked them and they didn't want to have the hook in them sure i mean yeah i mean i've had the experience of seeing films that i absolutely loved and then you know you see it again a few months later and you don't it doesn't connect to you at all but i've had i've had the experience of films i have it with records too like i'll get a record from somebody i'm dying i'm dying for the record to come out and you put it on and you just go what's going on and perhaps it's that perhaps it's that you had expectations about what it was meant to sound like and yeah it didn't and you know eight listens later suddenly you're like what was i think this is great you know some you just kind of can groove into what they're doing and god i don't know um but you just kind of made me think i'm you're talking about you know when freddie gets on that boat there just talking about rhythms i mean i always remember reading like you're supposed to have some you know like on page 30 yeah it's it was a big action some indelible event big decisions and then page 60. and i've always tried to stick to that i've always thought that that was a really good thing to swim back to shore with and um when we were editing the movie and putting it together um my goal was to get to that first scene when they're processing each other i don't know how i'm hoping everybody here has seen the film it was gonna be really dull but that first scene when they're processing each other that that that would start around 30 minutes and um we struggled for a long time and suddenly magically we did it we got like that that starts about 32 minutes in so if there's a rhythm that audiences are used to that something happens at that moment that defines the film um i we we kind of hung our hat on that being um rhythmically you know our page count wise minute wise what would be an indication of what the film was about because i think that's all we re that's what we had was a film about these two men connecting to each other yeah so i suppose i was trying to i suppose it's a long-winded way of saying you're abusing the privilege of the first 30 minutes to do what you need to do to sort of meet this guy and then meet that guy and introduce anybody else and then land at 30 minutes with what need what an audience may traditionally need to hold on to right makes sense it does it does and something you said earlier about just a a guy who sells transpiration for a living right uh i it's it's so it does it so draws a good circle around lancaster dodd but i wonder at what point did that enter your thinking did you i mean was that just something that you were thinking about and you were waiting for the character to arrive or or was the character already in your head and you you god did you talk about it yeah i mean did you begin to define him after the fact i mean just in terms of your own process dreaming him up and and get putting him to work for you did you have a theme in mind early going in or did it did that emergency no no no no no no hopefully if i've ever had a theme in mind i mean usually that's just like the worst you're kind of then you're yeah then you know you feel yourself you feel yourself writing and there's nothing worse than that feeling of kind of chasing after a theme i mean that's always like writing and it's worse for me you know the best things kind of become something and you're just happy it's there it's just um i think i had um a character you it was it was a sort of larger-than-life character and yeah there was inspiration from elrond hubbard and you know all these different things i was sort of dragging from and had the two of them together which never seemed ideal just because they were actually kind of quite similar you know normally i think you're supposed to the better way to go in terms of getting better writing is having two characters that are more opposite you know that way you get more traction and stuff but um ultimately if you have if things are going well and the characters are coming out of you or you know they're going to guide you how they're going to go and yeah i lost my train of thought no that's okay well let me help it um in terms of freddie quell one thing that struck me about him you know i mean he's he has cousins elsewhere in your work you know like like barry and punch drunk love you know there's a an aspect to him that's as you describe that you don't know if he's gonna he there he's in his warehouse or is he gonna you know bite the head off the you know the guy you know he has that same violence bursting up in him in a very different form in a way but he's he's somebody who has the same challenge and in a weird way i mean oddly enough although he's much more articulate and seems to be uh more high functioning you know daniel plainview is is is not far removed from these guys and so it's like um i'm just thinking you know where just what gets you rolling it seems like there's there's this guy that that you can call upon and and lancaster dad's not that different either because even though they're they're they're alike i mean when they're in the jail cells opposite each other you see oh here's the real lancaster or maybe one of the guys in lancaster died right right yeah um well that's the classic thing you know you always set out you think you're writing writing drastically different characters but ultimately they share there's so much in common but um hopefully they you find different ways to sort of to deal with them or to manage them um i had a little bit of that freddie quail character just that stuff that was based on so there wasn't even a character it was stuff that was based on facts stories that i'd heard about guys coming back from the war stories that my dad had told me stories that i'd heard um just around you know guys drinking booze out of torpedoes this kinds of stuff so you know through a collection of episodes and i remember at a certain point reading um a great short story called i believe it's called bucket of blood john o'hara wrote a great story about a fella starts out he's just he wakes up in a hospital and he's he comes to and he's having this great conversation with a doctor he's just had his appendix removed because his appendix is burst on this train and he doesn't know he wakes up he doesn't know where he was and there's just this great conversation at the beginning of it between a doctor and this patient this guy and i started um to transcribe i just wrote it down in the script form thinking oh maybe i'll this would be an adaption or something or as i've done before too you sort of steal something if you you got you're bored and you've got nothing to do you know yeah there's no better exercise than just write somebody else's words down to see how they look typed out just to get you inspired again or to get it moving and that's what i was doing with the john o'hara thing and by the look of it and the sound of it it seemed to fit with some of these other things that i had had lying around so this that character started to come more and more and you just start finding pieces of them and um you hope that they start to talk to you yeah talk back at you in a kind of in a weird kind of it sounds hocus pocus but like a weird kind of seance you hope that you are not there at a certain point that they're just doing the work for you that's when it's at its best you know well it it you know when you were talking about um you know you hope that you you start on it you think it's different every time and you feel it the same things are coming up i don't mean to put all those characters on the same batard but it's like i remember when uh daniel day-lewis was speaking about there will be blood at one point he he had actually approached you because he he loved punch drunk love so much and you know there's like and i think that what's going on i mean and i don't want to read into daniel d lewis's mind but i'm just thinking i get what i sort of sparked to what he was saying because i thought you know there's something about barry in punch drunk love that's universal about all men even though he's got this he's got a condition that sort of puts what what every guy goes through but it's on his sleeve so we get to see it in him it's not like you don't feel it's the same old same old you feel something more much much more true that it's like this is a universal thing and i'm so glad to be seeing this out in front so it's so as a dramatist i don't think it's you're in the position of having to say the same old thing but you're going there's something that interests you right and you're you're setting you're you're setting for the horizon again but it's like you're moving off the guy you did before but you're still heading in the same direction that's kind of what i was thinking and it seemed like somehow dan day lewis kind of caught the gold fever too he sort of he liked the guy that you were trying to find and you know yeah um something like daniel um i mean i i think was thinking two things when you're saying that is that and this might sound funny but i the there's the unifying thing there but besides me sure is adam sandler and daniel day lewis walking phoenix share so much uh in terms of as performers you know um i know people will laugh because if some people don't consider adam a serious actor but i do and their attack on um acting and performing is believe it or not quite similar and so a lot of that that thing is there but just thinking about daniel day-lewis and that movie that role if you talk about that for a second is it so so something so much clearer about that character too just because his ambition to have a character like that whose ambition is so clear i mean it kind of it's it's kind of can be gold and for for screenwriting you know there's no limit to kind of pushing that that thing forward um when you get into something like adam's character that you're talking about it it it is more ambivalent it's it is a bit more confused about exactly what the is going on here you know whether it is mental illness or just basic frustrations or whatever you know it's something else and those probably equals a box office dollar sign well it's a it's an intangible because one of the things that that made me sit up you know i mean i'd enjoyed adam sandler and other things but i you know what what you had him do in the first part of that film is you know he's sitting in a warehouse without anything on the walls and he's just wearing a suit and he's at a bare desk and not saying oh he's talking into a phone but there's no actual dial and i'm watching this guy i'm practically watching the back of his head so i'm going well this is there's something going on here that you managed to tap into that that isn't i mean it's it's in the staging it's in the but it's also in the in the physical presence there's something going on inside this guy that i'm trying to find out i want him to turn around so i can find out what's in him and and that's a very real wavelength you tuned into with that guy and it seems that i don't know that that that's where he is in common with daniel day-lewis and joaquin phoenix because they all have that they have that going on and you can't name it well yeah yeah that and uh you know for lack of a better world it's called a movie star you know i mean that's like like they just they have some kind of thing that makes them so watchable and you film them with a movie camera and you can't take your eyes off them it's and it's if all of us had it here we'd be movie stars you know it's like um but but i'm just if to talk you i love that you're talking about adam and that film because i i like that film a lot too and i have to say that was something that i wrote specifically for him you know that was like a ground-up creation to kind of write something for him and i didn't really even know him i just kind of had a sense of him and had a desire to work with him and a desire to kind of mix things up at the time when i was writing i wrote it very very quickly and i i have to give you know if if anybody likes that film it's just because of adam because it sort of exists because of him and wanting to get to know him and allowing him to do something with him and you get to do something very i mean i don't know if it's complex if complex is the right word but it's like you're asking here what i loved about it you know when i revisited it is that here's this guy he's got all these the seven sisters i mean that's like a fairy tale character you know he's like snow white no he's a guy and he works in a warehouse but then he gets into this conversation with a girl on a porno line and you know she's asking all these hot questions are your pants off and i was like no i've got got all my clothes on are you jerking off no no you know he's like and and we're he's being really nice to her says and he's talking just about his life so he's this guy with these all these chivalrous instincts and because of these chivalrous instincts of course the girl on the other end is feeding it to her guy and they're all get they're going to blackmail him so no good deed goes unpunished here he's being chivalrous and he's getting screwed and it almost ruins his life and then he has to actually become a real chivalrous guy and go out and slay the dragon so it's a it's a very primal little story and i i guess the the it's such a pleasure and it's so unexpected that the dangers he gets into you just don't expect that but i was wondering in finding you say it came together quickly did you did you have a sense that he was going to get into that kind of phone call or did that surprise you the day that that you were writing it and suddenly he's in a conversation with that girl i mean just it would remember i'm trying to remember um and i don't know if i do i feel like um i knew a little bit about that phone sex world just sort of tangentially from some stuff that was left over from boogie nights and researching that world a little bit and knowing some people that were involved and maybe it always had that kind of lingering that there could be a great opportunity to do something there um and you know stories that i'd heard of um blackmail situations and stuff like that and um but the fairy tale thing you're talking about i suppose i remember you know maybe there was some like half cooked ideas or things that i wanted to do when i wrote that movie and more than anything it was trying to just like completely find a new way to work um we just with jim we just made magnolia and that was like a hundred days of my life and three hours long and all like heavy duty stuff and i just remember like the last thing i wanted to do was that again so it was just like how to keep it fresh and how to kind of like shake that off and um the the thought was like to make something that was small and bite size and attack it in a different just work in a different way and you know 190 page script was just that's insane so it's like how to do something the films that i love that i was watching that i was really inspired by at that time i was watching adam's films just because they were on all the time and i was like i just they'd come across tv and i love them or what everything that woody allen does i just that was the stuff that was floating my boat at the time that was making me happy so trying to do that um probably meant not lingering too long with it just writing fast and just trying to follow first instincts and trying to kind of just dig away and and not get too hung up not get too up inside my head and try to write impulsively i mean those are the things i remember about writing that and sort of went away for a month and said well i'm gonna come back in like six weeks and and i'm gonna have something and i did and it was kind of pretty good it was probably about 75 percent of what we eventually did and we just started shooting um and 75 with 75 yeah i thought it was 100 but it turned out to be 75 i mean that that was the kind of lesson there was just like let's just move let's move fast and kind of disrupt the apple cart and how we're working and yeah it was great for the most part and then there was like big huge gaping holes that obviously were the result of working that instinctually and fast so thank god we just sort of like took a break and in the filming you took in the filming we took a break and we kind of we sort of rethought and reshaped and came back again and and did more and and got it to where we wanted it to go yeah it was just and so ultimately it was it was a successful exercise because it was the opposite way of working on magnolia it was which was the goal you know now in terms of you you had adam sandler firmly in mind but when you're writing the the script no he hasn't said yes yet necessarily do you think away from him in terms of getting barry the character hole in your head did you think of other actors or did you just somehow think of somebody that you'd see in the street how did you how did you keep that character alive apart from the casting choice or did you feel the need to that's a good question normally i would do something like that is to not get too hung up and writing so specifically for an actor you know you got to write this this person first and hopefully but i had enough going in i had enough pieces and half-baked ideas like i said pardon me that i did approach adam that i said i want i want to do this and i want to do this in march we should get going and i want to finish writing it for you something again you know just to do it differently that no it was really like a hundred percent for and about him and and collaborating and doing this thing together um you know yeah i had some other stuff i had pieces that have been lying around but it was so clear to funnel them into this yeah yeah no it was all about adam and eve but otherwise you know like with daniel day-lewis um i was writing this character daniel plainview and i think you know obviously at a certain point you have to start asking yourself if this is a real thing that you're going to pursue who is an actor that could do this and obviously he kept popping into my mind but you probably but i i probably did the best to kind of push that away and either not get too hung up on it because you start to think well what if he says no but wait i shouldn't even be thinking about that kind of stuff you just have to tell the story um and luckily the phone rang and somebody said he liked me and wanted to work with me so there you go well in in terms of like other actors you know like like um at what point did emily watson enter your mind because she's so perfect opposite him what did you did you think did you think somebody completely unlike i mean you know were you were you strategically working your way toward her did she come to mind right away in terms of your conception she came to mind very early on too i mean it was kind of one of those things um talk about trying to work impulsively and quickly and trying to get that going um obviously i'd loved emily in breaking the waves yeah and had been following her since then and she had a wonderful bit in um uh rock the cradle you remember oh yeah um cradle rock right sorry tim robbins yes right and um that was on and i was watching that and she has this great bit in it and i just just remember feeling just this sort of gravity towards somebody and you know um and they seemed like a wonderful couple together and the three of us had a fantastic time together that's wonderful i want to ask about i want to go further back because you know there's a point a lot of people are working on their scripts right now just trying to get something launched i'm i'm thinking of you know heart eight which was originally called sydney and that that's that's really the first thing you managed to get mounted if you could talk a little about you know where you were before you got that up and running what how did you develop yourself as a writer and and a director and what you know just what were the steps you took to just make that first success happen um well the first thing i just thought of when you said that was that and i had never really thought of this before but um when i was 17 i made the uh this short film that was called the dirk digger story which became boogie nights but the distance between being 17 and making this short film which the format of that was like a fictional documentary kind of like spinal tap or something like that you know which was very easy to do because we were shooting with a video camera right and it didn't matter yeah that was a great form if that's what you had you know yeah it fit that kind of style i remember watching um front line do you remember from frontline's still on i guess on pbs but they had a they did a piece on shawna grant who was a porn star who unfortunately ended up killing herself but they did a piece on her that i that i saw that really inspired the dirk tiggler story anyway the distance between making that when i was 17 which was this little script that i wrote out it's like probably you know 14 or 15 pages and writing the script for that was boogie nights i i was constantly writing for nine years i wrote like a full version that was a fictional documentary like you know like zelig it was like 80 pages or something that expanded it out and then i wrote another draft you know that was the same thing but then i decided well no i should try to turn this into a film you know and i tried and i wrote it as um very probably kind of close to what bookie knight says now it was in there was an exercise to learn how to write it was almost like i wrote a um like well i suppose the first novel was more like um like i wrote some story out that i thought was true that really had happened it was like a documentary and then set about adapting it but when i look back on it now you talk about how did you practice or well like i guess i just practiced for about eight years writing that one story trying to learn how to write learn how to feel good about putting words together and scenes together and getting it to getting shaping it so that it felt good that i was confident and i wasn't embarrassed by looking at it on the page i mean that was really isn't that so much of what writing is is that you're not humiliated looking at it yeah and it definitely and it's such a you know it's such a populous movie i mean there's so many characters that are alive and i would wonder that in those eight years weren't you i mean did you tackle it from the point of view of amber waves or roller girl or how did you work those characters did they take over for you sometimes and you you leave dirk diggler behind while you're just kidding sure sure sure absolutely yeah absolutely i can yeah that's exactly yeah now i'm remembering you would write you'd follow a character and you'd write about them you know you could write like little short stories about all of them you know there was lots of stuff that i would write about amber that character that julianne moore plays in sort of relationship with her ex-husband and her relationship to her estranged son she has a son i think that right survives in the film and there was much more about that or there was much more about um every every character really um yeah um and i hadn't really thought of this until you asked that this is probably because it probably is part of the reason why the movie watching it again recently i mean you feel the weight and extension of the characters you feel that something's going on down the hallway even if you can't see what's going on there it's good you know and yeah and so it's it's a it's a it's a great feeling you know it's it's exciting to watch movie and feel that but i think that for a writer i wonder if it's the challenge or if you could talk about the challenge of what to leave in what to put out you know i mean where how do is there a way you're making those decisions that you saw okay what what do i leave down the hall what do i keep in mind i don't know i don't know i mean i still don't know i mean that's like yeah i mean yeah that's the but that's the fun of it that's the endless fun of it the endless like rubik's cube fun of doing what we do what i i dare i guess everybody in this room is chosen too and i can't play piano but i imagine it must be sort of similar just like here are these 88 keys and all these different combinations um the fun of it is just sort of wondering what you can do without or what do you need and you know you inevitably i probably write way more than i need but um god the fun discussions in the editing room at least on this last film about like what what what do we need you know you don't know and yeah you hope that you find it and you hope that you make the right decisions you know i'm not i'm not sure that we have made any of the right decisions all the way along but they're the ones that we made you know now all the iterations of boogie nights as it was developing did you show it to friends did you like test it on people and say ah they're not getting that or or did it grow along boogie nights yeah but across the eight years that you were developing it you know and letting it i mean yeah i mean i might have shared keep it to yourself i think i kept it mostly to myself i mean i might have shared it with a few people here and there but no i i think it was something very private um that i was keeping to myself and was sydney aka heart 8 the the was that something you wrote quicker as almost like a i don't want to reduce it to something strategic but in order to get something like boogie nights made you need it to establish your your credentials with you know you've got a a like a film that's intimate with just a couple of characters and the dynamics are pretty clear it's got you know crime and you know it but it it rides off the development of all that other stuff you you so did you strategically go for that first with the hopes of bringing landing boogie night up the lines i don't remember thinking that strategically perhaps that was there you know maybe the more strategy that that might that i might have been thinking was i want to make a film um and how do i make a film and um small seemed sm you know something that was containable that i could go and do that i could go and shoot seemed right i'd spent time in reno with friends and i and i was actually i'd worked up there on a film so i knew reno pretty well and i loved this actor phillip baker hall and i loved this actor john riley and i'd worked on the short and there was similar stuff i was stealing from that and it just seemed like stuff that i was watching at the time informed it and it felt like to write something that was that size was something that i could actually go and and get enough people together and go and do um but i never if i thought through even what it was like to make that film i you know i probably would have given it up then you know just like not realizing what i was getting into but thank god you know yeah i mean i was hooked you know the second i was there we once talked a little about that movie before and as i recall you regarded it as something of a very heavy baptism of fire and education because you were in the position of having to fight for your version you you prevailed your version actually got out there but it was like i think every writer in the room can relate to having a how do you keep your thing alive you know that keep it from being interfered with is there any general observations you can make that are useful i mean things you know you can advise out of what you experienced on that no only because um i mean yeah sure but um i mean i it's funny to look back at that and feel and see my own mistakes in handling that you know i was so young and i was i was completely defending every bad idea that i had and and and and because i didn't know any better you know i just didn't know i mean but i'm um that said i was i was right um some of the time um but i just didn't know how to navigate um other people talking to me about what i was doing but that said if the actors ever talked to me about what was going on there was some instinctual thing that had me completely give over to whatever they whatever they thought you know in other words they were the people that were saying it so i just wanted to make them comfortable saying it you know it didn't matter but anytime anybody outside of that sphere that wasn't actually making the film had something to say um i got into a paranoid panic um i don't know what it was well it sounds like i mean if the actors are giving you a note saying asking you a question it's like well it's emotional and it's actually it's in the direction of what you're trying to do whereas these people saying well who's your protagonist sometimes it's like right get the out of here you know i mean you know you're interfering because they're not they're going off a recipe and not not looking at what you're cooking but right well how do you sort that out because you have to navigate it you know i mean how do you sort out like the bad advice from the good advice i mean when when yeah you don't want the notes it's a great question how do you yeah um you test it you know somebody gives you a note and you think oh and how do you is there a way you can test it so you can say to yourself is there a way to look at your own work and i i tell you i think the only thing that springs to mind for me because i am a i mean i'm a slow learner and is really is time you know if somebody sort of made a suggestion to me i i i i usually kind of tighten up and i panic and i couldn't tell what was going on but you know somebody makes a suggestion you know and if i have two days to kind of like you know sit around on the couch and think about it i don't care who made the made the suggestion it's i'm going to steal it and it'll be my idea you know but that's my own personal experience with with navigating that is is just the time to kind of sit with something it doesn't matter who comes up with something to me anymore probably used to have chips on my shoulder about that kind of stuff but i wish i hadn't because at any moment there can be a good idea from anywhere it just doesn't matter you know and and and hearing what somebody who who you may perceive as your enemy just because they have a suit on or whatever this kind of thing is is a bit horseshit too because they have their point of view and that point of view is valid i mean it just might not be what you're doing or what you think but if anything you want to hear it you know you know what where are you coming from just to kind of just to kind of get a measure of the course of what you're doing you know um i mean i mean it said so that makes sense yeah it does and i guess the the one counter would be like is it that um sometimes people are if they're having a problem well maybe they're naming the wrong problem but maybe there's a problem is that the kind of totally completely completely somebody will say something um yeah i'm trying to think of example it's exactly right you know oh god i'm gonna come up with a great example when i'm in the car on the way home well listen you're exactly right you know um hear hearing somebody say something you said it best you know no it's um maybe somebody has a problem with a scene in your thing and maybe it is maybe it is that scene but maybe it isn't maybe it's something that's around it you know something that's hovering right around it and there's a solution that's just within reach and yeah and trying to ascertain how to deal with that it's that's that's the fun that's that's the kind of never ending was there anything in the master that you had to defend even to your co-workers or your actors was there anything that stood out where people said okay i'm with you but where are we going and you're gonna you've got to think oh what do i say yeah like all of it [Laughter] yeah [Laughter] well on that note i'd love to invite questions from the from the audience and get get people interacting with us uh we have a question here in the second row and if we could jake if you could get us a microphone where is the question the question is right here you stand up and talk loud well we have a little recording yeah sorry that's all right thank you for coming out tonight um i've heard a lot of writer's directors say that when a story comes to them it comes to them in the form of a single vivid image i'm wondering where story comes from for you where's the story at its rawest good question yeah good question um i've never had that i mean i get i've never really had that experience of a single image that um as vividly as that maybe i can remember magnolia i remember seeing melora walters face looking into the camera or something like that that was a really strong thing but i'm other than that um sorry no i was just thinking for the master i'm just just to think about that it was more of a collection of odds and ends and pieces that i'd had for a very long time that were kind of in search of something that was going to you know squeeze it all together some kind of glue or or just working with it long enough that it started to present itself as something that was impossible not to do you know because if you're writing something and it's and it's going well i mean you know your house would have to burn to the ground for you to stop you know i mean that's you know but if it's not going well the slightest distraction of a bird outside or you know the phone ringing or you know will take you away you know you could care less and maybe it was just working with enough things that i had that it was getting to the place where the house could have burned down and it wouldn't have mattered um i mean to talk to focus on the masters imagery for a moment you know there is something that's very arresting about it that's i wonder how it interacted with the narrative when you were conceiving of it because we you know a lot of talk because you shot in 70 millimeter you know and it is particularly valuable i found because what what what stays with me are a couple of things it's like i mean the image is of course freddie quell lying on the sand woman which is an image you return to so it becomes an image that we take away with us from the film but you know i want to go when did that begin to occur to you because it seems so primal but around that is the the the light in the sky on the beach over those veterans i i was feeling like i was looking at 1940s light right and it it reiterates when he's he's he's accidentally poisoned that that poor farmworker he's got to run across the field and we're zapping along you know and it's it's the same light it's a and it has to do it's a it's an intangible it's made tangible for us to read about it because we know it's 70 millimeter but it's like okay you were chasing something and was that off this question were you early on in the writing kind of chasing that kind of light was it rather than an image was that the thing you were going for um yeah you know god you what's the quote um it's always night otherwise we wouldn't need light fellonious monks okay i've got two things that popped into my head when you were saying what you said and i know this is a writer's you know thing great guild foundation thing so you're not supposed to say this but that kind of thing with the sand woman that we have in that film and all that stuff on the beach was like it's the kind of thing when you just write in the script it just says freddy's on the beach after vj day that's all i wrote wow because it didn't i had no i had nothing i had no ideas i just knew we needed to do something on the beach and so i was like you know you know that was more the director took over there was like but the idea as a writer was to not write anything to kind of leave it so like you know to kind of hopefully you find things and you know you it was the last thing that we did and along the way um jack fist kind of came up with these pictures of um these sandys they call them sand dolls that they would make in the sand and all these sailors would have and we saw those pictures it was just too good not trying to do one of those and so the sailors and that were extras that we had would make them and and you talk about the light i mean listen you know good light is good light you get lucky and you got a nice day and all that but um when talking about 70 millimeter cameras is that you you know the fun of working with any kind of old gear is that you hope and you pray that um as much of a pain in the ass as it is to work with you hope that whatever little ghosts and critters are inside those cameras that have been there that have been used before hopefully they'll seep onto your film and maybe give it some good karma and you can go back out so that when they're not breaking down hopefully those go soon well this this actually triggers a couple of thoughts in me because you know you know to talk about something as technical as 70 millimeter with the writers i don't mean to impose that on the writing except that it seems as with you know like in your opening i looked at your script for there will be blood and you specified in the first shot that there would be a crescendo of almost violent music over this desert now that's a very startling effect in the film so that was clearly there early in your dream your your process for writing before there was a film there was the music in your head that you were honoring and so that's i'm talking more not so much the technicalities but the technicalities were serving something that you were trying to get to and and like and i guess to formulate this into a question like the found the sandies in the research and i'm thinking that as a writer you know there must have been stuff that you were tripping over from the 1940s and early 50s where just in your research and this is for everybody about researching your own idea and trying to trigger it with research because you didn't need to get those sandies then until you were on the beach but when you're writing there were other things you needed to research and how did you go about that to stimulate yourself well it's more more like it's more like how do you tear yourself away from that research to actually write start writing again you know i mean in some ways i feel like um it's just to say i was writing the film was just a way that i could lie to my girlfriend and my three kids like i'm writing but really you're down there researching because uh because the that is the that's the kind of it's the logs on the fire it's the few it's everything um just because the writing part i mean it's fast isn't it kind of mostly you know and usually it's pretty good the first couple times it comes out of you and you work a scene maybe sometimes it gets better sometimes it doesn't but that time spent just trying to hold hands with another period or time you know and trying to kind of get inside that mind of whatever land you're writing about and the ways that things can lead you you know even if they're dead ends it doesn't matter you know i mean just the time to read about soldiers and um coming back from the war re even it was a great thing called the pacific war diary and james j fahey i don't know if you ever read it but he kept diaries on a battleship i mean you know that's like a 300 page book and just to sit down and read that and to read to read those experiences sort of go through that um a wealth of material that we had about dianetics and now ron hubbard and that kind of stuff and it's just endless amount of stuff and there was like a newsletter from the arizona or something that you found yeah yeah um which i yeah i did i i couldn't get through all you know 12 years in volume and that was too much but to kind of go through all that stuff was the the reason to do this i mean the reason to do it was to spend that time looking for anything looking for anything that might kind of trigger um an idea or some kind of compassion or some something um so many letters to the editor people sort of writing into this thing and that's where you could get stuff you could find people's voices find the way they were feeling about their life or their movement or whatever they were involved in and and um yeah because the wonderful lines that are spouting out of the characters they played by laura dern and various others that just you do feel you're eavesdropping on another time you know well that's not me you know i mean that's like you know kind of good writing is stealing and finding little things that people had written or said or navigating it and trying to get in then and that is the fun i have to say at least right now for me that is so much fun i get off on that that's what really floats my boat is being able to do that stuff um yeah it's time sucker but it's it's it gives back yeah for sure i'm gonna move over here to see if there's a is there a hand over here that i'm ignoring or any any questions okay we've got lots of questions okay we're going to go to the back the striped shirt keep your hand in the air yep and then i'll i'll get to the next questions don't you worry keep going last time i was here uh diablo cody was speaking and someone asked her if she could have written any script what would it be and she said boogie nights so i'm wondering you know if you could have written any script what would it be uh first thing that came into my mind was sweet smell success i wish i wrote that i could if i had that on my resume can you imagine if my if you had my if i had my name and you should look it up on imdb or something i said sweet smell success north by northwest poster ernest lehman um treasurer sarah madre that'd be that one network i'd put that on my resume yeah i could keep going i mean we could keep i could keep listing films all night um pulp fiction i would put on my list yeah i'd say that i wrote that yeah um i mean we could play this game all night it's a great game it's like a drinking game did you i mean did you treasure the sierra madre and network did how how young were you when you saw them for the first time when did when did you first left i saw treasure ceremony on channel nine like when i was a kid um and it made an impact but not this kind of severe impact that it made on my life um when i saw it again in the middle of writing there will be i mean i've seen it a couple of times and i yeah this is great but when i saw it in the middle of writing there will be blood it was like yeah my head exploded and funny enough if anybody was watching tcm it was on this morning um and i said you know there it was my head exploded again i was just like this is as good as you know as it gets that's great um dr strangelove is another one i said i mean i saw that when i was a kid my dad said oh you should watch this it was on channel nine again too and i don't i didn't get the humor i mean i must have been 10 or 11 years old and the main thing i remember is you know slim pickings riding the uh running the bomb the bomb yeah you know if you're 10 years old you see that what yeah yeah yeah and you know it's what's interesting i mean in this by the way folks there's a the the great kubrick show at the la county museum and at the academy theater on wilshire at lapeer there's a in the lobby they've got all the screenplays color xeroxes of kubrick's personal copies of of what became dr strangelove sometimes it's called edge of doom and you see its various evolutions uh because it it and i only mention it because it's very related to the process you've been sort of laying bare for us tonight which is that of discovering it as you go i mean part of the power that we you can wish you have written but it was like it was growing out of like you know a whole a whole cluster of inspirations but sort of being logically worked out and discarded as he went along yeah hopefully yeah yeah exactly yeah um it's funny i found an old file the other day like an old computer i was looking for something else entirely and came across what obviously became there will be blood and it was really i mean i've never done this before really i kind of could watch myself you know going like in this direction that direction i thought oh wow look at my mind we're going this way in that way and i finally thank god i figured that out or got rid of that you know um i don't have the ability to do that with anything before there will be blood because it didn't save things like that but um yeah i was mad to do that i was crazy great let me let me get there was another question back here the gentleman the white shirt was right near and then then we'll start moving forward to yeah uh i had read an article on indiewire i think that said parts of the master were inspired by a certain john steinbeck story or there was a steinbeck influence on certain early scenes can you talk about that at all yeah that's just i was reading then this is just what we're talking about i mean even i read a great john steinbeck biography i think it's just called john steinbeck writer and it just chronicled his life really well really well written i'm blanking on the writer's name i'm sorry but um it just chronicled his his life um after salinas and going to stanford and splitting from stanford and working in different fields and and contained in inside there were just these great anecdotes of him working in a beat field as a bench chemist where um it was during prohibition and if you worked as a bench chemist in a beet field you had access to all kinds of different chemicals and stuff like that so you could make a really nice potion you could make a really nice kind of booze and the way that the story goes in his life was that he realized that he was coming up short on some chemicals and he thought who the stealing my booze you know and so he also had as a bench chemist you also had another chemical that was essentially a laxative so he spiked this this booze with this laxative and there he was out in the fields one day and he sees these guys way over by this tree like squatting down taking their pants down and he said i knew it you know um so there's a couple things like that and that i just sort of embellished or just used to to write and get to think get something cooking great this gentleman in this blue shirt and then we get to you yet thank you do you ever write something without the intention of directing it and knowing that you're the director does that influence your writing process um i know i don't probably i write pretty selfishly feeling like i'm writing for me for myself to not to direct but just to write like um like i mean for instance i didn't write i didn't get a chance to really write today and i don't feel right you know i mean i feel fine it's no it's it's been an okay day but it's not as good a day at the very least if i'd had 15 minutes this morning to write i would i would probably feel just more yeah together yeah you know but you can do that like 15 minutes even we'll just get you you just make something it's just enough of a dose to feel like okay i did something you know um i try to work every day and if it doesn't happen yeah i don't i just don't feel as good my day doesn't tumble forward as well anyway um but no but directing and i mean like when you're saying i i forgot that i wrote that thing at the beginning of there will be blood in the script i mean obviously i had an idea in my head of there would be music and yeah sometimes you write a lens down you know as a director and it's you write it in there just because it's an idea you have you may completely throw it away but it's just that you don't want to forget it so i i'll do stuff like that but but also try to try to leave things open sometimes so that it doesn't get too there's enough room to do keep doing more things you know do you know what i mean i mean i don't yeah yeah no it it exactly it's it's it's you're you're tricking your memory and you're unconscious into you know uh showing up so that they they they remember to come back okay yeah this was what we were talking about yeah oh right you know do you know wells tower this writer wells tower no anybody out here go get wells tower he's got a great book of short stories called um everything ravaged everything burned and he was taught i read yes great great writer and he i was reading something he was talking about writing he says um you have to get yourself into a form of auto hypnosis that is exactly right i never heard anybody say it quite so perfectly yeah um yeah every go get this book it's great we have a question here uh if you could stand and uh yeah or just well they found you yeah okay hi paul i get the sense that you create from a really unconscious place um and it's sort of the place that stephen gibbon calls like the magical garden where great gets handed to you for free and i've heard you talk about sort of um like writing from the gut and i know you did the early morning kind of thing but my question and there's a question here but um i love the first three films of yours and they come um they're such amazing empathy for your characters and humanity and some of the speeches in magnolia are just amazing amazing stuff and um i'm wondering the the last three movies when i saw them the first time i saw them it was like i had to see them a second time to really kind of get them whereas the first three movies they went down very smoothly and i was wondering is it coming is there you finding like it's coming from a more are you finding yourself in these in these more recent movies like um is this making sense like it's coming from a more unconscious place like you know when you see 2001 for the first time it's like what did i just see and then you see it again and you're like wow now i get it it's like your last three movies have felt very much like that for me and i'm wondering if there was a shift that went on in your filmmaking that you're aware of um god like we're getting more obtuse and more confusing or yeah or perhaps just reaching further you know like i mean using the 2001's a good analogy because after doctor strangelove i mean okay he could have done another comedy after that he goes he goes way further out you know right but yeah um i mean are you and i guess the question you know in trusting your unconscious mm-hmm you know do you do you worry about getting ahead of your own curve or do you how do you how do you stay i mean you just you know you have to be you have i suppose you're gonna have to if you do if you're gonna i mean listen when you talk about trusting your subconscious when you're writing a film i mean part of that's completely ridiculous and part of it's completely you know all you're trying maybe sometime all you're trying to do for the next year is protect so the the vast distance between when your instinct wrote something down and what it means to actually try to get it financed go get it together get everybody out there shoot it shoot it in some way i mean there's a it's a and get it by the time it reaches the theater that golf you know between whatever your gut was doing and something else your brains had a lot of time to kind of think about what's going on and so i don't know how if the film business is the best place for that kind of intuitive filmmak you know intuitive thinking to if you can do that it's but um i guess to answer your question i feel like after i feel like with punch drunk love when we made that film something seemed to feel i don't know based on all the insecurity and kind of like panic around during the making that film we kind of i we the people that i work with sort of emerged with like a newfound confidence and as funny as that sounds um just a different way of working a different way of feeling good about what you were doing or confidence and that's not to say that you get so confident that you don't still get you know just stricken with bouts of confusion and depression but that's okay you kind of know those things will change and you trust that they'll change um but that felt like a little bit of a kind of maybe just um i don't know a different way of working and it kind of felt it felt more us felt like we were just somehow getting into our own skin i was getting into my own skin and people i was working with felt we just had put enough miles between something but that's not to say that we're not all completely still baffled by what we do you know but we maybe enjoy it a little bit more well off this gentleman's question about you know in a sense the question seems to be the theme of it is also challenging yourself because sometimes i mean it's not that you have to see a movie twice but sometimes an audience is challenged by what you tried because you challenged yourself that's it's not becoming more obtuse but it's like you didn't want to do the same thing twice you gotta you gotta you gotta try and do it an extra somersault but you know and the audience will challenge itself and come back to you know um but i guess in relation to that looking at say magnolia you know magnolia is is a movie that where it feels like you challenge yourself to do something really white and really wild and doing it's like a trapeze act you've got all these characters sort of flying and they're flying in symmetry almost like in formation because and it's good because it keeps you there they're all following one curve but there's a lot of them you know and it was a lot of it's like juggling and keeping a lot of apples and oranges in the air and and with punch drunk love you got to a kind of simplicity but are you tempted i mean you've moved in different directions even from that in your more recent films but are you are you tempted to go back to a kind of symphonic uh sort of um idiom like you were in in magnolia again is there any kind of movie that's that's you know um calling to you now or do you see yourself doing something a broad canvas like that again anytime um i don't know yeah no i know i should ask you about it no i know what you mean but i mean um i'm not into the stuff that i was into when i was making that film different i'm into different films and different things stuff and different stuff it's just getting me off and making me feel excited about making films and um whatever that's going to be whatever crops up that you see that just suddenly kind of gets you excited about films again or um you know um you kind of have to rely on that it's going to just spark something in you that's that's going to push you a certain way you know i mean i'm like i'm completely obsessed right now with um our archipong whatever his name is um is they call him joe he made syndromes in the century you know the taiwanese director no no he's great you gotta see this stuff i mean it's the syndromes in the century and uncle bonami who's pas who can recall his past lives oh uncle me i've seen yes okay okay wow maybe you didn't like it but no no i liked it a lot but it was it was one no i loved it see like that but it's not a movie like i wish i could make a film like that you know like but i guess that's where you know like no and it's funny about uncle bun me which is it's a strong recommendation but it is um i don't know it trying to explain if i had to try and explain it to somebody would be like the great orson welles line that a filmmaker should should make movies innocently the way anna and eve named the animals because that's not a movie like i've seen anybody else make right yeah and sometimes you can even i had to think how do i know that name because it's like i even forgot it and it's no disgrace to him but it's kind of like my mind kind of left it behind for a second because i can't i don't have an easy handle to put on it except that you say it and then oh yeah that film right well it's like anything i mean it's kind of like you know last night my um two girls for whatever reason got out of bed at like 10 30. like obviously they were up chatting away in the room they're supposed to be asleep and they came in and i was making a sandwich because i was starving and there was something playing on tcm which i don't know what it was it was obviously like um i didn't look at the display but it was it was basically just like a series of vignettes performance vignettes two girls playing piano uh two girl acrobats that were sort of walking this crazy it must have been like mid 30s late 30s and then a kind of comedian who who literally ate everything start smoking a cigarette eats the cigarette starts taking part a suit eats a vaudeville act you know eats the eats the heart place they're playing harmonica eats it and you know it was like talk about inspiring just watching these those kind of vignettes it was like the kind of thing that you see that just gets you you going again and and then you can see you could see my first instant was like i want to do that that looks like fun that looks like so much fun with performers and getting a camera like that and those are where these inspirations come from you know talking about going back to something i never want to go back that yeah i mean i want to keep going i want to keep finding new things that are yeah exciting to me and keep you know i want i don't want to go back that would be horrible [Music] no really no no i get you though yeah i'm i don't want to be neglecting uh good we got questions over here let's get the question against the wall and then we'll move move across this way hi i came in late i'm sorry if i distracted people at the door i just want to apologize but hi i guess my question yeah i ruined the room the evening i'm sorry but i guess my question was what's always attracted me to certain films is the character development and the reason i think i've enjoyed so much of your films is just how i guess deep you go into the character in the film even though it's not always as it's not really apparent to other people i've had watch like there will be blood and everything they just kind of see it as a movie but there's so much more to all the characters and i was wondering if you had like some sort of um like system in developing like if you keep like writing about the characters like as you're writing the screenplay if you develop like a whole background for them or if it's just the way that you write you like there's so much to them question mark yeah we have like a program computer program i don't i mean you hope you hope to get to know your characters and you hope to trust that if you start writing something that they don't want to do that they'll fight back in other words you know you kind of um whatever if you like there will be blood let's hope you hopefully try to write a scene where daniel suddenly kind of becomes a really nice guy you know and started donating money to charities or whatever or he learned sign language for his son or something like that and you know you should do dude you should try to write that scene you should try it on your character and just see how long they let you do it to them before they reach out from inside your typewriter or computer and just smack you across the face and say we're you're kidding yourself let's get back to what we were meant to be doing you know does that make sense yeah it it's interesting to point out that in in this in the in the script which i was reading today of there will be blood you know you when you introduce daniel plainview you don't describe him physically you simply say daniel plainview late 30s at this point uh i had it written down and said he's he's there he is in the 110 degree heat of new mexico hunting for silver right oh it's all you need it's all you need right it's probably too much already i could have taken but it's all original yeah right right but it's action as opposed to adjectives and it just seemed like and as i checked everywhere else in the script it was like yeah there's no no mood no purple no just it was all just whatever the heck they're doing but it's in contradiction to wherever they are like 110 degree heat there's a physical element i mean i was taught i don't know where i learned this or who taught me but like screenwriting is not real writing it's come on it's not you're not writing a book you know i mean you're writing the basics you know you are let's just the situation where they are and what they're doing should should really say everything you know and um and let and leave room for an actor to do something you know i was i always just felt like that was um that that was good screenwriting that you know good writing was kind of belongs in books that that screenwriting should be is um absolutely as economic as possible so that the filmmaking can take over so that an actor can take over so that the camera can take over you know that it's best it becomes invisible you know it's yeah um yeah i mean i think i got that early on because actors i knew i was friends with a lot of actors and they said you know they'd read they'd show have scripts they say you know we don't read any of that we just read what our lines are you know well if they don't read it why write it yeah right we had questions of the next question yeah there and then we'll get together hello uh the san fernando valley or the whole valley seems to play a pretty big part in a few of your movies and like maybe most so i was wondering if there is anything that maybe still kind of lingers whether it be like an affinity or just like what kind of influences or impressions did that place uh that area leave on you as a writer and and also maybe when does location come into play as a writer into your stories um well you know obviously the same way probably for anybody here that that's where i was born and that's where i was raised that's where i live now and so i i can only assume that that's that's a huge that that's a huge you know that that's a huge part of who you are a huge part of what what you've learned where you've come from as tragic as that is you know i mean like i mean i wish you some place cooler or more you know but um but that's what you got so you you try to you know i don't i think the second part of your question is something about i'm sorry but i didn't understand exactly do you mean if i had a mother um like where in the writing process i mean you have there's location characters yeah and then how much do you like to give attention to it in in the actual script oh okay yeah i know you know good question i mean well um good question i don't really know it's like you know if you've got a story like boogie nights it can't really take place anywhere else i mean i suppose it could i suppose there's other places where pornography might have been made well well boogie nights and magnolia both both are appropriate to san fernando valley specifically but you know the the the the california that you portray in uh there will be blood is is like a it what it has in common is the same bear desert and it's in the master too but it's the when the motorcycle is in the desert there's something that calls to you about those bare places those wide open places it seems to be in you like a watermark wherever the you know wherever the characters are wounded i mean listen you know uh the place that a story it takes place makes a lot of difference to what's going on you know i mean it does absolutely you know um and i think the way like in the master for instance you know it's it's no accident the way the um the the that they start off in san francisco they make their way over to new york and that movement doesn't last very long in new york city i mean that makes sense for new york city get out of here you know they go to philadelphia and freddie well doesn't last very long in boston he has to get out to the exactly right freddie quell by you know doesn't last very long on land you know wherever he's like you know he's much better at sea yeah i mean that's location you know having a character that obviously is so much more comfortable when he's at sea than when he's on land or in take him to the desert you know i mean so take one of your characters and put them somewhere where they maybe don't want to be you they don't belong and see what happens you know things will happen things inevitably will happen to people when they're out of place yeah you know let's see your question then yours yeah i'm wondering how you construct a story i mean it sounds like you get a lot of inspiration and research and you really get wrapped up in it you find all these gems i mean do you do you take all that and sort of just dump it out on the table and rearrange things or i guess yeah that's exactly right and anything more than that i'd be being disingenuous with you to say that i kind of can construct a story i mean i never feel like i know how to to construct the story except just like that's a great way what you just said like yeah dumping things on a table and like spreading them around like that for sure and hopefully getting lucky enough to kind of get enough things going in a row that feels like something worth doing something worth telling something worth going to shoot yeah i mean it's kind of sadness too when you sort of can feel that you're maybe getting to the end of something you know yeah i mean it's an extraordinary scene at the close of the master and it it snuck up on me i didn't expect the climax to come so soon in a funny way even though it's a long movie but i'm like the rhythm suddenly they're having this conversation and it's a very uh the feeling under it that it communicates is something very specific which is that you know whatever the outcome of this conversation whether they kill each other at the end of the course or whatever happens because the the you have the dot and you know and and quell this is the last conversation ever going to have you they both know it too they're looking each other in the eye and they actually there's even an odd smile on freddie quel's face which is actually i think helping us as viewers anticipate where where this is really going and god is almost like fighting that that that that cruel little smile on freddy's face because they both know that this is the this is the end of the road for their whole relationship it's a really interesting thing to feel sometimes it happens in life that you do feel i'm not going to see this person again you just do but you don't want that it's like a terrible thing to feel and and and you communicate that terrible feeling i was just wondering when when did it did you know in advance that they were going to have to have this or did you find out when you were writing it that the oh my you know was that i don't remember i mean i think it was probably that i that i knew you know sooner or later i was going to have to end this film and but that that but but that more importantly that their relationship would not work i think you probably intuitively knew probably about halfway through writing it is that like any romance that you maybe you realize you know unfortunately i think i'm writing a doomed romance rather than one that could survive you know right um exactly how that would play out maybe i wasn't quite sure but um [Music] yeah it just well anyway it it it's the i think that um and i'm some of my questions are a little unfair because i'm trying to get you to quantify something that can't be quantified except by the by the thing itself you know but it is this one of the things that is powerful that i'm hopeful that people can take away is the feeling of open-endedness that's sometimes there under under each of your scenes because the anything can happen you feel in these scenes and it's a night it's a great feeling to have and it's i feel like it's something to aspire to whatever kind of movie you're writing you know it's because that it was said of say something like a hot right because it's like somebody said why is that film erotic you know it's because tony curtis and marilyn monroe you feel anything can happen when they're when they're talking it's just you don't know where it's going to go and it's it's a it's a great zone to get in and you really got there in there so that's great that's funny i mean that's funny you should bring that up because i was just watching that film the other day and you know you if you know the when that film starts you'd have no you know unless you're you could it's possible that you could start the watch the beginning of that and not even know what film you're watching because it's like starts as this gangster film yeah yeah um oh what's his face is walking around spats colombo what's his name uh george george raft ran around and so the navigation that that film takes does not kind of lead you to believe that you're watching this sort of classic comedy by billy wilder that's essentially going to end up on the beach and down by the del coronado you know but and then they're on the train for all that long time i mean it has a kind of whole pace it's on it that's all it's own and well there's something yeah i mean i like that in my films i i i would prefer to be confused about where we're going um and and just kind of hand over the and and and then no you know um yeah yeah there's another question here and then we'll get um to kind of piggyback off the last question um so much of the conversation's been about kind of the discovery process and not really knowing where you're going and specifically i think in the cindy commentary you would uh spoken to the to the effect of um if you don't know where the story is going kind of just set the two characters down in a copy shop and have them talk until until the story starts um so to that end now that you're working on an inherent advice thomas thomas pension yeah um and there's a book and it's kind of you know the characters and everything's kind of set up for you is that more difficult or you're kind of wrestling with that now that you know where you're going or well um it's nice just because it's different you know just because it's different to be adapting a book and um and that's the most important thing is just keep an excitement going about writing and not never be stale with it and i mean right now if i felt like i was starting having to start back up to write something i mean i probably just wouldn't probably be doing it i'd just be so tired and exhausted but the thrill of going to work every day is the thrill of working with someone else's amazing words and throwing them around and trying to see how they go together and um it's no less fun than coming with up something from the ground up if anything it's right now for me where i am in my life and my writing it's more fun it's more rewarding i'm getting more out of it because it's not something i've ever done before and that's great you know sick you know it's like so nice to be looking at words on a page that aren't that you didn't write you know you just you're so nauseated with stuff that you do and now it's you've got somebody else's stuff to play it's great a great feeling so as long as it lasts i want to keep writing it out i mean when you did you adapted there will be blood from upton sinclair and and it's often been remarked you know you only took you know the first time that page is a novel now that's that's not a bad that's not a comment against you erupt in sinclair but it was an interesting attack and do you feel the same freedom with pension to just say no not at first i mean i don't but i probably should i mean if anything it sooner or later i'm going to have to kind of be harder on that book to to actually make a pro to make a film about it you're going to have to get um very very hard on it you know and that's and that's okay i mean anybody here has i don't know if you've had but i used to like i used to like when i was younger i just love like you know you'd be so self-satisfied with something that you write now the self-satisfaction comes from like oh the the joy of like a great cut you know the gre some great like red circle through something in a slash and two things get smashed together yeah ah it's the greatest feeling um it it's just a high you know because discovering something that you never thought could could smash together like that and yeah um it's what keeps me coming back you know like you know that kind of thrill um yeah and that's some of that and then when that's happened with this it's great and hopefully it'll happen more question back there yes than you yeah oh this hi uh given your love of uh words and characters and humanity have you ever considered writing and directing for the theater no i mean i have i would like to do that but i've never done it and that'd be great that seems hard to me yeah a different set of demands really i guess yeah nowhere to hide that's real writing that's more real writing you know again really that's yeah because that's we have uh your question to general in the back and then we get to yours yeah yeah uh when you're talking about your writing you leave a lot of room for discovery and then you go and you have to make them a film and you talk about having a lot of discovery with your actors is there a a conflict between the writer that's made a blueprint and the director who's on the set with the actor and says i'm just going to go this way or is it a continuous handoff that you're completely okay with and that's a continuous handoff that i'm completely okay with you know i don't have i mean i like i completely fire the writer when we get to the set like you know um i mean he has to be hired again you know sometimes you get to a scene you've got to like come up with something on the spot and that's fun and that's great you know you get to go type something up you're like oh right i'm a writer and you type something but no um no no i'm so unprecious about um my writing um i try to be at least every once in a while there'll be something that you get really precious about some some line or something and you you'll kind of you'll go wait no you missed that you got to say it like this you know and it's just weird things that you get hung up on but i'm not fussy about it at all i don't i don't i know i'm don't care don't really care just want to kind of look at something in front of me that's it seems like it's going well and right and usually actors would be if it's written well they'll say something that you wrote and it'll be great but usually if they kind of they'll say something better if they can co if it's coming out of their mouth in a certain way and yeah i'm just not fussy about that at all and usually they really come like if anything um you know i write too much sometimes you know we had a scene like in the master and with um freddie and his uh uh clark the the uh great actor rami malik who gets married to the daughter-in-law anyway they're they're going to kick the out of john moore and there's a walk and talk on this street that we did and ramy had this you know unfortunate mission of kind of spewing out all this dialogue that i'd written him about how he met master and what's going on with him and everything was like a page of what i thought was really good writing you know like the day before joaquin's like well somewhere you want us to kind of say all that stuff walking down the street i was like yeah it's gonna be great then like later that afternoon like so you want you want me to say all of that stuff like what you know and finally i was like you know he's hinting at it he doesn't hint at anything else along the way here like okay yeah you're right this is horrible you know it was really bad no i think i said well let's just do it once you know and they did it once and they walked and talked down the street and he did a great job of getting it out and then we did it a couple more times i said okay what if you guys just walk down the street and don't say anything and they walk down the street and didn't say anything it was like that was great it was because it was what they'd do they'd walk down the street and they didn't say they were going to kick the out of somebody they weren't going to stop for a conversation you know we have time for one more question this gentleman here in the blue shirt hi um i was just wondering how many of your stories are based on actual experiences versus sort of seeking to explore something that you've never done before through writing great question that's a great question that's heavy stuff man um well lots of so many things um that com come from either my life or story that i've heard in my life from but i suppose yeah i mean i have so what the second part of the question is something that you wish to explore with your life i mean yeah i mean does a character fulfill something that like i mean you know for example daniel plainview yeah well uninhibited now does he get to you get to put on the big boots and and walk for you in some way or no no what i was thinking about more importantly was that there was a moment when you're staying we were standing out in the middle of the desert and there's a train coming down the tracks and there we are with this camera and you sort of look around you think this is a absurd you know you are completely fulfilling some fantasy you're making a movie out in the desert with a train and guys and with these this gear on you think this is like wish fulfillment you know like you've got to train i felt the same way we were out on a boat in san francisco harbor you're tooling around you've got you know you've got a movie camera and just just the thrill of doing that having that experience now that portion of it is wish fulfillment i mean that's the kind of joy and that boy is thrilled of doing this thing that's so you feel so lucky to do it but in terms of the characters i can only assume yeah that you are funneling some part of you wholeheartedly i hope into them and through them um you know so yeah so i mean how many times have i wanted to say to somebody i'm gonna come into your room in the middle of night and cut your throat i mean a lot you know well but i don't speaking of wholehearted thrills this has been so great paul and you guys have been great thank you everybody you

Channel: Writers Guild Foundation

Views: 168,505

Keywords: screenwriting, writers guild foundation, writing, film, film writing, paul thomas anderson, magnolia, boogie nights, screenplay

Id: T9aBe0FB3d0

Length: 89min 12sec (5352 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 08 2017