From B-Roll to Boogie Shoes: The 10 Greatest Paul Thomas Anderson Music Moments

An article by Glenn Kenny (The Village Voice) has pinpointed the essence of Paul Thomas Anderson’s keen ear for soundtracks: “the knack of being able to choose the most unlikely, but absolutely correct, song to change the stress of a scene“.

But one could say this sentiment rings true for all of Anderson’s choices: the seemingly arbitrary firecracker kid in Boogie Nights, Magnolia‘s frog storm, the nude “A-Roving” scene from The Master… these things have no good reason to fit nicely into the narrative, yet they do. The flavor of a P.T.A. movie is no doubt bizarre (the product of his equally-kooky influences, Thomas Pynchon, Robert Downey Sr. and others), but it’s all the more digestible with the director’s sheer elegance in delivering something we’ve never seen before. And his penchant for music is no exception.

Ergo, here are the top 10 greatest music moments in Paul Thomas Anderson films:

10.) Harmonium Chaos – Punch-Drunk Love

At the midpoint of Anderson’s oddball rom-com, there is a moment where the film’s Barry Egan (Adam Sandler) is tangled between his belly-up business, a plethora of patronizing sisters, and most mysteriously, a harmonium taking up space in his office. Job Brion’s clanky score (titled “Hands and Feet”) complements the stressful scene perfectly. It’s an acoustic collage of brooms sweeping across the floor, tiny bells ringing, metal screeching, and the sound of a bathtub’s edges being rubbed. Barry’s paranoia is placed into audible form, making for an queasy and chaotic sequence.

9.) Ouija Board Nostalgia – Inherent Vice

Although it lost many with its stoner centric logic and one after another of befuddling events, there is a beautiful moment of clarity in Inherent Vice when Doc Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix) recalls a ouija board he once consulted during a dry spell. Neil Young makes a too-sparse filmic appearance with his song, “Journey Through the Past”, which is precisely what Sportello is doing: reaching into his cloudy bag of memories for some semblance of meaning. The line, “Now I’m going back to Canada” hark to Young’s roots, which began in Canada and have without question earned him the right to be chiseled onto the hippie Mt. Rushmore. This moment is brief, and sandwiched between the rest of the perplexing narrative, but it’s an invigorating detour into Doc’s love affair with Shasta, the catalyst for the entire film.

8.) The Loneliest Number – Magnolia

The exodus, so to speak, of Magnolia is a montage of our nine players at their loneliest point, poised to be dragged even lower: Jim Kurring (John C. Reilly) records a voice message asking for a companion, the deathly ill Earl Partridge (Jason Robards) is slowly losing his consciousness, and Quiz Kid Donnie Smith (William H. Macy) crashes his car with the haze of his waning success hanging over him. “One is the loneliest number” indeed. Aimee Mann’s cover of Three Dog Night’s hit sports psychedelic guitars and Beatles-esque backing vocals, laying a vivid coat of fantasy over the film – a fantasy where raining frogs, miraculous coincidences and one’s own pipe dreams may or may not come true.

7.) Seymour Hoffman’s Serenade – The Master

Anderson has stated that he would “trade all [his] screenplays for a writing credit” to Frank Loesser’s “(I’d Like to Get You on a) Slow Boat to China”. And when you watch Lancaster Dodd’s wounded and heartfelt rendition, you can see why. Whichever way you slice it, The Master is in many ways a romantic story between Freddie Quell and Dodd – not of a physical or passionate breed, but instead rooted in the human yearn to classify one’s self through someone else. Dodd’s lullaby is essentially a “break-up” song for the two. And as most sour break-ups go, they may make you stronger, but you are still fated to become (as Dodd puts it) “sworn enemies”. The next scene follows-up with Helen Forrest’s “Change Partners”, a song about the emptiness one feels when you change partners on a dance floor: precisely how we feel when we part ways with our proverbial “masters”.

6.) Pool Party Medley – Boogie Nights

With the closing of Eddie Adams’ door and the opening of Jack Horner’s, the Three Dog Night cut, “Mama Told Me Not to Come” perfectly embodies Eddie’s casting-off the chains of his spiteful mother. The tune is fun, summery, and damn catchy. But hidden underneath are trepidatious lyrics of someone “passed out on the floor” and how “that cigarette you’re smoking nearly scared me half to death“. Anderson is cleverly camouflaging the writing on the wall for the disasters ahead. Elvin Bishop’s “Fooled Around and Fell In Love” also shows up, scoring Little Bill’s wife bumping uglies whilst encircled in a ring of onlookers. It’s profoundly depressing, but fitting: Bill’s wife, a retired porn star, has now settled down, but perhaps this “love” is not what either of them signed up for. A third great track at the party is Hot Chocolate’s song, “You Sexy Thing”, a hammy theme for Scottie’s (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) attraction to Eddie. Though perhaps it’s a tad on-the-nose, you still can’t help but grin when Scotty removes his shades in sheer awe of the future Dirk Diggler.

5.) Up in Flames – There Will Be Blood

There may have been nobody better than Jonny Greenwood to take the helm once Paul Thomas Anderson turned to original scores. The scene above marks a major drawback to Daniel Plainview’s burgeoning empire: a total collapse of his venerated oil rig. Greenwood’s music begins with a steady percussion of drums, tambourines and rattling wood blocks. Not only does it sound like a frantic heartbeat as Daniel rushes his deafened son to safety, it’s also phonetically similar to the crackling of weak timber, as in, say, a flimsy oil rig. As the oil geyser catches fire, the beat lathers into something fiercer, adding scurrying violins into the mix, and a few sinister plucks of their strings as the rig goes down in flames. It’s utter desperation and madness.

4.) Long Take of Little Bill – Boogie Nights

This scene may seem to be about the foils: the end of the 70’s vs. the beginning of the 80’s, happiness of New Year’s Eve vs. Little Bill’s despair. But if there is anything welded completely together it’s the tension of Charles Wright’s “Do Your Thing” and Little Bill’s boiling hatred. In a three-minute long tracking shot (with no cuts), we follow Bill through Jack Horner’s house into a bedroom where his wife is cheating on him, back outside, into his car and back into the house before returning to the bedroom to shoot his wife and lover. The lack of edits or cuts weds with the song’s anchored rhythm/lack of a chorus or bridge. “Do Your Thing” sounds upbeat enough, but as a nigh-instrumental jam session, there is ultimately no lyrical message other than to “do your thing“, even if that thing is to reap terrible retribution.

3.) Hawaiian Rendezvous – Punch-Drunk Love

The song, “He Needs Me”, from Robert Altman’s 1980 film, Popeye, is sung by the meek, endearing Shelly Duvall (Olive Oyl). On its own, the track’s preciousness just may be too much for it’s own good. But arranged into Barry Egan’s trip to Hawaii to find the woman he loves, its whimsy is put to good use. The repetition of the phrase, “he needs me” (24 times) is all the justification we need to make sense of Barry’s erratic behavior and misplaced decisions (the 99 Cent Store pudding, the decision to keep the harmonium, the defacing of a public restroom). It’s just love. It’s reckless, it’s unpredictable, and all it takes is for someone to “need” somebody else. The repetition also has an anxious temperament to it. When Barry is huddled beside a pay phone trying to reach Lena, the phrase heightens the moment again and again by reminding us what is at stake.

2.) Aimee Mann Sing-Along – Magnolia

Perhaps the boldest use of music in Anderson’s repertoire, Magnolia sees its characters reach their respective breaking points, only to stop and sing in unison. Aimee Mann’s stanzas in “Wise Up” are divided among the characters, who sing along to the half-diegetic song. Claudia (Melora Walters) is given the lion’s share of lyrics, which directly reflect her situation: “You’ve got what you want. And you can’t hardly stand it“. Claudia fears real human contact after being abused as a child, and even though she has found someone who care for her it’s frightening. Another telling verse is the one sung by Linda Partridge (Julianne Moore): “Prepare a list for what you need before you sign away the deed“, which sums up her dilemma of securing her dying husband’s assets before committing suicide. Other characters’ verses are less-relevant, and only repeat the phrase, “It’s not going to stop ’til you wise up“, a theme of resilience to the pain they all share.

1.) Botched Drug Deal Suite – Boogie Nights

This should come as no surprise to anyone frequenting the countless P.T.A. blogs and articles over the years. It’s a mythic moment that has been analyzed since it’s 1997 for its Tarantino-ish dialogue, it’s lathering sense of panic, the unexplained presence of firecrackers, Mark Wahlberg’s 50-second catatonic stare, and Alfred Molina’s doped-up performance as the scene’s tractor beam of attention, Rahad Jackson. The scene flaunts giant 80’s hits, “Sister Christian” and “Jessie’s Girl”, all the while Rahad Jackson indulges his three swindlers (Dirk, Reed and Todd) on his cassette-mixing opinions. Much has been written about this scene already, so I’ll just let the music speak for itself. It’s possibly the paramount of Anderson’s lengthy and inspired body of work.

How Much Should We Tie Up? [Movie Review]

WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD!

You have two ways to end a movie: either tie everything up in a big bow or leave some unresolved loose ends. Maybe you want to go the montage route – à la the Six Feet Under finale – and plug up every plot point in sight. Or maybe you want to take a cue from Darren Aronofsky and leave your characters’ fates up in the air.

Before you choose, consider the time-tested rules set forth by the mavens of screenwriting. The lauded Syd Field Paradigm, for example, dictates that in Act III, “issues of the story are resolved“, thus “tying up the loose ends… giving the audience closure”  (Syd Field, author of Screenplay).

In addition, screenwriting darling Blake Snyder says:

“The finale…is where we wrap it up. It’s where the lessons learned are applied. It’s where the character tics are mastered.” – Blake Snyder, Save The Cat! (p.90).

The role of a Hollywood film ending is to be a perfect remedy, to restore balance. It’s a vital organ in the celluloid anatomy, and it’s what nearly every mainstream movie abides by.

And surprise, surprise – it’s the same ending most audiences prefer, too:

Film, with its crux of marketing and budgets, is set apart from other mediums. The thing has to sell. It has to honor the audience’s time and the studio’s money, so risk-taking isn’t exactly encouraged.

In novels – a cheap medium by comparison – the goal of an ending isn’t merely to seal plot points, but to convey/replicate a truthful human experience. In fact, works considered to be classics – Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle – can end somewhat crudely, and with very little resolved. We don’t need to know if the Joad family ever found work in California. There doesn’t need to be an explanation of Creta Kano’s whereabouts in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. The catharsis you get after turning the final page comes from other entities: its reality, its characters, etc.

But when film drifts into this territory, it’s unwelcome.

Take perhaps the most oft-used example of an open-ended film: the Coen brothers’ No Country For Old Men (2007):

Up until this scene, we have been in the throes of a cat-and-mouse tale, following the diabolical Anton Chigurh (played by Javier Bardem) as he leaves a trail of death in his path.  He kills our hero and survives a car crash… but then what? The final scene features the sheriff (Tommy Lee Jones) recounting a dream he had. Okay… then what? Nothing. The last line, “Then I woke up” juts into your belly as the credits roll and you’re left with nothing but questions. What happened to Chigurh? What about the wife? Who stole the money?

No doubt someone you know had this first reaction. Curiously enough, even after going against the screenwriting rules mentioned above, this film was rewarded the Oscar for Best Picture. So how did this happen?

Let writing heavyweight, Robert McKee give us his two cents:

McKee explains that No Country exists in a world where nobody (the law, the renegade [Josh Brolin], and even sheer luck) cannot kill evil. Police officers, like the sheriff, are rendered hopeless in this new, desolate world on the horizon. The very title of the film suggests that old-fashioned justice has fallen victim to obsolescence and those who still cling to it will follow suit. Since the movie was based on a novel, it could be said that No Country is a perfect adaptation in that it keeps its ending rooted in reality/theme, not air-tight plot.

Still not satisfied? Well, maybe that’s okay. When it comes to the crime genre, messy endings are kind of its thing. Take the immortal Neo-Noir classic, Chinatown (1974):

We’ve just spent the last two hours with Jake Gittes uncovering a seedy conspiracy, and the only reward for his efforts is a slap in the face. Is it an open-ending in the traditional sense? Not really. But it does refuse to nurture the seeds of plot planted earlier in the movie (i.e. the fates of Katherine and California at large). Similar to No Country, Chinatown‘s theme is corruption, and thus, the ending doesn’t have to be satisfying. It lives by its theme.

But open endings rooted in theme aren’t only tethered to the crime genre. Take the ending of Noah Baumbach’s 2005 film, The Squid and the Whale:

The final shot of the movie – Jesse Eisenberg gazing at a nostalgic diorama from his childhood – isn’t necessarily the closure to this tale that we want. After all, it doesn’t answer the question of whether or not his family can have a peaceful joint custody. But is that really what we need to be satisfied? Baumbach’s eye for realism gives us something much more: a believable, harsh-but-true fate for his characters. No need to gild the lily. Endings like this can also be found in Little Miss Sunshine (2006) and Up In The Air (2009).

Added to this, there is a third species: the dual-ending. In this variation, reality becomes distorted in a way where it can be interpreted a number of ways, with multiple outcomes.

Maybe the best recent example of this is 2015’s Best Picture Oscar winner, Birdman. Its final scene shows Riggan (Michael Keaton) leaping from his hospital room to the street below. His daughter rushes to the open window, her eyes ascending from the street to the sky, suggesting Riggan has taken flight.

Many have discussed the scene’s unexplained elements: did he kill himself and his daughter’s reaction is just his fantasy? Or, did he really kill himself on-stage during his play? A duplicitous ending like this fulfills both a closed and open-ended story. Audiences are free to decide for themselves, almost subverting any adverse reactions entirely by leaving it in the hands of others.

Here is a list of other binary endings, and their corresponding theories:

Fight Club (1999) – the Narrator killed himself, and the explosions were only his fantasy.

Blade Runner (1982) – Rick Deckard is a replicant.

Inception (2010) – Cobb is still trapped in a dream, and his home/children are only his projections.

Are these ambiguous endings as perfect a balance between theme and plot as we can get? It remains to be seen. There is no palpable answer because every person seeks something different in a movie. Some need a tied-up ending with a cherry on top. Others are content with a frayed mess. But one thing we can take solace in is change. In his book, Story, Robert McKee explains:

“Climax is a revolution in values from positive to negative or negative to positive with or without irony – a value swing at maximum change that’s absolute and irreversible. The meaning of that change moves the heart of the audience” (McKee, p. 309).

Although we may never agree if an open or closed-ending is better, one thing all endings need is change. A profound, dramatic transformation.

Embracing the Bruises: Cinema’s Most Resilient Characters [Movie Review]

Enduring the harshness of life and rising from the ashes is essential to the mainstream character arc. So much so, that writers have it down to a science. Author Blake Snyder of the screenwriting bible, Save The Cat!, breaks it down as follows: on pages 75-85 in a screenplay, there must be some dramatic downward spiral – the “why hast thou forsaken me, Lord?” moment – to set the character up to improve in Act III.

And from the dawn of storytelling, this has been true. Take storytelling’s own Magna Carta: Aristole’s Poetics:

“The sequence of events, according to the law of probability or necessity, will admit of a change from bad fortune to good, or from good fortune to bad” – Aristotle, VII. 5 – VIII. 3

Watching characters fall and rise again is what produces that juicy feeling of empathy and catharsis, the mark of a good ending. Perhaps the best example of this resilience is found in Gone With the Wind (1939):

In this scene, Scarlett O’Hara (by today’s standards, perhaps unsubtle) neglects the sum of her problems, proclaiming, “Tomorrow is another day“. This still goes down in history as one of the most memorable proclamations from a character who is putting their problems behind them.

But what about the characters who don’t forget? What happens to those who dwell in the darkness for a while to see what they find?

In Disney-Pixar’s film, Inside Out, there is a rare character who does just this: Riley. Riley is controlled by her five emotional engineers – Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust – and it becomes clear in the first 10 minutes that the de facto leader, Joy, will stop at nothing to prevent Sadness from influencing Riley vis-à-vis her control panel.

In a way, Joy represents both the average moviegoer and the average movie plot: don’t be unhappy. Unhappiness means defeat. This paranoid sentiment carries throughout the movie until Riley hops on a bus to run away from home. All five emotions are compromised, and Riley is rendered a hollow shell. That is, until Sadness takes the helm and influences Riley to dwell in the unfairness of the world around her. This leads to an emotional climax where Riley and her family not only reunite in their unified anguish, but identify themselves through it.

The movie totes the message of befriending your own suffering, as you would not be the person you are without it. The concept of “core memories” are used to signify crucial sad moments that have sculpted Riley’s personality over the years. Not only is this message rare to find in a mainstream family movie, but it’s important. Indulging in one’s failures nurtures a knowing of one’s self, and subverts self-pity – which, as Stephen Fry can tell you, is for the best:

After watching Inside Out, I began to fish around my own core memories for movies with similar themes. Hollywood movies are pretty gung ho about “curing” their characters of sadness, so as you can imagine, this was not easy. But one film I could unearth was Benh Zeitlin’s magical creole masterpiece, Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012).

In Beasts, the film’s protagonist – a girl named Hushpuppy – endures Homeric episodes of tragedy: she loses her mother, a storm wipes out her home and her father dies. In one of the movie’s final scenes, Hushpuppy’s inner demons materialize into huge, marauding beasts and confront her at her father’s final resting place. It’s a poignant metaphor for her suffering: here she is, face-to-face with her worst enemies, and what does she say to them?

“You’re my friend, kind of” is the line she ultimately delivers.

Hushpuppy calls the source of her pain her “friend”, very similar to Riley’s acceptance of Sadness in Inside Out. In Beasts, the ability to mature and adapt is a major motif, and is likened to animalistic impulses. This theme is refreshing because it leaves no room for self-pity and hard feelings. It prioritizes self-understanding over blind happiness.

This isn’t to say that all other movies have robotic heartless protagonists, and that adversity is never truly conquered, but perhaps it would be refreshing to see more characters embrace their bruises, instead of persistently trying to slap rouge over them to cover their ugliness.

To leave you with one last dose of frisson, here’s a final example from Spike Jonze’s Her (2013): the wounded and humble Theodore Twombly.