Cigarettes and coffee; a pretty classic mix for anyone who enjoys the two. This 1993 short film done by Paul Thomas Anderson is aimed to introduce you to the story of our characters. Also, don’t worry, for all the smokers out there, it is only 30 minutes (unless you’re lucky enough to smoke a cigarette while watching, in which case I’d call you a lucky bastard). So it’s not too much torture, plus you’ll want to light one up after the movie anyway. This was PTA’s first professionally done short film, created using money he saved from dropping out of NYU film school (after 1 day of schooling) to budget the short and borrowed camera, and from there… well you know the rest.
Kirk Baltz (Officer Marvin Nash from Reservoir Dogs) plays our main character, whose name isn’t discovered until the film’s final minutes, but that is sort of irrelevant anyway. Wanna know someone who has a name in this film? Bill, and he is a hitman. This film takes place in a diner, I am assuming on the outskirts of Las Vegas, Nevada. Baltz is sharing a cup of coffee with Phillip Baker Hall, who is very strict about the rules of conversation. “We will wait for our cigarettes to be lit and our coffee poured” before they discuss anything. Honestly. I expected nothing less from PTA. Well, not only are Baltz and Baker Hall at this diner, so are two young newlyweds (on their honeymoon), one of which is upset with the other. The last patron in the diner is Bill. Bill (played by Miguel Ferrer, think Blank Check) immediately gets on the phone and calls someone, but all dialogue leads back to Baltz and Baker Hall. Unfortunately, we missed the conversation about how and why Kirk Baltz is even here.
I’ll stop for a second and explain. I mean so far all I have talked about is people conversing with each other, so how is that entertaining? Well, the details are divulged on a “need to know basis”, and part of the fun of this film is trying to extract story info from the heavily intriguing dialogue. Something I absolutely admire about Paul Thomas Anderson is the fact that this was his first film and the film is done so well. This film is almost like a scene from a Quentin Tarantino movie. Don’t believe me? Well, he won Best Director at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival. If anyone is still with me, let’s continue.
“What, you want to hear it again?” asks Baltz “Possibly, yes. The second time will either confirm its validity, or brighten it’s silliness,” Baker Hall replies. Sorry, but I am a total sucker for the dialogue used in this short (because it’s brilliant). Baltz eventually gets to it, as the cigarettes continue to burn, and tells the story about how he was gambling inside the casino and stepped out for a minute as a ritual, took a bill out of his pocket and wrote his name of the back of it. Something like a “good luck charm” (oh man). He never made it back inside with that bill, instead running into his best friend Steve from Portland (the best man at his wedding). He asks him to borrow 20 bucks because he was going to play craps. He gives it to him. As they also plan to meet in Baltz’s room at 7PM, only for Baltz to show up and find just his wife and between the nightstand and the bed, the marked bill.
He continues to explain and we find out that Baltz has some buried emotions about his wife and best friend, eventually, leading him to explain that he took the bill and gambled it, and won about 8 grand. Bill finishes up his phone conversation and walks into the diner to buy a pack of cigarettes; guess what dollar bill he uses? With that being done, we know that Baltz hired the hitman to take care of his wife and friend, which is why he and Baker Hall are even discussing this, and Baltz feels regret for what he has done. When the change from the bill is brought back to the table, Baker Hall is left with a 20. We then discover that Baltz’s name is Douglas Walker. Doug doesn’t notice the bill, and he decides to drop the 20 on the ground. After finding out that Steve is in the trunk of Bill’s car, the dysfunctional newlyweds leave, but not before his wife takes the bill off the ground. Baker finally leaves Doug with a bit of advice, “Drink your coffee and smoke your cigarette, that alone will make everything alright.”
Now, I didn’t mean to take this review and turn it into a full on breakdown of this movie or even rant about how original and well thought out it is, but it deserves it. So what’s the point of the whole thing? That’s for you to decide for yourself. Paul Thomas Anderson is one of the few great screenwriters around the business today. Cigarettes and Coffee thrives on a simplistic setting and idea, while remaining a complex story where five characters’ lives are all intertwined by a single bill. However, it holds much higher meaning and anyone who watches can identify that.
