A retrospective in honor of Academy Award-winning actress Julianne Moore, who was the special guest for Feature VII, a fundraiser benefiting Film Streams.
Shortly after the release of MAGNOLIA, director Paul Thomas Anderson spoke to The Guardian about the inspiration and evolution of his mosaic-like masterpiece. According to Anderson, the film quickly morphed from an intimate picture to a large ensemble drama: “I wanted to make something that was intimate and small- scale, and I thought that I would do it very, very quickly. The point was that I wanted to shed myself of everything that was happening around BOOGIE NIGHTS. And I started to write and well, it kept blossoming. And I got to the point where still it’s a very intimate movie, but I realised I had so many actors I wanted to write for that the form started to come more from them. Then I thought it would be really interesting to put this epic spin on topics that don’t necessarily get the epic treatment, which is usually reserved for war movies or political topics. But the things that I know as big and emotional are these real intimate everyday moments, like losing your car keys, for example. You could start with something like that and go anywhere.”
He wrote roles specifically for actors crafting roles that he felt would expose new sides of them: “I really didn’t want Phillip Seymour Hoffman to play another character-character, you know what I mean? I wanted him to play a really simple, uncomplicated, caring character […] As for William H. Macy, I think he’s scared of big emotional parts — he thinks actors shouldn’t cry — so I wrote a big tearful, emotional part just for him. And Julianne Moore, I just thought I really wanted to see her explode. I just haven’t seen her do that. I said, ‘I want you to go nuts!’”
