Burt Reynolds Finally Talks PTA, Boogie Nights

Mr. Burt Reynolds recently sat down for a 90-minute conversation with the Movie Geeks United! podcast. During the course of this in-depth discussion, Reynolds spoke at length about a number of his films and iconic roles -- including Boogie Nights & Jack Horner, which he has apparently still not watched all the way through. 

Check out the 4 minute excerpt below:

  

If you wish to hear the entire interview, please click here!

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41 days

20th Anniversary Boogie Nights Cemetery Screening!

For those in the Los Angeles area, Cinespia will be holding an outdoor 20th anniversary screening for Boogie Nights Saturday, May 20th at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. In their words:

P.T. Anderson’s tour-de-force about the porn industry in 1970s Los Angeles swept across screens and launched the career of one of our most brilliant filmmakers. Mark Wahlberg stars as the well endowed but naive dishwasher who became one of the biz’s greatest heroes. Discovered by a powerful producer, his fame grows as does his attachment to his new film family. 

Pulsing disco, thrusting camera moves and a dream cast adorn this sparkling story that reveals the darkness at the edges of the glamor and dazzle of our most glittering era. Also stars Julianne Moore, Burt Reynolds, John C Reilly, Heather Graham and Don Cheadle. 

The gates will open at 6:45 and the film will start at 8:30.

Tickets are $16 dollars and are available here.

Address: 6000 Santa Monica Blvd.
Phone: 323.221.3343
Transit: Metro Red Line Hollywood/Vine station

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Happy Birthday, PTA!

We here at C&RV wanted to send out some serious positive vibes to the man himself, who celebrates his 46th birthday today. Have a happy one, sir, and thank you for all that you have given us!

We'll leave you with a 30-minute commentary PTA did on the John Holmes documentary Exhausted, which he provided for the Boogie Nights laser disk back in the day.

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Happy 45th, PTA!

Here's wishing Mr. Paul Thomas Anderson a happy forty-fifth birthday from the team at C&RV. We owe you everything and then some, sir, and we sincerely hope this next year brings you wellness, joy, and (selfishly) productivity.

And here's an oldie-but-a-goodie:

Cheers!
CJ & Bryan, Cigarettes & Red Vines

WATCH: PS Hoffman (A Tribute)

Good afternoon.

We were passed along this beautifully constructed, and extremely moving tribute to the colorful career of Philip Seymour Hoffman, which was tragically cut short last month. The piece contains highlights from all five of the films PSH made with PTA, alongside countless other memorable PSH screen moments. It is sure to put a lump in your throat.

Thank you to the creator of this piece, Caleb Slain, for reaching out to us personally with this.

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Boogie Nights Almost Went Straight To Home Video

It's that time of year. Directors, producers, multimegastars are doing the holiday press push for awards consideration on their films. One of the hallmarks of this process in the last few years has been the various roundtables that The Hollywood Reporter orchestrates, and with their "producers" roundtable having just dropped, The Playlist points out an interesting anecdote shared between Michael de Luca and Mark Wahlberg on their experience making Boogie Nights. 

MDL:  'Boogie Nights' scored horribly. They recruit for these [test screenings] off a paragraph [synopsis] in the mall, and the paragraph for 'Boogie Nights' made it look like a sitcom, and then they come for this three-hour exegesis on existential crises in porn. It got to a point where Bob Shaye, my old boss, chased good scores on that movie, and that movie was never going to score high.

MW: I remember he did his own cut and made Paul watch it.

MDL: Yeah, it was horrible. It was tough. That movie was going straight to video, and then the reviews started to come in at the New York Film Festival. If it wasn't for early reviews… 

It's hard not to consider the dazzling irony of the prospect of the film going straight to video, given its message about the effects of video production over celluloid distribution. You can watch the roundtable in its entirety below, or skip to the pertinent information starting around 44:50.



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Eric Roberts Boasts Mysterious Involvement in 'Vice'; PTA Responsible For Anchorman?

Friends, it has been far too long. We have a bit to get caught up on.

Firstly, if this October 6th edition of The Dr. Drew Podcast is any indication, it would be appear that Eric Roberts is also going to be in Inherent Vice. He has some brief, nice things to say about the experience of working with PTA, but keeps it mostly very (very) tight-lipped. The good stuff comes in around 15:20, and here's our loose transcription:

Actor Michael Cotter Talks "Inherent Vice"; Boogie Nights Script Read At TIFF

An interview over at examiner.com has been making rounds today, wherein actor Michael Cotter talks a bit about his experience working with Paul Thomas Anderson & co. on Inherent Vice, and here's the nitty gritty of it:

What can you tell us about your role in the upcoming Paul Thomas Anderson film "Inherent Vice"? 

I play A.D.A. Rhus Farthington and I work in the District Attorney's office in LA, where I am co-workers with Reese Witherspoon's character Penny. It is a period piece set in LA in 1969-1970, and it's always fun to be able to play in a different decade, especially for the wardrobe and set choices which were both great.

How was working with A-listers Reese Witherspoon, the always unpredictable Joaquin Phoenix and director Paul Thomas Anderson?

It was an amazing experience! I think all three of them are brilliant at what they do and I felt lucky to be able to play in the same game as them for a few days. Once the cameras started rolling, they all welcomed me into the fold and were all very generous in the moment.

Any interesting stories from the set you can share with us?

One of the coolest things that we did was for one of the scenes we shot, PTA ended up letting the three of us basically improv through this interview scene. And once we all started to improv together, it became this really fun game of finding our way through the scene together and just feeding off of each other. It was really fun to be able to do that with Reese and Joaquin and just trust that we would find our way to the end of the scene each time, but always find cool new moments on every take.

Among other things, this should finally help put to rest any lingering suspicions you may have had that Reese Witherspoon was somehow no longer involved in the film. It also fills in a couple casting gaps that were a bit more justifiably up in the air: that Witherspoon will be playing Penny Kimball, and that the role of Rhus Farthington has gone to Cotter. Our Inherent Vice page has been updated accordingly.

FBF: Watch Footage From the Set of Boogie Nights

Thanks to a laser-eyed reader, we have a very, very cool Flashback Friday for you today. Some footage was spat out onto youtube yesterday which shows PTA, his cast, and his crew in action on the set of Boogie Nights back in '96. The video is choppy, with many uninvited and abrupt cuts to black, but it captures some very interesting little moments, half-sentences, camera moves, dance choreography, and, most importantly, shots of Paul directing with sunglasses on like it's his damn business.

Special thanks to Diego for dropping this at our feet. Cheers.

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WATCH: William H. Macy Discusses Boogie Nights With Jason Reitman

Spare little Flashback Friday for you today, mostly because we have a casting announcement coming in a bit, but here's a cool little Q&A that writer/director Jason Reitman (Juno, Up in the Air) moderated with Bill "Snake at the Door" Macy at the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles in 2010 over the topic of his participation in Boogie Nights. Sound's not great, video's not great, and it gets cut off at the end, but it's still got some pretty good stuff! Watch away.

Stay tuned, as I mentioned, because we'll be making a casting announcement in the next little while.

annnnd

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"The Master" is now available on Blu-ray and DVD. 

FLASHBACK FRIDAY: Old School Boogie Nights Interview with PTA

 Good morning, kids. Thought it might be nice to resurrect an old tradition while waiting for more exciting news on Inherent Vice, and I don't think we ever got around to posting this one, so here ya go: A charmingly youthful PTA can be seen in the video above doing a press interview for Boogie Nights, circa April 1998. The [fucking great] older gentleman at the beginning of the clip suggests this was during a tour of Australia near the end of the Boogie Nights insanity. Enjoy and still remember: Keep stored in a cool, dry place, under "b" for Boogie.

In case you missed it, last night the cat got out of the bag re: the casting of IV's now famous heroine, Shasta Fay. It's pretty damn cool that the project has shaped up the way it has over the past couple weeks, don't you agree? There will certainly be more to report in the near future, so be sure to check back on the regular. In the meantime...

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"The Master" is now available on Blu-ray and DVD. 

Mondo Debuts 5 Film Paul Thomas Anderson Poster Series

While PTA is gearing up for his next film, Mondo -- who you will remember from their dazzling "The Master" print from a few months back -- have decided to look back. This week the Austin-based powerhouse is debuting a series of Paul Thomas Anderson poster prints this week featuring his first five features. The series was curated by artist Aaron Horkey and as per the company's usual policy will go onsale at a random time at a date still TBD sometime this week. Check out all the posters on our Facebook page and vote for your favorite or check them out at Indiewire who also features quotes from the artist/curator.

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"The Master" is now available on Blu-ray and DVD. 

Watch: ‘Boogie Nights' Inspiration ‘Exhausted: John C. Holmes, The Real Story' With PTA Commentary

Most PTA fans are aware of "Exhausted: John C. Holmes, The Real Story" and its huge influence over "Boogie Nights" but probably few of you have actually seen it. About 35 minutes of excerpts from the doc appeared on the Criterion Laserdisc 15 years ago as a special feature with commentary by PTA. It was scheduled to go on the DVD release as well but for some reason or other got pulled and has been buried ever since, viewable only by the lucky few who held onto their Laserdisc players....until now. We're surprised it took this long honestly but some enterprising fellow named bodian26 has uploaded the doc to YouTube in 4 parts and even taken the liberty of cutting to a title card to block out the naughty bits so you can consider this SFW. In the opening minutes, PTA calls says the film is "a major inspiration for 'Boogie Nights'" and goes on to chronicle the various similarities as well as the things he loves just because they're funny/sad. Happy Friday. (via Richard Iaeger)



"The Master" is now available on Blu-ray and DVD.    
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‘Boogie Nights' Was Released 15 Years Ago Today

Everyone has one special thing.

"Boogie Nights" was released on October 10th, 1997 shortly after premiering to raves at the Toronto and New York Film Festival's. The sophomore feature by the then little-known Paul Thomas Anderson arrived less than 9 months after his debut "Hard Eight" had been quietly released into a handful of theatres. But things were different this time. The buzz which had been building since the film went into production had reached a fever pitch by the time it was released. Reviews were ecstatic and many compared the young filmmaker to Martin Scorsese and Robert Altman. Everyone wanted to know just who was this 27 year old that had made such a brilliant film which went on to rack up 3 Oscar nominations including Best Original Screenplay for Paul Thomas Anderson.

To celebrate "Boogie Nights" 15th Anniversary, take a stroll down memory lane on our "Boogie Nights" info page. There you can find interviews, production notes, posters, deleted scenes and more.  We'll be posting some archival bits and pieces throughout the day on Twitter so stay tuned.



I first saw "Boogie Nights" in 1997 when I was in high school. All my friends worked at the local theatre so we basically saw everything that came out. We probably went in expecting something a little bit risqué but were totally unprepared for what we saw. I remember stumbling out of the theatre afterwards. My mind was blown. It was hilarious, heartbreaking and unmistakably confident. When the film was re-released for Oscar consideration I saw it a 2nd time in the theatre and subsequently many more times on VHS (!) and DVD. I knew then that Paul Thomas Anderson was my favorite filmmaker at that moment. But what I didn't know was that a decade and a half later he would make such a good case for being the very best filmmaker of his generation.

Where did you first see "Boogie Nights"?
What are your favorite moments from the film?
Leave a comment below or use the hashtag #BoogieNights15 on Twitter.

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Thomas Jane Talks ‘Boogie Nights' At The New Beverly

The New Beverly Cinema in LA is currently in the middle of their Paul Thomas Anderson retrospective showing all 5 of his films prior to "The Master." (Which we could've sworn we posted about but it looks like we've only been talking about it on Twitter.) Over the weekend the theatre screened a double-feature of "Hard Eight" and "Boogie Nights" with a special Q&A inbetween with Todd Parker himself, actor Thomas Jane. Reader @westernwilder was kind enough to tape the full Q&A for us where Jane where he discussed being a broke actor in LA, auditioning for the film and getting kicked in the balls by Burt Reynolds. Watch the videos below:

American Cinematographer Looks Back At ‘Boogie Nights' & ‘Magnolia' With DP Robert Elswit

The latest issue of American Cinematographer has an interesting little article called "Tales Of Ordinary Madness" in which cinematographer Robert Elswit looks back at the making of "Boogie Nights" and "Magnolia" with Paul. No real news but a good fun read anyway and as you can see above, an excellent picture of PTA in his pajama bottoms. Highly complimentary quote from Elswit below:

“Paul is one of the few people I’ve worked with that has a poetic temperament. That allows him to do things in his films where you know the result will be more than the sum of its parts. It’s a combination of the way we shoot it and light the picture, the way it’s performed and edited, the way everything resonates with everything else.Each scene is doing more than just telling a story; it’s doing something you can’t put into words. And that puts him, I think, in the land of people like Bergman, Kurosawa, Ozu and Ford.”

 You can read the whole thing if you're a magazine subscriber. (Thanks to our readers @jblots, @damitago, @mertsrocket for their help!)

All quiet on "The Master" front except for this nifty fanmade poster that recently came across our desks by illustrator Alex Fellows... unless someone closer to production than we are wants to drop us a tidbit. Our inbox is always open. 

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Albert Brooks Turned Down Burt Reynolds Part In ‘Boogie Nights'

It's always fun to think about the things that might have been, particularly when it comes to casting. We already know that Paul had originally wanted Leonardo DiCaprio for Dirk Diggler in "Boogie Nights" but according to a recent interview with Collider, it looks like Albert Brooks (seen most recently in this year's excellent "Drive") says he had to turn down the part of Jack Horner because he was in preproduction on his own movie (looks like either "Mother" or "The Muse").

Is there a part over the last decade or two that you were offered that you turned down and still think about?

Brooks: Well, I turned down so many parts. I couldn’t even begin to tell you. Dead Poets Society and Big and Pretty Woman. One part that I actually wanted to play, and I was in pre-production of my own movie, just because I thought I wanted to work with Paul [Thomas Anderson] was the part that Burt Reynolds got in Boogie Nights. I liked that whole ensemble. When I read that script, I really liked it. But I couldn’t stop, I couldn’t shut down what I was doing. But, regrets are stupid; they don’t mean anything and they don’t add up to anything.

No new news on "The Master" front. But you can check out "The Master" cast here. And for some reason if you like sitting through commercials, AMC is airing "There Will Be Blood" this Saturday where it will be edited and likely still 4 hours long.
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Name Drop Round-Up: Bill Nighy, Aaron Johnson, Justin Long

We recently mentioned Rotten Tomatoes "Five Favorite Films" feature and found PTA's films on a few more lists digging through the archives today. Happy Friday!

Bill Nighy ("Shaun of the Dead," "Love Actually") places "Punch-Drunk Love" among his Top 5:

"A relatively new film that went straight into my top five, I adore Punch Drunk Love, and I can almost recite it to you. It was on TV on a loop for a while, and it's like The Godfather, you hit that film on TV and you stay there. There aren't many, but you just stay there, thinking, 'I could keep flipping, but there's not actually going to be anything better than this,' and it doesn't matter that you've seen it sixteen times - you just dig it because it's such high quality.
I think Adam Sandler and Emily Watson are completely marvellous in it, and I didn't know anything about Adam Sandler, I've never seen any of his other films, so I've only seen him in this. I love Paul Thomas Anderson, and I think it's my favourite of his films. Possibly a controversial thing to say, as his other films are, perhaps, hipper, but I love the fact that it's this fucked up love story. I love it stylistically, the jokes, the visual attitude of it and those funky links that he does. I love the apparent arbitrariness of the plot, which hinges on upon the fact that you get free air-miles with a particular brand of chocolate pudding, and I love the way it dovetails at the end.
Everyone in it is magnificent, including Philip Seymour Hoffman, who's in The Boat that Rocked and who is beautiful in Punch Drunk Love. Adam Sandler gives one of the greatest light entertainment performances I've ever seen. It's a submerged light entertainment, it's so integrated, so authentic in terms of naturalism, that you surprise yourself by laughing, because it's so deadpan, so undercover in terms of comedy, and that's my favourite thing of all time, the highest level. For the first twenty minutes you think you're in art movie hell, but you're not, so don't panic."

Aaron Johnson ("Kick-Ass," "Nowhere Boy") says this about "Boogie Nights":

Paul Thomas Anderson -- what a fantastic director. These are all directors that I would love to work with, you know. I doubt any of them could give a sh*t. [laughs.] Boogie Nights. Pretty epic. It just captured that era so brilliantly. Mark Wahlberg, man -- great role. Julianne Moore, Philip Seymour Hoffman -- they just blow me away. I could watch it again and again. Great movie.

And Justin Long ("Drag Me To Hell," he's not a PC) also names 'Boogie' as one of his favorites:

I think a lot about Martin Scorsese and how heavily influenced Paul Thomas Anderson was by him. I feel like he learned so much from Scorsese in Boogie Nights, and so I feel like picking Boogie Nights is somewhat accounting for my Martin Scorsese love. But I'm also being very honest about a movie that I can watch over and over. Just the epic nature and the grandness of it, and some of the shots and the style of it, and the music -- my God, the way he uses music -- and that great shot where somebody jumps into the pool and you hear the muffled soundtrack. It's brilliant. I never get sick of watching it. And the acting is just some of my favorite actors at the top of their game. I love doing impressions and one of my earliest impressions of an actor was Philip Seymour Hoffman in that movie, when he's saying how much he loves the name and he's chewing on the pen.

As always, you can get the latest news on Cigarettes & Red Vines on Twitter and Facebook. Tell your friends.

Luis Guzman Talks PTA, Getting Cast In ‘Boogie Nights'

Collider recently sat down with PTA regular Luis Guzman, promoting his new film "Arthur," and got a chance to ask him about his work with Paul. Nothing too revelatory here, just a few nice quotes from Maurice/Luis/Lance.

On how he ended up in "Boogie Nights"...

"He had sent me the script of "Boogie Nights" and it laid down on my desk for a while. One day I was cleaning my desk off and I found the script and said 'Maybe I should read this?' And I read it and was I blown away by it and I called him up. I said 'dude, are they gonna let you do this movie? It is so out there, it is so genuis.' His writing [is] really, really unbelievable, very passionate. And we hit it off, I showed up and then it was a hell of a ride doing "Boogie Nights." We had an incredible cast of people, we shot in some great locations and just the experience of being able to shoot with someone like Paul and seeing his vision come to life. It was really, really impressive."

On whether PTA has changed over the years...

"He's always been that passionate person. That's something that I respect about him, he gets what he wants as a director and I think that's really important, not to settle for less. Even if it means to go back and be shooting a certain scene, 3-4-5 times because you see it, it's just not there. So he's really passionate about those things and I've always admired that about him."

You can watch the entire interview over at Collider and as always, get the latest news on Cigarettes & Red Vines on Twitter and Facebook (including some pretty cool fan art we didn't post here on the site). Tell your friends.

Robert Elswit Talks PTA & How He Almost Didn't Do ‘Boogie Nights'

A bit of new old news here while we wait for new news. Robert Elswit, cinematographer on all of PTA's films (who won the Academy Award for "There Will Be Blood") and his wife Helen (a visual effects person) gave a talk in 2009 at Principia College and thanks to Youtube that hourlong talk has now surfaced. (It was actually put up about a year ago but just now made it's way to our site.) The interview ranges from topics like exactly what a Director of Photography does to how to break into the business ("write a screenplay") and naturally Elswit brings up Paul several times during the talk. He calls Paul a "luddite" when it comes to technology and says that even though he's a young guy he likes to work with very old fashioned methods. He also says Paul is "a director who hopes that movies will come to life if accidents occur. There's a certain amount of planning, but some of it, he hopes will be serendipitous." He goes on to say that even though he liked Paul, he almost passed on "Boogie Nights".