146. Ethan Warren on the Craft, Legacy, and Apocrypha of Filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson

Paul Thomas Anderson may be one of the last American auteurs. The
term, which means author in French, grew out of the French New
Wave and eventually made its way to America by the 1960s where
the director asserted control and authorship over his–and it
often was his–films. The concept has come to represent a kind of
rebellion against the corporate content machine, a lone,
independent cowboy of authenticity in the arts. And yet today,
while the theory is still around, it’s difficult for a filmmaker
to sustain commercial viability as a brand while the film
industry finds itself shifting in the streaming age.





On today's show, Ethan Warren, whose new book is The Cinema of
Paul Thomas Anderson: American Apocrypha, is in conversation with
Tom Knoblauch about the changing landscape of American cinema,
the legacy of Paul Thomas Anderson, who directed films like There
Will Be Blood, Phantom Thread, and Boogie Nights, and what his
influence on the medium might be going forward.