Like Jean Renoir and Max Ophüls, his films are characterized by a constantly moving camera. Like Truffaut and Scorsese, his films are the work of a true "cineaste", someone with an encyclopedic knowledge of film and film technique, and who is able to make tried and true techniques as fresh and as vibrant as when D.W. Griffith first started to discover them. Like Robert Altman, he thrives on working with large ensembles of actors. And like Steven Spielberg and Tim Burton, his films often depict suburban America as a place of alienation, and his characters are often alienated people who must in some way or another learn to assimilate themselves into some kind of family environment.
All of this comparison to past directors might make one assume that P.T. Anderson is unoriginal. That could not be further from the truth. Anderson is one of those great joys for filmgoers. A master director that seems to come out of nowhere. Like Spielberg in the seventies and Spike Lee in the eighties, Anderson went from being a grip to auteur in seemingly no time.
Another factor may be that if directors like Tim Burton and Spike Lee were born in the twilight of the baby boomer years (the late fifties), Anderson was born in 1970. He was one of the first of the "video store" generation of filmmakers. His father was the first guy on his block to own a VCR, and so from a very early age, Anderson had an infinite number of titles available to him. And while previous filmmakers like Spielberg cut their teeth making high 8 films, Anderson cut his teeth shooting films on video and editing them from VCR to VCR.
Part of Anderson's artistic DNA comes from his father, who hosted a late night horror show in Cleveland. His father knew a number of oddball celebrities such as Robert Ridgley, an actor who often acted in Mel Brooks' films and would latter play "The Colonel" in Andersons' "Boogie Nights". Anderson was also very much shaped by growing up in "The Valley", specifically The San Fernando Valley in greater Los Angeles. The Valley may have been immortalized in the eighties for its mall hopping "Valley Girls", but for Anderson, it was a slightly seedy part of suburban America. You were close to Hollywood, yet you weren't there. Would bes and burn outs populated the area. Anderson's experiences growing up in "The Valley" have no doubt shaped his artistic self, especially since three of his four theatrical features are set in "The Valley".
At a young age, Anderson got into film making. His most significant amateur film was "The Dirk Diggler Story (1988)", a sort of mock-documentary ala "Spinal Tap" about a once great porno star named Dirk Diggler. After enrolling in NYU's film program for two days, Anderson got his tuition back and made his own short film, _Cigarettes and Coffee (1993)_ . He also worked as a production assistant on numerous commercials and music videos before he got the chance to make his first feature.
His first feature was a little something he liked to call "Sydney (1996)", but would later become known to the public as "Hard Eight". The film was developed and financed through The Sundance Lab, not unlike Tarantino's "Reservoir Dogs". Anderson cast three actors that he would continue working with in the future, Altman veteran Philip Baker Hall, the husky and lovable John C. Reilly, and, in a small part, Philip Seymore Hoffman, who so far has been featured in all four of Anderson's films. The film deals with a guardian angel type (played by Hall) who takes down on his luck Reilly under his wing. The deliberately paced film featured a number of Anderson trade marks. Wonderful use of source light, long takes, and it also featured top notch acting. Yet the film was re-edited (and re-titled) by Ryshar Entertainment against Anderson's wishes. The film was admired by critics, but did not catch on at the box office. Still, it was enough for Anderson to eventually get his next movie financed. "Boogie Nights (1997)" was, in a sense, a remake of "The Dirk Diggler Story". But Anderson threw away the satirical approach and instead painted a broad canvas about a makeshift family of pornographers. The film was often joyous in it's look at the seventies and the days when porno was still shot on film, still shown in movie theaters, and porno actors could at least delude themselves into believing that they were movie stars. Yet "Boogie Nights" did not flinch at the dark side, showing a murder and suicide, literally in one (almost) uninterrupted shot, and also showing the lives of these people deteriorate, while also showing how their lives recovered.
Anderson not only worked with Hall, Reilly and Hoffman again, he also worked with Juliann More, Melora Waters, William H. Macy, and Luis Guzman. Collectively, Anderson had something that was rare in American cinema, a stock company of top notch actors. Aside from the above mentioned, Anderson also exhibited top notch performances from Burt Reynolds and Mark Walberg, two actors whose careers were not exactly rollicking at the time of "Boogie Nights", but found that they were that much more employable afterwards.
The success of "Boogie Nights" gave Anderson the chance to really go for broke in "Magnolia (1999)". A massive mosaic that could dwarf Altman's "Nashville" in the number of characters in the film. The film essentially dealt with a number of characters ranging from a dying family patriarch to a young boy being exploited on a quiz show, and how their lives begin to spin out of control on one really rainy day.
Many were perplexed by the divine intervention at the end (I will not reveal it for those of you who haven't seen it), while others were put off by the gloom and number of stories being intertwined. Yet just as many people were fascinated at how a young director, barely thirty years old, could make a film so complex and so powerful.
Anderson has certainly proven himself to be a director of formidable skill and power, but he has not yet reached a terribly wide audience. Still, he proved that he could win mainstream approval with "Punch-Drunk Love (2002)". Unlike his other films, PDL was not an ensemble piece, but a starring vehicle for Adam Sandler. Many people were a bit taken aback by the idea of the director of "Magnolia" directing a film with the star of "Billy Madison", even if Sandler's co-star was the always great Emily Watson. Yet PDL proved to be a bizarre, quirky, and very well made film that tapped into Sandler's anger and vulnerability in a way that his pre-pubescent comedies failed to. Anderson was also awarded a "Best Director" award at Cannes, while the film went on to do very good business at the box office.
Anderson will almost surely create more great works in the future. Whether he will cross over to a Spielberg sized audience or whether he will be fated to be a well endowed "national treasure" like Martin Scorsese (not a bad fate if you ask me) remains to be seen.
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