"Rainbow in your living room"

Maxim Kruglov is a former Moscow City Duma deputy and deputy chairman of the Yabloko party. In October 2025, he was arrested , accused of spreading “fake news,” and added to the list of “terrorists and extremists.” The reason was two old posts on social networks, published back in April 2022: in the first, he cited UN data on the number of Ukrainians killed since the beginning of the war; in the second he criticized the actions of the Russian military in Bucha (you can follow his case here ). Even before prison, Kruglov decided to write a book about his favorite director, the American Paul Thomas Anderson. He did not have time to watch his last film, “Battle after Battle,” which brought the director an Oscar, but in conclusion he continues to work on the text. The cooperative of independent journalists “Bereg” publishes a fragment and a preface to Kruglov’s book, as well as a commentary by film critic Anton Dolin. In this excerpt, a former MP (and PTA fan) talks about the ridiculous teen short films that launched him as a big director.

Anton Dolin

film critic

Young politician Maxim Kruglov, a former Moscow City Duma deputy and deputy chairman of the Yabloko party, has been in prison since October 2025 on charges of spreading “fakes about the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.” He is one of the many political prisoners in the current Russian Federation and is not the first repressed member of Yabloko .

We decided to express our support to Maxim by telling him about his unusual hobby.

For some time now he has been working on a book (the first in Russian!) about his favorite director, the American Paul Thomas Anderson. This work was interrupted literally mid-sentence: while the draft manuscript includes Anderson's films up to The Master (2012), Inherent Vice (2014), Phantom Thread (2017) and Licorice Pizza (2021), the author has yet to describe. Because of his arrest, Kruglov was never able to see the last masterpiece of the American filmmaker - the monumental "Battle after Battle", recently recognized by the American Academy as the best film of the year.

It is impossible to fully appreciate Kruglov's book about Paul Thomas Anderson - it is not yet completed. But it’s impossible not to pay attention to the significant coincidence.

PTA, who conceived “Battle after Battle” more than two decades ago (the original source of the script, Thomas Pynchon’s novel “Vinland,” was published back in 1990), completed its magnum opus in 2025 and amazingly coincided with the spirit of the times, guessing, describing and even ridiculing the hopes and phobias of our crazy era. The result is both the greatest commercial success in the director's career and his first personal Oscars (three at once - for the script, direction and film).

And the Russian politician, who had long been fascinated by the style and ideas of the PTA, began writing his book at the same time - in the year when the theme of the grueling war of ideologies and generations so captivated the public. Simply put, now is the time for this kind of work. It is a pity that readers cannot yet appreciate it in its entirety.

Nevertheless, we decided to publish the author’s introduction, already written in Butyrka, as well as one of the initial chapters of the manuscript in order to reassure Kruglov and his future readers. And maybe at the same time help find an editor and publisher for a future book. We believe it will be completed and will certainly find its audience.

Maxim Kruglov

From the author

I have devoted my entire life to Russian politics, the democratic movement and the Yabloko party, sincerely trying to influence what is happening in the country. At the age of seventeen, in my first year at university, I came to Yabloko with my friends to try to oppose something to the authoritarianism that was already approaching. In 2022, twenty years later, it became clear that at this historical stage we had lost.

Nevertheless, I continued to work as a deputy of the Moscow Duma, and my responsibility was to continue to do everything in my power and competence to publicly voice a different, non-official view of the ongoing tragedy. I think I did the best I could. However, my parliamentary term came to an end, and the authorities did not allow me to participate in new elections. I remained deputy chairman of Yabloko and used the very limited opportunities for public policy that still remained. And here I am, in the Butyrka pre-trial detention center in Moscow.

At the beginning of 2025, the idea occurred to me that, while maintaining my main occupation, it was worth trying to take a step aside.

I was thinking about the films of Paul Thomas Anderson while re-watching The Master, and I was surprised to realize that I had something to say about the essence of his films - how I perceive and understand them. Such a statement in the form of, for example, a book in Russian would be the only one: there are no books about PTA in Russia, American works about it have not been translated either. There are notes and articles, but there hasn't been much research yet, and I happily decided to do it.

It’s quite difficult to remember this now, being in a Russian prison. All scattered thoughts in this space are focused on something else; There is no chance of seeing the films of my favorite director on local TV, and his last film, “Battle after Battle,” which I had been waiting for for so long, was released a little later than my arrest. Nevertheless, if you make an effort and distract yourself from your surroundings with thoughts about PTA and its worlds, you feel good and calm.

After reading and studying a lot of materials on the Internet, mainly in English (PTA interviews, materials from fan forums, numerous publications and videos, director’s and actors’ comments, several books about the director and the context of the time), I began working together with my friend Andrei Lyushakov, who speaks the language of cinematic analysis and was supposed to supplement the book from this point of view.

The task was to analyze his films, production process and creative results through the main points of PTA’s biography, because each film is a unique work of art. What made the process easier was the fact that the PTA universe—his actors, the music in his films, literary sources and musicians for whom he makes videos and short films—I love all of this, almost without exception. For example, the music of Radiohead or the great and mysterious Thomas Pynchon, whose prose I have been trying to unravel for a long time (when I read the author’s first book, Lot 49 Screams, I even had to write a poem about the main character in order to understand her at least a little).

All this, at least to a small extent, helped me overcome the impostor syndrome, and I set to work, unfortunately interrupted by the arrest on October 1 in St. Petersburg, where my friend and I were just discussing a book about the PTA.

I remember how about fifteen years ago, together with my wife, I watched the film “The Master” in the cinema and was perplexed throughout the entire session: it seemed that complete nonsense was happening on the screen. This impression remained until the last frame. But as soon as we left the hall, I realized: God, this is wonderful! In his films, I adore this effect - not a direct narration “head-on”, but the impact of magic from somewhere on the side, from the edge, on the periphery of vision. Instead of straightforward statements, there are hidden treasures under several layers of literal reality.

I remember the energy of “Magnolia” that struck me and the surprise that, it turns out, the author was only twenty-nine years old. Although later it became clear that such courage and emotionality in statements on the most important topics could be afforded precisely then, before having yet crossed the line of youth.

PTA always had something to say to the world. His remarkable feature is that, firstly, he does this with the help of an amazing arsenal of artistic means, which he masterfully masters, and secondly, he is in no hurry and speaks only when this statement develops into an unconditional work of art.

As with “The Master,” I repeated the contradictory impression with the director’s next film, “Inherent Vice,” but acceptance came much later.

Having watched the film adaptation of Pynchon, unknown to me then, on the plane, I thought: well, there can be no mistake here - this is absolute nonsense. Not so. I watched the film several times until I literally fell in love with its magical world. When things were bad and sad, I plunged into the warm summer of Los Angeles in 1970, into the world of Anderson and Pynchon, and life seemed to become brighter. And an amazing effect arose - the desire to be inside this narrative, picture, layer of reality or illusion.

Delving deeper into the life and biography of PTA, you inevitably develop even greater sympathy for him. Not being a man of shocking gestures, he managed to make his home a place of human happiness. “There’s a rainbow in your living room, you idiot!” — Anderson’s words, addressed from his height to his younger self. You reflect on a similar attitude and trajectory in prison - how right he is! And if I am ever destined to finish a book about him, I hope this will be clear from it. Having created this warm and joyful life around itself, PTA can address the most important timeless themes, doing so with constant love and hope.

PS

Writing about PTA from prison is also difficult because it means mentally leaving this world for a while - with an inevitable and painful return to it. It seemed that it was better to calmly continue reading about Hitler, and not go into his pictures about sunny LA. However, although it was difficult to begin with, in the end it was very nice for me to take a break and think about it again and be there.

Chapter 2. Childhood. Youth. Betamax

Note. In this part of the text, one of the quotes contains a swear word.

Paul Thomas Anderson is born into a large family. He is the only son of Ernie and Edwina's marriage (there are three other girls), but his father brought with him three children from his first marriage - Michael, Victoria and Stephen - from the east coast.

Everyone lives in California under one roof. Looking ahead, we note that of all the brothers and sisters, only Paul will be related to show business and publicity in general. In the future, one of his sisters will become a librarian, his half-brother will become an auto mechanic, and the other will become a housewife. Two of his half-brothers died as adults from complications of diabetes.

Conversations about cinema, movie star neighbors, hard workers in the film industry - all this surrounds growing children.

Subsequently, in 1999, twenty-nine-year-old Anderson will contradictively recall the space of his childhood and youth - with love and some annoyance from the boredom of what was happening:

I have always been very shy about the place where I was born and raised. I look back at my favorite directors and think, okay, there's Howard Hawks, and oh my God, he fought a war, or Ernst Lubitsch, who escaped from a camp in Germany, and all these amazing things happened in their lives that you can bring to film.

In another interview he adds:

I was embarrassed by the place where I grew up. It seemed to me that if I was not from big New York or the endless fields of Iowa, then I had nothing to say. I've never been to war like John Ford. I'm not even from France, like Francois Truffaut. And I'm not from Chicago like David Mamet. <…> I'm just from the Valley. That's why I have to make films about this.

However, PTA grows up in a large, wealthy family and attends an elite private school. In total, he will study at several schools, changing them one after another. […]

Paul has been interested in cinema since childhood. Around the age of five, he watched “The Wizard of Oz” and fell in love with cinema forever. He wrote down different stories all the time, and at the age of seven he wrote that he would be a director:

My name is Paul Anderson. I want to be a writer, producer, director and special effects supervisor. I know how to do all this, I actually know everything. Please hire me.

Paul spends almost all his time watching movies, and the rest of the time he imitates his favorite characters.

Until he was eleven years old, he studied at a private school called Buckley. Esquire magazine, in a long story about PTA's background, describes his high school background as follows: "The son of a urologist named Steve Garrett, the son of an entertainment lawyer named Alain Kallheim, and Shane Conrad - the son of actor Robert Conrad." Anderson will be friends with Shane for many years.

In the sixth grade, Paul transferred to another private school, John Thomas Dye. It was around this time, at the age of twelve, that Paul's parents gave him a Betamax camera and he began making short films featuring his father and his friends from television. The family's well-off financial situation allows Paul, in addition to the camera, to use two VCRs, a Betamax player and a personal computer.

This is how endless home filming begins: of family, parents’ friends, random passers-by, family vacations in the park, on trips, whatever. [Father of director] Ernie Anderson's friend Tom Conway recalls:

His first films were sketches featuring Ernie and his group of showbiz friends doing all sorts of stupid things. They once held a competition to find the best pie, but the pies were so terrible that they had to bring in the family's Shetland pony to judge. The pony sniffed one pie, then another, and finally made his choice - they laughed until they cried. Paul filmed the whole thing.

And further:

Even if it was just photographs of us playing volleyball or swimming, he knew how to edit with his eyes.

If some idea settled in his head, it was almost impossible to knock it out. “He was constantly taking pictures of us and always annoying us,” Conway says. “We told him: ‘Fuck off.’” Then Paul and his friends went outside. “Instead of taking drugs, we fucked people and tried to film it,” says his friend from his youth, Conrad, in an interview with Esquire.

An illustration of one such raid “on people” with the aim of filming something interesting has been preserved online. This is a short video of a sixteen-year-old PTA with friends filming trucks around Hollywood locations that provide the production's resource base: logistics, inventory, catering, and so on. The PTA interviews the drivers and personnel of these trucks.

After endless experiments and amateur short films, including some quite radical ones (Paul and his friends came up with varying levels of borderline absurdity, bold artistic dispositions, and sometimes far from harmless provocations), his parents send him to yet another private school in another part of the country, Cushing Academy. The reasons for this decision are not entirely clear, but in the book Backyard Rebels: Six Independent Directors and How They Conquered the Hollywood Studio System, the author states:

He was expelled from school more than once for truancy and fighting. He attended the prestigious private Buckley School in the Valley until fifth grade, but his problems with his teachers meant he had to leave. In desperation, Anderson's parents sent him to the Cushing School for "troubled" teenagers near Boston, Massachusetts, where he repeated tenth grade.

“It was hard. It was scary to be away from home. I found myself surrounded by tough guys, and there were a lot of drugs there,” the author of the book quotes his recollection.

Nothing comes of PTA's "exile" - a year later he persuades his parents to return him home. Paul reunites with his friend Shane Conrad at Monteclair Preparatory School. Here he finally lingers: the growing Paul develops interesting interactions with teachers and classmates. Endless shooting with an amateur camera continues.

His teacher, Mrs. Stevens, recalls an amazing story that clearly demonstrates the future director’s confidence in his talent, his consistency and perseverance, which in other words can be called “long will.”

One day, eighteen-year-old Paul came to her office and announced that the title of his first film would be “Sidney.” It turned out that at that time the film “Run Before Midnight” with Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin was released. A short and inconspicuous role in this film was played by the already middle-aged actor Philip Baker Hall, and it was he who sank into Paul’s soul. Hall plays the role of adviser, consigliere, the walking conscience of the mafia boss, and constantly repeats to his patron: “don’t do this,” “I wouldn’t advise doing that,” acting as a ghostly alternative to the disastrous decisions being made.

At eighteen, Paul decides that he will make a film about the development of this character, whose name is Sidney. PTA will fulfill its promise, the film "Sidney" (its official studio title, given by the film studio against the will of the author, is "Fatal Eight") will be his first feature film.

So, studying at the Monteclair School is the time to fill the director's hand with endless shooting of short films. What were these short films?

According to Esquire, using his brothers Conrad, Steve Garrett and handyman Fernando as actors, stuntmen and crew, Paul is filming a parody of gangster films called Ranger: The Man, the Myth. This is the story of a real-life group of middle-class white gangsters who called themselves the Freedom Fighters. He creates a Miami Vice parody called "Brock Landers" (the name he would later give to Mark Wahlberg's porn sleuth in Boogie Nights), in which Conrad and his brother play cheap detectives tossing out brutal lines like "I'm the law" and "He was a cop. Чертовски хорошим копом».

ПТА также пародирует «Терминатора», давая фильму название «Легенда о Грате», — это история космонавта, путешествующего в будущее, чтобы сразиться с гигантским роботом. Затем он снимает подражание нуарным детективам «Эрл Флик», где его друг Конрад играл сыщика и водил старую машину отца ПТА Эрни, несмотря на то что ему было всего шестнадцать и у него не было прав.

Вместе с другом по имени Майкл Стайн будущий режиссер снимает мокьюментари «The Spastic Olympics», посвященный нелепым соревнованиям вроде конкурса на поедание большого количества хлопьев Rice Krispies. Потом — «Young Buns», добавляя порнографический оттенок к фильму «Young Guns» («Молодые стрелки») Кристофера Кэйна. Дальше идет короткометражка «The Big Shit» («Большое дерьмо») — о парне, который не может найти туалет на Ла-Бреа-авеню. И еще одна, «Thief» («Вор»), о человеке, который собирает портфель на работу, но кладет туда оружие, затем грабит винный магазин и возвращается домой… а квартира пуста — его самого обокрали!

Итак, Полу семнадцать, и он занят в любительском кинопроизводстве, которым он, набивая руку, занимается день за днем. В свой последний год обучения в школе Андерсон приступает к съемкам тридцатиминутного фильма «История Дирка Дигглера», забавного и трогательного трибьюта порноактеру Джону Холмсу. По сути, это первое произведение уже не ребенка, а юноши, которое приоткрывает дверь в его взрослую профессиональную жизнь. Это самое раннее произведение ПТА, сохранившееся в интернете.

Фильм сделан в жанре мокьюментари и пародирует различные модные в то время реалити-шоу о жизни звезд, которые показывали по каналу MTV. Распределив роли и раздав скрипты, ПТА снимает на любительскую видеокамеру своих друзей и подругу (в фильме всего одна женская роль). Молодой режиссер иронично рассказывает историю порноактера, который мог стать настоящей звездой Голливуда, но его испортил нарциссизм и погубили наркотики.

Мир съемок порнофильмов действительно окружал Пола. В 1980-е в США процветали однозальные кинотеатры, в которых показывали низкопробные фильмы, в том числе порнографические. Впоследствии режиссер вспоминал, что они с друзьями прекрасно знали, что происходит за закрытыми дверьми темных киносалонов, узнавая актеров и актрис на улицах Долины. В этом смысле молодой ПТА по-настоящему реализовывал принцип Хемингуэя: «Пиши о том, что знаешь».

«История Дирка Дигглера» начинается с закадрового голоса Эрни Андерсона, серьезно и значительно рассказывающего о вехах жизни протагониста первого фильма своего сына. Дальше псевдодокументальные съемки Дигглера перемежаются с выдуманными воспоминаниями его коллег: «Он был профессионалом», — говорит, чуть отстранившись от камеры, девушка в костюме медсестры. Задумчиво затягиваясь сигаретой, она повторяет: «Он был потрясающим».

«Воспоминания» коллег чередуются со съемками псевдопорнофильма, закадровый голос Эрни, комментирующий взлеты и падения Дирка, остается с нами до конца. Молодой Андерсон тоже идет до конца: произведение не скатывается в сумбур и в абсурд. Режиссер показывает весь путь Дирка, каждую ступень падения, обрыва. При всей пародийности фильма, стилизации и даже абсурдности изначальной диспозиции, он по-настоящему эмоциональный, ироничный, ностальгический. А заканчивается трагично: готовясь к съемкам, Дирк умирает от передозировки наркотиков в своей ванной.

В последнем кадре красуется цитата: «„Все, что я когда-либо хотел, — это крутой Vette 1978 года и загородный дом“. Дирк Дигглер». Молодой Пол нахально перенесет эту подпись в школьный выпускной альбом под своей фотографией. В концовке фильма играет ностальгическая песня Барбры Стрейзанд «The Way We Were» (образ певицы появится в предпоследнем на сегодняшний день фильме режиссера «Лакричная пицца»).

Уже в этой короткометражке мы замечаем наметки профессиональных режиссерских ходов, которые в будущем сложатся в особенный киноязык ПТА. Первое и главное — использование крупных планов.

ПТА в своих фильмах особое внимание будет уделять внутреннему состоянию героя, всматриваясь в мимические сигналы его лица. Для режиссера это достаточно смелое решение, так как на крупном плане видны мельчайшие ошибки в игре актера, и это может подвергнуть сомнению достоверность повествования, разорвать единое полотно, выбить зрителя из магической иллюзии кинематографа. ПТА уже в первых работах доказывает свое мастерство в выборе актеров и работе с ними. При этом исполнители будто импровизируют перед камерой, что добавляет глубину правдоподобия созданным образам.

«История Дирка Дигглера» получит свое смысловое продолжение спустя десять лет в фильме «Ночи в стиле буги», который сделает Андерсона знаменитым. Пока же школьная работа молодого Пола придает ему уверенности, чтобы следовать дальше.