Flagpole Special

Commissioned for Creative Time’s RET.inevitable in 1998, Paul Thomas Anderson’s Flagpole Special is a DV short showing John C. Reilly and Chris Penn from the waist down, riffing on pickup-seminar bravado that anticipates Magnolia’s “Seduce and Destroy.” Screened once under the Brooklyn Bridge and never released, it’s now regarded as a lost film.

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

Cast: Chris Penn, John C. Reilly

Audience-only score — full critic data not yet in the ReelXO vault.