Interview: The Geek Who Made Art From Porn

Daily Mail & Guardian
February 13th, 1998


At 27, Paul Thomas Anderson is winning plaudits with Boogie Nights, about the early days of blue movies. Jonathan Romney meets the man who has made Burt Reynolds hip again

Hollywood in the late Nineties is more than ever committed to child's play, to effects-laden nursery diversions designed to make grown-up money. No wonder critics and public respond so eagerly when faced with genuine adult cinema. It just happens, in the case of America's latest maverick hit, Boogie Nights, that the subject really is adult cinema, in the more specialised sense of the term - Paul Thomas Anderson's film is set in the blue-movie underworld of late seventies Los Angeles.