Boogie Nights (1997) with director/writer Paul Thomas Anderson
Comments on the Film
On the film's length
There was never any concern from New Line originally
about the length of the movie. When I sat down with Mike de Luca, I had just
come from a situation making my first movie where I had gotten so royally
fucked over that my back was up and I was so paranoid. I felt that what I had
to do with my next movie was to sit down with the guy paying for it and go
through every single word and say, "Are you reading this? Have you really read
the script?" I sat down with de Luca and came at him, because he was instantly
the enemy and I was just this paranoid freak saying, "Let me tell you something
right now, buddy. It's going to be three hours long. Have you read this? See
where it says the camera follows him? It's going to be a three-minute shot and
I'm not going to cut it." I went at him and he just said, "Calm down, what the
fuck is your problem? Relax. What you went through is not the normal thing." I
did calm down and trust him enough but I wanted to really map the movie out for
him because I didn't want a surprise in the editing room. If you like this
script you'll love the movie, but if you have problems with the script now they'll
only get worse. So there was a real clarity between de Luca and I about what
the movie was, and the one concession he asked me to make was to not make it
NC-17, because they can't stock it in Blockbuster and they lose a lot of money
in video returns. So I took the
challenge to make an R-rated movie, and they're just happy that it's 20 minutes
shorter than I said it would be.
On Jack Horner meeting Eddie Adams
We shot this twice actually. We shot it once very
early in the schedule and it always gnawed at me that it was not right. It
didn't feel right in the writing, the acting, the shooting, in everything, and
I think everybody felt that way but for the longest time nobody said anything.
Then Joanne Sellar my producer came to me with two weeks left and said, "We're
about to wrap up, we're doing OK, we've got enough money. Is there anything
else that you want to get?" and I said, "I want to reshoot scene two." I went
to Burt and Mark and they felt the same way, and Dylan my editor certainly felt
the same way, because he had seen the massive amount of bad footage that I shot
trying to get it right. I was really happy to rewrite it and make it shorter,
better, more direct. I'm not sure I'm happy with the scene yet, but it's
fine.
On dialogue scenes
It's really hard to get people to fucking pay
attention to people talking. I don't blame it on the audience, I think a lot of
people blame it on MTV-style audiences, but I blame it on the storytelling and
filmmakers who are getting lazy and buying into condescending to an audience.
They're structuring their movie in a way that if they want to have two people
stop and talk it's not going to flow within the movie. It's all about how you
tell the story, and there just aren't enough good storytellers these days. LA
Confidential is so fucking great and that's all talk, the structure of it is
just well told and it's set up to be that. But (a) you don't see much talking
and (b) you don't see much silence, which is probably even harder than just
having people talking.
On John C. Reilly
I've known Reilly a long time. John C. Reilly is
definitely one of my favourite actors but he's certainly no.1 on the scale of
making me fucking laugh. There's no one that makes me break down crying,
falling on the floor, thinking I'm going to throw up laughing, and every single
thing he does makes me laugh. It's kind of criminal and it drives Dylan my
editor nuts, even though Dylan loves him. I just can't see the forest for the
trees with John Reilly, and maybe he sucks in this movie and maybe he'll suck
in the next movie, I don't know, but it's all good to me and I can't get enough
of him. I can stare at that fucking face all day long. God, he is so good. It's
so great to be around him and have him as a friend because so much stuff that we
do when we joke around ends up in the movie. This whole conversation while
making the margaritas is just me and Reilly fucking around one summer, and the
stuff in the pool, it's all just me and him. I saw him in Casualties of War
when I was 17 years old, it was his first movie and I thought "That's the
fucking guy." I wrote Sydney for him
before I knew him personally and I was able to get the script to him through his
agent at the Sundance lab. Maybe someone else would want to meet Robert de Niro
or Tom Hanks or something, I wanted to meet John C. fucking Reilly and have him
be my best friend and in every one of my movies, and now I have him.
On the ensemble cast
First of all, the reality of pornography is that there
are so many great stories, you know, there really is a million great stories.
It really came from wanting to write parts for a lot of great actors, either
actors who were my friends or that I'm a fan of. My first movie really only has
four characters in it, and this one has got 80 speaking parts, with probably 10
or 12 main characters. It was about wanting to work with a lot of actors and
knowing that this is a story and a world that can accommodate a lot of
different stories and characters, and we can just keep adding on top. I'd keep
adding characters because I'd think of Macy, I'd think of Julianne, I'd think
of Reilly, I'd think of Phil Hoffman. And I think everyone gets covered pretty
well because I have a lot of actors who are my friends and I want to write them
moments. They all have to participate in the ensemble but they are all going to
get their moment too, and that may not be the best for the storytelling, but it's
certainly a kick for me and it's a kick for that actor. In a selfish way that's
what comes first.
On his influences
As far as influences go, I'm pretty aware of all that
stuff. I mean do watch a lot of movies and I'm pretty film-literate. It's
funny, because people talk about Scorsese and certainly I've learned a lot from
him and riffed off his style, and I've seen where he's taken it from, guys like
Truffaut and Ophüls and people like that. But my greatest influence style-wise
is Jonathan Demme, and I remember talking to him on the phone, telling him he's
my idol, and I asked him if he's seen all those shots I ripped off from him,
and he said no. Nobody else does either, but somehow I interpret these shots
he's done and they affect me in such a way that it's really the most profound
influence, and when it vomits out of me I'm hopefully adding on top of what
he's done in an interesting way. As far as that topic goes, it's like, every song
we hear now is basically a Beatles song, you know? Verse/chorus/verse/chorus,
and now the job is just building on top of that. I think a lot of people are
ashamed to feel free or to do stuff with the camera because they don't want to
feel self-conscious or feel good about making a movie, to celebrate making a
movie, and I think that's bullshit. But I also think that it depends on the
story, and this is a good story for a lot of good show-off moments, and I hope
I took advantage of every single one of them.
On piracy
It's ironic that we're talking about this on a DVD,
but when you make a movie you want people to see it in a movie theatre, that's
what you plan to happen. A big cinemascope production in stereo at the Mann
Chinese, hopefully, and it's a criminal thing when you hear about people seeing
the movie on videotape – (a) on videotape and (b) on videotape before the movie
is even finished. Over the summer that we were cutting the movie we heard
stories of bootleg videotapes that had gotten out, and it's just like a needle
in your eye. You think "Fuck, how did this happen?" We traced some of the tapes
and I found out who had the tapes on the grapevine, and I'd call them on the
phone and say "Hi, this is Paul Thomas Anderson, director of Boogie Nights." They'd say, "Oh hi, how are you doing?" and I'd say, "I'm fucking terrible, you
have my movie on videotape. Where did you get it?" A couple of people would say "I'm not going to tell you, I can't tell you, please don't make me" but some
people did tell me and we were able to trace it back to a commercial
production house that was assigned to cut trailers and commercials. They were
dealt with accordingly...well not really, to tell you the truth. The funny
thing is that in the middle of the summer, here we are dealing with the MPAA
about the rating, and the bootleg tape thing falls under the category of the
MPAA, who are supposed to deal with that. They are supposed to call people up
and say "This is against the law, you're going to get fined, or the FBI is
going to come to your door" because it's a serious thing, you know? I guess a
portion of it is flattering because there's such an excitement about the movie
that people were paying $100 for a bootleg tape, but this is a movie not a TV
show, please don't do this. It's like if I broke into your house and looked at
work on your computer. It's not done, and it was really hard for me to deal
with."
On the changing porn industry
This scene, where Floyd Gondolli comes in and talks
about the introduction of video, this was the major hook that once I had
latched into it really freed me up to write the movie. My sort of romantic
notion is that back in the old days of the 70s, when porn movies were shot on
film, there was a major difference. First and foremost there's just a technical
difference. When you're shooting on film it's more expensive and you really
have to concentrate, you have to focus and you have to think about where is the
best place to put the camera in order to tell this story well. That's not even
getting into the emotional factor, which to me is that I look at the porno
stars of the 70s and I think they can draw a straighter line between themselves
and legitimate movie stars. They were both being shot on film and they were
both running at 24 frames per second and being thrown up through light onto a
big white screen, and it was easier to think "I'm a movie star." In this
business that was so degrading so quickly, they could hold onto a shred of
their dignity and think 'I'm a movie star.' But when video came along it ruined
that and created this assembly line mentality, which was "It's $5 a take, keep
shooting and we'll figure it out later." The quality of work went down and
they're not movie stars anymore, they're video stars. Not to mention that if
you're a director you're making your movie for an audience and the market is...what?
The market is a guy at home with a fast-forward button. You do not have time
for a plot because he has a fast-forward button. So it really stripped away any
version of dignity that might have been in the business at that time.
Bits and Pieces
You're listening to a guy who learned a lot about
ripping off movies from listening to laserdisc audio commentaries. My favourite
one is John Sturges talking about Bad Day at Black Rock. It was the first one I
ever listened to, so maybe that has something to do with it, but it is
wonderful, really wonderful.
I'm really proud of the score that Michael Penn put to
this movie, because there's so much disco music, funk stuff and soul stuff, and
I think the score was somewhat underappreciated. People were so busy being
excited about the pop songs they forgot about the score.
Macy comes from that Mamet school of acting and
dialogue, and he's so wonderful at talking. Macy's voice is his greatest tool
and most actors forget their speaking voice, but Macy doesn't, he enunciates in
a wonderful way. And everything you write, you'd better know what you've
written because he is going to say every single word exactly as written. He'll look
at the punctuation and find out what it means – a dash means this, an ellipsis
means that, this is in quotes, this has been underlined, this has been
italicised. He's all about finding out what the writer means, and he studies
the script so well that as a director you don't have to do shit, you just have
to watch him. I feel like I did my job as a writer so being a director was just
being a fan.
The thing about this first sex scene where Julianne
Moore and Mark Wahlberg do this bad porno dialogue – she is unbelievable. I
don't know how she did it. I remember asking her about it and she said it was
all about being uncomfortable with her hands, trying to find something to do
with her hands, and if she just thought about her hands and got through the scene
then she would do good, and she did. God, she's incredible. I remember telling
the actors, "You're all fucking good, but if you think you're good just wait
until you have to act bad, then we'll see who the real man is." I think
Julianne won.
When I was 17 I saw Exhausted, a documentary which is
just this love letter to John Holmes, it's not really a documentary. It's two
hours about how great John Holmes is, what his cum tastes like, how big his
cock is and how many women he's fucked. And there's something wonderfully
natural about his acting and something wonderfully goofy about his karate, and
karate and porno together... that's how I want to live my life.
This is a song I wrote, by the way. I just wanted to
point that out to everyone. Feel the Heat was written by me. I wrote this. No,
I can't sing it, Mark Wahlberg is the only one who can sing it, and I would
never desecrate this beautiful, rocking song called Feel the Heat by trying to
sing it. And John Reilly with the music, boy I'm proud of this. I'm sure the suspicion
is that Mark really can't sing, but the truth is that I'm not going to give
away if this is really good acting or really bad singing, because that's part
of the wonderful mystery that is Dirk Diggler.
I guess this is giving it away, isn't it, which I've
never done but I guess I'll do. Yeah, that's a big old fake dick there on Mark
Wahlberg. But boy, we like it.
Final Thoughts
You know, there are people who say this movie is too
long, and it might be, but the bottom line is that nobody has to watch this
movie more than me. In editing it, mixing it, going to previews and screenings,
that sort of stuff, and the second you realise that you just go, well fuck, I've
got to entertain myself first, and maybe accidentally some other people will be
entertained. I think that's the way to approach it. I mean, I've only made two
of these fucking things, but I think that's the way to do it.
