Composite Interview

This concluding chapter illustrates segments of various interviews Paul Thomas Anderson has given about his feature films, and interviews with actors, such as Philip Seymour Hoffman on The Master. Ultimately, one of the main strands of argument in this book is that Anderson continues to guard the story of his mother that “he might tell;” and yet, the story is always working its way into his narratives about fathers, and carries the real burden of the narrative mystery. The motivation of Anderson's male protagonists in the three films—Punch-Drunk Love, There Will Be Blood, and The Master—becomes increasingly deformed, and in each case the mangling pressure derives from the protagonist's inability to secure a crucial lost balance and alignment with absent maternal shades.