Interview: "A Natural Porn Director"

Independent On Sunday, Written By Paul Mungo
January 11th, 1998


When Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights was shown at the Toronto film festival last year, it was perhaps inevitable that the young American director would be hailed as the "new Quentin Tarantino". New Quentin

Tarantinos have been popping up fairly regularly in the past few years: the qualifications are a childhood spent in darkened cinemas, youth, and at least one ambitious, quirky film. If the movie features a faded Seventies star on the way back up, so much the better.

Anderson's faded Seventies star is Burt Reynolds, who plays sleaze king Jack Horner in Boogie Nights. And the film, set in the subculture of the hard-porn industry in Los Angeles in the late 1970s and early 1980s, was described by one American critic as "the most sensational act of moviemaking so far this year". It was directed by Anderson when he was just 26.

Anderson is 27 now. Despite the light straggle of beard on his chin, he seems younger. He is dressed mall-style, his shirt hanging out over his trousers, and is prone to American teenage expressions like "jeez". He cheerfully describes himself as "a standard-template film geek" who grew up in the San Fernando Valley, north of Los Angeles, with three sisters, his mom and dad. It was, he says, "normal suburbia - except that it's the capital of film production". His only real connection with the entertainment business was through his father, who did voiceovers for TV.