When You’re Making The Movie Up As You Go

This moment was one of the most suspenseful I'd seen in a movie in years. The character Chase Infinity is

years. The character Chase Infinity is waiting for someone to come around that corner, and the entire $130 million star-studded action-packed blockbuster has built towards the

dramatic question, what will happen when they do? So, it might surprise you to

they do? So, it might surprise you to learn that going into shooting this scene, the actors and the director didn't really know what would happen. I

I I have to admit that we went into this movie without that as our ending. We

knew that all our participants were headed to the desert and exactly how it was all going to go down was unclear to us. The director not knowing how a film

us. The director not knowing how a film of this scale is going to end as he's shooting it might sound a little insane.

But far from being irresponsible, I think this is all just a result of Paul Thomas Anderson's unique approach to filmm and storytelling. An approach that I think makes his films some of the most unique American films of the last few

decades. an approach that has crafted

decades. an approach that has crafted some of my favorite endings in cinema and one that helps him consistently capture amazing performances. But what

is that approach? What is Paul Thomas Anderson doing that makes one battle after another feel so different from every other blockbuster we've seen recently?

To answer this question, let's rewind a little to the car chase that happens earlier. And if you haven't seen the

earlier. And if you haven't seen the movie, don't worry. I'll warn you before I spoil anything.

I've already seen some people calling this one of the best car chases in modern cinema, and I'd agree. But what exactly makes it so good? Certainly, part of the novelty

so good? Certainly, part of the novelty is the location. The almost nauseating waving hills create visual suspense and are unlike anything we've seen in a car

chase before. Some of it, of course, is

chase before. Some of it, of course, is the good filmmaking, the way the sound design and cinematography bring you into the physicality of the chase.

Notice how a lot of things kind of shake the way they would if you were really filming a high-speed chase in a car. But

I'd argue that those elements are secondary to the real reason the entire chase. And even a fairly static shot

chase. And even a fairly static shot like this feels exciting and suspenseful. Nobody's going to a movie

suspenseful. Nobody's going to a movie to look at a road. You know what I mean?

It's like the one thing that we all look at are the people in a movie. It's so

obvious, but it maybe it bears repeating. It's like no one cares about

repeating. It's like no one cares about the cars. They care about the people.

the cars. They care about the people.

>> Anderson isn't just talking here about showing the people driving the cars.

Although that's an important part of filming a chase. He's talking about how the entire reason we even care about the outcome of this chase, the thing fueling the conflict, drama, and creating

suspense in this sequence is the relationships between the human characters in the cars. It's the only thing that people care about. Maybe I

shouldn't be that I should say it's the only thing I care about. This focus on relationships is not just PTA's approach to A Card Chase, but represents his entire storytelling ethos. No matter

what subject he's covering, what themes he's exploring, or what period his film is set in, the one thing he's hyperfocused on is the people in his films and their relationships to each

other. When he tells the story of a

other. When he tells the story of a Scientology-like cult in the Master, there's so many ways you could approach telling that story, but Anderson focuses on one specific relationship between the

cult leader and one of his followers, and the entire drama of the film hinges on their unique sort of lovehate relationship. The whole film builds

relationship. The whole film builds towards a final confrontation between these two characters. Not where they're fighting or chasing each other, but where they have a conversation. This is

a recurring type of scene in his work I'll call the relational showdown.

When he makes a movie about capitalism, the oil industry in the American West, again, you could approach that story in so many ways, but he distills the conflict down to the relationship between a father and his adopted son,

and these two rivals, a ruthless businessman and a preacher, and the ways they both try to use each other's power for their own gain. Again, the entire

film builds towards one final relational showdown between these two characters.

When he makes a movie about an obsessive artist, he chooses to do so by examining the relationship between that artist and his muse and their battle for control

and power in that relationship.

Again, building the entire movie towards a final relational confrontation between them.

And before you jump in and say, "Yeah, that's just good writing. Every great

story focuses on the characters." Not

every film is like this. Yes, character

is screenwriting 101. But often the characters are trying to overcome specific external obstacles to resolve the conflict. For example, we care about

the conflict. For example, we care about the characters in Jaws, but the dramatic climax of the film is in their confrontation with a man-eating shark.

We already know how the two sides of this conflict relate to each other. The

big question for us is who will win.

Compare that to most PTA films where the dramatic climax happens not in action but in a conversation where we might be asking ourselves who will win but where we're probably wondering not who's going

to win the fight but if the characters are even going to fight, if they'll treat each other like enemies or make up and become allies.

This is a big part of what's going on in one battle after another. Presumably,

he's making a movie about American politics revolutionaries fascism and immigration. But just like with most of

immigration. But just like with most of his other movies, what he's really mostly focused on are a few core human relationships at the center of all of that.

>> Thank you.

>> You're hung over and you got home at 3:00 in the morning. That doesn't mean that the themes and conflict of the larger setting in his films are irrelevant, but we should keep in mind when we're trying to understand his work

that the lens he's using to examine any setting or theme is almost always that of a relationship at the center of the story and how the conflict of the setting manifests within those

relationships. Anderson, of course, is

relationships. Anderson, of course, is not the first or only filmmaker to use relationships or the meeting between two characters as the dramatic climax for the film, but he does this consistently

and with a unique intensity that I think few other directors achieve. His films

often center on relationships where deeply flawed or problematic characters are drawn together despite being incredibly toxic for each other. Or he

focuses on characters that have some kind of bond, but where larger forces seem to be pushing them apart. He's

interested in examining the ways in which human relationships seem to defy logic and frequently builds an entire film towards a scene where the central

relationship is what's at stake. Okay,

but how did he end up not knowing how this movie would end? To understand

that, we need to first look at his approach to working with actors. I'm a

little unclear as to what the plan is. I

need some direction.

>> Don't be unclear. One of the best characters in the entire film is Sergio, played by Benio Del Toro. And a huge part of what makes this character so fun to watch is simply the character's

relaxed energy in contrast with Bob's frantic anxiety.

>> Whoa, what's going on? Can you

>> According to Anderson in interviews, most of that big sequence that Del Toro is a part of was improvised. He says

that Del Toro brought a lot of ideas to this section and that the main piece of direction that Del Toro himself asked Anderson to give was simply to make sure he didn't accidentally start matching

Bob's frantic anxiety.

>> Courage, Bob. Courage.

>> It's always impossible to know entirely who gets credit for what in a film unless you were there on set, but from how this is described, it sounds like most of the character we see on the

screen in the film was created by Del Toro. Anderson's role here seems to be

Toro. Anderson's role here seems to be less writing and crafting this character and more simply setting the stage for this character to exist and facilitating capturing the scene on camera. I don't

think if you're an actor in a scene and you show up to work one day, I tell you where to stand and I tell you to go over here and I tell you to go over there that you're going to feel very collabor with this kind of light touch.

>> It's important to walk in with a plan.

obviously, but it's equally as important to be flexible on that plan.

>> Even the way Anderson shoots with a small crew and minimal lighting is geared towards giving the actors as much flexibility as possible.

>> Sorry, man.

>> You have to walk in open to everything and be ready to see something new. You

might be ready to shoot here, but you also have to be ready to turn around and shoot this way. Again, I have to say PTA is not the only or first director to give actors this amount of freedom, but he does so to a surprising degree. And

you start to realize how unique that approach is when you combine his collaborative spirit with just how much he lets the characters define the story for him. Even starting with the writing

for him. Even starting with the writing process, I try as hard as I can to not do the writing, to let the character do the writing. So hopefully you're getting

the writing. So hopefully you're getting into a state of kind of autohypnosis where the characters are kind of doing making choices and things are happening to them um that can eventually formulate

a story. It's an attempt at a type of

a story. It's an attempt at a type of creativity that isn't consciously moving towards a predefined outcome, but is instead guided by some underlying creative instinct or intuition emerging

out of a collaboration between the actor, director, and character. And it's

a big part of why I think I love PTA's films. They always feel unpredictable and alive to me. But when you're allowing the characters themselves to

drive the story, and you want to leave space for those characters to be developed in collaboration with the actors throughout the process and on set, you end up in some unexpected

places, and it can lead you to some tricky situations.

And this is where I can't go any further without major spoilers. So, if you haven't seen the film yet, come back after you do.

So, why didn't Anderson know what would happen in this moment? Well, as he said, they knew they were going to send all these characters into the desert for a showdown, that Bob would be trying to rescue Willa from Lockjaw and the

Christmas Adventurers, and that Willow would be trying to escape. But they

didn't know how any of that would play out. In the conventional Hollywood

out. In the conventional Hollywood version of the story where Bob Ferguson is the protagonist and the hero, obviously you'd have him come in, shoot somebody, and save the day. And for a while, that was sort of the plan.

>> If you take the traditional route, inevitably that father is going to have to shoot somebody to shoot somebody else to save the daughter, right? That's how

this stuff's supposed to go.

>> But then DiCaprio and the character had other ideas. Leo was so strong in

other ideas. Leo was so strong in forming a character that really was going to be incapable of shooting somebody properly, right? That we have to follow that and we have to kind of address that each step of the way. Say

realistically, what is plausibly what could Bob take care of? So if Bob can't save the day, then who does? Does

Willa just die? Apparently, they briefly considered darker versions, but you have this daughter of two very militant fighters. So, it makes a lot of sense

fighters. So, it makes a lot of sense within the logic of her character that she would be capable of doing the shooting and saving herself. But then

what happens when Willa and Bob meet back up? So, you set up the scene and

back up? So, you set up the scene and you try shooting an ending.

Will But it doesn't feel quite right. In an

interview with Rolling Stone, Anderson said he watched back the first version they shot in the dailies that night and he said, "Hang on, there's more here. I

mean, she's just learned that this guy was her real dad. That her mom was not exactly the uncomplicated hero that she thought she was. She's just had her entire life abruptly torn apart and

threatened by her biological father.

Would she even trust this guy anymore?

Who even is he? So, they went back and did it again, discovering the version we see in the final film.

>> Will Greenacres Beverly Hillies in Hooterville Junction?

>> No, no, baby. It's me, Will. It's me.

>> Green Acres, Beverly Hill BILLIES IN HOOTERVILLE JUNCTION.

>> OKAY. OKAY. And I'm glad they did because that scene is the one I find the most interesting in the entire movie. It

captures so much about the way the larger political turmoil in our country seeps into our individual relationships, even close family bonds. And it's in

that moment where for me, Willa really starts to feel like she has some agency and is the hero of the story. Like any

good PTA ending, I find it hard to articulate exactly what it means, but it feels true to these characters. It feels

like if these characters were real people, I'm watching what they would have actually done in this scenario. And

I like not quite knowing what it means because if you tie everything in your film into easily identifiable symbolism, a clear allegory or neat message, then

the film ends there. I know what it says and I walk away and can forget about it.

But for me, with one battle after another, like with There Will Be Blood, The Master, and Phantom Thread, I'm stuck thinking about this movie, mulling it over and wondering what it means. I'm

compelled to return to it, and I see something new in it every time. There's

something about these endings that are messy and a little illogical in the way human relationships are. Working this

way requires a lot of trust. It requires

the director to trust the actors. It

requires the actors to trust the director to lead them towards something good, even if it's not already all mapped out in the script. It requires

trusting that there's a value in allowing the characters themselves to inform where the story will go, rather than just trying to push the story into

where you think it should go. This

livewire form of storytelling isn't inherently the best. There are plenty of other directors who work in exactly the opposite way, intricately mapping out every line of dialogue and shot before

the movie even starts. And those kind of directors have also made a lot of great movies that I like. But Anderson's

approach offers a lot of freedom to actors that creates some incredibly compelling and complicated characters on screen and gives actors a lot of room to

really find something fascinating and compelling in performance. But it's not for everybody because it's inevitably going to take the story to some unusual

places. It's not going to fit into

places. It's not going to fit into conventional narrative structure. But

often art that is made with this kind of freedom and collaborative discovery is the art that I find the most interesting to look at and return to. And getting to

see that approach in a film of this scale is a rare treat.

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