Boogie Nights, Magnolia, Punch Drunk Love: Why PTA’s Most Personal Films Take Place in the Valley
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 25 авг 2024
- Paul Thomas Anderson is in exclusive company. Not only for his incredible camera movement and character studies, but he's right up there with Martin Scorsese, Wong Kar-Wai and Federico Fellini as filmmakers that love their cities. Born in the San Fernando Valley himself, PTA set a trilogy of wildly different films in the Los Angeles suburb with Boogie Nights, Magnolia and Punch Drunk Love. But how does a personal connection to the location translate to the screen? What does this mean to the characters he writes, and the visual style he creates?
From Mark Wahlberg as Dirk Diggler and his search for parental figures in the porn industry with Burt Reynolds and Julianne Moore amid some of the best long takes ever on film, to Tom Cruise in his Oscar Nominated turn as misogynist huckster Frank TJ Mackey and his relationship with his dying father with Magnolia's kinetic camera movement and blocking, to Adam Sandler in Punch Drunk Love living in the shadow of his overbearing sisters in overexposed North Valley warehouses, each of PTA's valley trilogy films leans on his own experience. And the Valley, his home, makes everything that much more personal.
This video was written by Siddhant Adlakha and edited by Clint Gage.
Interested in more director profiles? That's great because CineFix has them!
Dune director Denis Villenueve and his quest for Identity on screen - • Dune Director Denis Vi...
The Green Knight writer/director David Lowery has a unique obsession with myth and folklore - • The Green Knight and D...
The Dark Knight, Tenet and A Brief History of Christopher Nolan and Time - • A Brief History of Chr...
#IGN #Cinefix
Growing up in the Valley myself, it's great to see PTA repeatedly coming back to this city and explicitly separating it from Los Angeles itself.
Reminds me of how Las Vegas isn't the actual place with the strip, but a place named "Paradise".
I also grew up in the Valley in the 70's and 80s part time, however, it was the San Gabriel valley. Jr high and HS moved to Lake Arrowhead then San Diego. PTA seems to have a real love the city and it is some of the most realistic representations in the area.
Magnolia is an underrated masterpiece I feel, the way you understand the characters and the course of events is so divine in itself. PTA makes the best films about humans and how we’re flawed and not perfect but seek a sort of salvation, all of us
Magnolia is one of the most acclaimed films ever made
Yeah, it's not underrated at all. Everybody loves it.
Magnolia, Boogie Nights, and The Master are not only my favorite PTA films, but they are some of my favorite films of all time. Complete masterworks in my opinion
The Master is my personal favorite, in my top 5 films ever. Just about everything he's made is a classic, imo.
In my opinion, the best American filmmaker since Kubrick. I think every film he’s made after his first is a masterpiece including his misunderstood Inherent Vice.
Inherent vice is painfully long winded and paced. I love it!
Completely Agree. No other filmmaker in my opinion has quite mastered the writing and directing combo. On top of that he also happens to make some of the most brilliant filmmaking decisions ever. He's our Scorsese and Kubrick combined. I mean in terms of the culture not style, although some of his films are obviously influenced by those two filmmakers.
Love Inherent Vice, though it is dense. I had to watch it one of two scenes at a time, before I got it. "Shasta Fey"
inherent vice is just like a cheaper version of the long goodbye, but I understand that because the director of that film was PTA's favorite director
@@craigco6480 Yh IV is definitely his 'The Long Goodbye'. The Long Goodbye is so good though. I think everything or at least most everything that happens in IV takes place in doc's head.
Magnolia, There Will Be Blood, and Boogie Nights are all 10/10s from me.
Also Master
DDL in There Will Be Blood is my favorite acting performance ever
@@NeverSaySandwich1 And that music that goes straight to your prefrontal cortex...
This guy just can't make a bad movie
@@noTH9IK Absolutely. In fact, it's my favorite PTA film, and in my all-time top 5, where There Will Be Blood once was... Punch-Drunk Love, Inherent Vice, and Phantom Thread are all ridiculously brilliant, as well. The best filmmaker working today.
Magnolia, Boogie Nights, and Punch Drunk Love are all my favorites from Paul Thomas Anderson. So you're basically telling me Licorice Pizza is gonna be my favorite movie of the year, a guaranteed 10/10 if it's even remotely close to as good as those.
The scripts in these videos are always top tier, well done Cinefix.
punch drunk love is one of my favorite movies but I haven't seen the other two maybe now is the time to do so.....
Please make a list of the top 10 bigger than life characters in movie history
Phantom Thread also [basically] takes place in one house. Thanks for the analysis.
These 3 movies are masterpieces. Boogie Nights being the best. Magnolia being his most well received. And Punch Drunk Love being his most underrated. I stand by my personal opinion that Adam Sandler has deserved 3 Oscar nominations. His first being in Punch Drunk Love.
I don't share the same feeling with Magnolia. For me, PTA's worst movie or the one I disliked the most.
He also got career-best performances out of Sandler and Tom Cruise, as well as convincing people to take Mark Wahlberg seriously as an actor. He's not just a great director, he's a generous one in giving actors amazing parts to play.
These are my three favorites of his films and this was a great analysis of what makes them so great
This channel always has imense quality content, but this is his best video to date. FANTASTIC.
This channel is extremely underrated
Love you Clint, but I have a small criticism I’ve never noticed in your content before. The sound mixing in this is tough - I’m having a hard time making out your voice. It seems to fluctuate in volume a bit as well.
Having grown up in exactly same time, same place as PTA, although we never went to the same schools, his SFV films, to me, have always felt like watching my childhood lovingly recreated and, considering the approbation that the Valley tends to get especially from the stuck up snobs from Beverly Hills on over to the Westside, it's refreshing to see a filmmaker who takes this part of town seriously.
Although calling Reseda a "happening Valley neighborhood" really cracks me up, because it never was and never will be. I know the street where those club scenes were shot very well, and it was pretty much always totally down-market. Hell, that's why all the strip clubs and adult theatres in that part of town were on Reseda Boulevard near Sherman Way --- cheap rent, and nobody respectable would go there after dark.
Happening at the time was down in Woodland Hills, especially along Ventura Boulevard or, if you were a really daring Valleyite, you'd just drive over the hill (or take the bus) into Hollywood.
SFV resident here for 13 years. If you live here. You get it. We aren’t LA, and I love that PTA makes that clear
Another great analysis. I really enjoy re-seeing these movies with the tidbits you share.
One of my favorite filmmakers!
Amazing essay. Long Live PTA.
Thought we were taking the Parent Teacher Association and their films.
Dirk kinda gets a happy ending as well I feel in Boogie Nights
I thought the same thing when I finished this video. I think that boogie nights definitely has a happy ending for most of the characters.
Jack in magnolia as you call him is actually frank Mackey played by Tom Cruise. My #1 Movie.
This is a great essay, congrats to the effort
9:46 is an amazing shot
FINALLY. THANK YOU. PTA love.
For me the best director of all time
PTA is The Master
Tarentino and LA in general. Shaymalan and the great Philadelphia area … etc
I have watched all the three movies and felt exactly as described in the video. PTA dead accurate in his movies.
This is educationally inspiring
Love a decent triple salchow deep dive from CineFix.
did you guys hire a new editor? these transitions are dope
Voice? Yes. Yes!
My favorite director❤
there will be valley
inherent valley
phantom valley
punch drunk valley
magvallia
valley nights
cigarettes and valley
hard valley
and of course: Licorice… pizza
I always thought the subtext in "Magnolia" was that Tom Cruise's character had fucked Julie Ann Moore's, his step-mother, out of revenge, which is why she freaked out at the prospect of the reunion between the two of them. She was racked with guilt over her infidelities; that would be the most egregious cheating she could do. And of course, Cruise's character would certainly be motivated to do so.
Thanks
Of all his films I still like Hard Eight the best. They’re all great though.
wong kar "way" bothered me at the beginning lol
I like the video but disagree that boogie nights and magnolia don’t have happy endings. I think they are pretty optimistic
PTA ❤❤❤
Every frame a painting
Why does PTA version of “the Valley” never include Mexican/Latin people ? In real life , there is a huge population of Mexican people. They work for Barry in punch drunk love but they don’t really have characters other than the few lines from puerto rican actor Luis Guzman.
Having grown up in the Valley from ‘68 to ‘04, it always bothered me how it was treated as a punchline, as an “uncool” place to live or be from.
Sorry to sound dumb, but, what does PTA stand for?
I thought this was more about schools and parents.
@@MrJayParkez Thanks
Those weren't "urban legends" about coincidences in Magnolia; those are documented events. He cited them in the film. I read about the scuba diver before the movie ever came out. Similarly, frogs falling from the sky has happened. (Basically, a big storm sucks them up out of a wet land.) I did find the frog ending cathartic.
But that's what urban legends are, stories that never happened but still manage to find their way into journals. One British comedian, Dave Gorman, does a bit centred around a 'fact' that appeared about him in wikipedia. The article said he had cycled around the Pacific Rim for charity. He never did this. A regional British newspaper did an article about Gorman, consulted the wiki page and included the 'fact' in its article. Now anytime Gorman tries to remove the bit, it gets reinstated because it appeared in print!!
The frog man in the tree after the fire fight, The doberman with the burglar's finger in his mouth, the kid being attacked/killed/ra**d in the toilets of McDonnalds...all these things are urban legends and none of the happened. I did a study on them many years ago in college.
Where are the home made movies
I am just two years younger than PTA, and my father was IN the porn industry (and in fact, he believes that Jack Horner is partially based on him, which might be true, because Jack dresses and looks like a greyed-out version of my dad in the early 80’s,) AND I grew up in The Valley, so when you say that images of the porn industry were “likely inescapable” in The Valley during that time, I ask you: WHAT TF ARE YOU ACTUALLY TALKING ABOUT?
IF you had grown up in Los Angeles during the 70’s and 80’s, and had been the son of a porn director, there’s one thing you would know for sure… The porn industry at that time was under immense pressure from police and prosecutors, and often didn’t even shoot their films anywhere in Los Angeles county. They most certainly would NOT have been plastering the city with images of their industry, as that kind of attention would be anathema to the underground nature of the industry at that time. So, normies in The Valley at that time would not have been inundated with images of porn.
Your idea of what The Valley porn scene was like seems to be partly an amalgamation of what it was like in the 90’s, and your own imagination.
Who was your dad?
1st