Paul Thomas Anderson



Paul Thomas Anderson (more commonly known as P.T. Anderson), is an American filmmaker who has written and directed five films, including Boogie Nights, Magnolia, Punch Drunk Love and There Will Be Blood.

Anderson has been said to belong to the "VCR Generation" of filmmakers, grouped with directors such as Quentin Tarantino, Richard Linklater and Kevin Smith, and described as filmmakers whose careers were founded not upon film school training, but from an enthusiastic love of movies.

If Stanley Kubrick, Robert Altman and Martin Scorsese had made sweet, passionate love, P.T. Anderson would have been the fruit of their priapic loins.

Awful mental pictures aside, his real father was Ernie Anderson.

Not to be confused with Paul W. S. Anderson, although both have gone by merely Paul Anderson before.


 * Sydney (retitled Hard Eight)
 * Boogie Nights
 * Magnolia
 * Punch Drunk Love
 * There Will Be Blood
 * The Master
 * Inherent Vice


 * Angrish
 * Black Comedy
 * Church of Happyology: His continually delayed film The Master sounds suspiciously like a Happyology concept: A "charismatic intellectual" starts a religion in the 1950s.
 * Crowning Music of Awesome: His films usually contain at least one moment like this.
 * Cult Classic
 * Ensembles
 * Epic Tracking Shot
 * The Film of the Book
 * Mood Whiplash: P.T. Anderson is fond of what he describes as "Gearshift Movies". Similarly his films usually contain breakneck tonal shifts. The ending of There Will Be Blood is a notable example.
 * The Oner
 * Pop Star Composer: Aimee Mann, Jon Brion and Jonny Greenwood have provided scores for his films.
 * Production Posse: Usual suspects include Philip Seymour Hoffman, Julianne Moore, John C Reilly, Luis Guzman, Philip Baker Hall. Hoffman has been in every P.T.A. movie except There Will Be Blood and is slated to appear in The Master.
 * Smash to Black
 * Soundtrack Dissonance
 * Throw It In