update 7/26

Just realized its been awhile since I posted--I'm in the home stretch of work on the PTA manuscript. Final revisions on the writing itself are more or less done. I've been working on the images and captions for the book itself--there are over 150, and hopefully they all make it to the final product. After working on the Disney history book, which didn't really have much in the way of close film reading, I really came to embrace the visual possibilities in the amount of textual analysis there is in this book and used it as an excuse to use as many images as possible. I might never be able to work on such a "visual" book again.

There's a lot of production and reception histories here, too, as it's a project that situates Anderson's films historically within a larger narrative of postmodern media culture at the end of the 20th century (post-Sundance, "smart films," etc). But there's a lot of close analysis of the movies themselves, with particular attention to the themes of celebrity, masculinity, commodity culture and historical consciousness. In all, the transitions aren't always as smooth as I'd like, but it is a very thorough account of all five of his films. Its a little shorter than the Disney book content-wise (80K words), but with all the images might end up a lot bigger.

So anyway its been very time-consuming moving through all the films, grabbing the images, organizing them into the six chapters and (especially) writing the captions for each. I've also had a couple of big, unexpected projects that recently came up on my radar that's taking a lot of time as well. Either way, I hope to have good news to pass along in the next week.

I confess I've spent so much time with each one of his films at this point that I have a certain kind of affection for all of them now, even the ones I didn't really care for in the past (Boogie Nights, Magnolia). I think I'm ready to embrace the position of "Anderson scholar" once it starts to get thrown around my neck in the next year. The connection to Kubrick, which continues to this day, really threw me for a loop, but this time I'm being careful and thorough as I have a better sense of what I'm walking into (of course, I will soon be seen first and foremost as a Disney scholar, so perhaps the auteurist tendency will finally subside anyway).

I still plan to have all the materials off to UT Press at the end of the month. At that point, nothing will probably happen until copy edits come back in the late fall. That will be the last time I can add anything to the manuscript. I'm cautiously optimistic that they will let me add a short afterward on The Master (2012) at that stage, which will have been out for awhile by then. But we'll see. In any event, the book itself should be available in late 2013.

At some point, probably next week, I will write an updated summary for the entire book to help promote it, since some people might be wondering about more specifics, along with a revised table of contents.

Best for now. . .

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Trickle Down Postmodernism

I am taken in by Michael Newman's remarkable phrase (in Indie), "pop pomo" or "trickle down postmodernism," to articulate the ways in which the term is causally used to describe the pastiche and intertextuality of movies today. The idea being that most scholars and critics who use it don't really pay much attention to the history of the idea itself. The problem is two-fold: the term's not used very carefully, and its overusage further robs the concept of any significance.

There's also the clear irony: postmodernism began as an account of the weakening of historical consciousness in media culture. And now it seems to be undergoing its own "crisis of historicity."

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first draft flabbiness

This month I dived into the PTA manuscript as planned, one last dash through the material before its sent off to UT Press for copy-editing. I also have to provide screen captures for images, which will be very time-consuming as well. Honestly, its proving to be a lot more slow-going than I thought.

I really haven't spent much time with the manuscript since last summer and it shows. I've only gotten through the chapter on Hard Eight and the introduction to the Magnolia chapter--I'd hoped to be halfway through the entire manuscript by now. The organization, research and general arguments are still holding up, but the writing itself is a mess.

Its not just a matter of proofreading, as I thought, but of making significant sentence-level revisions. Having been away from the material for over a year while it went through the acquisitions process at UT, I'd not realized how much "first draft flabbiness" existed in it. There's a lot of repetition and wordiness throughout. I've cut nearly 3,000 words in the first two days doing nothing but trimming and rewording sentences.

Its good for the manuscript, but not so much for my work plan. I still have to write a new introduction for the book when I'm done revising the rest, as well as grab the images. But I have less than a month to do all of it.

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BTW, here's the TOC at the moment:

Introduction /

Postmodern Media Culture

and the Films of Paul Thomas Anderson

Chapter 1

I Remembered Your Face /

Indie Cinema, Neo-Noir and

Narrative Ambiguity in Hard Eight (1996)

Chapter 2           

I Dreamed I was in a Hollywood Movie /

Stars, Hyperreal Sounds of the`70s

and Cinephiliac Pastiche in Boogie Nights (1997)

Chapter 3

If That Was In a Movie, I Wouldn’t Believe It /

Melodramatic Ambivalence, Hypermasculinity, and

the Autobiographical Impulse in Magnolia (1999)

            

Chapter 4

The Art-House Adam Sandler Movie /

“Post”-Patriarchy, Commodity Culture

and the Ethereal Ephemera of Punch-Drunk Love (2002)

Chapter 5

I Have a Competition in Me /

Political Allegory, Artistic Collaboration and

Narratives of Perfection in There Will Be Blood (2007)

 

Select Bibliography

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