Paul Thomas Ander­son: ​‘Daniel retir­ing com­plete­ly changes things’

What does a Paul Thomas Ander­son film look like? It’s a hard thing to put your fin­ger on, not least because in the 20 plus years since he start­ed mak­ing movies, the Amer­i­can writer/​director of Boo­gie Nights, Mag­no­lia, Punch-Drunk Love, There Will be Blood, The Mas­ter and Inher­ent Vice has nev­er real­ly set­tled into a famil­iar groove. His films are cut from the same artis­tic cloth, often con­tain­ing recur­ring faces and themes, but they are con­nect­ed more by mood than a bind­ing set of styl­is­tic prin­ci­ples. It’s there, but it’s woven so fine­ly into the fab­ric that it becomes almost imperceptible.

Anderson’s eighth fea­ture, Phan­tom Thread, is a strange, lav­ish romance set in 1950s Lon­don about a mas­ter dress­mak­er and his sphinx-like muse. It neat­ly illus­trates his con­stant­ly evolv­ing cre­ative process, and it rep­re­sents both the hot­ly-antic­i­pat­ed con­tin­u­a­tion of a fruit­ful col­lab­o­ra­tion and a whol­ly unex­pect­ed step into new nar­ra­tive ter­rain. We spoke to him about how the film – and its beguil­ing title – came about, as well as the retire­ment of his longterm col­lab­o­ra­tor and friend, Daniel Day-Lewis, and his idea of a per­fect breakfast.

LWLies: It’s inter­est­ing to be speak­ing to you 30 min­utes after the review embar­go on Phan­tom Thread was lift­ed. Did you know Bar­bra Streisand is a fan?

Ander­son: I saw that she named it as one of her top films of the year. I was real­ly excit­ed by that! But the whole embar­go thing… I’m not quite sure I under­stand… I guess I under­stand the basic premise of an embar­go, but I don’t know that I like it. What do you make of it?

I see why film com­pa­nies do it, but a lot of the time it seems like an unnec­es­sary evil.

But if the premise is… Look, I fight bat­tles all day long, and real­ly it’s not my fight, but the impres­sion I have is that the idea of an embar­go is to max­imise inter­est in a film by ensur­ing that reviews come out close to release. That’s a rea­son­able enough thing. But it just seems so arbi­trary to me. Who looks at the cal­en­dar and decides that’s when we’re gonna lift the cur­tain? It’s a lit­tle bit… fuck­ing… I don’t get it.

Do you not have any say in the matter?

I could if I decid­ed to stick my nose into it. But I’ve got enough oth­er things to do. It’s their thing, they seem to like it, maybe it gives them some sense of pow­er, so why not just let them do it, you know? I try and con­cern myself more with the stuff that real­ly mat­ters, the things that can make a dif­fer­ence to the life of a film.

How involved are you in over­see­ing the posters and oth­er mar­ket­ing assets?

Some­what… I like to pass an eye over that stuff, sure.

Some­one point­ed out that the title card for Phan­tom Thread looks a lot like the one for The Age of Inno­cence. Was that intentional?

You know it’s fun­ny, that was brought to my inten­tion as well and I’ve got­ta say that that was not my inten­tion at all. I’ve done my fair share of rip­ping off but that was one that went straight over my head. We kind of went with this Reynolds Stone look. He did wood­cuts and the font we used is very sim­i­lar to ones he made for Cecil Day-Lewis’ books.

So there’s a famil­ial con­nec­tion there.

Yeah, Daniel turned me on to it and I thought it was great. It’s very sim­i­lar to that flour­ish that moves around the title of The Age of Inno­cence. Did Saul Bass do that one?

I think so, yeah.

Right, so any­way, the Reynolds Stone stuff is amaz­ing so that’s what we were going for with that.

Let’s talk about the title itself. The film was list­ed as ​‘Unti­tled Paul Thomas Ander­son Project’ for a long time. At what point did you set­tle on ​‘Phan­tom Thread’?

It’s a strong word, ​‘phan­tom’. I nev­er had a title in my mind but it was nec­es­sary to name the com­pa­ny, just on a prac­ti­cal lev­el. Dur­ing my research I came across this book about Vic­to­ri­an-era work­ing con­di­tions for women who were mak­ing these fan­tas­tic gowns. They were toil­ing away in shit con­di­tions with no light, no air, 50 of them shoul­der-to-shoul­der in a tiny room – clas­sic Charles Dick­ens stuff. And there was this phe­nom­e­non that kept hap­pen­ing of these women reach­ing for threads that weren’t there, and I saw this phrase and it just looked so right to me. You know when two words just go togeth­er? For a while we tried to come up with some­thing else but noth­ing else quite worked. It just sort of fit. I’m real­ly hap­py with it.

You’ve described Phan­tom Thread as a Goth­ic romance and even com­pared it to Daphne du Maurier’s ​‘Rebec­ca’. Guiller­mo del Toro tweet­ed a pas­sage from ​‘Jane Eyre’ as his response to the title: ​“I have a strange feel­ing with regard to you. As if I had a string some­where under my left ribs, tight­ly knot­ted to a sim­i­lar string in you. And if you were to leave I’m afraid that cord of com­mu­nion would snap. And I have a notion that I’d take to bleed­ing inward­ly. As for you, you’d for­get me.”

Well… god, he’s a smart cat that Guiller­mo. I think with a title you kind of have to… I don’t know… It’s always a strange thing, they’re either very clear straight away or they emerge lat­er on. ​‘There Will be Blood’ came ear­ly on and this one wasn’t clear at all. There was an idea for a moment that we were gonna call it ​‘House of Wood­cock’, but that’s not the film. Giv­ing the title of the film to one char­ac­ter seemed like a mis­take to me. I actu­al­ly see it more as Alma’s story.

The cast­ing of Vicky Krieps as Alma is inter­est­ing. Do you think it would have worked if she were played by a more high-pro­file actor?

You could make it work in a dif­fer­ent way, which would not be the right way, at least not for what we need­ed. The idea of hav­ing a face that you don’t know… Ah man, I can’t even artic­u­late why… Why would that be bet­ter some­how? I don’t know the answer to that. I sup­pose it reflects the dis­cov­ery that Reynolds makes in the sto­ry. Is it the same if he comes across Natal­ie Port­man in that hotel? I don’t think it is. The risk was always, if you’re look­ing for that, how do you find some­body that hasn’t been found already? We got real­ly lucky. We were look­ing for some­body who looks a cer­tain way, sounds a cer­tain way, and who you could believe work­ing in that hotel and fix­ing that din­ner at the end. Vicky could do all that, she real­ly ticked every box. Some­times when you’re writ­ing a char­ac­ter you have a vague visu­al image in your head, and in Alma’s case I kind of had a cross between Joan Fontaine and Car­o­line Black­wood. Or like a young Mary Stu­art Masterson.

How long do you typ­i­cal­ly allow a project to gestate?

It varies. Some ele­ments of Phan­tom Thread were writ­ten down real­ly quite quick­ly after we fin­ished Inher­ent Vice, which I guess was around 2014. Just the basic idea of a rela­tion­ship between a man and a woman and a pow­er strug­gle. The kind of thing you write down is like ​‘a man and a woman’, ​‘a love sto­ry’, and then ​‘sis­ter?’ You write down a lot of stuff with a ques­tion mark next to it – that’s a great indi­ca­tion of when an idea is start­ing to come togeth­er. It’s fun­ny, when you read oth­er sto­ries about oth­er writ­ers and you realise you’re not alone when you see notes in mar­gins and on script pages, where these guys are doing the exact same thing as you. Ask­ing your­self ques­tions is always a good way to start build­ing a sto­ry. So I kept adding to this idea of a strong man who gets sick and the woman in his life who recog­nis­es that in that ill­ness he is sweet and vul­ner­a­ble and in need of her. And then it all hap­pened so quick­ly, which is such a good feel­ing. But there’s always half-baked sto­ries kick­ing around somewhere.

Are you some­one who has 10 ideas on the go at any giv­en time?

Oh god no! That’s too many. Gen­er­ous­ly I’d say two or three tops. And that’s fea­ture films, you know, although some are big­ger than oth­ers and some­times you break things up and you’re left with spare parts which end up being used for some­thing else.

Can you give an exam­ple of that?

There was a lot of things that I wrote and researched around There Will be Blood that became The Master.

There’s an inter­est­ing link between The Mas­ter and this film I think.

I think so too. That wasn’t evi­dent to me ini­tial­ly but there’s some­thing in the bizarre cen­tral rela­tion­ship between the pro­tag­o­nists. That push and pull, that intense dynam­ic between two peo­ple who have a great amount of affec­tion for one anoth­er but find it hard to com­mu­ni­cate. Yeah, chalk that up to ​‘bag of tricks: limited’.

Is Phan­tom Thread a love story?

It is, but then I guess it depends on what you expect from your romance movies. I tried to make a romance movie that I’d like to see. I don’t know… I watched The Big Sick the oth­er day which I thought was real­ly good, and I was won­der­ing whether peo­ple con­sid­er it a romance movie. It’s fun­ny but it’s got a strange title, it’s cer­tain­ly not a roman­tic film title. Obvi­ous­ly Phan­tom Thread is a very dif­fer­ent film but I think we could sit on the same shelf, don’t you?

If you were con­trol­ling the algo­rithm, what would come up in the ​‘if you like this…’ col­umn next to Phan­tom Thread?

Oooh… Well, the ones that we’ve already talked about… You would hope that some Cri­te­ri­on stuff would come up. ​‘I Know Where I’m Going!’ is a favourite, Daniel and I obsessed over that movie. The Pas­sion­ate Friends is anoth­er one that we real­ly love. I sup­pose if you could get any­where near the same ball­park as Brief Encounter I’d be hap­py. Drag­onwyck is anoth­er great one.

The Vin­cent Price movie?

Yeah, Joe Mankiewicz did it I think. That’s a real­ly good one. It’s based on a book by Anya Seton which is also pret­ty great.

As some­one who’s both a big Adam San­dler fan and a staunch advo­cate for 35mm, does it make you sad that he seems to be mak­ing films exclu­sive­ly for Net­flix now?

A lit­tle bit because I feel like things hap­pen on Net­flix and I don’t even know they’re hap­pen­ing. They’ve cer­tain­ly made their pres­ence known. To be fair though my Net­flix is co-opt­ed by my chil­dren so every­thing that comes up on my menu is kid-relat­ed. But they don’t real­ly have the stuff that I wan­na watch, hon­est­ly. I don’t know what the selec­tion is like where you are…

Not great if you want to watch any­thing made before about 1985.

Right, well I like a lot of old­er, weird­er stuff and it’s pret­ty lim­it­ed on that front. But I can’t real­ly com­plain because I’ve nev­er paid for it, I’ve always used some­one else’s account. I’d love to work with Adam again though. We talk all the time, we talk about dream­ing some­thing up togeth­er but just haven’t come up with any­thing yet. I real­ly wan­na see The Meyerowitz Sto­ries but it only got a tiny, tiny release over here. I feel so old for say­ing this but I just want my movies to be movies. I wan­na see it big and I wan­na see it loud.

Obvi­ous­ly there’s been a lot of talk about Daniel’s retire­ment. What was your ini­tial reac­tion to that announcement?

My ini­tial reac­tion was, ​‘Oh my god!’ I was sur­prised. He’d spo­ken to me about it over the years but I fool­ish­ly didn’t take it that seri­ous­ly. I can only back up what he said in that press release and say that it’s a deci­sion that had been pulling him for some time. My take is just to embrace what­ev­er it is he feels he needs to do, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t secret­ly have some­thing in the back of my mind hop­ing that we’ll do some­thing else together.

You first worked togeth­er 10 years ago, so maybe in anoth­er 10 years…

Well, you nev­er know… But, you know, that would make him 70 and me 57, so there would have to be a real seri­ous reassess­ment of what the hell we’re doing. I think it’s good to prop­er­ly pause and wait and think about what’s going on and what’s next.

Do you see your­self mak­ing movies when you’re that age?

Yeah. I mean, I hope so. I don’t know how to do any­thing else. I’m rel­a­tive­ly hope­less when it comes to any­thing that’s not mak­ing movies. I know I’d prob­a­bly be very unhap­py if I wasn’t able to do this. But, you know, I don’t have a crys­tal ball. I fuck­ing love doing this. I can’t see myself los­ing that love. I feel so ful­filled by it. There’s only two places I want to be and that’s with my fam­i­ly or mak­ing a movie.

I was in Venice when The Mas­ter premiered…

That was a great, great night. It was so joy­ous, just the feel­ing that we had done it. We’d worked so hard to get that 70mm pro­jec­tion, which no one had done in such a long time. We moved moun­tains to make it hap­pen, so to be there in that beau­ti­ful city and to see it through and for the response to be so over­whelm­ing­ly pos­i­tive was just an unbe­liev­able thing. It was fuck­ing great.

I men­tion it because I inter­viewed Philip Sey­mour Hoff­man the next day, and he said some­thing about your rela­tion­ship which has stayed with me. He said: ​“My work­ing rela­tion­ship with Paul doesn’t mat­ter; it’s my friend­ship with him that does.” Is that a rare thing, and is it the same with Daniel?

It’s… This is all gonna just come tum­bling off my tongue in a pecu­liar way because it’s hard to describe how entwined and sep­a­rate those two things can be… You always val­ue the friend­ship because the friend­ship is also the work, or the hope, or the dream of work. But there’s also just times when it’s not about the work and you’re just shar­ing your lives inti­mate­ly. When that goes away and you’re in the blender of mak­ing a film togeth­er, I don’t think it’s ever tax­ing on the rela­tion­ship, but every­thing is so height­ened that it becomes a dif­fer­ent thing. I wouldn’t know how to work with any­body that I couldn’t be friends with. As I’ve got­ten old­er I’ve found that I just don’t have the incli­na­tion to work with peo­ple that I don’t care about or wouldn’t want to spend loads and loads of time with. There’s no point in mak­ing movies if you can’t have some fun doing it.

Does Daniel retir­ing lim­it you cre­ative­ly in any way?

God, you know, it makes me melan­choly to hear you even talk about him retir­ing. Hon­est­ly, in the midst of mak­ing and now pro­mot­ing this film, that thought hadn’t even occurred to me. That’s the kind of thing you size up once the smoke has cleared, I guess. I mean you’re right of course, it com­plete­ly changes things. But look, I shared The Mas­ter with Daniel just as a friend, to help get his ideas about the screen­play and what the film was. Same thing with Inher­ent Vice. So we can still have a cre­ative rela­tion­ship amid the friend­ship as well. But I get your point, you’re open­ing my eyes to that real­i­ty in way that I’m ful­ly unpre­pared to deal with right now.

Sor­ry about that…

No, no, you know what I mean… It’s a strange thing – for the first time in a long time we’ve gone straight from fin­ish­ing the film to putting it out, and so there’s still that feel­ing of ski­ing down­hill fast. There’s very lit­tle self-reflect­ing hap­pen­ing right now, which is prob­a­bly a good thing.

What’s your ver­sion of a per­fect breakfast?

Oh my god… I’ll tell you: I per­son­al­ly pre­fer my eggs over-easy; toast kin­da crispy; loads and loads of but­ter – I’m the oppo­site of Reynolds, I mean I real­ly just fuck­ing lath­er it up – chives on top; not too much salt; avo­ca­do; black cof­fee. I don’t eat meat but in the old days I’d prob­a­bly throw some bacon and sausage in there. I could go on and on about breakfast…

What does a typ­i­cal break­fast on set look like?

Well, unfor­tu­nate­ly that looks like cold break­fast bur­ri­tos in a field. Just stan­dard set food real­ly. I have to say I’m not real­ly a big por­ridge guy. When we were over in the UK shoot­ing, every­body was eat­ing por­ridge. It’s more of a native thing I guess.

And there we were think­ing you’d made a quin­tes­sen­tial­ly British film…

I know, I know… Talk about lift­ing up the veil. What can I say, as a Cal­i­forn­ian it just doesn’t ring my bell.

Phan­tom Thread is released 2 Feb­ru­ary. Read our review.