Paul Thomas Anderson on writing, The PCC and One Battle After Another

Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest film, One Battle After Another, is considerably his most expensive effort to date. It was also, like There Will Be Blood, The Master, Phantom Thread, and the rest of his subversive filmography, written on Microsoft Word. “I’m still stuck on the world’s worst programme,” the 55-year-old director tells me over the phone from LA, laughing. “It’s stubbornness. It makes no sense. It’s an addiction that’s really unhealthy.”

After all, Anderson has a touch of old-school about him. The majority of his films are period dramas shot on celluloid. He explains that using Microsoft Word instead of Final Draft is like bashing out scripts on a typewriter with a sheet of paper. “Deep down, I like to write the characters’ names. I like to hit tabs.” Does the inconvenience force him to think more about the dialogue? “Exactly. It’s those hiccups you have to do.”

For around 20 years, Anderson has been tinkering with one draft after another of One Battle After Another. At one point, the Word document was 600 pages long. (He claims it was easy to cut down because “500 of those pages were shit”.) With car chases, shootouts, and an action-heavy narrative that lives up to the title, One Battle After Another is Anderson at his most ambitious: it allegedly cost $150 million, which is approximately the cost of his five previous films combined. Yet it’s still as peculiar and perverse as you’d hope from a director who made it rain frogs in Magnolia.

“It felt no different than my other films,” says Anderson. “Magnolia, we shot for 100 days, and this was about the same, but with a break in the middle. When I look around, I’m with the 15 familiar faces I’ve always worked with. Whether you’re doing a car chase in the desert, or a scene of a baby being born in a room in Inglewood, it’s still the same 15 of us.”

Shot on 35mm with VistaVision cameras, One Battle After Another starts off with a radical group, the French 1975, and two of its activists, Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Perfidia (Teyana Taylor), forming a romance fuelled by fighting fascism. When Perfidia has a secret tryst with Colonel Steven Lockjaw (Sean Penn), the revolutionaries disband and Bob flees with their child. Two decades later, Bob lives alone with his daughter, Willa (Chase Infiniti), the latter crestfallen to learn the truth about her mother: she was, in Willa’s words, a “rat”.

With Lockjaw desperate to join a racist cult known as The Christmas Adventurers Club (yes, this isn’t your typical studio blockbuster), Bob and Willa’s home is targeted; Willa is rescued by a former French 1975 member, Deandra (Regina Hall), while Bob struggles to locate his daughter due to forgetting a password. Assisting him is Willa’s beer-drinking karate teacher Sergio (Benicio del Toro). Like The Dude in The Big Lebowski, DiCaprio spends almost the entirety of the action-comedy adventure in a dressing gown.

I’ve had this overwhelming feeling lately. In the past week, I’ve had to remember how I got here, and I’ve genuinely come to the conclusion that what’s taken so long is that I was waiting to meet Chase Infiniti

Set in the present day, it’s Anderson’s first film to feature smartphones. “I have to thank Leo and Chase for bringing it to my attention that the phone could be a ticking time bomb. If she’s got a secret phone from her crazy-ass dad who won’t let her have one, then we’ve got a real problem in terms of the plot – in a good way. Which is: they’re gonna get her if she’s got a phone.”

Anderson constructed the script from three previous movie ideas: one was about a bounty hunter; the second involved a young female activist; and the third was an attempt to adapt Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel Vineland. (The screenplay is credited as “inspired by” Vineland.) The film is ultimately stolen by Infiniti, who out-acts DiCaprio and Penn in key, heart-stopping scenes. In writing Willa, the story’s politically minded hero, was Anderson inspired by the youth of today, particularly women of colour?

“I must be, because I live in a house full of them,” says Anderson, who has four children with his partner, Maya Rudolph. “I’m starting to feel bad, because I put so much love and pressure upon Chase. I can’t undersell how terrific she is. I’ve had this overwhelming feeling lately. In the past week, I’ve had to remember how I got here, and I’ve genuinely come to the conclusion that what’s taken so long is that I was waiting to meet Chase Infiniti. Without getting all Californian, astrological, and hippie about it – to your point, she is the hero of the movie. I put so much pressure on finding the right actor because of who I live with, and what I’m surrounded with. Finding her was one of the lucky breaks I’ve had in the movie business.”

We discuss the film’s third act at length, especially certain scenes involving Willa. Anderson continues to pour praise upon Infiniti, then worries he’s giving away too many spoilers. He tries to be as vague as possible: “The film needs to build to a very suspenseful climax that doesn’t need a violent payoff, it needs an emotional payoff.”

Through his side gig as a TCM programmer, Anderson has recommended five films to watch before One Battle After Another: Midnight Run, The French Connection, Running on Empty, The Battle of Algiers, and The Searchers. When I ask if Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s 35mm dreaminess was on his mind, he tells me it was more Wong Kar-wai. “It’s the fucking looseness that he has, the kind of absolute swagger that isn’t overly cocky but just so cool. I watched In the Mood for Love and Chungking Express a couple of months before shooting. I wanted to remember his energy, particularly for the first act of our movie. He’s also a great 1.85 shooter.”

On his own film’s looseness, Anderson puts it down to the years of planning and picking the right locations. “The way Wong Kar-wai inhabits cities and shoots – it feels like people walking along the streets with a camera. That was a good vibe for our story.”

In 2006, Radiohead played an instrumental called “Spooks” live on tour; it ended up on the soundtrack for Inherent Vice. One Battle After Another marks Anderson’s fifth film with a Jonny Greenwood score. What happens if Anderson and Thom Yorke like the same demo by Greenwood? “There’s been a few times where Jonny has written something that’s earmarked as a possibility for Thom and Radiohead, but everybody’s cool with using it where it seems appropriate,” says Anderson. “It’s like getting in line at the Jonny Greenwood McDonald’s, and hoping you get served first.”

I probably could have made five more movies by now if I didn’t spend so much time fucking around with stupid Microsoft Word

I bring up rumours that Anderson did uncredited writing on Ridley Scott’s Napoleon and Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon. Does he also get advice from other directors? “I love to contribute in any way I can if somebody reaches out for help. Both of those things were a thing with Joaquin [Phoenix], a thing with Leo, and obviously with Marty and Ridley. It’s always a privilege to say, ‘Let me tell you my thoughts on the script.’” He cites his friendships with three late directors in Robert Altman, Jonathan Demme, and Robert Downey Snr. “They made me feel encouraged and confident.”

Anderson is a day away from flying over to London for press. I tell him that I envisage One Battle After Another playing at the Prince Charles Cinema for years to come, even if it’s under threat of closure. “From your lips to the landlord’s ears,” he says. “Speaking of one battle after another…” He adds, “The PCC is one of the best places in the world, if not the best. My ritual when I come to London is to check their schedule.”

Whatever Anderson does next, it’s likely to again be written on Microsoft Word. I reveal that when I interviewed Mia Hansen-Løve, I learned that she also does the same. “See, I knew she was brilliant! I need to talk to her. That said, I still don’t even know how to use Microsoft Word properly. It has a mind of its own. It puts tabs where it wants to.” With a laugh, he adds, “I probably could have made five more movies by now if I didn’t spend so much time fucking around with stupid Microsoft Word.”

One Battle After Another is out in cinemas on September 26