eventual studio deal with Columbia to make the feature in 1996. While the feature didn’t make money it was a cult favorite right away, and obviously launched some big careers. Oddly enough, the short starts with Owen talking about Starsky and Hutch.

Slide 5: From Cigarettes and Coffee to Hard Eight

Film school for Paul Thomas Anderson lasted only two days (at NYU), as he moved on to work as a PA before making his career-trampoline short film, Cigarettes and Coffee in 1992. Following three overlapping plots and dialogue in a diner over 24 minutes, the short establishes Anderson’s knack for intense characters on the edge of society, with their idiosyncrasies and clever fetishes. The combination of realistic people with genre movie plots, “what’s-it-all-about” dialogue in a booth with ahitman outside, harkens to the work of Mike Nichols and Robert Altman and hints towards Anderson’s later feature success. The lead story of Phillip Baker Hall as wise sage to a messed-up gambler was expanded by Anderson into the feature Hard Eight (1996). The short played at the Sundance Film Festival and got Anderson into the Sundance directors lab, where he developed the feature version. Just keep drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes and everything will be fine.

Slide 6: From Five Feet High and Rising to Raising Victor Vargas

When a short wins both the Sundance and Cannes film festivals, you hope it could work as a feature too. Cast, produced and edited by Eva Vives, directed by Peter Sollett and written by both, the 29-minute Five Feet High and