Quentin Tarantino on the “slight flaw” in Paul Thomas Anderson movie ‘Boogie Nights’
In the late 1990s, no two directors had more coverage and comparisons than Quentin Tarantino and Paul Thomas Anderson. As two leaders of the independent film movement that decade, the pair would have to field endless questions about each other during press junkets and interviews. Once Anderson released Boogie Nights in 1997, writers couldn’t stop contrasting the styles and approaches of the two to the point where it almost became weird between Anderson and Tarantino.
“I remember Paul got in touch with me because he was doing his big press for Boogie Nights, and Manohla Dargis was interviewing him for the L.A. Weekly, and the whole subject was jumping off of me – of like ‘director as rock star, how does that work?'” Tarantino told Amy Nicholson on the Feature Presentation podcast. “Out of the blue, I get this phone call, and it was like ‘Hey, I’m Paul Thomas Anderson, and we met once before. You probably don’t remember.'”
Anderson’s goal was to clear the air and get to know Tarantino. “‘Everybody’s talking to me about you and talking to me about your career, and they’re talking about this and that, and it’s just, they mention you so much that I think it’s about time that you and me get to know each other and talk so we don’t have any weirdness about it,'” Tarantino said about Anderson’s call.
Tarantino and Anderson wound up getting along well, setting the foundation for a friendship that appears to be intact to this day. The two shared a connection with a Hollywood legend – Burt Reynolds. Reynolds starred as filmmaker Jack Horner in Boogie Nights, while Reynolds was originally cast in Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood before passing away during the film’s pre-production.
That being said, Tarantino felt the need to share his own view of Horner that doesn’t quite line up with the common view of the character. “Me and Paul have talked about this, though,” Tarantino added. “I actually think there’s a slight flaw in Boogie Nights, and the flaw in Boogie Nights is the perception of the Burt Reynolds character. Paul can say he’s not based on the director Gerard Damiano, who directed The Devil and Ms. Jones and Deep Throat – he is. He obviously is.”
Tarantino points out the obvious physical connection between Horner and Damiano, but Tarantino’s nitpick is more specific. “My problem with it, though, is when he makes the cop movie – the porno cop movie – and he’s killing himself doing it. And then you see the film: the film looks like a piece of shit. It looks horrible… But he has the Burt Reynolds character say, ‘I think this is my greatest work yet’… Gerard Damiano was a better director than that.”
Tarantino also claimed that he had watched more porn movies than Anderson by virtue of having worked in an adult film theatre. The joke that Horner wouldn’t know when his film is bad stuck with Tarantino enough for him to still be worked up about it two decades later. “I think it’s a cheap line because that character would know that that work is not the best work he could possibly do.”
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