Watch Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights prototype, The Dirk Diggler Story

[boingboing]

Originally published at: Watch Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights prototype, The Dirk Diggler Story | Boing Boing

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[James_Lovette-Black]

I discovered this film last year. The star is HOT.

[bobtato]

I ain’t watched it yet, but if he’s managed to live his life without brutally maiming anyone in a racist attack and then feeling sorry for himself about it, he’s already ahead.

[Torlygid]

Boogie Nights is one of my all-time favorite movies. This isn’t nearly there, but it is definitely interesting to see the genesis of BN in there. Thankfully, PTA’s writing and directing have improved immensely since.

The actor who plays Dirk Diggler in the short film is actually in Boogie Nights. He’s the guy Don Cheadle is trying to sell the stereo to toward the beginning of the film.

[Gendun]

My main beef with Magnolia is that it’s so closely modeled after Short Cuts that it verges on plagiarism.

I think he really struggled early on to find his own voice and see most of his early films as a series of auteur homages - Boogie Nights to Scorsese, Magnolia to Altman, and There Will be Blood to Kubrick and Herzog.

I think Short Cuts and then Punch Drunk Love were his most original films from his early phase, and in many ways his best, though the sheer dizzying virtuosity of the performances in Boogie Nights makes a good case for that film.

Man, I miss Philip Seymour Hoffman.

[Jesse13927]

Hoffman’s presence in every film that he appeared in was invariably the highlight of that film, and even a brief cameo lit up the scene in a way that would reverberate through subsequent scenes.

I have never been one to pay much attention to which actors appear in a movie, but I always made it a rule to watch anything with him in it.