{"id":253431,"date":"2025-09-25T11:06:16","date_gmt":"2025-09-25T11:06:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/253431\/"},"modified":"2025-09-25T11:06:16","modified_gmt":"2025-09-25T11:06:16","slug":"paul-thomas-anderson-on-writing-the-pcc-and-one-battle-after-another","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/253431\/","title":{"rendered":"Paul Thomas Anderson on writing, The PCC and One Battle After Another"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paul Thomas Anderson<\/a>\u2019s latest film,\u00a0One Battle After Another, is considerably his most expensive effort to date. It was also, like\u00a0There Will Be Blood,\u00a0The Master,\u00a0Phantom Thread, and the rest of his subversive filmography, written on Microsoft Word. \u201cI\u2019m still stuck on the world\u2019s worst programme,\u201d the 55-year-old director tells me over the phone from LA, laughing. \u201cIt\u2019s stubbornness. It makes no sense. It\u2019s an addiction that\u2019s really unhealthy.\u201d<\/p>\n

After all, Anderson has a touch of old-school about him. The majority of his films are period dramas shot on celluloid. He explains that using Microsoft Word instead of Final Draft is like bashing out scripts on a typewriter with a sheet of paper. \u201cDeep down, I like to write the characters\u2019 names. I like to hit tabs.\u201d Does the inconvenience force him to think more about the dialogue? \u201cExactly. It\u2019s those hiccups you have to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

For around 20 years, Anderson has been tinkering with one draft after another of\u00a0One Battle After Another. At one point, the Word document was 600 pages long. (He claims it was easy to cut down because \u201c500 of those pages were shit\u201d.) With car chases, shootouts, and an action-heavy narrative that lives up to the title,\u00a0One Battle After Another\u00a0is Anderson at his most ambitious: it allegedly cost $150 million, which is approximately the cost of his five previous films combined. Yet it\u2019s still as peculiar and perverse as you\u2019d hope from a director who made it rain frogs in\u00a0Magnolia.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u201cIt felt no different than my other films,\u201d says Anderson. \u201cMagnolia, we shot for 100 days, and this was about the same, but with a break in the middle. When I look around, I\u2019m with the 15 familiar faces I\u2019ve always worked with. Whether you\u2019re doing a car chase in the desert, or a scene of a baby being born in a room in Inglewood, it\u2019s still the same 15 of us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shot on 35mm with VistaVision cameras,\u00a0One Battle After Another\u00a0starts off with a radical group, the French 1975, and two of its activists, Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Perfidia (Teyana Taylor), forming a romance fuelled by fighting fascism. When Perfidia has a secret tryst with Colonel Steven Lockjaw (Sean Penn), the revolutionaries disband and Bob flees with their child. Two decades later, Bob lives alone with his daughter, Willa (Chase Infiniti), the latter crestfallen to learn the truth about her mother: she was, in Willa\u2019s words, a \u201crat\u201d.<\/p>\n

With Lockjaw desperate to join a racist cult known as The Christmas Adventurers Club (yes, this isn\u2019t your typical studio blockbuster), Bob and Willa\u2019s home is targeted; Willa is rescued by a former French 1975 member, Deandra (Regina Hall), while Bob struggles to locate his daughter due to forgetting a password. Assisting him is Willa\u2019s beer-drinking karate teacher Sergio (Benicio del Toro). Like The Dude in\u00a0The Big Lebowski, DiCaprio spends almost the entirety of the action-comedy adventure in a dressing gown.<\/p>\n

\n

I\u2019ve had this overwhelming feeling lately. In the past week, I\u2019ve had to remember how I got here, and I\u2019ve genuinely come to the conclusion that what\u2019s taken so long is that I was waiting to meet Chase Infiniti<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Set in the present day, it\u2019s Anderson\u2019s first film to feature smartphones. \u201cI have to thank Leo and Chase for bringing it to my attention that the phone could be a ticking time bomb. If she\u2019s got a secret phone from her crazy-ass dad who won\u2019t let her have one, then we\u2019ve got a real problem in terms of the plot \u2013 in a good way. Which is: they\u2019re gonna get her if she\u2019s got a phone.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anderson constructed the script from three previous movie ideas: one was about a bounty hunter; the second involved a young female activist; and the third was an attempt to adapt Thomas Pynchon\u2019s 1990 novel\u00a0Vineland. (The screenplay is credited as \u201cinspired by\u201d\u00a0Vineland.) The film is ultimately stolen by Infiniti, who out-acts DiCaprio and Penn in key, heart-stopping scenes. In writing Willa, the story\u2019s politically minded hero, was Anderson inspired by the youth of today, particularly women of colour?<\/p>\n

\u201cI must be, because I live in a house full of them,\u201d says Anderson, who has four children with his partner, Maya Rudolph. \u201cI\u2019m starting to feel bad, because I put so much love and pressure upon Chase. I can\u2019t undersell how terrific she is. I\u2019ve had this overwhelming feeling lately. In the past week, I\u2019ve had to remember how I got here, and I\u2019ve genuinely come to the conclusion that what\u2019s taken so long is that I was waiting to meet Chase Infiniti. Without getting all Californian, astrological, and hippie about it \u2013 to your point, she is the hero of the movie. I put so much pressure on finding the right actor because of who I live with, and what I\u2019m surrounded with. Finding her was one of the lucky breaks I\u2019ve had in the movie business.\u201d<\/p>\n

We discuss the film\u2019s third act at length, especially certain scenes involving Willa. Anderson continues to pour praise upon Infiniti, then worries he\u2019s giving away too many spoilers. He tries to be as vague as possible: \u201cThe film needs to build to a very suspenseful climax that doesn\u2019t need a violent payoff, it needs an emotional payoff.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Pin<\/a>\"ChaseChase Infiniti in One Battle After AnotherCourtesy Warner Bros<\/p>\n

Through his side gig as a TCM programmer, Anderson has recommended five films to watch before\u00a0One Battle After Another:\u00a0Midnight Run,\u00a0The French Connection,\u00a0Running on Empty,\u00a0The Battle of Algiers, and\u00a0The Searchers. When I ask if Apichatpong Weerasethakul\u2019s 35mm dreaminess was on his mind, he tells me it was more Wong Kar-wai<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s the fucking looseness that he has, the kind of absolute swagger that isn\u2019t overly cocky but just so cool. I watched\u00a0In the Mood for Love\u00a0and\u00a0Chungking Express\u00a0a couple of months before shooting. I wanted to remember his energy, particularly for the first act of our movie. He\u2019s also a great 1.85 shooter.\u201d<\/p>\n

On his own film\u2019s looseness, Anderson puts it down to the years of planning and picking the right locations. \u201cThe way Wong Kar-wai inhabits cities and shoots \u2013 it feels like people walking along the streets with a camera. That was a good vibe for our story.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2006, Radiohead played an instrumental called \u201cSpooks\u201d live on tour; it ended up on the soundtrack for\u00a0Inherent Vice.\u00a0One Battle After Another\u00a0marks Anderson\u2019s fifth film with a Jonny Greenwood score. What happens if Anderson and Thom Yorke like the same demo by Greenwood? \u201cThere\u2019s been a few times where Jonny has written something that\u2019s earmarked as a possibility for Thom and Radiohead, but everybody\u2019s cool with using it where it seems appropriate,\u201d says Anderson. \u201cIt\u2019s like getting in line at the Jonny Greenwood McDonald\u2019s, and hoping you get served first.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

I probably could have made five more movies by now if I didn\u2019t spend so much time fucking around with stupid Microsoft Word<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I bring up rumours that Anderson did uncredited writing on Ridley Scott\u2019s\u00a0Napoleon\u00a0and Martin Scorsese\u2019s\u00a0Killers of the Flower Moon. Does he also get advice from other directors? \u201cI love to contribute in any way I can if somebody reaches out for help. Both of those things were a thing with Joaquin [Phoenix], a thing with Leo, and obviously with Marty and Ridley. It\u2019s always a privilege to say, \u2018Let me tell you my thoughts on the script.\u2019\u201d He cites his friendships with three late directors in Robert Altman, Jonathan Demme, and Robert Downey Snr. \u201cThey made me feel encouraged and confident.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anderson is a day away from flying over to London for press. I tell him that I envisage\u00a0One Battle After Another\u00a0playing at the Prince Charles Cinema for years to come, even if it\u2019s under threat of closure. \u201cFrom your lips to the landlord\u2019s ears,\u201d he says. \u201cSpeaking of one battle after another\u2026\u201d He adds, \u201cThe PCC is one of the best places in the world, if not the best. My ritual when I come to London is to check their schedule.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whatever Anderson does next, it\u2019s likely to again be written on Microsoft Word. I reveal that\u00a0when I interviewed Mia Hansen-L\u00f8ve<\/a>, I learned that she also does the same. \u201cSee, I knew she was brilliant! I need to talk to her. That said, I still don\u2019t even know how to use Microsoft Word properly. It has a mind of its own. It puts tabs where it wants to.\u201d With a laugh, he adds, \u201cI probably could have made five more movies by now if I didn\u2019t spend so much time fucking around with stupid Microsoft Word.\u201d<\/p>\n

One Battle After Another\u00a0is out in cinemas on September 26<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paul Thomas Anderson\u2019s latest film,\u00a0One Battle After Another, is considerably his most expensive effort to date. It was…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":253432,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[1037,12243,12242,12244,12245,12246,12247,12248,171,10574,1020,12240,12241,975,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-253431","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-art","9":"tag-dazed","10":"tag-dazed-confused","11":"tag-dazed-confused-magazine","12":"tag-dazed-and-confused","13":"tag-dazed-and-confused-magazine","14":"tag-dazedconfused","15":"tag-dazeddigital","16":"tag-entertainment","17":"tag-fashion","18":"tag-film","19":"tag-ideas","20":"tag-ideas-sharing-network","21":"tag-music","22":"tag-united-states","23":"tag-unitedstates","24":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115264617527735327","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253431\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}