People tend to put filmmakers and film fans into strict categories; someone might be a comedy guy, a drama person, a horror fan or a superhero admirer. For example, no one would expect a filmmaker like Lars Von Trier to be a huge fanboy for Disney movies. He probably isn’t of course, but it’s just an extreme, hypothetical example of how we tend to presume peoples tastes.

Writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson makes difficult movies. Some more so than others, but he’s never played to the audience with simple, happy endings or huge action set pieces. Raw emotion, language and tense situations are constantly on display and these are things many people don’t want when they go to the movies. Those people want Christopher Nolan films. Huge action, sweeping spectacle, but with just enough thematic resonance to feel like they’re more than some run of the mill action movie. On the surface, one would think these two filmmakers occupy opposite sides of the spectrum.

That might be the case, but while promoting his latest film, The Master, Anderson was revealed that he’s a huge fan of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy. Read his quotes after the jump.

Note: This was in Superhero Bits Thursday, but we decided to break it out.

Anderson was in Australian with his film and did a Q&A after a screening. Cigarettes & Red Vines reported on that, where he said the following about Nolan’s film:

I’ve never really been asked to do [big tentpole blockbusters]. You look at what Christopher Nolan did with Batman, that’s like the meeting of the highest level of artistic skill & a kind of commerciality and appeal to a wide range of people which is what anybody would want. It’s kind of unparalleled actually, and they don’t come to me with those. And that’s alright.

It’s not that surprising that Anderson is a fan of these films. He’s obviously hoped his films would make more money than they have, he’s just never had a story to tell that would require the kind of scope Nolan does. Plus filmmakers respect filmmakers who do good work.

The question of Anderson being asked to do bigger movies is interesting though. Thankfully, he’s been able to make his own movies for the last 15 years but if he ever hit a real slump, do you think he’d take a Hollywood film just to do it? Or will he be able to stay on the Woody Allen/Stanley Kubrick path of making the movies you want, at your own pace? Would you be surprised if he ever made a big budget blockbuster?