Background
Adam Sandler and the French New Wave are not often discussed in the same breath, but according to cinematographer Robert Elswit, they both figure in his new collaboration with director Paul Thomas Anderson. Elswit explains that Anderson's latest feature Punch-Drunk Love, which stars Sandler and Emily Watson, takes some of its visual cues from the early color films of nouvelle vague director Jean-Luc Godard. That is not to say that this new Anderson release attempts the heavily intellectual approach Godard was known for. Punch-Drunk Love, promises to be lighter and more straightforward than anything Godard, or even Anderson, has done in the past.
Elswit, who shot all three of Anderson's previous features, explains that the content of the film is more like an early Peter Sellers comedy centered on a main character that we love despite his extensive eccentricity. But the inspiration for the look, he adds, came from Godard's early color films, particularly A Woman is a Woman starring Jean Paul Belmondo, Jean-Claude Brialy, and Anna Karina.
Raul Coutard shot many of those early films, including Woman. "[He] created interiors that had a very unique look for that era," says Elswit. "In A Woman is a Woman, Jean-Claude Brialy wears this electric-blue suit and it stands out in these rooms with white walls. This was kind of a starting point for the look of this movie. Paul wanted to find a way of realizing these clean white walls and then having just one or two main colors. The costume designer Mark Bridges came up with this blue outfit for Adam Sandler then a few very specific colors for what Emily Watson wears. The rest of the design is a kind of monochromatic version of one tone."
Goals & Challenges
Early on, Elswit and Anderson decided Fuji 125T would best render the palette they were after. "It's a contrasty stock," says Elswit. "You have to fill it a lot. When you light, the set doesn't look right to the eye or on the monitor. I generally rely on a one-degree spot meter made by a company in Vermont called Zone VI. It's unbelievably accurate. With that meter I can essentially do a one-light work print and be very consistent throughout."
Elswit shot Punch-Drunk Love with Panavision cameras (primarily older Panaflex models) and Primo anamorphic lenses—0, 50, 75, 100, and 180. He set the aperture as wide as he was comfortable going in an anamorphic show—between T 2.8 to just under T 4. Even so, interiors still required quite a lot of light for exposure, as well as a great deal of control because of the stock's inherently high contrast. This was particularly challenging because Elswit, like Coutard in 1960s Paris, had to tailor his lighting for location shooting.
Coutard, Elswit explains, built lighting rigs that allowed him to encircle the interior of a Parisian apartment with Photofloods all aimed at the ceiling, which had been rigged with aluminum foil. The bounced light hitting the actors in the room provided a soft feel to the images while bringing the overall light level up enough to almost match the generally overcast view outside the windows. For Elswit to approximate this effect in Southern California's notoriously sunny San Fernando Valley, he needed instruments far more powerful than Photofloods. "You always want big lights far away," he says. "The hard part in locations is it's big lights really close. So part of the trick is finding a place to put them."
A lot of Punch-Drunk Love, takes place in an industrial strip mall where Sandler's character runs an import/export company of cheesy novelty items. The location is one of countless non-descript, industrial-looking areas that exist throughout the San Fernando Valley. The 100x180-foot warehouse space consists of a long concrete building where Sandler's character keeps an office. The entire interior was painted white, and glass walls within the massive space defined his office. There are giant doors leading outside the warehouse to reveal a giant, white cinder block wall. "The hardest thing," Elswit recalls, "was getting the exposure level of the office bright enough and still feeling like it's natural light."
The design suggested an overhead fluorescent light fixture in the office, but instead of a real fluorescent fixture that could never have approached the exterior levels, Elswit used a dozen 6k Pars aimed at a sheet of bleached bounce light down on Sandler's desk. "We had more lights in there than I've had in almost anything I've ever shot," Elswit says. "That gigantic amount of light let us balance—not quite perfectly—the exterior. At least it was close enough that you could get a nice full exposure inside the office and have it fall off somewhere toward the back of the warehouse and still have the outside be only a stop and a half overexposed."
In scenes where the lights are all daylight-balanced, Elswit debated whether or not to use an 85 filter. "You always get different points of view from the lab people," he says. "Some tell you to always use an 85, others say to make the adjustment in timing. Paul just said, 'I don't like filters. Let's not use any.' Now, with Panavision, you put your 85 filter in back, so it's not even a real filter. But Paul just didn't want to use any filters so we didn't and the lab was, in fact, able to make the necessary adjustments in the timing."
The effect of matching interior and exterior exposure, however, was less than seamless, Elswit admits. But Anderson, who is open to the unusual and unpolished, had Elswit alter the aperture in the middle of a shot if a character walked from a really bright exterior to the interior or vice versa. The effect, not unlike what happens when someone takes their auto-iris home video camera from one kind of lighting condition to another, is not something Elswit would push for himself. But he has worked with Anderson long enough, and he respects his vision to the point that he went with it.
"Of course, we've done f/stop pulls on other movies," he says, "but generally you try to be subtle about it. We came up with the idea of not trying to hide them here. We thought, 'Let's have somebody walk in from a bright exterior and, while they're standing there, go from an f/11 to an f/4 and just see the character and the background change so that it's part of the film.' It was always in a transitional moment. It was never in the middle of a piece of dialog or something like that, but there's no attempt made to conceal it."
In this way, too, Anderson's approach resembles that of Godard, whose films gleefully break all cinematic conventions—though not for the Brechtian, artifice-exposing motifs attributed to the Parisian intellectual. "Paul's esthetic," Elswit explains, "is to say, 'Let's try this, it might be neat.' If accidents happen, we don't turn the camera off. There are no marks for actors. He wants to rehearse on film, which puts a particular strain on camera assistants, but he knows there's a certain magic when the actors have that freedom and are doing a scene for the first time.
"The hard thing for a cameraman," Elswit continues, "is that something that can serve the movie isn't always the thing that impresses you as a cinematographer or your cinematographer buddies. But Paul has very definite ideas about what he wants and it can be really freeing sometimes to just do things that you would normally reject. It can keep the whole process of filmmaking fresh."
At one point Sandler's character is being followed by the Steadicam as he talks on the phone. During a take, the front of the camera bumped into a table and knocked the camera briefly, causing the shot to jump from Sandler to an image of an out-of-focus piece of the set and then quickly re-adjust. "Most directors would probably not even print that take," says Elswit, "but Paul loved the effect and wanted to do it again. So we did more takes and right at the same point in the dialog, I'd sort of smack the front of the matte box to re-create the look." Though a final cut wasn't completed by press time, Elswit believes the shot, for which no other coverage exists, will remain in the final film.
The resemblance to Godard ends, says Elswit, with the look and the occasional convention-bashing effect. "I don't know if Godard ever involves you emotionally in a movie, and Paul is all about emotion," he says. "So much of Godard is about a kind of cool irony. Paul's the smartest guy in the world, but when it comes to his work there's not an ironic bone in his body."
joaquim pheonix, the master joaquin, anderson paul thomas, master blu ray, the master de paul thomas anderson
Sunday, 20 April 2003
Interview: Behind The Scenes With Robert Elswit
Background
Adam Sandler and the French New Wave are not often discussed in the same breath, but according to cinematographer Robert Elswit, they both figure in his new collaboration with director Paul Thomas Anderson. Elswit explains that Anderson's latest feature Punch-Drunk Love, which stars Sandler and Emily Watson, takes some of its visual cues from the early color films of nouvelle vague director Jean-Luc Godard. That is not to say that this new Anderson release attempts the heavily intellectual approach Godard was known for. Punch-Drunk Love, promises to be lighter and more straightforward than anything Godard, or even Anderson, has done in the past.
Elswit, who shot all three of Anderson's previous features, explains that the content of the film is more like an early Peter Sellers comedy centered on a main character that we love despite his extensive eccentricity. But the inspiration for the look, he adds, came from Godard's early color films, particularly A Woman is a Woman starring Jean Paul Belmondo, Jean-Claude Brialy, and Anna Karina.
Raul Coutard shot many of those early films, including Woman. "[He] created interiors that had a very unique look for that era," says Elswit. "In A Woman is a Woman, Jean-Claude Brialy wears this electric-blue suit and it stands out in these rooms with white walls. This was kind of a starting point for the look of this movie. Paul wanted to find a way of realizing these clean white walls and then having just one or two main colors. The costume designer Mark Bridges came up with this blue outfit for Adam Sandler then a few very specific colors for what Emily Watson wears. The rest of the design is a kind of monochromatic version of one tone."
Goals & Challenges
Early on, Elswit and Anderson decided Fuji 125T would best render the palette they were after. "It's a contrasty stock," says Elswit. "You have to fill it a lot. When you light, the set doesn't look right to the eye or on the monitor. I generally rely on a one-degree spot meter made by a company in Vermont called Zone VI. It's unbelievably accurate. With that meter I can essentially do a one-light work print and be very consistent throughout."
Elswit shot Punch-Drunk Love with Panavision cameras (primarily older Panaflex models) and Primo anamorphic lenses—0, 50, 75, 100, and 180. He set the aperture as wide as he was comfortable going in an anamorphic show—between T 2.8 to just under T 4. Even so, interiors still required quite a lot of light for exposure, as well as a great deal of control because of the stock's inherently high contrast. This was particularly challenging because Elswit, like Coutard in 1960s Paris, had to tailor his lighting for location shooting.
Coutard, Elswit explains, built lighting rigs that allowed him to encircle the interior of a Parisian apartment with Photofloods all aimed at the ceiling, which had been rigged with aluminum foil. The bounced light hitting the actors in the room provided a soft feel to the images while bringing the overall light level up enough to almost match the generally overcast view outside the windows. For Elswit to approximate this effect in Southern California's notoriously sunny San Fernando Valley, he needed instruments far more powerful than Photofloods. "You always want big lights far away," he says. "The hard part in locations is it's big lights really close. So part of the trick is finding a place to put them."
A lot of Punch-Drunk Love, takes place in an industrial strip mall where Sandler's character runs an import/export company of cheesy novelty items. The location is one of countless non-descript, industrial-looking areas that exist throughout the San Fernando Valley. The 100x180-foot warehouse space consists of a long concrete building where Sandler's character keeps an office. The entire interior was painted white, and glass walls within the massive space defined his office. There are giant doors leading outside the warehouse to reveal a giant, white cinder block wall. "The hardest thing," Elswit recalls, "was getting the exposure level of the office bright enough and still feeling like it's natural light."
The design suggested an overhead fluorescent light fixture in the office, but instead of a real fluorescent fixture that could never have approached the exterior levels, Elswit used a dozen 6k Pars aimed at a sheet of bleached bounce light down on Sandler's desk. "We had more lights in there than I've had in almost anything I've ever shot," Elswit says. "That gigantic amount of light let us balance—not quite perfectly—the exterior. At least it was close enough that you could get a nice full exposure inside the office and have it fall off somewhere toward the back of the warehouse and still have the outside be only a stop and a half overexposed."
In scenes where the lights are all daylight-balanced, Elswit debated whether or not to use an 85 filter. "You always get different points of view from the lab people," he says. "Some tell you to always use an 85, others say to make the adjustment in timing. Paul just said, 'I don't like filters. Let's not use any.' Now, with Panavision, you put your 85 filter in back, so it's not even a real filter. But Paul just didn't want to use any filters so we didn't and the lab was, in fact, able to make the necessary adjustments in the timing."
The effect of matching interior and exterior exposure, however, was less than seamless, Elswit admits. But Anderson, who is open to the unusual and unpolished, had Elswit alter the aperture in the middle of a shot if a character walked from a really bright exterior to the interior or vice versa. The effect, not unlike what happens when someone takes their auto-iris home video camera from one kind of lighting condition to another, is not something Elswit would push for himself. But he has worked with Anderson long enough, and he respects his vision to the point that he went with it.
"Of course, we've done f/stop pulls on other movies," he says, "but generally you try to be subtle about it. We came up with the idea of not trying to hide them here. We thought, 'Let's have somebody walk in from a bright exterior and, while they're standing there, go from an f/11 to an f/4 and just see the character and the background change so that it's part of the film.' It was always in a transitional moment. It was never in the middle of a piece of dialog or something like that, but there's no attempt made to conceal it."
In this way, too, Anderson's approach resembles that of Godard, whose films gleefully break all cinematic conventions—though not for the Brechtian, artifice-exposing motifs attributed to the Parisian intellectual. "Paul's esthetic," Elswit explains, "is to say, 'Let's try this, it might be neat.' If accidents happen, we don't turn the camera off. There are no marks for actors. He wants to rehearse on film, which puts a particular strain on camera assistants, but he knows there's a certain magic when the actors have that freedom and are doing a scene for the first time.
"The hard thing for a cameraman," Elswit continues, "is that something that can serve the movie isn't always the thing that impresses you as a cinematographer or your cinematographer buddies. But Paul has very definite ideas about what he wants and it can be really freeing sometimes to just do things that you would normally reject. It can keep the whole process of filmmaking fresh."
At one point Sandler's character is being followed by the Steadicam as he talks on the phone. During a take, the front of the camera bumped into a table and knocked the camera briefly, causing the shot to jump from Sandler to an image of an out-of-focus piece of the set and then quickly re-adjust. "Most directors would probably not even print that take," says Elswit, "but Paul loved the effect and wanted to do it again. So we did more takes and right at the same point in the dialog, I'd sort of smack the front of the matte box to re-create the look." Though a final cut wasn't completed by press time, Elswit believes the shot, for which no other coverage exists, will remain in the final film.
The resemblance to Godard ends, says Elswit, with the look and the occasional convention-bashing effect. "I don't know if Godard ever involves you emotionally in a movie, and Paul is all about emotion," he says. "So much of Godard is about a kind of cool irony. Paul's the smartest guy in the world, but when it comes to his work there's not an ironic bone in his body."
Adam Sandler and the French New Wave are not often discussed in the same breath, but according to cinematographer Robert Elswit, they both figure in his new collaboration with director Paul Thomas Anderson. Elswit explains that Anderson's latest feature Punch-Drunk Love, which stars Sandler and Emily Watson, takes some of its visual cues from the early color films of nouvelle vague director Jean-Luc Godard. That is not to say that this new Anderson release attempts the heavily intellectual approach Godard was known for. Punch-Drunk Love, promises to be lighter and more straightforward than anything Godard, or even Anderson, has done in the past.
Elswit, who shot all three of Anderson's previous features, explains that the content of the film is more like an early Peter Sellers comedy centered on a main character that we love despite his extensive eccentricity. But the inspiration for the look, he adds, came from Godard's early color films, particularly A Woman is a Woman starring Jean Paul Belmondo, Jean-Claude Brialy, and Anna Karina.
Raul Coutard shot many of those early films, including Woman. "[He] created interiors that had a very unique look for that era," says Elswit. "In A Woman is a Woman, Jean-Claude Brialy wears this electric-blue suit and it stands out in these rooms with white walls. This was kind of a starting point for the look of this movie. Paul wanted to find a way of realizing these clean white walls and then having just one or two main colors. The costume designer Mark Bridges came up with this blue outfit for Adam Sandler then a few very specific colors for what Emily Watson wears. The rest of the design is a kind of monochromatic version of one tone."
Goals & Challenges
Early on, Elswit and Anderson decided Fuji 125T would best render the palette they were after. "It's a contrasty stock," says Elswit. "You have to fill it a lot. When you light, the set doesn't look right to the eye or on the monitor. I generally rely on a one-degree spot meter made by a company in Vermont called Zone VI. It's unbelievably accurate. With that meter I can essentially do a one-light work print and be very consistent throughout."
Elswit shot Punch-Drunk Love with Panavision cameras (primarily older Panaflex models) and Primo anamorphic lenses—0, 50, 75, 100, and 180. He set the aperture as wide as he was comfortable going in an anamorphic show—between T 2.8 to just under T 4. Even so, interiors still required quite a lot of light for exposure, as well as a great deal of control because of the stock's inherently high contrast. This was particularly challenging because Elswit, like Coutard in 1960s Paris, had to tailor his lighting for location shooting.
Coutard, Elswit explains, built lighting rigs that allowed him to encircle the interior of a Parisian apartment with Photofloods all aimed at the ceiling, which had been rigged with aluminum foil. The bounced light hitting the actors in the room provided a soft feel to the images while bringing the overall light level up enough to almost match the generally overcast view outside the windows. For Elswit to approximate this effect in Southern California's notoriously sunny San Fernando Valley, he needed instruments far more powerful than Photofloods. "You always want big lights far away," he says. "The hard part in locations is it's big lights really close. So part of the trick is finding a place to put them."
A lot of Punch-Drunk Love, takes place in an industrial strip mall where Sandler's character runs an import/export company of cheesy novelty items. The location is one of countless non-descript, industrial-looking areas that exist throughout the San Fernando Valley. The 100x180-foot warehouse space consists of a long concrete building where Sandler's character keeps an office. The entire interior was painted white, and glass walls within the massive space defined his office. There are giant doors leading outside the warehouse to reveal a giant, white cinder block wall. "The hardest thing," Elswit recalls, "was getting the exposure level of the office bright enough and still feeling like it's natural light."
The design suggested an overhead fluorescent light fixture in the office, but instead of a real fluorescent fixture that could never have approached the exterior levels, Elswit used a dozen 6k Pars aimed at a sheet of bleached bounce light down on Sandler's desk. "We had more lights in there than I've had in almost anything I've ever shot," Elswit says. "That gigantic amount of light let us balance—not quite perfectly—the exterior. At least it was close enough that you could get a nice full exposure inside the office and have it fall off somewhere toward the back of the warehouse and still have the outside be only a stop and a half overexposed."
In scenes where the lights are all daylight-balanced, Elswit debated whether or not to use an 85 filter. "You always get different points of view from the lab people," he says. "Some tell you to always use an 85, others say to make the adjustment in timing. Paul just said, 'I don't like filters. Let's not use any.' Now, with Panavision, you put your 85 filter in back, so it's not even a real filter. But Paul just didn't want to use any filters so we didn't and the lab was, in fact, able to make the necessary adjustments in the timing."
The effect of matching interior and exterior exposure, however, was less than seamless, Elswit admits. But Anderson, who is open to the unusual and unpolished, had Elswit alter the aperture in the middle of a shot if a character walked from a really bright exterior to the interior or vice versa. The effect, not unlike what happens when someone takes their auto-iris home video camera from one kind of lighting condition to another, is not something Elswit would push for himself. But he has worked with Anderson long enough, and he respects his vision to the point that he went with it.
"Of course, we've done f/stop pulls on other movies," he says, "but generally you try to be subtle about it. We came up with the idea of not trying to hide them here. We thought, 'Let's have somebody walk in from a bright exterior and, while they're standing there, go from an f/11 to an f/4 and just see the character and the background change so that it's part of the film.' It was always in a transitional moment. It was never in the middle of a piece of dialog or something like that, but there's no attempt made to conceal it."
In this way, too, Anderson's approach resembles that of Godard, whose films gleefully break all cinematic conventions—though not for the Brechtian, artifice-exposing motifs attributed to the Parisian intellectual. "Paul's esthetic," Elswit explains, "is to say, 'Let's try this, it might be neat.' If accidents happen, we don't turn the camera off. There are no marks for actors. He wants to rehearse on film, which puts a particular strain on camera assistants, but he knows there's a certain magic when the actors have that freedom and are doing a scene for the first time.
"The hard thing for a cameraman," Elswit continues, "is that something that can serve the movie isn't always the thing that impresses you as a cinematographer or your cinematographer buddies. But Paul has very definite ideas about what he wants and it can be really freeing sometimes to just do things that you would normally reject. It can keep the whole process of filmmaking fresh."
At one point Sandler's character is being followed by the Steadicam as he talks on the phone. During a take, the front of the camera bumped into a table and knocked the camera briefly, causing the shot to jump from Sandler to an image of an out-of-focus piece of the set and then quickly re-adjust. "Most directors would probably not even print that take," says Elswit, "but Paul loved the effect and wanted to do it again. So we did more takes and right at the same point in the dialog, I'd sort of smack the front of the matte box to re-create the look." Though a final cut wasn't completed by press time, Elswit believes the shot, for which no other coverage exists, will remain in the final film.
The resemblance to Godard ends, says Elswit, with the look and the occasional convention-bashing effect. "I don't know if Godard ever involves you emotionally in a movie, and Paul is all about emotion," he says. "So much of Godard is about a kind of cool irony. Paul's the smartest guy in the world, but when it comes to his work there's not an ironic bone in his body."
Sunday, 13 April 2003
Interview: "I Wanted To Make Myself Scared"
Spiegel, Written By nina Rehfeld
April 13th, 2003
The exceptional American director Paul Thomas Anderson about his new film “Punch-Drunk Love,” his penchant for unorthodox casting, and the connection between love and violence.
Spiegel: Mr. Anderson, you obviously like to engage apocalyptic scenarios. In “Magnolia” there were raining frogs, and in your new film “Punch-Drunk Love” there is a type of catastrophic whirlpool, in which your lead actor Adam Sandler is the catalyst. Where do these ideas come from?
PTA: From this secret place, where all ideas come from. But the situation, where one is pulled into such a whirlpool, is very old: that is Buster Keaton: the little man in the middle, who has shit always flying around him. One of the proven methods to bring verve into a story is to have a little fun.
Spiegel: Adam Sandler’s figure, the sympathetic/eccentric loser Barry Egan, is allegedly based on a real person.
Anderson: In part, yes. There is an engineer in California, who in fact bought $12,000 of pudding to get these frequent flyer miles. But it went even further: There was an promotion of seven or eight South American airline companies that wanted to advertise their flights between North- and South America. If you would fly on these airlines within a specific timeframe, they would promise you one million frequent flyer miles. This guy really did it. He was in twelve countries in four days. He now had something like five million frequent flyer miles. But I have no idea if he had violent outbursts, or what kinds of suits he wore.
Spiegel: Until now, Adam Sandler had mainly starred in crude comedies like “Big Daddy” or “Mr. Deeds”. For many, the casting of him in one of your films was a surprise. What do you see in Sandler that others miss?
Anderson: I believe I simply pay attention. I look very closely. I really love his films. I see what he does, and one should not take them so lightly. I wanted to write a film for him, although I originally only had pieces. He has something magical, a wonderful, soft confidence that is very rare.
Spiegel: You are notorious for casting big-named stars in unusual roles: Burt Reynolds in “Boogie Nights”, Tom Cruise in “Magnolia” – and now Adam Sandler.
Anderson: I simply get those who I think are right for the role at the time. Above all, I am interested in what kind of people they are. I don’t want to see them in a role, I want to see them as they really are. You should not try to make them into something completely different. I always try to build from their own personalities.
Spiegel: In this film, there are some very unnerving love scenes, in which Adam Sandler says to Emily Watson: “You face is so beautiful, that I’d like to smash it.”
Anderson: You don’t know that feeling? That feeling that you love someone so much, that you would like to devour them or kill them?
Spiegel: Do love and aggression go hand in hand for you?
Anderson: That question is too big for me. I don’t know if that’s true. Maybe it is a feeling of being run over by love and not being able to steer it in one direction – not to know how to get control of it again.
Spiegel: Sandler’s aggression seems to be coupled directly with his seven sisters in the film. Is your own life also full of dominant women?
Anderson: No, I only have one sister, a great woman. But I know a guy, who has seven or eight brothers, and slept every night with his eyes open, because they would always scare him and surprise him in the middle of the night. And then I saw this police show on TV, there was a guy who was arrested wearing a bloody shirt. He had fought with his sisters, who, as it turns out, had beaten him up. They asked him where they should bring him, and he said: to Shelley or to Dianne, I have six other sisters…I thought that didn’t sound too good for him. I wouldn’t want to change places with that man who stood there in the bloody shirt. But maybe it was also just my fantasy.
Spiegel: In “Punch-Drunk Love”, one’s imagination sometimes gets rattled from the hard contrasts and constant tempo changes.
Anderson: There is a lot there, when you don’t know what will happen next. There is an old rule that says, you can annoy your audience for two minutes, but don’t let them know ten seconds in advance what’s going to happen. I try to surprise the audience – they resist that.
Spiegel: Does this speak to your filmic dogma?
Anderson: What worked once does not necessarily have to work again. I often try out new things. You should not stop pushing yourself, to chase after things and to scare yourself a little. When I am excited about filmmaking, the audience will be also. When you lose sight of that, you risk shooting yourself in the ass.
Spiegel: After two films that were well over two hours long, you have made a film that is a brief ninety minutes – a measure of discipline?
Anderson: Yeah, I wanted to intentionally challenge myself and scare myself a little. I thought that’s how I would have to sort it out, by what I liked to watch and what bored me.
Spiegel: How difficult did you find that?
Anderson: The first two weeks were the real battle. I had the feeling that we were picking around at the idea, having no idea what we were doing, and somehow that it all didn’t make sense or didn’t work. First, the feeling finally set in: Okay, here it is, that’s right. Do you know the feeling when you write something and then rewrite in 900 times, but the only one that worked was the first one? But somehow you have to get through that whole doubt and searching first to understand that. It is as if you pulled it out of your ass, and it creeps into your head.
Spiegel: In Hollywood you are seen as kind of a prodigy, with your films regularly featured at all of the top festivals in the world. How do you handle that?
Anderson: Well, above all, there is a buzz and you always have to keep that in sight. It’s really bad when it starts to have influence on your work. You just have to put your head down and do your job. Otherwise you lose the understanding of that too quickly.
Spiegel: Are you actually a political person? Many of your colleagues have come out as sharp critics of the Bush administration…
Anderson: Isn’t George W. Bush the most exemplary American that we have? I think that he has lost sight of it! As a politician you can probably count him with the big ones – he is slick as an eel and clever, and he has been through the most impossible things. And no one can stop him. I always ask myself if George W. Bush really knows how powerful America actually is. It is like the bullies in a school who don’t know their own power. Every movement of America can harm the entire world. And Bush is like an elephant in a porcelain shop.
April 13th, 2003
The exceptional American director Paul Thomas Anderson about his new film “Punch-Drunk Love,” his penchant for unorthodox casting, and the connection between love and violence.
Spiegel: Mr. Anderson, you obviously like to engage apocalyptic scenarios. In “Magnolia” there were raining frogs, and in your new film “Punch-Drunk Love” there is a type of catastrophic whirlpool, in which your lead actor Adam Sandler is the catalyst. Where do these ideas come from?
PTA: From this secret place, where all ideas come from. But the situation, where one is pulled into such a whirlpool, is very old: that is Buster Keaton: the little man in the middle, who has shit always flying around him. One of the proven methods to bring verve into a story is to have a little fun.
Spiegel: Adam Sandler’s figure, the sympathetic/eccentric loser Barry Egan, is allegedly based on a real person.
Anderson: In part, yes. There is an engineer in California, who in fact bought $12,000 of pudding to get these frequent flyer miles. But it went even further: There was an promotion of seven or eight South American airline companies that wanted to advertise their flights between North- and South America. If you would fly on these airlines within a specific timeframe, they would promise you one million frequent flyer miles. This guy really did it. He was in twelve countries in four days. He now had something like five million frequent flyer miles. But I have no idea if he had violent outbursts, or what kinds of suits he wore.
Spiegel: Until now, Adam Sandler had mainly starred in crude comedies like “Big Daddy” or “Mr. Deeds”. For many, the casting of him in one of your films was a surprise. What do you see in Sandler that others miss?
Anderson: I believe I simply pay attention. I look very closely. I really love his films. I see what he does, and one should not take them so lightly. I wanted to write a film for him, although I originally only had pieces. He has something magical, a wonderful, soft confidence that is very rare.
Spiegel: You are notorious for casting big-named stars in unusual roles: Burt Reynolds in “Boogie Nights”, Tom Cruise in “Magnolia” – and now Adam Sandler.
Anderson: I simply get those who I think are right for the role at the time. Above all, I am interested in what kind of people they are. I don’t want to see them in a role, I want to see them as they really are. You should not try to make them into something completely different. I always try to build from their own personalities.
Spiegel: In this film, there are some very unnerving love scenes, in which Adam Sandler says to Emily Watson: “You face is so beautiful, that I’d like to smash it.”
Anderson: You don’t know that feeling? That feeling that you love someone so much, that you would like to devour them or kill them?
Spiegel: Do love and aggression go hand in hand for you?
Anderson: That question is too big for me. I don’t know if that’s true. Maybe it is a feeling of being run over by love and not being able to steer it in one direction – not to know how to get control of it again.
Spiegel: Sandler’s aggression seems to be coupled directly with his seven sisters in the film. Is your own life also full of dominant women?
Anderson: No, I only have one sister, a great woman. But I know a guy, who has seven or eight brothers, and slept every night with his eyes open, because they would always scare him and surprise him in the middle of the night. And then I saw this police show on TV, there was a guy who was arrested wearing a bloody shirt. He had fought with his sisters, who, as it turns out, had beaten him up. They asked him where they should bring him, and he said: to Shelley or to Dianne, I have six other sisters…I thought that didn’t sound too good for him. I wouldn’t want to change places with that man who stood there in the bloody shirt. But maybe it was also just my fantasy.
Spiegel: In “Punch-Drunk Love”, one’s imagination sometimes gets rattled from the hard contrasts and constant tempo changes.
Anderson: There is a lot there, when you don’t know what will happen next. There is an old rule that says, you can annoy your audience for two minutes, but don’t let them know ten seconds in advance what’s going to happen. I try to surprise the audience – they resist that.
Spiegel: Does this speak to your filmic dogma?
Anderson: What worked once does not necessarily have to work again. I often try out new things. You should not stop pushing yourself, to chase after things and to scare yourself a little. When I am excited about filmmaking, the audience will be also. When you lose sight of that, you risk shooting yourself in the ass.
Spiegel: After two films that were well over two hours long, you have made a film that is a brief ninety minutes – a measure of discipline?
Anderson: Yeah, I wanted to intentionally challenge myself and scare myself a little. I thought that’s how I would have to sort it out, by what I liked to watch and what bored me.
Spiegel: How difficult did you find that?
Anderson: The first two weeks were the real battle. I had the feeling that we were picking around at the idea, having no idea what we were doing, and somehow that it all didn’t make sense or didn’t work. First, the feeling finally set in: Okay, here it is, that’s right. Do you know the feeling when you write something and then rewrite in 900 times, but the only one that worked was the first one? But somehow you have to get through that whole doubt and searching first to understand that. It is as if you pulled it out of your ass, and it creeps into your head.
Spiegel: In Hollywood you are seen as kind of a prodigy, with your films regularly featured at all of the top festivals in the world. How do you handle that?
Anderson: Well, above all, there is a buzz and you always have to keep that in sight. It’s really bad when it starts to have influence on your work. You just have to put your head down and do your job. Otherwise you lose the understanding of that too quickly.
Spiegel: Are you actually a political person? Many of your colleagues have come out as sharp critics of the Bush administration…
Anderson: Isn’t George W. Bush the most exemplary American that we have? I think that he has lost sight of it! As a politician you can probably count him with the big ones – he is slick as an eel and clever, and he has been through the most impossible things. And no one can stop him. I always ask myself if George W. Bush really knows how powerful America actually is. It is like the bullies in a school who don’t know their own power. Every movement of America can harm the entire world. And Bush is like an elephant in a porcelain shop.