3: Punch-Drunk Love (with Adam Nayman)

Host Jesse Hawken is joined by Toronto-based author and film critic Adam Nayman, who has written a new pictorial monograph “Paul Thomas Anderson: Masterworks”, for an in-depth discussion of Anderson’s singular romantic comedy Punch-Drunk Love. The film won the Best Director prize at Cannes but despite some great reviews, audiences weren’t quite sure what to make of it in 2002, as the long-anticipated followup to the epic Magnolia turned out to be a 90 minute (arthouse-adjacent) Adam Sandler comedy. But time has revealed Punch-Drunk Love to be the film that marked a new trajectory in Anderson’s career, a generous and complex work, and one hugely influential on other filmmakers, especially a recent feature-length simulation of an anxiety attack starring Sandler, Uncut Gems.

Adam & I discuss, among other things, the pure pleasure Punch-Drunk Love offers viewers, how the film is related to later Anderson works, how it is situated right on the precipice of a major technological shift in the culture, what it has to say today about Incels and Dream Girls, and a look at some of the Extremely Online takes it has inspired over the years.

Plus Adam & I talk about the David Fincher / Orson Welles battle being waged on Film Twitter as Mank approaches.

“Paul Thomas Anderson: Masterworks”, by Adam Nayman, is available now from Abrams Books:

Follow Adam Nayman on Twitter

Here’s the fan video that puts forward the theory that Punch-Drunk Love is secretly the story of Superman: