another edition of a fistful of popcorn i am tonight's moderator my name is janet stern and i'm pleased to be joined tonight by marilyn campbell and bob brown and we are going to be discussing one film it's currently in theaters it's called phantom thread and it is by paul thomas anderson we're going to talk about this film  but you know the good good good portion of the show but we should say that it's also causing a lot of grief because daniel day lewis has announced that this is the last film he will make so that's part of the whole i guess our hoopla around the film is that notice bob said that he would be happy to do a summary of the film and so it was volunteered to take you know i just saw it last night during super bowl sunday who dresses his women and floats them out on his designs and he actually lives through the designs rather than the women i mean as far as he's concerned it's the dress not the person that well there's a hotel where he's having a meal strikes up conversation with him and he points her to dinner he's obviously captivated by her looks and her body shape perfect for one of his creations i mean no sooner is he had dinner with her than she's back at his place and being fitted and his sister then comes in and it's obvious that he and his sister are kind of pair and so the young woman who thinks this is going to be an interesting date because look crestfallen at first to see that she's going to have to share the room with the sister but as time goes on and the relationship a very complicated relationship she has a model and an assistant and as a lover and what have you and then fine with not only his sister for attention but other models of the clients and the ghost of his mother it all mixes up together into quite a complex which ends in a very surprising way and i don't think we'll get too far into the  don't and you're right i don't think we should but i did want to say that and you probably know both of you know this the origin of the film had to do with did you read about that whole t turn is based on something that i find very interesting which is that this is somewhat like a fairy tale there are so many elements i'm wondering if you found the same thing that this is what i thought more of patricia highsmith or ruth r there's a ghost and there's a lot of superstition very interesting facts about young seems to says not wanting to touch a bright dress because they felt that that would mean that they would not get married over station there's the sewing in but there's also i was so struck the first dress we see him complete i think it might be the first or second crack something out of snow white did you notice that that that supposedly based on bull and the aga was a very odd guy right early and and very very detail oriented and very much a old school could tour designer and that every dress was and you so wrong then various other designers started to be ready to wear and he stuck with his old school and till he died and when he died is label went out of existence there were no successors to the house with him it died and that's a very much i think a theme of the film is the art artistry and that people treat him specially because he's an artist and say his sister sort of the guardian of that and making sure that nobody gets between him and me and their creation and it's very insular life that he lives so it's not surprising that he's kind of he's things yeah apparently that was you probably heard this too but that was something paul thomas anderson the director had heard alexander mcqueen do to prince charles is cool but they  of a high sensibility versus the material you know he doesn't he doesn't want to be consumed with materialism or what else is going on in film even at the time that he's making films i don't even know how i would classify his films but they're not person oh no that's so you he had to you picture him in a carefree well a comedy film he made with his wife where he played the single father oh yeah young girl on the isolated island of course that when you say i think he might you might he might come back i wonder if then the obsessive nature his obsessive nature is really a drain on him so that when he is in the film he is so obsessed with the research and he has to be in and it's too much for him to say well well in fact he said it is sad that he one of the reasons he decided he should retire was this film was so emotionally draining him that he he just had to yeah stop yeah i mean  her personality she lives there she wants people to know it do you think that she's meant to be posed as some sort of a feminist hero heroine ho reason i'm saying that is because in so many films where there there is an obsessed artist at the center usually someone famous the woman is always in the helpmeet is always in the periphery and you know that she's she's the helper and he wanted complete submission of his other lovers his previous lovers one got the feeling that he just wanted them to do exactly what they were told and that's that and not eat too noisily in all that sort of thing and that in fact the reason that she gets under his skin is because she gets understand because she chews noisily and won't go away and you know won't agree with him on everything i made that it is  a sort of he gets a kind of a thrill at it than i i think and i don't want to get into spilling the beans on how the film ends but i think his obsession with relationship they had had she and he and his sister cyril had been right not only business partners but emotional partners she had come to his help at a time when he really needed it and they were very solid but she starts to change with alice insistence on being the person he needs and she gives it up because i think she's sick into it being his mother where she says at one point you are you going to send her away i rather like her of comes around why her yeah so you can and she's not said that about others so that we see you know she finds the other very disposable right but i almost left disposable you know she maybe is not going anywhere yeah she's not going anywhere she like that i was he likes and the rest is yeah and he's not going anywhere and she's going to find a way to make yourself indispensable what did you think about the relationship with the mother because it's a very mysterious in a way of what happens to her they refer to the fact that he made her second wedding dress my house whatever happened to the father of cyril and reynolds is unclear  there's no there's no solid explain it there's no narrative explanation for what happened to her i think that's sort of left allegedly no it is definitely left unexplained and that's what and why it's a big sort of yeah hole but didn't how much of it is it's deliberately being left exposed unexplained or the director slash writer we should say he wrote you weren't really wanting us to think her as all she exists the  way she exists is in his imagination and his memory i'm just wondering if it's a fact she represents the sort of woman as victim that she says seems to not have agency that she may have been abused by her husbands or neglected by her husbands and was not a happy person and lived through her children because she wasn't happy in her marriages or even something even more dire that they don't that their sister and brother don't even want to discuss or he wants to discuss that europe is appearing in his dreams and she's and not speaking to him and cyril definitely doesn't want to discuss that you know you may be right because he does alice says to him when he talks in detail about this dress that he made her for her say his mother's second marriage and this is where is that as he said i don't now  i think it's interesting coming back to the mother that his memory of her in the picture of her is at a certain age you don't yeah him recollecting her beyond that and yeah age that that i think is very much part of his problem there is that he loses somebody he's the father is out of the picture i think that significant but there's a bond that's very strong that has been lost at a very crucial part of his life and that he hasn't recovered and part of his obsessiveness and focused ness is is to try to kind of push on that beat be obsessed with between him and his mother yes that she can leverage which he does very successfully i don't buy it completely how that works with him as a psychological character but this is paul thomas anderson  opaque almas plays a part part of someone who isn't in some ways very opaque and i don't know whether that's because she's not a good actress or because she's a very good actress it's because that's what the character needs to be whereas i think daniel day lewis is part of is of course more showy because he's playing someone who's very much of a sacred monster and he's has to have tantrums and he has to you know swoon on the floor and do other kinds of things that are are say oh i'm back to work yeah and then people who are supporting here i think you and so it's almost fresher more natural oh by the way you said you were we were talking about not knowing where she came from it just occurred to me if you stayed and watched all the credits all the way to the end at the end where he thanks it's kind of amazing when you think about it actually is let's let's look at this is if it were real instead of a movie is that he plucks this waitress from who is not a good way trista the reason he notices her boost because she trims and practically drops her braids and and and she's transformed into a mannequin of extreme control and elegance and so you have to ask their lifestyle pm and he keeps saying you know that he doesn't like certain people because they're balder or they don't wear their dress well or i have too many breasts i'm not sure oh yeah but he doesn't he doesn't like that and she has to be that you have a practical as well it must be odd if you are a designer though to see your creations go out on other people and exist out there not necessarily the perfect way you would hope to specially if that person's gained a little weight or didn't was not wearing her hair in a way that's flattering to the dress something that you don't have control over because you are by your very nature a controlling person you know what i want to say was i found very interesting the women who work for him the snippers you know i mean they were just completely natural yeah sure well they were in their element yeah it was what they knew yeah i know so i really enjoyed that it was it was as if they were also of course they were very minor capacity that part of the family because they're working in his house they're his were his workshop is a tell you a and where they live at the same way yes and so they come in in the morning and are you know kissed on both cheeks and and sent off and they change into their lab coats and they're you know they're working and and they're through all these kinds of crises that come up that his being ill or having a tantrum having a tantrum or the client being perhaps intoxicated while being feted and all these kinds of other things if they're there you know supporting right if supporting cast in so many ways well we don't have much time with and i wondered if you want fan i mean some of his films magnolia i did not like at all and a couple of others but this one it helped me right up until about the last ten minutes where i kind of you know i didn't buy as some yes relationship as psychologically complex relationship and also it's funny it's it's so perverse that you would just have to laugh and and i thought oh i just thought philip well i agree with you both i thought i thought that he created and credible world and i was immersed in it and i liked it better than i thought i would because i'm not particular interested in high fashion but psychologically and there was a dinner table scene between the two of