Stylistically, he was influenced by Rob Reiner’s THIS IS SPINAL TAP (1984) and its comedic documentary conceit. He was fascinated by the subculture of pornography, at least as it existed in the late 70’s when it was still relatively underground and unregulated. He wanted to make a film about John Holmes, the legendary pornographer with a legendarily large package. He recruited the talents of his father and his friends, and raised the money he needed to shoot by taking on a job as a birdcage cleaner.
From this ragtag collection of aging hooligans, PTA drew inspiration and began to forge a distinctive voice for himself.īy age seventeen, Anderson felt ready to tackle his first “serious” project. His father encouraged his pursuits, unconsciously enabling them by providing the junior Anderson with a never-ending source of creative character fodder- Ernie’s own eccentric showbiz friends.
DIRK DIGGLER VINTAGE SCENE TV
His father, Ernie Anderson, had been a late night horror TV show host under the name of Ghoulardi-a name that Anderson would later appropriate for his own production company.Īt the age of eight, Anderson made his first home movie, and at twelve he began regularly making them with his father’s Betamax video camera. But unlike Tarantino and Soderbergh, Anderson came from a family already well-steeped in the entertainment industry.
DIRK DIGGLER VINTAGE SCENE PROFESSIONAL
Like his peers Steven Soderbergh and Quentin Tarantino, he broke out as a professional director in the heady days of 90’s independent film, catapulted into the limelight by a formidable debut at the Sundance Film Festival. The first to cut their teeth using cheap video and not expensive film, they could afford to make mistakes– and they made plenty of them. To later find out that Anderson too attended Emerson (albeit only for a year) was a moment of untold delight for me-validation that I was on the right path towards a rewarding, fulfilling career in filmmaking.īorn in 1970 in Studio City, California, Anderson is firmly a member of Generation X, whose filmmakers were raised on an endless diet of movies on videocassette. He was a role model and a guiding light in the crucial moment of my life when my paradigm of what film could be was radically blown open. Anderson was the first filmmaker where I could actually see how his work was constructed and subsequently desired to emulate it.
When I entered Emerson College as a second-semester freshman, my roommates sat me down to watch 1998’s BOOGIE NIGHTS, his second feature and his mainstream breakout. I had first heard rumblings of his greatness towards the end of high school, when all the artsy drama kids could talk about was 1999’s MAGNOLIA during its cult resurgence on DVD a few years after its release. It should come as a surprise to no one that Anderson is a profound influence on my own work. Affectionately called PTA by his fans, Anderson is held up by his contemporaries as a shining example of a true artist creating truly important work-high praise for a man who has yet to even win an Oscar for himself.įilmmakers of my generation look to Anderson like the Film Brat generation looked to Stanley Kubrick-a god walking among us, an elder young enough to accessible, an ideal to which we aspire. While his output is relatively small compared to his peers, each of his films is of such an impeccably high caliber that his impact on the medium is undeniable. In the larger film community, director Paul Thomas Anderson is widely considered to be one of the greatest living directors in America. Influences: Robert Altman, Martin Scorsese, Stanley Kubrick, Orson Welles
Alma Mater: Emerson College/New York University/Sundance InstituteĪssociated Movements: New American Independents
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