It's not exactly a secret that Burt Reynolds didn't have the easiest time working on “Boogie Nights.” But now that the 79-year-old actor is on a media tour for his recently released memoir, “But Enough About Me,” we're getting a little more of his side of the story.
Even though Reynolds' turn as porn director Jack Horner garnered him his only Oscar nomination, he's never seen the film all the way through. He apparently doesn't think much of the porn world or porn actors.
“I don't like those people, I feel like they are due for a very hard time because they tried to do legitimate film and they're never going to be able to,” Reynolds told the Guardian. “It's sad, they were very sad people and they showed up a lot of times on set. It's a one-way street, if you go down that road as an actor, you're finished.”
Reynolds also told British talk show host Jonathan Ross that “Boogie Nights” “wasn't a fun picture,” but he agreed to the role because his career needed a boost even though “it was about a subject matter I have trouble with, which is pornography.”
Quite the moral high ground for a guy who did a nude centerfold for Cosmopolitan!
As for his dislike of Anderson, Reynolds told GQ that “personality-wise, we didn't fit,” and “he was young and full of himself. Every shot we did, it was like the first time. I remember the first show we did in 'Boogie Nights,' where I drive the car to Grauman's Theater. After he said, 'Isn't that amazing?' And I named five pictures that had the same kind of shot. It wasn't original. But if you have to steal, steal from the best.”
He had stronger words when talking to the Guardian, saying he “hated” the writer-director and when offered a role in “Magnolia,” Anderson's follow-up, he turned it down.
“I've done my picture with Paul Thomas Anderson, that was enough for me,” he said.
Reynolds has never seen “Boogie Nights” all the way through (though he did, at least, see a rough cut — after which he fired his agent, so much did he hate it). Ross urged him to do so, saying it might change his mind about the film. Reynolds refused.