#322. 'Boogie Nights'
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With Paul Thomas Anderson's One Battle After Another newly in theaters, the crew rewinds to his 1997 breakout Boogie Nights rather than reviewing a new release. Sonny walks through his own viewing history with the film at 18, 30, and now 40, and confesses that this time around it landed very differently: he'd never fully reckoned with how much the movie is actually about child sexual abuse, from Dirk Diggler's abusive home and underage entry into porn to Roller Girl's backstory and the Colonel's arrest, and he contrasts its queasier edges to the age-gap discourse around Licorice Pizza. JVL pushes back with unqualified love, calling Boogie Nights one of the handful of films that taught him to see movies as art, crowning Anderson (alongside Tarantino) as one of the only true Gen X auteurs, singling out the firecracker scene as one of cinema's great sustained "what happens next" set pieces, and marveling that a 26-year-old directed something this assured — while framing the film's unsentimental "yeah that was pretty fucked up, we got over it" attitude as quintessentially Gen X versus Boomer self-mythologizing (see: The Big Chill). Mike, on roughly his second watch, admits the drug-abuse sequences hit him much harder as a father now than Requiem for a Dream did in his youth, and he and Sonny dig into how Jack Horner is as debased by the industry as anyone around him. All three heap praise on the ensemble — Walberg's wordless eye-acting, Thomas Jane and Heather Graham giving career-best work, Julianne Moore, John C. Reilly, Ricky Jay's Scotty J., and especially Philip Seymour Hoffman, which sends JVL on a detour through PSH's other PTA and non-PTA highlights (Punch-Drunk Love, Mission: Impossible III, A Most Wanted Man). Before any of that, the opening banter runs long: Mike's saga of a European hornet nest in his tree (misdiagnosed pest control, a hazmat-suited exterminator, torrential rain washing pesticide into the watershed), JVL's woodpecker problem (a protected species drumming on his house shingles trying to attract a mate, countered only with stapled-on tinsel), and Sonny's dismay at his son's hyper-competitive seven-year-old flag football league complete with hired coaches and offseason practices — plus a box-office detour on Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle's huge second-week drop, anime's rise relative to superhero fatigue, and the Jordan Peele-produced football-horror movie Him.
From the show notes
The Gen X Story!
Full transcript
Guest00:00:00in nineteen seventy seven a kid from nowhere maybe think about your name my name yeah something a little pizazzed Dirk Dignor good name I like your name a lot had a dream of getting somewhere Jack Horner has found something special in newcomer Dirk Dignor
Mike00:00:28Welcome to the Sub-Beacon Podcast I'm your co-host Mike Warren joining me as always are my two co-hosts who got the touch who got the power Jonathan V. Last and Sonny Bunch join us over at Sub-Beacon.com tell your friends and family if they want to listen to the show they got to do it at Sub-Beacon.com also check us out on Instagram we're over on Instagram Sub-Beacon Sonny loves that Sonny loves to hear about Instagram
Sonny00:00:56I was saying to Mike it's very nice it's very nice uh that Mike's lovely wife is is doing the social media for us and we and we thank her for that we thank her but I was just saying it's very it was very funny when we had a show that we never told anybody about and we just we just we just kept doing and being like if you like it's like a speakeasy it's like it's like it's like a speakeasy you got to tell your friends and that's the only way anybody can find out about it that's right eventually eventually people just stop coming and then we can then we can be free
JVL00:01:26but now now we'll try and I'm sorry can we stop talking about this because I need a hornet update okay sorry sorry sorry hold on the only thing I care about the only reason I'm here is because
Mike00:01:35I want to hear about these hornets I feel like it's less than less than what you what you think um but uh well okay hold on quickly let me get let me get through the rest of this here we're going to be talking about boogie nights later on in the show but first okay I'll give you the hornet update I'll go first here in dudes chatting um so first of all a correction correction from I believe I said multiple times uh that I had uh pale-faced hornets um the actual name of the of the species of hornet is bald-faced hornet um but it turns out that that's not what I have in my yard advocacy groups very upset with you they were they were misnaming furious furious about that um uh taxonomic uh error that I made um no so but they are not they are not bald-faced hornets um they I was the guy who who initially did my uh estimate was a bald-faced liar oh uh no he actually didn't get far up enough and in fact the guy who did my initial estimate did not end up calling me back which actually let me go on a quick aside here like this is my regular pest control company that I have come out four times a year to do my pest control um spray around the perimeter of my house and etc um I can to this to this day as we're recording this a week after um I have not been able to get an actual estimate for the work uh and I've called back to be like what's going on with this estimate and it's like oh we can't reach the technician right now we'll call you back like it seems to me they don't want to do the job they didn't want to do the job they're scared of the hornets must be um so I mean that
JVL00:03:18I'm sorry that just seems like the obvious thing is they looked at these hornets and thought no fucking way we're crossing those guys exactly which again
Mike00:03:26seems bad seems bad if you're uh if you're mike we're back where we started you have to move no no okay so so I called I'm sorry but you have no choice I called around and I got somebody to come by a very uh sweet lady on the phone who may or may not be the two brothers who run this pest controls um this pest control company's mother um who said uh that he could come by that afternoon and uh he did he got up there took a look gave me a call and said uh what you have here are European hornets which are an invasive species worst they're bigger um they they do it actually wearing these adidas track suits euro trash hornets is what they were um talking about f1 f1 and eurovision you know like like the hell is that um and they but it makes sense because again no sort of like visible hanging paper nest the nest is in the tree in in the cavity of this branch and that is something that is indicative of European hornets but they're bigger and um apparently they're a pain in the butt so i paid way too much money for him to get up there that day and i sent you guys the photo i know that my wife sent me of him in his i think uh sonny you said like the the et space suit yeah exactly the hazmat gear uh it looked pretty cool he climbed up on the ladder and he sprayed the hell out of it with the pesticide that i looked up and it's it's the pesticide that apparently kills every every insect and another small crawling and flying pest um uh but he said it's gonna take washed right into your your rain runoff yeah baby yeah and oh and by the way like two hours later it began torrential rain uh here you go chesapeake watershed so uh so yeah so it's apparently going to take 10 to 7 days sorry 7 to 10 days for the the entire hive to die again the problem is you can't it's not like with the it's not like with again as i've discussed these youtube videos you see them like with the nest and they like they spray it a little bit and then they take like a vacuum and they like vacuum up each individual uh uh wasp as it and like they've got like water in the shop vac and they'll like that like kills them immediately or they got some kind of chemical in the in the shop vac they fall in there and they die drown and die um and then you could just chloric acid right and then like sharks with freaking lasers on their heads if you especially if you kill the queen like it's then it's over right so you remove the nest and then and then it's all done so this is going to take a little while longer um i haven't been out today to see it gets rainy um so i haven't been out to see if uh if i can see any more of uh of the buzzing guys buzzing around but hopefully we'll have it all squared away nipped in the bud and we can get this uh dead tree limb
JVL00:06:37down safely i have questions answers how much would the hazmat suit cost
Mike00:06:45can you get your own hazmat suit i haven't looked into it it's uh yeah it's like one of these beekeeping suits it must not be prohibitively expensive because ever since the hunt like the the great honeybee um activist uh trend began like in the last decade or so right where honeybees were dying and so there was like this big push for people to um to have honeybees on their property like scam yeah i think the honeybee scam i like to call it
Sonny00:07:15honeybees didn't go anywhere all right so of all the panics over the last decade i'm saying it's
Mike00:07:21you could get your hands on one of these i imagine i could i haven't done the research but i imagine
JVL00:07:25i could listen you've got to get up there on that ladder yourself you're gonna fucking taunt those little motherfuckers you sit there take a little butane lighter up there with you and just sort of into the just burn some of them alive while they're in there i'd be like oh how you doing
Mike00:07:43klaus right we save fritz no i know i'm gonna go full jingoistic america back-to-back world
JVL00:07:50war champs bitches i remember when we saved your asses at normandy i mean and you should go up there and just finish the job yourself that's a great idea jvl um like
Sonny00:08:04did you bring up did you bring up my machine gun plan to the b the b you know you know sonny i did
Mike00:08:10i i failed to mention it you know he's calling me at work i'm busy i'm trying to get stuff done and i just want you know what i again i threw money at the problem i didn't throw you didn't
Sonny00:08:20ask you didn't ask can i shoot them to death with a gun you didn't ask that no but you know what the next one i'm gonna i'm gonna look i you can do what you can live your life however you want but in america we have ways of taking care of these europeans oh yeah there you go
Mike00:08:36there you go make them carry their own weight um all right well that anyway that's it that's all i have i don't i don't have any other i don't have any other updates but i can let everybody know next week how the uh how things are going with the with the european hornets uh sonny what's going on with you i don't know i don't know i don't there's
Sonny00:08:55not much going on on my end uh we we're doing my my my son is playing sports and playing sports is always fun um he's playing football for the first time this year and and you know we get some cte well no it's it's very much flag and whatever but it's it's interesting because like in we've played we've played like rec soccer and we've played rec basketball and in both of those leagues it both the the soccer and the basketball it's been very much like just kids playing sports like you get you get some kids who are better than others and if a kid has like a superstar it unbalances the whole thing and like whatever but this football league is the first time and again my son is like he's turning seven next month he's not old he's not he's not an older child he's a young he's a young kid this is the first time we've played we're playing in a sport where like people are taking it seriously and well it's texas and it's it is texas and it is so it is very much like texas football but is this wednesday night lights
JVL00:10:09because it's seven-year-old flag football no no you're working your way tuesday night lights
Sonny00:10:14they play on saturdays like a normal sport which again i find very which i find very surprising frankly i would assume everybody is off at their college football games we have a lot of the dads miss games because they are at either watching or going to college football games anyway or they're mad at their kids for playing sissy flag football uh anyway the it's it's again it's you know previous leagues it's just you play and you you're you're just kind of having fun and learning the game this is the first time we've played in a league where people are taking it seriously and uh we have run up against a couple of teams a couple of teams that have now like been together for multiple seasons two to three years starting so starting when they were like four geez start keeper league starting when they were like four years old uh and um playing together and they have professional coaches coaches that they have hired to come coach the team who are former former players no not dads not dads not they these coaches and i can tell you how i can tell that offense oh how can you tell sonny oh fair but the uh how can you tell it's it's it becomes very obvious very quickly
JVL00:11:40the uh but they're just the wrong age they're too young yeah well yeah no they are i mean they are
Sonny00:11:44like 25 they're all like 25 and anyway so what sort of offense are they running what's that
JVL00:11:52what sort of offenses are they running wishbone they're running really
Sonny00:11:55real offenses like they're running like flea flicker plays and sweeps and it's it's so i like it it's not it's not fun to play and i'm hoping my son has enough not fun in this league that he does not want to play football anymore and we can stick to basketball and soccer because he's fine i mean he he whatever he entered he enjoys soccer and basketball enough and he's again these leagues are not not super serious they're very much rec leagues so i'm i'm okay with those but this is what this is the first time that like these are not fun games to play because we are so severely outclassed and outmatched and outcoached and everything out parented frankly you know if i really loved my kids i would have been doing this three years ago uh i i that i don't i don't i i don't enjoy it and the kids largely don't enjoy now my son like he genuinely does not seem to care if they win or lose he is just out there like running around having fun good for him um it's the right attitude to have me i'm watching this like this is fucking miserable this is the worst thing i've ever seen like i don't want to i don't want to be here i don't want to be i don't want
Mike00:13:11to participate in this this is terrible but do you feel like if you if if you're going to be there we should be winning and is that is that some of your frustration or are you just like
Sonny00:13:21totally done you're totally out of it i don't even i don't even care again i actually don't care if they win particularly in football to a lesser extent basketball and soccer um i don't care if they win i would rather they win because winning is fun and winning winning is good but like i don't i don't care that much it's it's it's not that they're not winning it's that they are like not able to get plays off you know it's like they are they are not able to they are not able to come they are they just aren't able to like run a play without without getting instantly or run a defensive play without the other team instantly scoring a touchdown again this is this has only happened for one or two of the games others are closer others are like clearly kind of like us like kids playing in their first or second year with dads as the coaches sounds like
JVL00:14:10the gm's gonna have to make a change uh yeah maybe starting with the uh staying with the offensive line coach well no this is gotta send a message to the locker room this is this is like this is
Sonny00:14:21like a so like the question now is like do are we get do we keep playing if we keep playing do we get one of these like ringer coaches do we get like practice do we practice in the offseason because that's what these teams do they're running they're running drills and stuff team lifts six
Mike00:14:35and seven year olds practicing football in the offseason what are we doing it is and this isn't
Sonny00:14:43even this isn't even like a serious league it's like a rec league it's a flag football rec it's not a travel team it's not a club but they are but it is anyway it's it's it's just like it's just not fun and that's that's what it comes out it's not fun for me to watch and some of the kids are like really not having fun you know tears and stuff um again not my son my son's just like yeah i pulled some flags good job good job buddy you're out there crushing it i will say i'll say good for him good for him staying out there playing playing his playing his little heart out but uh it's it's uh it's not it's not ideal none of this is ideal this is this is the
Mike00:15:25i mean there is it feels like we read pieces about this we hear talk about this all the time like almost every year but there's just something sick about the attitude of youth sports and i don't know what the cure is except maybe like for parents to just take a fucking chill pill i don't
Sonny00:15:47know like it it's it's all parent driven right like none of the kids we need to care we need
Mike00:15:55to work on the farm there you go exactly none of the sports sports crap uh you first
Sonny00:16:00jvl okay uh all right you you're closer to this than any of us yeah there well then i am certainly i don't know mike you're kind of in the middle i'm in the middle i guess um all right uh
Mike00:16:15well sorry about that sonny jvl what is what is uh what's going on with you i i only one thing
JVL00:16:20i'm gonna make it very very quick uh we had my pest guy here this week for our routine service ken love ken and uh we have a new problem that presented itself as of this week which is we have a woodpecker attacking our house no it can't have that and so i said to ken can you take a look at this for me ken said can we one of two things let me go up there and take a look so he went up there and looked where the woodpecker is pecking and he said so there are no bugs typically when this is happening it's because the woodpecker is looking for bugs uh the bad news is the good news is there your house you don't have termites or anything like that because that news is bad news is this is mating behavior and he is just looking to attract a little girl woodpecker madison woodpecker and uh and also they're a protected species so legally the only thing i can do is like hang some tinsel so i now have gold tinsel stapled to various portions of the exterior of my house and i'll be honest i feel a little bit bad about it because i'm cock blocking this dude and you have trees all around he'd go to a tree but you know maybe maybe in the world of woodpecker dating just banging on a tree is looked at it's pretty beta maybe the female woodpeckers want to they want a guy who's going to go and just attack a house hey those creatures over there have opposable thumbs on their castle show me you're a real man by pecking at that
Sonny00:17:49is is it hitting is it hitting the wood part of your house or like a metal part
JVL00:17:55wood so we we've got the the exteriors like wood shingles yeah yeah so he's just like drilling
Mike00:18:00little holes in the you're in the way you're not cock blocking you're you're this is you're helping him because like there's there's no end to this that works out well for for him or for you know
JVL00:18:12little miss let me let me tell you hey buddy what happens is you wind up with four kids and you don't
Sonny00:18:16get to do anything fun anymore got little got little woodpecker football teams asshole woodpecker
JVL00:18:25professional coaches all of a sudden you're in the travel woodpecker sports industrial complex
Sonny00:18:31and jv i got i got all right i have a solution for you you you have a problem i got a solution yeah first thing you do is you go get a cherry picker no uh uh you got it that's all i just turn the bear turn the bear loose on this woodpecker no i'm not gonna let tell i mean they live in the same neighborhood all right let's move on all right i didn't want to take
Mike00:18:55time we got a lot of show we got a lot of boogie nights all right but first learn so many things but my god uh uh but first no we got to talk about the box office um which uh the box office this week number one once again two weeks in a row uh our our talk last week now feels quite prescient uh number one at the box office demon slayer kimetsu no yaiba infinity castle uh second week in a row at number one it is well over a hundred thousand hundred million dollars at the
Sonny00:19:25box office although it had kind of a significant drop is 75 75 drop you don't i told you that this movie would drop 70 to 80 percent uh no i well it's interesting because it's it's grossed 100 million domestic 550 million dollars worldwide jeez 500 550 million dollars worldwide um because it uh i i'm actually just gonna pull up the japanese numbers right now japan it is gross 229
JVL00:19:55got it got it wow can we just get a marvel anime movie maybe marvel studios should decide we're gonna try doing an anime style of marvel wasn't that maybe it's sort of a worldwide hit i think
Sonny00:20:05they've done some of that they've done some of that on disney plus oh they have yeah but i mean like in theaters like this like give that now because i i like i think a large portion of the anime uh explosion in the united states is is tied directly to the failures of marvel and dc and the rest not but it's not it's not a style thing it's a storytelling right i i think the
JVL00:20:30storytelling is handed to a bunch of japanese anime writers i think people just want new stuff
Sonny00:20:37i mean i think that really is i think that's part of it it's not it's not that they want like anime batman because again there is an anime batman it's that they want like new things and the the comic the comic book companies are so locked into we got spider-man and wolverine and the x-men and superman and wonder woman that like that that's it you know those those companies are stagnant and the thunderbolts are you still reading absolute batman by the way uh i am and i uh
JVL00:21:06i am also i really it's still pretty good absolute wonder woman has gotten even better absolute wonder woman is really really great all three of those books superman wonder woman
Mike00:21:18and batman outstanding question and i know you will not be able to answer this but either of answer this i i don't i don't believe is there something about the anime storytelling structure that is different or is it simply i mean is it is it like recognizable to uh as just a different story but in a recognizable form like you would see in a superhero movie uh or in a star wars movie uh you know hero's journey all that sort of thing
Sonny00:21:55i know nobody knows no idea okay no couldn't say okay the only the only anime series i ever seriously watched was dragon ball z so i like i you want me i can tell you all about dragon ball
JVL00:22:05z if you want but i got anime doesn't have a lot of dialogue in it tentacles and and what it lasts
Mike00:22:12about uh two and a half minutes and then yeah about that about that all right uh okay well uh
Sonny00:22:18and then number two at the box office him what is him i've never heard of him him is a it's a it's about it is the ex machina of football oh like her like her like her and him um no like i
JVL00:22:35like in this like you go to the rich person remote place and it turns out it's all kind of i mean i
Sonny00:22:40have no idea what it's about so it kind of so the the very short version is uh a phenom a phenom football player is uh attacked before the draft and suffers a brutal injury and goes to a an older retiring legend played by marlon wayans who teaches him his secrets to success and spoiler it turns out he's uh there's there's basically the devil it's basically his secret is the devil uh is what it comes down to there's this whole religious cult thing okay um but yeah it's sports horror football horror movie it's it's actually kind of entertaining i didn't i didn't hate it i i went into it expecting to hate it i did not hate it it was it was amusingly bonkers i don't know that it's good precisely but it is amusingly bonkers interesting put it that way um all right
Mike00:23:29well uh it sounds like a like a jordan peele idea uh well it's a it's produced by jordan peele he
Sonny00:23:36he bought it okay but he he bought the rights to it well then okay that explains it all all right i think he has the biggest name on the poster he does oh totally like to the extent that people thought he directed the movie like people people thought he was that was the intention yeah no they were not they were not sneaky about it do you ever resent that with producing
JVL00:23:55credits do i personally i don't yeah like when when when a movie tries to to make you believe that the producer is the director well i mean we're now old enough and sophisticated enough that we don't fall for it but like when you're 14 and you're like oh steven spielberg right oh executive producer steven spielberg i got so mad when the when the the the american tale
Mike00:24:20uh poster said that you know and and i had no idea that it wasn't actually directed by no of course
Sonny00:24:25not my favorite my favorite credit is always either from a writer of not from the writer from a writer of is a good one that's but my my favorite my absolute favorite one is from a producer of xyz because i do because that is like the absolute fucking scraping the bottom of the barrel like oh please give us some of this reflected glory now jordan peele is it's interesting because jordan peele is a big enough name now that i think you can say produced by jordan peele and that is enough that is enough information to give you a sense of what that thing is right hundred percent like yeah i don't i don't mind i don't mind it that much because i am a but i i i can imagine people who went to this movie being annoyed that it was not actually a
Mike00:25:11jordan peele movie oh all right uh well we're not talking about either of those movies uh today we're talking about uh well we're taking a look back aren't we uh to paul thomas anderson's 1997 uh really kind of big screen debut boogie nights uh why are we talking about it breakthrough breakthrough hit yeah um sorry the heartache came out before that um sydney we refer to that film as sydney heartache um what uh we're talking about this because paul thomas anderson has
Sonny00:25:46a new movie out yeah new one one battle after another but paul thomas but we wanted to go
Mike00:25:50back and talk about boogie night so sunny will you give us a big point review of boogie
Sonny00:25:55nights boogie nights 1997 let's go back in time folks 1997 new auteur on the scene paul thomas anderson very much in that film school mode he only went to like i think one semester of film school at nyu and and bugged out of there but he is like he is that kind of director right he is very much a guy who watches uh martin scorsese movie and was like i want to make goodfellas but in porn and so he does with boogie nights and it's really interesting it's i i i don't think i have a particularly unique history with boogie nights but i i would like to just kind of lay out my own experiences viewing it so i probably saw this for the first time when i was with your mom what's that with your
JVL00:26:43mom you went out to the theater you said to your mom i want to go see like this i don't know it's supposed to be this really cool new director i don't know what it's about
Sonny00:26:49absolutely not absolutely so i did i did not see this movie in theaters i saw i saw it and i i it's funny because i looked it up i looked it up because i wasn't sure that the new line platinum dvd of this movie came out in 2000 the end of 2000 like august of 2000 and i am almost certain that's the first time i saw it i'm pretty sure i bought it on blu-ray without having ever seen it before or i bought it on dvd the original dvd without ever having seen it before and was like i'm gonna watch boogie nights um and uh i still own that dvd it's still in my collection no 4k of this movie interesting no no i want to see all the resolution of this uh so um i so i see this movie probably the first time when i'm 18 or 19 and and it uh and like you watch you watch it as an 18 year old and you're like wow this is look at all look at look at first of all you're like wow this is awesome second of all you're like look at all look at all yeah look at all this cool cameras oh yeah this is just like the copacabana shot this opening tracking shot in the taking us through the nightclub and then later through the pool party etc etc um oh look he's going underwater it's like the graduate or rushmore or whatever um i guess rushmore hadn't come out yet anyway but although i'd probably seen anyway it doesn't matter um uh so you know there there's that there's that version of the film you see that at you know 18 20 whatever you see it again at 30 and i'm i'm sure i watched it at some point in my 30s and it it it hits a little bit differently because it's like oh man time is really dark that's real that's real dark shit he is he mark walberg is going through it dirk digler having some troubles cocaine cocaine's bad stay away from the cocaine as oh look at this look at this scene with alfred molina this is freaky i've been in situations like this sure who hasn't but it's you know it's bad it's scary nobody wants that and then you watch it you watch it again at 40 and this was my experience watching it this time after again it's not just being not just being 40 not just having kids but also like having having now watched a lot of paul thomas anderson movies and having experienced a lot of the discourse around paul thomas anderson movies and it's something i never really appreciated until this this movie which it really is a movie about child sexual abuse like this this is a movie this is so like so was magnolia well we get we can maybe discuss that but the but this is a movie where like burt reynolds character meets uh mark walberg's character and he's like how old are you mark walberg's like i'm 17 comes from a broken home abusive into the porn industry roller girl in high roller girls in high school roller girl is an isolated lonely child in high school he gets into the porn industry there's the surrogate mother figure of uh of julianne moore's there's all of this drug abuse and degradation and then the colonel shows up and he is literally convicted of child possessing child pornography
JVL00:30:11at that party at that new girl that he has with him she the the girl the colonel brings with him to that party ods when we first meet well she ods but she is also clearly very young yes
Sonny00:30:24yes so you are not surprised when he is convicted of right philip baker hall shows up to this uh this party with like a bunch of like literally pimply faced children yep i the whole thing is and then and then it kind of closes on this and it's so it's so interesting because you know a lot of when when people talk about boogie nights they talk about the found family and the you know this is about outsiders finding community with each other kind of kind of what what jumps out to me this time watching it is john c riley's character asking mark walberg's character so he or saying to mark not even asking saying to mark walberg's character oh yeah so jack found you on the street right and and dirk digler is like well no he didn't he didn't find me on the street i i had a i had a home and and and john c riley was like oh he's confused because that's a thing jack corner has done before that may have been a thing that happened john c riley and the the it's again you did like watching watching the movie this time around is it was just a very it was a very different and like kind of almost disconcerting experience um that i had not i had not fully ever really reckoned with and i don't think and look there was there was a lot of like there was a lot of age gap discourse around licorice pizza did you guys see licorice pizza i don't know i don't think i don't think we discussed it i can't remember but there was there was a lot of talk about in licorice pizza about uh you know this this the girl who's played by the the heim sister uh who uh alana heim who uh is isn't it is an adult like you know and she is with a high school boy and it doesn't it's not it's not it's not i at least i didn't find it even now kind of uncomfortable the same way because they're close enough in age and like he's very in and like what it's it's almost sweet like it's not it's not it's not criminal sexual abuse like the much of this movie really really uh feels like not does not feel like it is defending or or promoting per se but it it's boy it skirts right up to that line in the in that first hour or so i don't know i don't know um i don't know i just it was a very very very different viewing experience this time around again it's a function of having kids being older living in a different world where this thing is talked about much more i think um but i don't know it's it's it was just it was weird it was weird watching the movie this time again great movie well shot wonderfully acted uh it does look like it you know it's the sort of movie you watch and you're like oh yeah this was made by a film school type kid again he only went to i think one semester of nyu this is this is a movie made by a film school kid that got like 15 million dollars to make a movie and do whatever he wanted and like you see a lot of that on the screen you see again that like all of the long tracking shots the the hyper kinetic way it is cut through the cocaine period um that just there's there's a lot it's it's it's it's it's still remains a very fun movie to watch but anyway well
Mike00:33:54but by the way um thank you sonny for all that uh i will say it was in no way there was in no way a summary of what the movie is actually about for anybody who hasn't seen it so just very briefly what just just very briefly uh mark walberg is a 17 year old i described it as i described it as
Sonny00:34:14porno goodfellas that's basically the movie okay fine fine go look it up on wikipedia if you want
Mike00:34:19to know what it's about go ahead i don't think that's right uh jvl share your thoughts
JVL00:34:24i so uh i mean i also have a a personal journey with this movie yeah tell us about your viewing habit or viewing you know journey here so i i have always been a high volume consumer of movies but i didn't really view movies as art until very late in life so it's only it's only when i get out of college and i'm living as an adult that i stop viewing movies as just the entertainment thing that i do because in high school like we were at the movies every week right uh and it was just because that was the thing to do what there was no cinema right there was no that's not what we were what movie are we seeing tonight right it was just we're going to see something because that's what you do every week right and you get i get into the adult world and i can just start seeing now i have a dvd player and i have access to film commentary tracks and start to see film as not just an art form but like the the most important american art form uh it's something i become very very interested in i start gobbling up everything i can i'm buying dvds like six of them a week i'm watching a movie every night i'm watching commentary tracks over and over again to try to to to learn what i can so you know film school in a box this is a brand new thing it's never existed before and this is this is something
Sonny00:35:54paul thomas anderson himself has talked about by like buying laser discs and listening to the commentary tracks and being like this is how i learned how to do what i do so uh this is part
JVL00:36:05of a very very small group of movies which is really like this and the usual suspects which and probably one or two other things if i had to think about it which were at the very very beginning of me falling in love with film right and uh and seeing and understanding what film could be so it was formative for me in that way uh it was also formed i mean it's a formative movie in the sense that it launches a number of careers uh it exists as simply a the entire movie is a proof of concept for paul thomas anderson to stake his claim as one of the two most important gen x directors and it's him and quentin tarantino and i don't think there's any real gen x auteurs maybe that's the better the better way of saying it wes i mean i don't think he's nearly as important i don't think he's nearly as good yeah i mean i i like wes anderson stuff i again i i view royal tenenbaums as one of my five favorite movies of the 90s um so it's not that i don't like it but he's a one-trick pony and uh paul thomas anderson did boogie nights and he also did the phantom thread i mean his progress and maturation as a filmmaker has been astonishing and uh every frame of boogie nights is just a statement of look what i can do it's like seeing you know freshman year michael jordan at his first practice at unc you know what i mean and like he's and he's the stuff he's doing is so good you can't believe it you know like how how does this kid who how old is he when he directs boogie nights 26 26 26 how does a 26 year old direct this thing it's it's fucking gobsmacking right think about what you were doing at 26 and how advanced you were in your craft as a writer at 26 right and paul thomas anderson was able to do this and he is i mean part of his who he is not just a he did a thing of film school so he is a los angeles kid who grew up in the entertainment industry he has been around movies his entire life he is in a spielbergian way like he has wanted to be a director his entire life right he is a kid who is running around with a super 8 camera from the time he could walk who was sneaking into uh the panavision offices and stealing not the panavision but sneaking into studio lots and breaking into their lockers to steal the panavision cameras so he could go out and film stuff with his friends or just like making short films writing scripts that was all he ever did and you know his dad worked in tv uh robert ridgely is a family friend like these are just all of these actors are people who are in his house and in his life his entire for forever right and he has known that he is going to be a director this is what he's going to do and that's why he's able to do like film school for him is a waste what the fuck is nyu going to teach him that he hasn't seen right he doesn't have going on his head um and uh and he makes this and it is as you say it's a it's a very dark movie but here this is a very gen x movie and so this is why i don't know that you guys can quite get it because we're the boomers every boomer so not every most boomer self-conceptions of their generation are like look how hard we had it vietnam we have vietnam you don't know what it was like it was so hard it was so hard right and the gen x view of their childhood was yeah that shit was pretty fucked up wasn't it but uh you know we got over it what are you gonna do and that's the progress of this right this you know it starts out and it's like yeah things are okay ish but like he's at a broken home his mom is crazy he's like sexually active at 17 in ways that like probably aren't healthy to his emotional development and well-being and uh he's like going out to clubs and like this whole scene is bad suboptimal nobody nobody who we know would be okay with their 17 year old like just disappearing out into the night the way Dirk Diggler's character is and then you get into the the really bad shit with drugs and uh all of the terrible things that happened in the 80s and it kind of resolves most of the characters make it out not everybody a bunch of them end up dead like Thomas Jane ends up dead uh the the um little bill will image mates he ends up dead like a lot of these people don't make it and when you finally emerge the end with god only knows and one of the things this movie is amazing at is the needle drops on it um when you get god only knows by the pool and they've got the baby um is it i think it's walters has gotten married to uh to the guy who's in jail character uh no to john oh that's right sorry i'm yeah so like he's got a real job like he's got a straight job he's not in porn anymore they've got a baby and like it's a hopeful moment but it's not a hey everything worked out it's a these people made it through but there's no like oh look at how hard we have because you know it's just a very gen gen x unsentimental yeah that shit was pretty bad wasn't it you know but without the self-pitying and
Sonny00:41:54grandiose sizing like oh and we had vietnam right i can see they shot jfk you know what's the uh oh what's what's the boomer movie where they all get together for the big chill the big chill the big chill it's like the opposite of it's the opposite of that it is the opposite of that
JVL00:42:16and uh i don't know and the movie is i mean i'll just say this ah he does he achieves something the firecracker scene which is the best scene in the movie like in a movie filled with great shots and great scenes the firecracker scene is like bring out the gimp in pulp fiction is one of the only times in movies that you wind up in a place where you legitimately have no idea what's about to happen next bingo and it is like being on a roller coaster in the dark you're like what the fuck and not in like not in an incompetent way the way i mean there are plenty of very bad movies because they're just insane fever dreams where you don't know what's happening next like but this is like you are being guided by somebody who knows exactly what he's doing with the camera and with the story and he's revealing little things to you but you have no fucking idea what's happening and that is such a satisfying viewing experience like that that that is one of the rarest treats in all of cinema and everything about that scene from the acting work going on to the dialogue i mean just the the writing where alfred molina's character gets who explains the chinese kid by saying oh that's just cosmo he's chinese that's the explanation we have these continual random explosions as this kid is walking around throwing fireworks and the full explanation of it is that's cosmo he's chinese every every thing about that scene the the the face acting that mark walberg does in that movie right as thomas jane is about to to decide to go ahead with robbery right you get this long it's like 30 full seconds on mark walberg's eyes and he go you see all of the wheels turning right and in a lesser actor and a lesser script that stuff winds up as dialogue where he's like actually maybe this could work yeah what the fuck right but instead you realize no he's a good boy right and he's a good boy who doesn't want to be here he's a good boy he doesn't want to be here and is scared he's a good boy he doesn't want to be here and he's scared and he realizes he has to do something right all of that stuff is just happening with his eyes that's right i i don't know i just think it's fucking great i think it's great and that paul thomas anderson made this movie at 26 for like 15 million dollars and he did a combination of bringing in like trained shakespearean actors like alfred molina friends of his like melora walters who's just like a buddy uh old family friends like robert ridgely this is robert ridgely's last role and then discoveries like thomas jane and don cheadle and i mean there are people phil hoffman phil hoffman is basically phil hoffman is an unknown but he's he has not gotten his break yet nobody knows who he is yet and he starts at john c reilly they're probably louise guzman louise guzman uh ricky jay using ricky jay in a film right i mean bill macy is a famous actor not as famous as he will become julianne moore heather grant i mean all of these people their careers happen in the way they do because of boogie nights and uh it's just a titanically awesome and important movie yeah sorry is that too much no i think i really i have very strong feelings about
Sonny00:45:59boogie nights no and i i i agree with all this and i i like don't want to my i don't i don't want to confuse my like kind of downer reading on the movie from before with my critical judgment of the film which is an astonishing just it's just such an astonishingly kinetic forceful piece of filmmaking that does not stop for 150 minutes it goes and goes uh and movies like this are often too long and self-indulgent and i guess this movie is kind of self-indulgent in the sense that like he he is doing things just because he can do them in in the movie but it all works and i would i would contrast it to one battle after another which i've seen and which is out which is out now which i don't think works nearly as well it's it's roughly the same amount of screen time and it feels it it feels it feels every it every minute of the 160 minutes that movie is this movie feels like a i don't know 110 minute movie 100 105 minute movie it just zips along um michael do you love it so i i've this is i think maybe
Mike00:47:12the second time i've seen boogie nights um you know i had a i had a first time um and uh share all of the views about it's about it's sort of how impressive it is technically and and and not just technically but just kind of the way again a 26 year old made this movie it's shocking um when you just when you just appreciate that like you know he's doing this he's getting this out of like burt reynolds you know it's it's it's i'm trying to imagine what it would be like to be a 26 year old talking to you know legend burt reynolds and being like okay i need you to do this you're gonna say this and like it just it's it's impressive and incredible um just managing the set yes a 26 year old who is able to organize all that right and a set and and a movie and a story with in which you're dealing with um nudity and sex and drug use and all these things that are like i just have to imagine add a level of difficulty even for a um a seasoned pro in terms of just like making sure everything is is right and telling you know is not too um exploitive you know or you're helping tell the story whatever um so all of that i share that um i i am closer to where sonny is in my in my sort of feeling after watching this movie this week about what what the what the real story of this movie is and how depressing it is and i just have i realized something about myself watching this movie which is watching drug use and drug abuse and the and everything from the actual use of it to the sort of fallout from it is extremely difficult for me i've now i've now sort of like yes i saw uh requiem for a dream when i was a when i was a must be like late teens or college um and it's like wow this is a cool movie this is a crazy movie like what a wild movie you know but i feel like if i went back and watched that now i i don't think i could i don't think i could get through and i kind of felt that way watching this movie where just everything about it like even maybe i'm just a maybe i'm just a pussy about it but like i i can't watch people pretend to like snort cocaine and like and like and have like bludge coming out of their nose because they od like it just all makes me queasy in a way that didn't used to be the case and i don't know what
Sonny00:50:00i don't know what that is i mean i think i think i mean i have a maybe too simple answer and maybe it doesn't correspond with your life experiences but uh i think once you get to a certain age and you have known people who have lived that way yes it becomes it becomes very much more unpleasant to watch replayed on screen i think that there's something to that and there's all
Mike00:50:24something to like as a as a father you're sort of like you know i'm thinking about uh you know what's his name eddie adams uh dirk digler like he's 17 when the movie starts it's like oh like so like he's he's like closer to your son's age than your exactly 100 and so and so i'm watching it now as like it's like no you know like don't don't do this to your life uh all of i mean the in terms of in terms of just how just how fucked up in all her whole if you can call it an arc her whole arc is i mean well she's clearly been sexually abused 100 and the scene where so the the scene where she where they're doing the like video uh we're gonna pick up a guy off the street in the limo everything about that scene is so uncomfortable and sad and heartbreaking and you're in a different level you know i'm not saying it's the same but you're also watching burt rounds's character like uh and we could maybe talk about about jack horner but like like like he has been debased in his own universe as well while he's doing this right like he's like he thinks of himself and i think it's ridiculous the way he thinks of himself but he thinks of himself as a filmmaker and here he is like like finding some random guy off the street to have sex with this woman in on videotape and he's like coaxing him and uh and and like directing him and it's like all all of it's so gross and again i don't feel bad for jack horner but it's like you recognize everybody has been debased in in this
JVL00:52:16entire experience and it's just i don't know i do pornography isn't romantic there's nothing romantic about its view of the industry
Mike00:52:24correct and which is which is to its credit it just it was it was hard for me to watch and i have to say like i just didn't i didn't enjoy it this time i did not enjoy this movie i enjoyed parts of it i enjoyed like the parts but the sum of it just left me like not feeling not feeling
JVL00:52:41great welcome to gen x baby like that's that's not i don't know that's i don't think i don't know why yeah it's real uh yeah i uh it was something else the music were you guys as struck by the how unbelievably perfect it's fantastic musical cues are it's the the it's
Mike00:53:08like it is this is a speaking of gen x like this is a guy raised on mtv too and like it's sort of understanding music drops and um and and like the the relationship between like between the visual of the screen and the music at yeah it's great like so many great and the rhythm the rhythm of
Sonny00:53:29of cutting with the rhythm of the songs yeah i mean last thing i'll say because i know we're
JVL00:53:35already running long um it is also to paul thomas anderson's credit that uh he gets performances especially out of heather graham and thomas jane which i think neither actor will ever replicate in their filmography okay i think both heather graham who seems like a lovely human being and thomas jane who seems like you know hey i'm tom jane they shoot they shoot junkies don't they right i just want my kids back um i they both go on to arrested development and that's great uh neither of them are ever displayed the sort of actorly promise that paul thomas anderson gets out of them on screen i mean jane is practically balletic he's so good he's a very small part but he's amazing in this yeah well jane is doing a very
Sonny00:54:28jane is uh jane's doing a kind of interestingly twitchy thing here that he has not replicated again i i think he's been good in other stuff but he is good i'm not saying he's a bad actor
JVL00:54:39i'm not saying heather graham was great in the dark night yeah very funny nice very very funny that's a good joke yeah you know and then you have phil hoffman who who does a lot with what having seen this i had no clue that phil hoffman was the actor that he was right he's sort of hot he is so good in this that he's actually hiding yeah how good an actor he is because
Mike00:55:09he's not being hammy in this i will say i will say um i did enjoy every scene uh with um with his character what's his name uh something jay um ricky jack no not ricky jay is it ricky jay um no ricky jay's the ricky jay's the no no no ricky jay's the uh the camera guy uh uh scotty jay scotty jay scotty jay oh scotty jay i'm sorry i thought you were talking about this no no i i love ricky jay i love ricky jay uh scotty jay um every scene that he's in you know he's in the background of a lot of scenes he's he's out of focus in a lot of scenes but like i was watching him because i've seen the movie you know so like i was watching him and he's doing so much great stuff when he's not even in focus um just like language and his face and he's sort of like you know he's i he the subtlety of like he's in love with dirk digler and he can't express it or he can't you know it's just ah that's great it's
Guest00:56:06great i'm such a fucking idiot i'm such a fucking idiot oh great great scene the uh i i philip seymour
Sonny00:56:14hoffman is my favorite regular paul thomas anderson uh regular you know partner on on screen and like it's obviously this kind of culminates in the master which is you know just an amazing an amazing piece of filmmaking an amazing piece of acting but my favorite my favorite uh my favorite philip seymour hoffman role uh in a paul thomas anderson movie has always been um punch drug glove which is it's a very small part he's he's playing the he's playing the like con artist slash mattress salesman who's running like a mormon extortion gang and and it he has he has this he has this one scene where he is on the phone just yelling at adam sandler to shut up that is my one of my all-time i just i lose it every time i see it it is so it's so perfectly calibrated for like comic outrage that i i've never i've never seen i've never seen anything quite like it before it just is it is so it's so good and he's so a i don't know this is right around the same i guess what i guess punch drunk love that's 2004 comes out after yeah i'm trying to remember it comes out after magnolia but it comes out uh slightly before um mission impossible 3 and like those those two characters have always kind of blended together for me the kind of the the the crazy uh the the crazy mormon extortionist and also the um
Mike00:57:44the the bad guy the bad guy in mi3 i just anyway the whole thing is the whole thing is great i of course brandt i mean how could you not love brandt
JVL00:57:56yes um yes brandt is great uh underrated just if you guys haven't i'm sure sonny you've seen this but his final movie is called a most wanted man oh it's so good it's a spy movie i think it basically just got lost like it it was very lightly regarded he is a member of the german version of the mi5 and it's a good movie but he's fucking amazing in it and it's uh it anybody who's listening to this treat yourself
Mike00:58:29it's like 90 minutes it's great uh the uh no no words we don't have time for the other three named philip in this movie phil baker hall who's baker hall so great um although his top role of course is uh bookman from seinfeld but um i like him at magnolia too uh all right so good so i think it's that whole scene when he comes home oh anyway we don't talk about that all right that is all the time we're going to give to this episode join us over at subbeacon.com leave a comment tell your friends and family to listen to the show at subbeacon.com and we'll talk to you next time uh yeah um i forgot by the way on this like how quickly uh william h macy's character is like like he does a lot in in before he kills himself and it's like i mean it's terrible but it's also like it's such a great he's like playing it for laughs like the whole you know like sad sack it's just until until like the very end then he kills himself yeah you're like oh holy shit yeah and his wife and the and the and the guy i'm sure it's fine
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