What happens when you bring together a Hollywood legend with a rising young director? Sometimes you get magic, and indeed, for Burt Reynolds, his turn in Paul Thomas Anderson‘s “Boogie Nights” might have been his last great performance. However, as the veteran actor tells it, he had a horrible time making the ’70s set, porn world movie.
Doing the rounds for his memoir “But Enough About Me,” Reynolds admits that he’d probably never work with Anderson again because, as he tells GQ, “Personality-wise, we didn’t fit.”
“I think mostly because he was young and full of himself,” he continued. “Every shot we did, it was like the first time [that shot had ever been done]. I remember the first shot we did in ‘Boogie Nights,’ where I drive the car to Grauman’s Theater. After he said, ‘Isn’t that amazing?’ And I named five pictures that had the same kind of shot. It wasn’t original. But if you have to steal, steal from the best.” Perhaps Reynolds does have a point, given that “Boogie Nights” does owe some of its verve to Martin Scorsese, particularly “Taxi Driver.”
That said, Reynolds admits he hasn’t watched “Boogie Nights” the whole way through, and while he tells The Guardian he “hated” Anderson, it seems the antipathy wasn’t reciprocated. The director apparently offered him a role in “Magnolia” which he turned down. “I’d done my picture with Paul Thomas Anderson, that was enough for me,” Reynolds said.
As always, there’s another side to the coin. In Grantland‘s excellent oral history of “Boogie Nights,” it paints the actor as old school Hollywood type who was perhaps upset he wasn’t getting the respect he thought he deserved from the young cast around him.
At any rate, it’s an interesting tale, and a reminder that sometimes fractious relationships on set can still result in great films. [via EW]
Burt\’s not wrong, but he should have looked past it. Imagined if he did Magnolia, maybe he woulda had a prolonged career instead of the Boogie Nights blip. Also, look who PTA has ultimately grown into? It all ended well there.
love how pathetically touchy Anderson fans are aka UGH
I knew before reading this that PTA was a fairly insufferable, coked-up douche around that time, but someone with the experience of Burt Reynolds should\’ve been able to see through all of that and recognize the intelligent, talented and kind-hearted person he always was. Read the cast list on Hard Eight, Magnolia and (the rest of) Boogie Nights, and you\’ll see how many great actors were able to see through the behavior and recognize what made him so great. This says more about Burt than Paul…
I concur. Watching PTA\’s earlier films, you get the sense that he was merely trying to impress. Luckily, as he\’s gotten older, he\’s gotten the balls to simply tell a story the way it should be told.
And Burt Reynolds was clearly OLD AND FULL OF HIMSELF.
"He was brilliant and audacious" is more like it. Should have taken the opportunity more seriously like Travolta did Pulp Fiction (and we can all see how long he rode that particular wave of fan enthusiasm post cinematic resurrection).
\’In Grantland\’s excellent oral history of "Boogie Nights," \’
Perhaps not the best film for an oral history, no?