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Paul Thomas Anderson: Writer-Director Paul Thomas Anderson
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Paul Thomas Anderson famously dropped out of NYU film school after just a couple of days, intent on beginning a career making movies. It worked: At 26, the writer-director released a remarkable debut feature, 1996's Hard Eight, which featured several actors that would become part of his troupe, including Philip Seymour Hoffman, John C. Reilly, and Philip Baker Hall. Anderson's real breakthrough, though, came via 1997's Boogie Nights, a simultaneously hilarious and heartbreaking ensemble piece set in the porn industry. His even more sprawling Magnolia—another melancholy love letter to southern California—earned Oscar nominations and high praise; he followed that with the unsentimental, beautifully off-kilter romantic comedy Punch Drunk Love, starring Adam Sandler. Then Anderson seemed to disappear.
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Writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson's newest epic, There Will Be Blood, very loosely based on Upton Sinclair's 1927 novel Oil!, spans almost 30 years in the life of Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) and his quest for land and wealth. One night, young Paul Sunday (Paul Dano) arrives in Plainview's office with the desire to trade information on the location of an ocean of oil for a price. Plainview travels to the Sunday farm under the pretense of taking his young son quail hunting, and offers to buy the land for next to nothing.
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Writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson was born on this day in Studio City, California in 1970. He briefly attended Emerson College and NYU, but both stints were short-lived. Instead of a traditional education, Anderson chose the school of real life--working as a production assistant on TV movies, videos and game shows. Anderson’s first film, Cigarettes & Coffee, was a hit at the 1993 Sundance Film Festival. Anderson is best known for his large casts and complex independent film inspirations with interweaving storylines. His breakout film, Boogie Nights (1997), was critically acclaimed as the best film of the year by many film critics and one of the finest examinations of the porn industry.
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Writer-Director Paul Thomas Anderson