Paul Thomas Anderson

I mean, it's a format that's still at work, you know?

But at the time, it was really like the most...

convenient and plausible way into a story with the equipment that you had at hand did you have you transferred that from from v8 was a vhs uh you know it was eight millimeter eight millimeter video so a high eight i think have you transferred it to something that'll last and are we ever going to see it hopefully not hopefully it's somewhere no it's it's it's transferred within an inch of its life it's available i think it maybe it's on youtube i'd have to look oh really

Yeah, I'm not sure.

Wow.

It's not terrible.

There's still some jokes that are the same and things and some pieces that, you know, remained in Boogie Nights.

You know, what was great about that was that what I didn't even realize at the time in terms of the writing, in terms of really learning how to write, was that I'd created this kind of these fictional characters in this fake documentary, right?

And then I realized what I had to do was adapt that, adapt these fake lives into a movie.

And I spent the next, well, probably about 10 years doing that.

So I wrote a 90-page version of this documentary.

And then I realized, well, I don't want to do that.

That's not the right format for this.

I want to write this as a fictional film.

So I did that, you know, for ten years.

I guess it was the way that I learned how to write, really, was practicing telling this story in multiple different ways.

For sure.

You know, maybe there's leftovers and you're just, I don't know, how deep is your well, I guess.

No, I never have anything good like that.

I always have like, just like, I never ever have.