Cigarettes & Coffee (1993)

Director:

Paul Thomas Anderson

Writer:

Paul Thomas Anderson (written by)

Genre:

Drama | Short

Plot:

Five people's lives that are curiously intertwined happen to all be at a diner at the same time. An...

Cast

Kirk Baltz
Scott Coffey
Miguel Ferrer	...	Bill
Bonnie Fidelman
Kim Gillingham
Philip Baker Hall
Michael Harris		(as M.K. Harris)
Jennifer Kaplan

Runtime:

24 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Quotes:

Older Man: [the older man removes a cigarette from the pack, taps both ends on the table twice, then strikes a match and lights the cigarette before placing it in an ashtray]
Older Man: ...and then, then we will talk about making sense of the matter. Once the coffee is poured, and the tip of the cigarette is lit, and placed in the ashtray, then, we will address the matter. We focus our attention when the time comes. When the coffee has been poured...
Younger Man: - "poured and the cigarette has been lit" yeah, but sometimes these things, they can't wait.
Older Man: Well, that's a common mistake.
Younger Man: ...what is?
Older Man: Not to wait, until the coffee is poured, and the cigarettes are lit.
Younger Man: Look, uh, this tradition, this matter of doing things in neat little boxes, it's um, a matter of making urgency wait, is what it is. I get the feeling that following these, these guidelines, these instructions of waiting for the coffee to be poured and all that is only going to get in the way of what I'm trying to tell you.
Older Man: [Referring to his cigarette] Now I'm going to light this. And I'm going to wait for the coffee to be poured. Because that is the correct order of business. And I'm gonna make myself comfortable first and I think you oughta do the same thing. Otherwise, this thing of urgency, that you have to tell me is gonna, it's gonna be like a conversation in two passing cars on a highway. Yeah, you're right, it is a matter of tradition. And that's why we have these things. That's why we have this coffee and these cigarettes. You understand? I'm talking about our bonfires for today - look, you have something to tell me, something you wanna say?
Younger Man: Yes.
Older Man: So, we're gonna sit around our bonfire of coffee and cigarettes, and you're gonna share your story. But - we wait, until the coffee is poured.
[...]

Movie Connections:

Remade as Sydney (1996)

p.t. Anderson's first is typical of his work so far

A major portion of "Cigarettes and Coffee" was later adapted, expanded and basically re-made into p.t. Anderson's first feature film, "Hard Eight". The most interesting part of "Cigarettes" was later used as the first scene for "Hard Eight"--in both Phillip Baker Hall's character interrogates a young drifter in a roadside diner and explains a few things about life and the art of conversation to him. In "Hard Eight" the two then go on to have a father-son type relationship in a fairly straightforward narrative (the most straightforward of any of p.t.'s later films). Here in the seminal "Cigarettes and Coffee", however, Baker Hall's conversation with the young man is only one of three happening simultaneously in the diner. P.T. cuts between the three, and we soon learn that the lives of the three seemingly-unrelated sets of characters do actually intersect in unexpectd ways. In this way, the short film is much more like the director's recent Altman-inspired "Magnolia" than it it either "Hard Eight" or "Boogie Nights." "Cigarettes and Coffee" has played on The Sundance Channel (or was it The Independent Film Channel?) quite frequently.