Paul Thomas Anderson On Burt Reynolds And Boogie Nights
You’ve probably heard the terrible news. The screen and TV legend, Burt Reynolds died this week at the age of 82. He wasn’t able to film his scenes in Quentin Tarantino’s latest movie (Once Upon A Time In Hollywood) but I’ve stumbled across an older Youtube video about him, and it just put some things in perspective about what kind of a man he was.
The 2 minutes video is from Radio Andy, and in it the acclaimed writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson was the host. During the interview I’m sure he spoke about many things, but one of the things that he was asked was the presences of Burt Reynolds in his second film Boogie Nights.
Reynolds earned his first and only Academy Award nomination for this role, but it’s been known in the past 20 or so years that he didn’t particularly enjoyed that role, or making that movie. He reportedly turned down the role in Boogie Nights 7 times, and continued to hate the film until his death.
As Anderson points out, there were a lot of tension on the set of Boogie Nights cause party by him and his young age, but partly by Burt himself, who admittedly didn’t care about that role.
It was years later that he finally grasped the performance his made in Boogie Nights, and the impact that great movie had in movie history, but continued to hate the role and the movie.
Check out Paul Thomas Anderson’s views on Burt Reynolds here.
