My Favorite Closing Shots: Bill Gunn's Ganja and Hess (1973) and Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia (1999)

Artist and Muse #14

While she is not often mentioned among the better actresses of her generation, Heather Graham's great performance as Roller-Girl in BOOGIE NIGHTS is a fine piece of work that most actor's would probably give anything to have on their resume.
Graham's career has been frustrating since Anderson cast her in her most iconic role but her dramatic work in James Toback's TWO GIRLS AND A GUY and her comedic turns in AUSTIN POWERS THE SPY WHO SHAGGED ME as well as BOWFINGER are worth noting.
I am guessing that Anderson probably was remembering just how effective Graham was in 1989's DRUGSTORE COWBOY when he cast her as Roller-Girl and his faith in her paid off. Graham's layered and incredibly tragic work as one of BOOGIE NIGHTS most vulnerable lost souls is among the great performances in a film absolutely overflowing with them.

"I can't keep doing this on my own with these... people."

I have seen several reviews mentioning how Paul Thomas Anderson's newest film, THERE WILL BE BLOOD, has nothing in common with his previous work. I even read one critic who said that if his name wasn't listed as director that no one would be able to distinguish that it was his film. I disagree with statement all the way around, for while it might be a stylistic break in many ways for Anderson, he is still focusing on the idea of family and specifically the complex relationships between (sometimes adoptive) fathers and sons that has been at the center of all of his films, with the exception of PUNCH DRUNK LOVE (which at the very least has an absent father as a key plot point).
As I was watching THERE WILL BE BLOOD over the weekend the thought occurred to me that we are lucky enough to be witnessing the journey of someone that I will believe will someday be looked upon as one of the true great American directors. The flashes of Altman, Kubrick, and Scorsese are all there as well as Michael Cimino, but Anderson is also reaching back to John Ford, John Huston and I think especially George Stevens. I recently read an interview where he listed GIANT (1956) as one of his favorite films and images of James Dean's destroyed Jett Rink at the end of that film kept popping into my head as I watched THERE WILL BE BLOOD.

Anderson's new film is a momentous achievement and it is also a very complex one. I saw it with four other people and we all found that we had differing opinions about key plot points in the film. It caused discussion...which is a really wonderful and rare thing for a modern American film to do. The film demands reviewing and I am going to hold off writing in detail on it until I can see it at least a couple of more times. Right now I just need to let its powerful, dazing affect settle in. I am curious to see on my revisiting of the film if I still think it is flawed in certain spots and as brilliant in others as I think it is right now.
THERE WILL BE BLOOD is a major work but I suspect that a lot of Paul Thomas Anderson's fans, myself included, who have been with him since HARD EIGHT over a decade ago will probably have to nurse a little nostalgia and probably a little sweet sadness as the film does mark a significant change for him. Gone is the family that we came to love who populated his first four films and it is hard to not miss them. Anderson seems to stand alone now but I can't imagine not following him. THERE WILL BE BLOOD isn't a betrayal of his past work but a distinct branching off. I will follow him down any road he chooses to travel and I frankly can't wait to see where he takes me next.

Paul Thomas Anderson Tribute Month: Boogie Nights Promotional Post Cards

I have posted these for before but moving them here for my month long P.T.A. celebration seemed fitting.
The quick story behind these is that I was managing a video store when Boogie Nights hit home video in 1998. In the weeks proceeding its release my store received these wonderful postcards in the mail to promote it. I'm really happy I have managed to hold into them all these years and the memory of showing them off at the store is still particularly sweet.

Paul Thomas Anderson Tribute Month: My P.T.A. Mix-Tape (The Opening Shots of Hard Eight)

John has got some serious worry. Way past the end of his rope, he sits outside a coffee shop on the outskirts of Reno thinking about the money he just lost, the cup of coffee he can't buy and his recently deceased mother that he can't afford to bury. Depressed and disillusioned, John remembers his mom and prays that some miracle will come that can help him gather the six thousand dollars he needs for her funeral. That miracle arrives in the form of an aging and mysterious man named Sydney, who approaches John outside the diner with an offer to buy him a cup of coffee and give him a cigarette. This seemingly inconsequential meeting will change both of their lives forever.




While nowhere near as famous, or as technically accomplished, as the opening shots for films like Boogie Nights and There Will Be Blood, the simple and brief opening to Paul Thomas Anderson's Hard Eight is both eloquent and poetic. It is also, in hindsight, a thematically perfect introduction to his canon considering how often his films concern the fractured but important relationships that occur between sometimes surrogate fathers and sons.





Looking back on the opening moments of Hard Eight, which are nearly completely silent save for Sydney's offer to John at the tail-end of it, one can already detect just how different Anderson was compared to the many American filmmakers that came out in the wake of Quentin Tarantino. The tracking shot that opens Hard Eight has a stillness that is much more in line with works from the early seventies like Five Easy Pieces than the overtly showy work that was populating theaters post-Pulp Fiction in the mid-nineties. It is fitting that when Anderson did decide to open up Boogie Nights with an audacious and technically dazzling one-shot take that he never let his technique overwhelm the emotion, something most of his peers struggled with.




Like all of Anderson's works, I find Hard Eight to be an extremely moving and wonderfully realized work. The well-documented trouble that Anderson had with the studio concerning the final-cut of Hard Eight, along with lying in the imposing shadow of works like Boogie Nights and Magnolia, has made his first feature one of the nineties key overlooked classics. These opening shots remain a real personal favorite and I find them extremely haunting.

Paul Thomas Anderson Tribute Month: Punch-Drunk Love (Lobby Cards)

Paul Thomas Anderson Tribute Month: Actor Profiles (Luis Guzman)

***Here's a redone and updated piece that was originally written as part of my 'Great Ones' series a few years back.***


Great characters actors should be routinely celebrated, as some of the best can add layer upon layer of dimension to films good, bad and great. Luis Guzman is one of the best on the planet right now, and has been for the past couple of decades but I rarely see that fact mentioned. So here is a little tribute to a guy who consistently has made some of my favorite films even better than they would have been without him.
A friend of mine used to shout out "The GuzMan!!!" every time we would Luis' name would pop up in a film's opening credits. It was like a stamp of approval..."okay, the film might be bad but at least it has the Guzman in it." Often though the films have been good, because Guzman is a really smart actor and he has managed to work consistently with many of the best directors on the planet. Filmmakers like Brian De Palma, Steven Soderbergh, and Paul Thomas Anderson have recognized the greatness present in Guzman and their films have been made all the more special because of his presence.

Guzman was born in Puerto Rico around the time that Rock and Roll was being fully realized for the first time. His family moved to New York's lower East side when Luis was a kid, and it was in New York that he came of age. After graduating from college, Guzman became a social worker who acted in theater to make some extra money, and as time went on he found himself acting more and more. Outside of a small role in Robert M. Young's SHORT EYES though in 1977, Guzman didn't began to find steady acting work in front of the camera until the early eighties when he started doing television in such shows as MIAMI VICE (someone should write a book on how many great actors got their start on this Michael Mann created show), and THE EQUALIZER.
Guzman would appear in a variety of television shows and films throughout the eighties. The first time I remember seeing him was in Joseph Ruben's vastly underrated TRUE BELIEVER in 1989. Even at this early stage you could tell that there was something special about Guzman, and it was really noticeable in Sidney Lumet's 1990 drama Q & A where Guzman delivered a really memorable performance for the great director.
Many more television roles would follow before Guzman landed one of the great roles of his career in Brian De Palma's emotional and intense CARLITO'S WAY (1993). Guzman was especially memorable in this undervalued De Palma masterwork, and the role would lead him to the attention of a group a young filmmakers who were coming of age as the nineties progressed.
One of those young filmmakers was named Paul Thomas Anderson and he kept the young actor in mind as his career began. When the time came to shoot his second feature, the astonishing BOOGIE NIGHTS (1997), Anderson would hand Guzman the best part of his career up to that point. Luis Guzman is one of the secret weapons in BOOGIE NIGHT'S mighty arsenal. As the lovable club owner Maurice who wants nothing more than to make a film for Jack Horner to impress his friends at home, Guzman is funny, fresh and moving. It is impossible to imagine the film without him. Unfortunately some of his best work had to hit the cutting room floor due to time limitations, but Anderson thankfully included these in the deleted scenes on the BOOGIE NIGHTS DVD. One scene in particular involving Guzman and Heather Graham's Roller Girl is one of the most oddly touching moments of his career.
Guzman would hit a major winning streak after BOOGIE NIGHTS. Soderbergh loved him in it and cast him in the small but unforgettable role of the escaped convict Chino in OUT OF SIGHT (1998). Guzman shines next to George Clooney and particularly in a scene with Jennifer Lopez and Catherine Keener. De Palma's SNAKE EYES (1998) followed and then some solid work with Angelina Jolie in THE BONE COLLECTOR (1999) before Guzman would score another set of films with Anderson and Soderbergh.
Guzman is extremely memorable as one of the game show contestants in Anderson's unforgettable MAGNOLIA (1999) but he is even better in Soderbergh's THE LIMEY (1999) opposite Terence Stamp. THE LIMEY would give Guzman one of his largest roles, and he is commanding in the film. The fact that he holds his own with an actor of Stamp's stature says a lot. As Eduardo in Soderbergh's already legendary film, Guzman delivers an honest and striking performance that should have garnered him much more acclaim than it did. He is brilliant in the film, and one of its major highlights.

Anderson and Soderbergh would give him two more great roles in their films PUNCH DRUNK LOVE (2002) and TRAFFIC (2000) but for the most part it has been back to business as a scene stealing character actor this decade for the great Guzman. He did score a major role in the funny 2005 comedy WAITING opposite Ryan Reynolds. The WAITING DVD, be the way, has a jaw dropping behind the scenes practical joke involving Guzman that has to be seen to be believed. Outside of WAITING though Guzman hasn't recently been given roles as good as he is...which says more about the films being made right now rather than Luis Guzman. He has kept extremely busy though, appearing in a whopping 3 dozen or so films and television roles since WAITING, but he should be getting plum roles in more great films than he currently is. Hopefully they will be coming again for him soon.
Luis Guzman is one of the major actors on the scene today. He is someone who always makes a movie better than it would have been. As my friend said to me once..."If you are making movies now, you need to have Luis Guzman in your movie." I agree, this guy is one of the greats.

To read an interview with Luis where he talks on his life and career please visit this link.

To visit the site of Luis' company Wild Orchid Stables please click here.

To visit his official MySpace page, please click here.

Paul Thomas Anderson Tribute Month: An Imaginary Soundtrack Compilation

Whether he was working with an original score (by the likes of Jon Brion, Michael Penn or Jonny Greenwood), basing his material on a group of songs by Aimee Mann or constructing his soundtracks out of unexpected rock and pop classics (who else could make Night Ranger's "Sister Christian" necessary and cool) no modern filmmaker uses music in his films quite as brilliantly as Paul Thomas Anderson. To pay tribute to his truly amazing soundtracks I thought I would concoct my list for an ideal 'best-of' compilation. I haven't timed this out but I believe this would fit on a disc, so if you have the soundtracks get to it...or better yet, construct your own.

Paul Thomas Anderson Tribute Month: The Art of the Movie Poster (Favorite P.T.A. Designs)

My absolute favorite of these is this striking Polish poster for Boogie Nights:



Hard Eight had the weakest campaign of any of the films, but I quite like this U.S. alternate:



This lovely Magnolia print is from Japan:




Wow, how is this for genius? This minimal Japanese print advertising Punch-Drunk Love is just one of a series and it is my second favorite of the bunch:




And last, but not least, the gorgeous Rolling Roadshow artwork for There Will be Blood:

Paul Thomas Anderson Tribute Month: My P.T.A. Mix-Tape (John and Sydney's Final Conversation in Hard Eight)

Some moments in a great film might speak to you, some might move you and some will hit you so hard emotionally that you feel it physically. The final phone conversation between John and Sydney towards the end of Hard Eight falls in that latter category for me and it remains one of my favorite scenes in Paul Thomas Anderson’s filmography. It’s a quiet and relatively static scene that shows how well Anderson knows when NOT to be showy. From Hard Eight to There Will be Blood, Anderson has never forgotten how powerful a moment can be when you have enough faith in your actors to just keep the camera on them and let them work their own particular brand of cinematic alchemy.




That final conversation between John C. Reilly and Phillip Baker Hall in Hard Eight just fills me with gratitude every time I watch it. Gratitude to P.T. Anderson for writing such a simply and yet poignant scene that manages to spiritually and emotionally give a sense of closure to two men who so badly need it, and gratitude to Reilly and Hall for being such mesmerizing and brilliant actors. It’s one of those moments in a film where you just sit back and marvel at just how effective a truly great pair of actors can be at communicating exactly what it is they are thinking, feeling and needing.




Anderson sets up the scene in the simplest way possible by keeping the camera on his two actors and just cutting back and forth as their conversation progresses. For a couple of minutes he allows his actors alone to relay the emotion of his piece, and he only cuts away from them once (to Paltrow’s Clementine waiting patiently in the car for John). The scene is one of the many great moments in Hard Eight, and there are tons of them, that truly signaled that Paul Thomas Anderson was going to be a force to be reckoned with as one of the most intelligent and graceful filmmakers of his generation. He would follow-up this scene with similar moments involving monumentally important phone-calls in Boogie Nights, Magnolia and Punch-Drunk Love, and all those indelible moments owe something to this brief section of Hard Eight.




I’ve watched Hard Eight at least a dozen times in the near decade and a half since it was first released and the moment when Sydney tells John that he loves him like his own son still shakes me up. Also, no one will ever convince me that John C. Reilly is not one of the finest actors on the planet. Just watch his reaction after Sydney tells him this thing he has badly needed to hear for so long...it's so beautiful and so fucking devastating.

Paul Thomas Anderson Tribute Month: The Art of the Movie Poster (Boogie Nights, 2007 Rolling Roadshow Edition)