Paul Thomas Anderson Ends ‘One Battle After Another’ Press Run by Honoring His ‘Proper F**king Movie Stars’

“That’s a fucking trifecta,” said “One Battle After Another” writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson, gesturing toward the men who led the cast of his latest film, Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, and Benicio del Toro — all current Oscar nominees.

The recent DGA Award winner came out on Monday evening to present his stars the Hammond Cinema Vanguard Award at the 2026 Santa Barbara International Film Festival, in what Best Actor nominee DiCaprio said marked the end of their “One Battle After Another” press run.

While both the filmmaker and the three actors tend to be tough nuts to crack, being very specific about which interviews they do grant (for example, Anderson is the only Best Director nominee missing from the festival’s Outstanding Directors Award panel lineup), they did all loosen up on the Arlington Theatre stage alongside festival director Roger Durling and Deadline journalist Pete Hammond, who moderated the event as one of the namesakes for the award (the other being his wife, events producer Madelyn Hammond).

Closing the loop on a bit he started his speech off with, where he treated the stage like a round of “The Dating Game,” Anderson ended his awards presentation speech by saying, “If you like your movie stars old-fashioned, with talent, some mystery, some class, a little bit of unpredictable danger, then here are three of a dying breed. So cherish them while they’re still here, because our supply of proper fucking movie stars is running a tad low.”

Striking a similar tone, Durling, who has run SBIFF for over two decades, started the event off by noting, “This is by far the biggest night in the history of the film festival.” While each actor got their moment in the spotlight, the run of show was an abridged version of the standard tributes that SBIFF is known for, with all three awardees seated on stage the entire time.

Both del Toro and Penn expressed resistance to watching their performances on screen, with the latter saying, “I don’t want to go to the film festival and watch a scene with Sean Penn. I just can’t do that, but I can watch and listen to really good writing.” The two clips of himself he helped pick were, fascinatingly, from “Hurlyburly” and “All the King’s Men.”

DiCaprio had the most to share about his previous projects, with the highlight being him crediting the late Adam Somner, the first assistant director and executive producer of “One Battle After Another,” with being the person to take Alejandro González Iñárritu’s “The Revenant” to the finish line. “That was very daunting going into that whole film. And Adam Somner, who worked on our film actually came in and sort of saved the day. I think it was two thirds of the way through filming. We were up in Alberta, Canada, the cameras were freezing, crew members were leaving,” he said. 

Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Benicio del Toro, and Pete Hammond speak onstage at the Hammond Cinema Vanguard Award ceremony during the 41st Santa Barbara International Film Festival at The Arlington Theatre on February 09, 2026 in Santa Barbara, CaliforniaRebecca Sapp/Getty Images for Santa Barbara International Film Festival

“Everything was during magic hour. So we’d have an entire rehearsal all day and then for one hour we’d shoot. So it was like a theater production every single day. And I mean, the scheduling couldn’t have gone more awry, and there was mutiny everywhere,” said the star, who would go on to win the Best Actor Oscar for the film. “And Adam Somner, who was the greatest first AD I’ve ever worked with, who worked with us on this film — and it was his last film — came to save the day, and there was absolutely nobody like him in this industry, and he will be sorely missed.”

DiCaprio also revealed that he will start shooting Martin Scorsese’s next film “What Happens at Night” alongside Jennifer Lawrence in two weeks. While he has not given up on plans to make a Frank Sinatra biopic with Scorsese as well, DiCaprio shot down the idea that he’d appear in the “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” follow up teased during the Super Bowl. “No secrets here,” he joked.

The conversation with the three Academy Award-winning actors also went into some of the viral moments from “One Battle After Another,” like del Toro’s “A few small beers line” delivered to police officers that had pulled over his Sensei Sergio character.

“I didn’t want to lie to the cops. I think that Sensei would not lie to the cops. So I just decorated it,” he said. Hammond also brought up memes comparing the fate of recently axed Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino to his character Colonel Lockjaw. “Charlie Chaplin’s loathing about Hitler began in the ’30s when Adolf Hitler stole his mustache. I see history repeats itself,” said Penn in response.

Ultimately, on a more serious note, DiCaprio summed up what it was like to see their film, which features Americans taking revolutionary actions like freeing migrant detention centers, speak to the current politically charged moment in the United States, by giving the credit to their director. “Paul wrote an incredibly pertinent script that’s landed perfectly for this day and age that just really talks about the divisiveness and the polarity of our country and the world that we’re living in, the fact that we can’t hear each other.”

The full panel is available on the Santa Barbara International Film Festival YouTube page.