Budding genius

A talk with P.T. Anderson

LOS ANGELES -- After three hours of Magnolia, one of the year's most challenging and ambitious movies, a bizarre, intense exploration of subjects ranging from fate and coincidence to game shows and tabloid TV, the question everyone is most eager to ask director P.T. (formerly Paul Thomas) Anderson was: that big kielbasa Tom Cruise sports in his shorts -- was it real?

"I learned to put a big dick in every movie," says Anderson, referring to the prosthesis Mark Wahlberg exposes at the end of the wunderkind director's last film, Boogie Nights, an epic of the '70s porn industry and family values. "Is it real? Ask Nicole [Kidman, Cruise's wife]."

Clearly, Anderson is a filmmaker who values length, but he doesn't think size matters much if you don't know how to use it. Magnolia, as he describes it, follows a calculated, quasi-musical structure. Starting with an abrupt statement of themes, it develops them and then resolves them in a climax and coda.

"I had this structure all planned out. Basically this prologue would happen a mile a minute, give you these three stories, leave you wondering, `What the fuck was that?' And then in a very quick and elliptical, musical way we'd meet our characters. And then actually the movie takes a slow beat to be able to introduce those characters with a little more information. Once you've done that, the movie kicks in. We're cross-cutting and the music starts and it just goes and goes and goes. We are winding through the day. And that will wind and wind and wind and wind, and ultimately you will get to the place where the rain stops. And then the idea was to slow it down there, to be able to take a breath on all that information that has just come at you."

Which sets you up for the film's big twist, which Anderson doesn't want to give away. When it's suggested that the film is like a cross between Jacques Demy's The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and Robert Altman's Short Cuts, he frowns. "I haven't seen Umbrellas of Cherbourg. There are parallels to Short Cuts -- an LA movie that has multiple characters. And I think I love Short Cuts, but I never thought of that. What I missed from Short Cuts is plot. It's just slice-of-life -- this happens over here, this happens, that happens -- and they're not entirely connected. What was interesting to me was throwing in a mystery plot. The thriller elements into everyday drama."

And since we're throwing around the names of filmmaking geniuses, how about the Stanley Kubrick reference of playing the opening bars of Richard Strauss's Also sprach Zarathustra as an introduction to Tom Cruise?

"Tom got this wonderful kick out of this, saying, `Stanley's going to love this. It's going to be so funny.' The idea was that you have the biggest movie star in the world in your movie. When he's first introduced, it's on this shitty little television screen doing an infomercial. But then for those who need the movie-star entrance, we're going to play 2001, and he's going to fucking come charging down the stage and say the line that he says."

Which is the now legendary "Respect the cock! Tame the cunt!" Was that line a factor in Cruise's taking this part after the sexual frustrations of Eyes Wide Shut?

"I think that was a major draw for him, actually. And I made fun of him after I saw Eyes Wide Shut. I said, no wonder you were fucking so anxious to be in this movie. You were the repressed Dr. Bill for two years. Two fucking years, man, you know, and you didn't get to do anything. The whole time he's dying to get laid. The guy's just . . . he's never said `cunt' in a movie before."

-- P.K.

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