Philip Baker Hall instructs a young man in waiting for The Pouring of the Coffee and the Lighting of the Cigarettes, which is "a latter-day bonfire." A young Paul Thomas Anderson clearly reread David Mamet's WRITING IN RESTAURANTS. A lot. Too much.
Stilted dialogue. Talking heads in a diner. "Intersecting" blah-blah.
PTA would go on to be--aw, let's just go ahead and say it--the best American moviemaker working today. And six years before he made this, he did the brilliant DIRK DIGGLER STORY at the age when you and I were horsing around with a six-pack in a forest preserve. So let's not--you know--hold it against him. Shocking, though, that such a master could make something so quintessentially film-school dumb.
Stilted dialogue. Talking heads in a diner. "Intersecting" blah-blah.
PTA would go on to be--aw, let's just go ahead and say it--the best American moviemaker working today. And six years before he made this, he did the brilliant DIRK DIGGLER STORY at the age when you and I were horsing around with a six-pack in a forest preserve. So let's not--you know--hold it against him. Shocking, though, that such a master could make something so quintessentially film-school dumb.