PTA: nacer en el valle, pero hablarle al mundo

este texto me parece fundamental; deberia leerse y analizarse en el primer dia de clases en cualquier escuela de cine
en este texto esta la posibilidad de crear o de simplmente imitar

Paul Thomas Anderson:

“I am from the San Fernando Valley. For many years, I was ashamed of this fact, thinking that if I was not from the big city of New York or the farm fields of Iowa I had nothing to say.
I have never been in a war, like John Ford. I am not from France, like François Truffaut. I'm not even from Chicago, like David Mamet. When you are young and impressionable, it is important to have some resemblance to those you admire. Once I got over who I was and where I was from (and that's a separate story) I found my love of Los Angeles. More important --and in most people's eyes, harder to accomplish -- I love the San Fernando Valley.
I grew up in Studio City. It is not as lush as it sounds. There are no "studios" in Studio City. It is a suburban area with houses and trees and all the rest. The only sort of film production there is pornography.
Boogie Nights was about pornography in the 70's and 80's and that dictated one location: the valley. It's the capital of adult cinema.
As a kid, I was surrounded by these porno shoots. The area of Van Nuys where I went to high school had warehouses, and each warehouse would have a sign hanging out front. Every fourth warehouse or so would be without signage and would have fancy cars parked out front. This, in my perverted mind, meant one thing: there's porno in there. And I was right. If you're precocious, young and randy, the valley can be an interesting place to live. If what informs your youth is channeled well, you can end up making a movie about porno as opposed to making porno. I think I got lucky.
I live a few houses away from the location where the adult classic Amanda by Night was shot.





It's the porn equivalent of living near the Sunset Boulevard mansion.
During the making of Boogie Nights, I had a major, major insight: I wanted every location to be within 15 minutes of my home. The thought is: where would I like to set my stories? The answer is: close. This is lazy. But I also love it, and if it fits the story, it's not lazy anymore.
The San Fernando Valley has always been epic to me. I would watch Lawrence of Arabia, and think of my equivalent: Ventura Boulevard. As a kid, I would take my camcorder and recreate shots from other films. You do with what you have, and my goal was to make the valley cinematic. It seemed rather easy, because of my frustration with how others had tried to do it…
…I have located two films in the San Fernando Valley. In the pop imagination, this usually means stupid girls, malls and big hair. In reality, this is not the case. Well, not exactly. Yes, there are stupid girls and drunk boys and malls and bad hair, but the valley also has the closest thing to a "real life" in the Los Angeles area. It is a suburb, but it is a suburb of the city of movies. It is not infested with "movie" types and too-cool-for-school fellas. It's pretty near normal, or as normal as a place can be when bordering Hollywood.


In my new film, Magnolia, I have set out to make the Mother of All San Fernando Valley Films. I may succeed, because the only competition seems to be myself. And that is another factor: when you go to shoot a film around Los Angeles, getting locations can be nasty business. Bribes are allowed, people are wise and no one wants a film crew on their lawn. If I shoot in the valley, the problem can be eliminated. Most locations are thought of as I write the script: therefore, I know I can get them. This helps. My vision can be produced and I can sleep at home.
And that, at the end of the day, is the bottom line: making movies is hard enough without sleeping in a strange bed each night. I like to stay home”.


De “A Valley Boy Who Found a Home Not Far From Home”,
Artículo de P.T. Anderson escrito expresamente para The New York Times
(14 de nov, 1999)