Paul Thomas Anderson Quotes

I almost never try to make the audience comfortable. I wouldn't want that if I were in the audience.

It's a gamble you take, the risk of alienating an audience. But there's a theory - sometimes it's better to confuse them for five minutes than let them get ahead of you for 10 seconds.

I prefer to make a film that people have a really intense reaction to than have a film that people feel ambivalent about.

I've learned that you can never predict what will happen to a film. You can never predict if people will love it, if they'll hate it. It's an act of ego if you're hoping for everyone to love the film and tell you how great you are.

No one knows why a film does well or not. The reasons for this are not important. What is important is the intention you start the film with and the final state when the film releases on a Friday - whether people liked it or not.

I’ve been accused of ‘raping’ the audience in my films, and I admit to that freely — all movies assault the viewer in one way or another.

I know the way WWE works. Things change last minute.

When we were a quiet, little-noticed channel telling stories from Russia, our audience was negligible. When we started being really provocative... our audience started to grow.

The first tour an artist does is a strange one... because you can never tell how the audience is going to react.

I always put myself in the audience's place and see if, as a viewer, I would want to see the film. If yes, then I want to know who's directing it, what my character is, and if it's impactful. If all these points fall in place, I'll do the film. If not, then I won't think twice before saying no.

The laugh track was invented to cue the audience to the jokes and encourage laughter in response. But it has another effect: if you hear people laughing and you're not, you start to question if maybe there's something wrong with you for not getting it.

I remember watching movies like 'Fatal Attraction' and watching the audience go bananas at the end of the film.

A constant goal of mine is to try to put myself back in the place when I wrote something - not just to perform it on a surface level, but to re-enter that headspace, that emotion. That's the point of a live show - for it to feel immediate and present and a little bit unpredictable.

You can't control how an audience responds to something. It's up to them.

You put it out there, you go film it, you go write it, you go record it... but the fans are the ones who decide it.

The nice thing about movies is that you can sort of steer your audience toward seeing that there's discomfort, but there's also this sense of, 'Well, we'll tolerate this weirdness because maybe it'll be interesting.'

When you are making a film, you do not know how it is going to be received by the audience. In fact, if you set out to make a film thinking that it will make 100 crores, it never ends up making that much money.

Sometimes improv doesn't work on TV because the audience had heard the thing that was shouted and they're very much alive, the audience in the room - they're alive in that moment. Whereas the audience sat at home on the sofa, it feels like it's part of a party that they haven't been invited to.

It is very difficult for anyone to predict how a film will do. It depends on so many things: the mood of the audience, the state of their mind at the time, how they have reacted to the whole treatment.

I think, as an actress, it is amazing to shock your audiences.

I try to mix the characters up and not be second guessed by the audience.

One of the things I've learned is you can't really control what an audience is going to feel.

I like to challenge the audience. I want people to feel discomfort.

You always hope an audience will respond to something you've done, but there's no way of knowing whether or not they will.

The thing about Drew Goddard and Mike Schur is that they are legit geniuses, and they love storytelling. They love creating worlds, love messing with the audience; they love doing things that we don't expect. To get to be a part of that is too good to be true.