Interview: "Splay Misty For Me"

Details Magazine Interview With Paul Thomas Anderson
September ?? 1997


The Director of this year’s most controversial movie, Boogie Nights, gets his money shot.

Studio City, California, 1979. Late at night, in the darkened family room of a ranch home, a sandy-haired nine-year-old stands in front of the TV, his drop-jawed face illuminated by the flickering images. Gripped by arousal and fear, he keeps an eye on the door and a finger on the stop button of the VCR, which unspools The Opening of Misty Beethoven, a tape he has just discovered in his father’s porn stash. In such moments are obsessions born.

Eighteen years later, Paul Thomas Anderson is in a dim Cuban restaurant in Los Angeles, recalling that moment. Unshaven and wearing a rumpled blue oxford, Anderson looks more like a residential adviser in a freshman dorm than a guy who has just finished directing one of the year’s most anticipated – and controversial films.