Boogie Nights(1997)
Anderson’s disco-era porn fantasiaremains one of the great directorial breakouts.
It’s set and shot in the Valley, where the adult-film industry took root.
And it was all in my own backyard!
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It didn’t occur to me at the time how lucky I was."
He can remember a period, however, when being from L.A. made him embarrassed.
“It didn’t seem interesting or worldly,” he says.
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“But it turns out that’s just bulls—, really.
Magnolia(1999)
The director remembers assembling his sprawling L.A. epic in pieces.
“I’d had theTom Cruisestory for a little while,” he recalls.
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I had a small story I’d heard about a guy who got braces to impress girls.
And the story of my father and his death was woven into that as well.”
Overall, though, it was a blooming sense of sureness that defined his setting.
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Many ofMagnolia’s most affecting moments occur in cars.
Driving at night in Los Angeles is a subject the filmmaker loves.
“I mean, the joy of it,” he says.
Alana Haim in ‘Licorice Pizza’.MGM
Driving is freedom."
“The sound of those things, it’s terrifying it can really rattle you,” he says.
“It’s random violence from a long way away that you witness.
People in cars, you never even see their faces.
Things that happen that are monumental, that are orbiting just on the edges of your vision.
It’s a strangely common occurrence here.”
“That’s really outside of my world.”
“The Valley has always been the working-class version of Hollywood and Beverly Hills,” he says.
“It’s where the technicians who made the films live.
Those sets fromThe Wizard of Ozwere built by people in the Valley.
All those rides at Disneyland were built in the Valley.
Any vision of Los Angeles involves palm trees, right?
But in the Valley, you see palm trees and power wires.
And that kind of visually says it all right there.”
A version of this story appears inEntertainment Weekly’s February issue, on newsstands Friday andavailable to order here.
