Paul Thomas Anderson Talks ‘Phantom Thread,’ Daniel Day-Lewis & Borrowing Your Netflix Account

Paul Thomas Anderson’s career keeps evolving, changing and maturing. The days of high speed, Martin Scorsese and Robert Altman-indebted movies are long gone and what has emerged is something more true to himself, more akin to the director’s personality — unhurried, laconic and chilled out. His latest picture, the ravishing “Phantom Thread,” is another one of his latter day pictures examining the inscrutable mysteries of human behavior and in particular, the crazy, strange designs behind love. And while films like “There Will Be Blood” and “The Master” have centered on monstrous, great men and their idiosyncratic behavior, with “Phantom Thread,” Anderson subverts this paradigm and focuses on a female perspective of the same trope. Set in the glamorous world of fashion in post-war London, Daniel Day-Lewis, in his final role, plays Reynolds Woodcock, a renowned dressmaker, known for his fastidious personality and habits, and the royalty, heiresses, and famous clients he tailors for. Woodcock and his commanding sister Cyril (Lesley Manville) are at the epicenter of 1950s British fashion and nothing is stopping them.

READ MORE: ‘Phantom Thread’: You’ll Want To Live Inside This Masterful Film [REVIEW]

Things change however, when Woodcock, a confirmed bachelor who trades women like discarded outfits when they are no longer useful, comes across the deceptively passive Alma (Vicky Krieps), a strong-willed woman not content with simply being a muse. Once implanted in his life, Alma threatens to unravel Woodcock’s painstakingly controlled universe and what unfolds is a beautifully told, yet mysterious illumination of love and all its complexities through a filter of potentially imagined curses, secrets, unwavering routines and the ghosts of the past. It’s Peak PTA: gorgeously realized, classical in form, perversely funny, unknowable and uncanny. There’s nothing like it out there because few American mainstream filmmakers are so willing to address their subjects with an intuitive, diaphanous touch. “Phantom Thread” is simply spectacular and one of PTA’s best works (our review).

READ MORE: Rian Johnson Interviews Paul Thomas Anderson About ‘Phantom Thread’

I was recently fortunate enough to sit down with Paul Thomas Anderson and chat with him for the first time, and given my curiosity about his entire career, with films I wasn’t able to discuss with him in the past, I zigged and zagged all over the place. PTA is a bit of a slippery figure who talks loquaciously when engaged, but gives short answers with long pauses when you’re trying to psychoanalyze an element of his career he’s just not that interested in. Sometimes PTA took me too literally, and I’ll chalk that up to me failing to ask my questions with clarity, but the conversation took us to some fun, unexpected places. There was a lot of ground I didn’t get to cover, but perhaps organic conversation is whats works best with a filmmaker who wants you to lean in and keep you guessing.

So, to keep it simple to start, what was the seed or genesis that got this one going?
[Long pause] Many things working in parallel, really. Wanting to work with Daniel again was a priority, so trying to find a story that would work for him. At the same time wanting to make a movie about a woman, which is a pretty broad idea, right? Wanting to do something romantic. Wanting to kind of fulfill a desire to work in this Gothic Romance category, the [Alfred Hitchcock’s] “Rebecca” category I suppose.

I hear that, but I find it very, very different from “Rebecca.”
It’s very different and that’s a good thing, it’s not at all meant to be a homage. I mean, that’s your greatest fear when you’re inspired by something. I spent a long time trying to mimic things and then you sort of realize, “What if I tried to do something else that came more from me?”

Sometimes when you mimic something, it comes out all wrong in the best way possible.
For sure. You don’t want to be a Xerox machine.

The creation of “Phantom Thread” is said to be a collaboration with Daniel Day-Lewis, starting with the writing process. Did you have to sell him on a project first?
Not really… I mean, I do have to make my case, for sure, but there’s very little that we don’t see eye to eye on. I think we’re coming from a similar place. Rather than go off and spend a year [writing] and have some big “Ta da!” moment, like popping out of a cake — “I’ve got it!” — that seemed fucking stupid to do. In a practical way, I’d finished work, I didn’t have a job, I knew he didn’t have a job and it was like, I was kind of the school teacher. It was kind of like, “OK, we’re doing this. So, I don’t know where it’s going to go, but we should start noodling together and see what happens.” Because his work ethic is unparalleled as everybody knows. But, it does take a lot to peel him off the couch. But once you’ve peeled the beast up off the couch, pffft, wow, he will work you into the ground if you can’t keep up.

There’s a rigor and perfection in Daniel Day-Lewis, or at least in how he’s perceived, and in Reynolds Woodcock too.
Well, perfection would be the wrong word to use because that’s not Daniel. I mean, I think he can be… he works hard. And that unfortunately gets translated into obsessive or perfectionist, but fuck, I’ve known him for a while, we’ve done two movies together and searching for perfection is certainly not what he is about. But, this character may be pursuing that and quite confused by it, but I will speak for Daniel and say, there’s no pursuit of perfection because that’s what a crazy person does. And maybe that’s what Reynolds is, but Daniel certainly isn’t that.