Why the raining frogs? "I was just trying to be cool... we wanted it to be cats and dogs but we couldn't afford it," Paul Thomas Anderson quipped when asked about the astonishing scene in Magnolia in which thousands of amphibians fall from the sky. (Producer Joanne Sellar hurried to reassure the international press that no real-life frogs were squashed.)

How did Anderon sign up Tom Cruise? "This is a movie that he did for no money," Anderson said of the star. "It was a bargain-basement discount... anybody's happy to get Tom Cruise in their movie, but they're really happy when he doesn't get paid a trillion dollars."