Interview: "X Marks The Spot"

Philadelphia Daily News, Written By Gary Thompson
October 17th, 1997


Boyhood Porn Film Site was a Quest for Anderson

Anderson recalls seeing film crews setting up to shoot a dirty movie at one of the houses on his block. When he grew up (he's still only 27), he went on a grim porn quest, renting X-rated movies in hopes of spotting his neighborhood on tape.

He never found it, but he became increasingly interesting in the behind-the scenes aspect of the porn business, which struck him as a warped, pathetic and altogether fascinating business.

"My fascination with porno is that, in a twisted way, it can be incredibly funny one moment and incredibly sad the next. That feeling is something I wanted to capture,'' said Anderson, who visited some porn sets to get a feeling for the scene. ``I did just enough research to verify that what I thought was the truth was in fact the truth. My assumption turned out to be on the money, although the business was sadder than I thought.''

His Boogie Nights is a 1970s period piece about the heyday of porn - when the movies were still shot on film (today it's grainy video), when porno directors had pretensions of making art, or at least artful smut.

The movie's provocative subject (remember the hullabaloo surrounding The People vs. Larry Flynt?) and Anderson's eye-catching technique have made him and his movie a sensation this season.

His work has drawn obvious comparisons to Altman and Scorsese, although the structure and tone of the movie have similarities to Ed Wood, Tim Burton's biography of a man purported to be the worst filmmaker of all time.

Anderson acknowledges the resemblance.

"I think both movies admire people who have the desire to do good work, and who make the effort. Whether the work is good or not is ultimately not important. We are charmed by and in love with the fact that they want to try,'' said Anderson, whose Boogie Nights is the story of a director (Burt Reynolds) and star (Mark Wahlberg) trying to make Hollywood-style movies with pornographic content.

"A hack is a damn hack,'' Anderson said, ``but a filmmaker who has bad taste but is trying his damnedest is to be admired.''

Anderson, at age 27, is trying his damnedest. And succeeding, by most accounts. Boogie Nights is earning high praise, and Anderson may soon surpass Quentin Tarantino as the hottest young director in Hollywood, if he hasn't already.

Anderson does tend to stand out among other Generation X directors, whose work is often genre-bound, self-referential and small in scope. His ``Boogie Nights'' is a sprawling, epic account of American culture, spanning the '70s and '80s, and crossing several generations.

"A lot of people of my generation have been beaten down, maybe by low expectations, into not taking risks. There's so much negativity that ambition seems to be like a bad word. I want to push myself, to experiment. I want my work to have an audaciousness.''

That includes wading into the porno pool at the same time Milos Forman was being attacked for making ``The People vs. Larry Flynt,'' criticized by feminists for being soft on pornographers.

"We were editing when that controversy came to a head. All I'm going to say is that I pinned Gloria Steinem's article to the editing board. I loved it,'' he said. ``I don't think, given the content of my movie, that we're going to get the same kind of flak.''

Probably not. Anderson gives the characters in ``Boogie Nights'' a full measure of humanity while managing to make the exploitative nature of the industry apparent.

And for a movie about sex, it's not very sexy. The sex scenes are more clinical than titillating (part of Anderson's point), and the movie's ``R'' rating stems more from violence than sex.

"I'm not really interested in how pornography fits into some universal moral framework. I wanted to explore the society that this little culture creates for itself. And that's about all I'm going to say about it'' he said.

"There's nothing worse than listening to a filmmaker tell you about his movie, and you're like, 'Hey jackass, why pay $7.95 to see it?' ''

Interview: "He Knows It When He Sees It"

LA Times, Written By Kristine McKenna
October 12th, 1997


Paul Thomas Anderson got Hollywood's attention with a look at the '70s porno-film world.

Before you rush out to see "Boogie Nights," Paul Thomas Anderson's epic about the pornography industry, there's something you should know: This is not a pornographic film, nor is it a film about pornography. It's a film about the people in the pornography industry, and, as such, it's more apt to move you than to turn you on. It's also apt to make you laugh.

Conceived by Anderson when he was 17 and under the sway of "This Is Spinal Tap," the scathing parody of the rock 'n' roll world released in 1984, "Boogie Nights" is set in the San Fernando Valley in the late '70s when, unbeknown to most of us, the porn industry experienced something akin to a golden period. Director-writer Anderson has a keen eye for both the surreality of making a living by having sex on film and the bad taste that pervaded the disco scene, and his film is as hilarious as it is distressing.

"Boogie Nights," made for $15 million and due out Friday from New Line, features an ensemble cast that includes Julianne Moore, William H. Macy, Heather Graham, Don Cheadle and John C. Reilly. Also starring are Burt Reynolds, whose performance is being touted as his most accomplished in years; Alfred Molina, who does a memorable turn as a crazed drug dealer; and Mark Wahlberg, whose work should bring an end to any snickering about Marky Mark, the rapper and underwear model.

Interview: Robert Ebert Q&A

Roger Ebert Q&A With Paul Thomas Anderson
October ?? 1997


Chicago, October 1997 - Paul Thomas Anderson has made one of the best films of 1997, and at age twenty-seven is getting the kind of attention no young director has had since Quentin Tarantino erupted. His Boogie Nights, which follows a cast of colorful characters through six eventful years in the adult film industry, is the year's best-reviewed film - a hit at the Toronto and New York Film Festivals.

Although the film's subject matter is touchy, Boogie Nights is not a sex film; porno supplies the backdrop to a traditionally structured Hollywood story about an unknown kid (Mark Wahlberg) who is discovered by a director (Burt Reynolds), encouraged by an older actress (Julianne Moore), and becomes a star - until his ego and drugs bring everything crashing down.

Interview: "A 27-Year-Old Director Tackles 70s Sensibilities"

Seattle Times, Written John Hartl
October ??, 1997


Paul Thomas Anderson wasn't even born when the 1970s began. Yet he's written and directed a 1970s epic about the California porn industry, "Boogie Nights," that is drawn partly from his own experiences growing up in the San Fernando Valley.

"I have strong and distinctive memories of the Valley, from my pre-adolescence and adolescence," said the 27-year-old filmmaker by phone from New York, where the picture played the New York Film Festival. It opens today at the Neptune and Lewis & Clark theaters and moves into 2,000 theaters Oct. 31.

"The Van Nuys industrial section had large warehouses, with people walking in and out of them who were not there to pour concrete," he said.

"I remember I was about 10 or 11, when across the street from my grandmother's house appeared this van and lights, with a lot of shady-looking people hanging around." He even recalls someone saying "They're shooting a porno movie over there."

Interview: "Lights...Camera...Hold it, Hold it; Would Someone Please Reattach Mark's Member, Please...And Action!"

Esquire Magazine, Written By Mim Udovich
October 1st, 1997


It's a movie we saw. It's a movie you're going to want to see. It's a movie that made us want to talk to the director. Writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson is twenty-seven, and Boogie Nights, a truly awesome piece of moviemaking starring Burt Reynolds, Mark Wahlberg, Julianne Moore, and Heather Graham, is his second feature. (The first was the indie Hard Eight) Set in the porn industry of the late seventies, this is a movie that even the Motion Picture Association of America can't help loving. "When I first started talking to them, they said, `No, no, no, we want it to be an NC-17 The rating has been ruined for us with Showgirls out there in that Showgirls way. This would really help us,'" says Anderson, who has, as he contracted to do, delivered an R. "I actually called Oliver Stone, thinking, Here's someone who's been through this and can maybe give me some advice. But it was kind of hard getting advice out of him, because all he wanted to talk about was the hypocrisy of America. Actually, he did end up calming down and being helpful."

Interview: "A Little Nights Music"

Entertainment Weekly, Written By Chris Willman
?? ?? 1997


Twenty-seven-year old director Paul Thomas Anderson didn't grow up to the superhits of the 70's, but he's built a monument to them with his Boogie Nights Soundtrack.

Having handpicked 40-odd songs for the soundtrack to his pornland epic Boogie Nights, filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson got nearly everything on his period-pop wish list. Only one songwriter asked to see the film before giving permission to use his tune: ELO-meister Jeff Lynne, whose "Livin' Thing" provides an It's alive! punchline to the scene where smut star Dirk Diggler (Mark Wahlberg) finally comes to terms with his...gift. "Jeff said, 'I have two young daughters, and I have a problem with sex and violence in movies. Should I see this?' So I screened it for him," chuckles Anderson. At the climax, rather than fleeing, Lynne leapt up, fists raised, as ELO kicked in post-prosthesis. "He said, 'I don't like sex and violence in movies, but this is the most brilliant f---in' movie ever!'"

Interview: "Boogie Might"

Toronto's Eye Magazine, Written By Alex Patterson
September ??, 1997


Director Paul Thomas Anderson gets down and dirty

Minutes before I'm due to call the director of the nostalgic comedy-drama Boogie Nights, a gaggle of Jesus freaks start some kind of revival meeting right outside my apartment. They are unbelievably noisy -- these folks may be doing God's work, but they're doing it with Satan's amps -- so I yell at them, "Lower the volume, damn it, I've got to talk with a guy who just made a movie about the porno business in the '70s!"

That guy's name is Paul Thomas Anderson, he's 26, and Boogie Nights is only his second feature. His noir-ish debut, Hard Eight, earned critical respect but sank without a trace earlier this year. But Boogie Nights won't be so easily ignored. Not only is it drenched with good old S-E-X, it features a star-making performance by Mark Wahlberg (the artist formerly known as Marky Mark) as a kid who makes it big by... well, making it big.

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.

Interview: "15 Minutes With The Prodigy"

Girls On - Claire Magazine
Fall 1997


I get 15 minutes. A short amount of time considering my hours of preparation for this interview--up since six a.m., writing out questions, rehearsing, calling Lise ("is that question too obnoxious?"). I come to his jazzy uptown New York hotel 20 minutes early, armed with a recorder, five 90-minute micro- cassette tapes, extra batteries, notebook, four pens, Boogie Nights production notes. Then I sit in the lobby like a dick, not thinking to call his room, testing my recorder for the thousandth time. After half an hour, I finally call, and his assistant appears to usher me to his suite.

I walk in and see that this guy is young. Like 26 or 27 young. And not only did L.A. native Paul Thomas Anderson write and direct Boogie Nights, he also wrote and directed a flick that I recently caught on video and loved, Hard Eight, with Gwyneth Paltrow and Philip Baker Hall. I'm a little star-struck, frankly. But he's just sitting there, all casual and sweet-looking and poised, smoking his Camels. He's kind of thin, with glasses and not-so-recently-washed-looking hair. Regular clothes--khakis, a button-up shirt (not oxford, though). But I notice he's wearing one of those super-hip G-Shock watches. Mmm-hmm. Mental note: wearing G-Shock. This is going well.