DOWN SINCE DAY ONE?

Started by modage, July 06, 2003, 08:50:39 PM

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ElPandaRoyal

First, it was Boogie Nights, rented because I was highly anticipating Magnolia which was beeing released at the end of that month. Saw Boogie, loved Boogie, couldn't wait for Magnolia. Saw Magnolia on opening night and loved it ("geee.... he uses many of the same actors in this one"). After Magnolia I rented Hard Eight and also liked it vewy mucho. I saw the three movies within a month or whatever and it was by that time that I found out the C&C website. Became a regular.
Saw P-DL inthe theaters this year, also on the opening day and fuck it... It was great as well.

PT Anderson..... you, sir, you make some great modafuckin' mobies.
Si

The Silver Bullet

I was at a Christmas drinks party at the end of 2000 and Boogie Nights was playing on the television [edited, no doubt]. No one was really watching it, but I obviously saw something that I liked and for some reason decided to tape the rest and watch it in the morning. I was fairly young at the time, and so the next morning, while I loved everything playing out before me, I couldn't stomach nor stand the last scene. I was somewhat disgusted by it.

Which is so fucking stupid, when I look back now. But I was young, and insecure about all sorts of shit, and a giant penis was not something I needed in my life. I'd constantly watch the movie, and stop it just after the final monologue of the film. Yes, I'd miss out on ELO's Livin' Thing, but it was a sacrifice I was willing to make.

In November of 2002, after someone had suggested Magnolia to me, I bought it on a whim. I watched it that night and was...somewhat let down. I felt distanced from it, unaffected. The sound design irritated me. I watched it again, and again, and suddenly, one of these latter viewings did something to me. I started watching Magnolia once a day. The video diary greatly influenced the production of my short film The Cow Hunter of the South Seas, and the film itself helped me overcome my writer's block. In December I started my first screenplay in over a year.

Magnolia will always have a place in my heart for this reason, even if Anderson goes on to make better pictures in the future, which he no doubt will. The film that you obsess about and watch daily [and I think it happens once or twice to every teenage cinephile] is one of the defining pictures in your development as a movie watcher [and in my case, a filmmaker as well].

So, now I was willing to give Boogie Nights another go, and I got it for Christmas. Of course, I loved it a whole lot more than I had two years earlier [penis included], and I still think that Anderson's solo commentary track is one of the most engaging I've ever listened to.

Of course, I was waiting in anticipation for Punch-Drunk Love now as well [we didn't get it in cinemas over here in Australia until early this year] and when I finally had the chance to see it, I was blown away. For six hours, I had nothing to give. Emotionally, this picture drained me, forced me to invest so much of myself in it that I couldn't function emotionally for a good six hours. I was, quite literally, a shell. I saw it again in July, found myself laughing at the comedy a lot more, thing like that. I wasn't as emotionally moved by it, which made me a little upset, but still. I think that, visually, it's Anderson' most strikingly beautiful film [as Barry walks onto the plane, I hold my breath, every time], and I probably need to see it again before I decide where it fits into his filmography in terms of my favourites.

And then, finally, after months of procrastination, I bit the bullet and bought the R1 DVD of Hard Eight [a film that never got theatrical nor DVD release here in Australia, and one that it was almost impossible to find a VHS copy of]. Definitely not what I was expecting, but I felt afterwards that it made perfect sense that it was a Paul Thomas Anderson picture. For so long I'd been sort of ignorant to its existence, and yet now I couldn't imagine the PTA canon as a whole without it there, at the very start.

And that's where I'm at.
RABBIT n. pl. rabĀ·bits or rabbit[list=1]
  • Any of various long-eared, short-tailed, burrowing mammals of the family Leporidae.
  • A hare.
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Gold Trumpet

It was the summer of '99 and rented Boogie Nights with no thought of who did anything. I heard it was good and racy (the latter was what got me to rent it). I enjoyed it a lot and knew no one else round here really had seen the movie round here so I felt I discovered something.  I looked up the director name and searched him out and got to C&C for all news on him. This was before the message board there and I even remember Greg having polls on what should be added to the site. Message board always won out easily but it took a while to get up. I think also during this time I rented Hard Eight. I remember the major anticipation for Magnolia and how the scope of it was so huge it seemed destined to be great. Saw that in theatres twice and saw PDL three times in theatres.

New Feeling

saw Boogie Nights the week it came out.  Thought it was the best new movie I'd seen since Pulp Fiction blew my mind 3 years prior.  Saw it 4 times on first run, watched Hard Eight and Boogie Nights with my mom the day it came out on video.   Bought it on DVD before I got a DVD player.  First audio commentary I ever heard.  Then saw Magnolia in theatres 8 times, PDL 6 times, thought CMBB was an interesting miss and only went to see it twice.  I miss the old (young) Paul but still a dedicated fan.     

ElPandaRoyal

The week Magnolia came out in Portugal, I rented the Boogie Nights VHS, because some dude on a TV show was saying he was dying to see Magnolia because Boogie rocked so much. I was hooked on both movies right away, worked my ass of to find out if Hard Eight had been released in video arond here, found out its portuguese title, rented, loved it and Paul's dick became one which I hop constantly.
Si

socketlevel

Quote from: New Feeling on December 07, 2010, 09:50:13 PM
saw Boogie Nights the week it came out.  Thought it was the best new movie I'd seen since Pulp Fiction blew my mind 3 years prior.  Saw it 4 times on first run, watched Hard Eight and Boogie Nights with my mom the day it came out on video.   Bought it on DVD before I got a DVD player.  First audio commentary I ever heard.  Then saw Magnolia in theatres 8 times...    

you just described exactly my experience in a nutshell. I bought it on DVD as a way to enforce buying a DVD player (back then a shitty one was 500 bucks) and i was in my last year of highschool with no cash money.  It was one of the first 10 dvds released if i'm not mistaken... and it was my first commentary too :)
the one last hit that spent you...

RegularKarate

I was working at a theater when Boogie came out.  One of the managers there talked to me all the time because I was the only one there that had even mildly similar taste in movies as him and he came to me screaming about how I have to see Boogie Nights one day.  He had just seen it the night before.  I told him I would and he got me a Boogie Nights shirt the next day telling me he saw it again and had I seen it (it wasn't playing at our theater so I hadn't yet).  I saw it that night and loved it.  The next day I told him and he made me rent Hard Eight that weekend.

I later found out that guy was some kind of sexual deviant and he may have been trying to eff me, but I still really liked Boogie Nights and bought it on VHS when it came out.  

Magnolia came out while I was in film school in Florida.  I went to see it at a theater and about an hour and a half into the movie, the sound started screwing up.  The speakers were popping and the channels were cutting in and out and it was unbearable.  I got so enraged and demanded my money back... not passes, my money back because I would NOT watch this movie at another AMC (at they time they exclusively used SDDS and I had learned from my projection days that format was the most likely to give out) it ended up being a two-day battle that resulted in a personal three year ban of AMC.

After that I realized that I must be a little obsessed with this guy and I went and found that original PT fan mailing list.

Also, I got so much shit when, in school, I would sign my name with my middle name or initial because everyone knew what a fanboy I was of PT's.

Reel

#112
   I do remember seeing trailers for Boogie Nights on TV when I was about 10. Even though I knew it was kinda cool and different but I thought it was about disco, not porn.. So I didn't really have much interest until I found out it was about porn. One night my friends mom had rented and she was watching but she wouldn't let us be in the room, but he got to see a snippet of the scene at the end where John C. is doing the magic trick, when the topless woman jumps out.
 
  I was so jealous of him, come to think of it I learned a lot about movies I would come to love just by hearsay from him. He was watching movies like Terminator 2 and Casino when he was like 5 years old. I remember he told me about he wasn't allowed to watch Pulp Fiction because of the scene where "A guys head gets blown off" and I conjured up that image in my mind years before I would actually get to see it, and no matter how much I anticipated I had no idea the surprise I was in for!
 
  My first taste of Boogie Nights was sleeping over at a friends house. We just wanted to see a little T&A, you know? But while watching it I think we were very uncomfortable with the dramatic and heavy themes going on even at the beginning, so we got to Rollergirl's first nude scene and were amazed. That was enough.

  Of course I also remember the tv spots for Magnolia. It seemed like such a sophisticated movie, strictly for adults but not in the same way Boogie Nights was. I saw it at the library one day and I thought my mom would like it ( probably because it has a flower on the cover ) but really I just needed an excuse to get it so I could watch it.

 When I look back, I don't think anything will ever beat that initial experience of seeing Magnolia for the first time. I watched it at night, it ended around 3a.m. and I felt like I'd just been mind-fucked. I had so many questions about this movie, and I stayed up to watch the sunrise thinking about it. I wanted to share it with my friends and stuff, but I didn't think they had the attention span. Even my Mom started in on it and had to turn it off.

  This was the beginning of my quest which inevitably landed me at xixax and made me want to be a filmmaker. I'm still not one though, barely even a writer. Magnolia planted a seed somewhere in my brain, the emotions it made me feel I wanted to someday recreate for others, maybe more accesibly, I don't know.

  All I really can say besides that is since There will be blood, EVERYONE's been on his dick whether they know it or not. Or at least it seems that way to me. I think they're really missing out on something though if they don't go through his filmography. I don't have any friends who even know who PTA is, I kinda wanna keep it that way. There's no reason to force something on anybody especially with how long winded he can be, but I'm just glad there's a place like this where people understand.


children with angels

Jesus - you forget how quickly a thread could develop back in '03!
"Should I bring my own chains?"
"We always do..."

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Ordet

saw boogie on the big screen and i'm like:"this dude's a bad ass" i was very sad when kubrick died and then saw magnolia and i knew the spirit lived on.
were spinning

diggler

I remember seeing ads for Boogie Nights when it came out, and for some reason I remember seeing a red carpet interview with Kathy Griffith where she said she thought it was awesome. I don't know why I so vividly remember that, but I remember it was her voice recounting why she liked the movie played over the long take ending with Mark Wahlberg jumping in the pool. I didn't see Boogie Nights until three years later in film school at the University of Hartford (yup), and it was probably the only worthwhile thing that happened there on that rocky first year of adulthood.

That following summer I rented Magnolia on VHS and watched it with my mom and she didn't dig it at all but I was electrified. I remember thinking it was weird that the double VHS copy I rented ended right when Philip Baker Hall asks Stanley about the song from Carmen and the next tape started with him answering the question. It seemed like the strangest mini cliffhanger to me at the time. After that I started following PTA's work and anxiously awaited Punch Drunk Love.  I took my then girlfriend to see it and she HATED it, while I quietly loved every frame. It was the first time a women's taste had ever turned me off. I wanted to convince her what a great film it was but I had no idea how. It was then that I came across ptanderson.com and eventually this site. I wanted to argue smarter.

I still have no idea what Xixax means
I'm not racist, I'm just slutty

matt35mm

Quote from: ddiggler on December 26, 2010, 08:28:55 PM
II remember thinking it was weird that the double VHS copy I rented ended right when Philip Baker Hall asks Stanley about the song from Carmen and the next tape started with him answering the question. It seemed like the strangest mini cliffhanger to me at the time.

I seem to remember that there was actually a reel change at this moment, or maybe it just felt that way because right at that cut, it suddenly becomes very quiet.  I don't know if that had anything to do with the VHS tapes.  I do remember that the DVD had a layer-change in a terrible spot where Claudia is in the middle of moving.

Alexandro

saw some boogie nights clips on entertainment tonight or something. I remember seeing william h. macy with that moustache and thinking: "I gotta see THAT". This was right after Fargo so he was big in my eyes. I was familiar with a lot of the cast. Moore from Shortcuts, Phil Hoffman from Scent of a Woman, but the whole combination of music and daring shots just in like one minute of footage I saw told me this was something to eagerly expect. I finally saw it in the theatre, I guess around march 1998 or something and it just blew me away. I said "whoa, this is the next scorsese". Then when it became available via piracy I watched it again, and rented a pirate copy of Hard Eight, which was the only version I ever saw for the next 8 years.

Magnolia, I was in london and went to see it on opening night. PDL I saw it three times on the big screen. Blood, the same.

Stefen

Bought a ticket to Titanic since I was only 13 and couldn't buy one for an R-rated movie, but snuck into Boogie Nights because I heard it had tons of boobs. I remember thinking it was the funniest movie I had ever seen until the 80's hit. By the end I thought it was the greatest movie in the history of movies.
Falling in love is the greatest joy in life. Followed closely by sneaking into a gated community late at night and firing a gun into the air.

Pozer

tarantino raves boogie to charlie rose / friend's brother who manages theater sneaks us youngsters a peak / everyone hates it save i / 2nd viewing confirms, pulpyficwho? / magnolia officially becomes most anticipated movie everever