BOOGIE NIGHTS’ POOL PARTY
The most dazzling shot in Paul Thomas Anderson’s scintillating sophomore feature (after Hard Eight) is a ‘oner’ that snakes its way around a pool party thrown by porn director Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds). “I didn’t want to do it with Steadicam; I wanted it to be funkier,” said a 26-year-old Anderson, and the writer-director came up with something so funky it’s up there with the Copacabana shot in Good Fellas.
A better comparison, though, is the astonishing opening of 1964 drama I Am Cuba, for it directly influenced Anderson. In that film, the camera slaloms through a party on a hotel rooftop before floating down the outside of the building and gliding towards a pool to follow a bikini-clad sunbather as she wades into the water. The jazz soundtrack distorts as the camera goes under, ogling the swimmers.
In PTA’s take, the drifting camera drops by on conversations – hi-fi salesman Buck Swope (Don Cheadle) arguing that his cowboy look is coming back into fashion; club manager Maurice t.t. Rodriguez (Luis Guzmán) asking porn actress Amber Waves (Julianne Moore) to get him a role – and watches people snort cocaine before following a bikini-clad woman into the pool. It follows her underwater (‘Spill The Wine’ by Eric Burdon and War distorts on the soundtrack) before bobbing back up to watch Eddie Adams (Mark Wahlberg) dive into the pool. “Did it look cool?” Eddie asks his mentor, Reed Rothchild (John C. Reilly). “Pretty good… let me show you what you did wrong.”
“I feel proud that we came back up out of the pool for dialogue,” said Anderson, who upped the ante on the I Am Cuba shot by housing a camera and having two operators carry it “like a pig on a stick”. It’s a technically audacious scene but also full of meaning, weaving together all of the members in the makeshift family that Anderson’s porn epic revolves around, and ending with Eddie giving Reed advice after he smacks his back upon attempting a somersault. The pupil has become the master, and soon he’ll become Dirk Diggler, the biggest star in porn. JG