On today's show, Ethan Warren is in conversation with Tom Knoblauch about his new book "The Cinema of Paul Thomas Anderson: American Apocrypha."
Paul Thomas Anderson, known for the films "Boogie Nights," "Punch Drunk Love," "There Will Be Blood" and many others, may be one of the last American auteurs. The term, French for "author," grew out of the French New Wave and eventually made its way to America by the 1960s, where film directors asserted control and authorship over their 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. 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.
Ethan Warren is a writer, critic and filmmaker based in Boston.
