PEL Presents PMP#210: One Paul Thomas Anderson Film After Another
The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast
Mark Linsenmayer
4.6 • 2.3K Ratings
🗓️ 26 November 2025
⏱️ 55 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In light of One Battle After Another, Mark, Lawrence, Sarahlyn, and Al walk through the range of his films from his 1996 crime film Hard Eight through his much lauded Magnolia, Boogie Nights, Punch-Drunk Love, and There Will Be Blood and his more controversial recent ones like Licorice Pizza, The Master, The Phantom Thread, and Inherent Vice.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to Pretty Much Pop a Culture podcast. |
| 0:11.2 | Mostly people just walking wordlessly while interesting music plays, but periodically punctuated by stark violence. |
| 0:17.6 | Much like the work of our focus today, the writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson, |
| 0:25.1 | known for films like There Will Be Blood, Magnolia, Boogie Nights, Punch Drunk Love, and his new one in one battle after another. I'm Mark Lintemeyer, lovable despite my obvious flaws. |
| 0:30.0 | I'm Al Baker, and I just think it's so refreshing to see a movie about black, empowered, |
| 0:35.1 | revolutionary women made entirely buying for white men. |
| 0:38.7 | Oh, good call. Oh, my goodness. |
| 0:40.9 | I'm Sarah Lynn Breck, and Paul Thomas Anderson is my second favorite PTA, just below parent |
| 0:46.7 | teacher associations, but way above post-traumatic amnesia. |
| 0:51.1 | Wow. This is Lawrence Ware, and I drink your milkshake. Nice. All right. We've had quite a while to |
| 0:58.2 | prep for this since we slotted in another topic secretly, Lawrence and I did. So I had a chance to |
| 1:05.7 | watch a lot of movies that I hadn't watched before. I don't know that I'd really put together. |
| 1:09.9 | You know, he's not like Scorsese, who's so well known and you know all of his movies. You know, if you told me that, uh, what's the one? Is it punched drunk love? Because I think about once every three years, I get surprised that Paul Thomas Anderson directed punched drunk love. I watch it every single year. I mean, Magnolia, you know, phantom thread, there will be blood. Which one is it, Mark? What are you trying to remember? If you told me some David O. Russell film was a Paul Thomas Anderson film, okay, I heart Huckabees. That's the one I was trying to remember. Oh, yeah. But now, through this review, I feel, you know, clarified, I see the through lines, interesting |
| 1:46.2 | guy. |
| 1:48.2 | Mm-hmm. |
| 1:49.2 | What is your, y'all's history with the... |
| 1:50.4 | I mean, I'd seen a lot of these movies before and just not the last couple. |
| 1:53.7 | Yeah, I'll go first because, you know, I really love Paul Thomas Anderson, and I do have |
| 1:57.9 | one particularly scathing take about the latest movie and it makes it |
| 2:01.5 | very interesting but there are a lot of days on which there will be blood if you ask me I would say |
| 2:06.8 | it is my favourite movie and there are even some days of all time of all time yeah it's it really ranks |
| 2:13.3 | up there I didn't rewatch it specifically for this because I watch it fairly regularly anyway |
... |
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