The Oscar Buzz Celebrates Its Eighth Anniversary!

 

Scene from Hard Eight

Ladies and gentlemen, I am proud to announce that the odometer has rolled over. We're entering my eighth year of running things here at The Oscar Buzz. Boy has life been sweet as I've continued to expand my area of interest here annually, finding new and exciting topics to explore as I wait for each season to start. As I do every year, I try to use numerology to figure out something interesting to explore about myself. This is a moment where I get personal and expand upon what I love about film. With the number "8," I've had a variety of topics to choose from, such as BUtterfield 8 or The Hateful Eight. However, those feel small, not allowing for me to really open up in significant ways that go back more than a few years.

Much like how I chose The Seven Year Itch for 2019 to explore my love for Marilyn Monroe, I have decided to use Hard Eight as an entry point into Paul Thomas Anderson. As long-time readers will know, I started this whole website because of The Master. It all started because I wanted to see Joaquin Phoenix get that Oscar win (seven years late, but we got there!). However, I have reserved criticism of that 2012 masterpiece to a certain upcoming anniversary (guess). For now, I am using Anderson's debut film to better explore the question: why do I love PTA so much? I'm sure everyone from my generation has an answer and those who know me personally likely already will find these key notes predictable. For everyone else, welcome to my anniversary piece, the one where I finally get to the heart of a very specific kind of movie love.

I suppose that I should begin by discussing Hard Eight. Like every auteur in the making, there's no place as fascinating to start at the beginning. You'd have to ask yourself if you'd be as in love with Anderson if you were at a film festival watching this movie. Where some filmmakers (most recently with Robert Eggers) come out of the gate swinging, more often than not you're looking at raw, unfocused talent that needs to be shaped. Maybe they just need a bigger budget to get their vision to reach its full potential. That is how I feel watching Anderson's Hard Eight, which has traces of what we'd love about him, but ultimately is a forgettable, probably disposable casino drama that has its moments, but sure doesn't stick with you.

I wouldn't be the first to tell you that Hard Eight is one of his weaker films. In fact, it's likely why it took me until a few months ago when it appeared on Amazon Prime to watch it. Whereas I've watched There Will Be Blood a half-dozen times and listened to Travis Woods' great podcast Increment Vice (all about Inherent Vice), I just never had an interest to see it. I knew it would be lesser by virtue of where it fell in his career. Even when you throw in all of the staples and the start of his stable of actors (notably John C. Reilley and Philip Seymour Hoffman), it never feels like the work of a confident filmmaker. He doesn't feel like the man who would go on to make Boogie Nights, featuring a long take reminiscent of GoodFellas that is far more proficient and full of personality than any one minute in this film.

But here's the thing. It kind of explains why I love Anderson. With the exception to Phantom Thread and Junun, he has become a personal visionary of west coast hucksterism. He has created a mythology for Southern California in the same ways that Martin Scorsese has done in New York. When you watch his films, you feel like you're living in those cities, driving down those streets, and talking to these colorful characters. One of my favorite details that I've picked up from dozens of Anderson retrospectives over the past decade is that he's obsessed with the salesman. Everyone is selling something, and in some ways, it's reflective of his own life and this distinctive Southern California feel that everyone is a bit disingenuous, forming their own operations. 

You look at Reilley in Hard Eight and he's trying to get out of debt, escaping the misery that he's set himself in. It's a place that uses casinos like an altar, praying to the slot machines in hopes that they'll redeem him if he puts enough quarters in. It's how negotiations happen in crowded restaurants, and long drives through Middle California reveal how much desert and hills there are. It's those moments where you have the sincerest conversations, having nowhere to run because if the bullet doesn't get you, then the heat will. The way that it creates this desperation maybe recalls film noir in a 90s American indie film lens, finding a righteous cameo from Hoffman that oozes coolness. 

I don't love this film all that much, but I recognize that more than being a fan of Anderson, I am just a sucker for Southern California movies. It gets a bit dicey if you take into account what this region seems to represent to outsiders. If you watch Los Angeles Plays Itself, you'll discover that it's a place full of misery and death. If it's not a crime story, then it's natural disasters. Thankfully San Francisco has shifted the burden to that lovely bridge, but it's still something I'm sensitive about. While there have been good So Cal crime thrillers, I generally look for films that have style and more substance to it. As much as there's crime here, there's also a rich atmosphere here that I love being depicted on film. It's kind of why I love the work of Dan Gilroy (yes, even Velvet Buzzsaw) because of how it fleshes out a city that has problems but also is full of these eccentric oddballs trying to get by. 

Though if we're being honest, Anderson has everyone beat in terms of recent auteurs. I love what he did with San Pedro in Inherent Vice, managing to make the port city feel rich with these oddball textures and characters running around like Chuck Jones creations. It's a vivid comedy underneath a hazy fog that only a master could really achieve. It may appeal to the stoner aesthetic, but it's not reliant entirely on your favoring of marijuana. Similarly, I love The Master with how it treats Joaquin Phoenix approaching a port and running around fields. It's all a vivid portrait of a California that writers like John Steinbeck romanticized. It's the type of historical relevancy that you can't help but admire with its rich cinematography and small moments. Maybe it makes me a narcissist, but I love seeing Southern California depicted in beautiful ways. Even the open fields in There Will be Blood has a majesty to them that is alluring. The fact that most of Anderson's film exists in similar geography only speaks to how diverse this state truly is.

Despite being the home of Hollywood and, symbolically, the film industry, it doesn't feel like there are that many filmmakers who tell stories about this state. More importantly, ones that can romanticize the people who exist even in the seedy areas of this world. Much like how Gilroy is creating his own universe, I feel like there are certain expectations you have with an Anderson movie, reflecting how the salesman has taken on many forms over the years. Considering how California has become a state welcoming wayward travelers, it makes sense that it has come to encapsulate petty criminals (Hard Eight), adult films (Boogie Nights), capitalists (There Will Be Blood), the religious (The Master), the slacker (Inherent Vice), and guys who buy pudding (Punch-Drunk Love). They all have a neurosis, mentally unstable, and capture what it feels like to live in one of the fastest states in the country. If you're pausing for a break, you're missing out on something greater. Everything is in motion, and Anderson manages to create it even while standing still, overlooking in exhaustion. The trick is to get that sale, and nobody has as entertaining of a pitch as Anderson.

I love how diverse his body of work is. I love that it's able to make California feel more alive than any noteworthy filmmaker has in the past. It's about more than my belief that he has one of the best filmographies of the 21st century so far, or how he's a purist when it comes to filmmaking. Whereas I can look at others like Quentin Tarantino and see a filmmaker fall into the fantasy of Hollywood, there are times where his films don't feel real, like we don't exist in same California. Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood comes closest, and even then it feels like he's more attracted to the details. Anderson is about the ethics and humanity of these characters, and I love them all for finding something deep and perverse. He creates art that I recognize as essential. It is more than genre pastiche. It's genuine to how he sees the world.

What's great is that you can pick up on this from Hard Eight. While I have never been to that restaurant, I know the feeling of opening the film with Reilley begging for money outside a diner. There are so many restaurants that you just drive by, on hours-long drives to somewhere else. Think of all the people that have been forgotten, left to fend for themselves. It's that type of desperation that gets you the neo-noir. It's that reasoning that makes you understand the moral code of a state that welcomes anyone who has even a trace of an idea. It's a crossroads, our personal calling card that is connected to both ports to the Pacific Ocean and trains that can transport goods east, to connect the outsiders to something greater. Then there's Hollywood, who has a whole street dedicated to celebrating stars with plaques and guys in Spider-Man costumes. This is an eccentric city that is both aspiring and delusional, and Anderson has enough heart to make it all feel sincere. 

I am sure that every state has its own significance when it comes to cinema. For instance, I don't know that anyone does Midwest idealism as well as The Coen Brothers. The issue is that I can't tell you what state they best represent as they wander around, looking for these colorful characters that I'm thankful to spend time with. I suppose it's a curse of so many auteurs moving to art hubs like Los Angeles or New York and not getting the chance to embrace what makes their state special. Sure you'll get a few personal tales, but you won't have the consistency of an Anderson or Scorsese. I want to see someone who is capable of making one of those other 48 states feel as alive and unique as them. If you know of them, please let me know.

More than the story themselves, that is why I adore Anderson with all my heart. I'm sure there are others who love him more, but I've given up on seeing obsession as a horse race. I just like what I like and am thankful to have fans willing to share their opinions about this stuff. I'm sure there are many who don't even look at these films as building a new California mythology. They don't see the bigger deal of making everyone into a symbolic salesman. To me, they make the stories richer, more ambitious even if they connect everything on a predictable plot level. Is that a bad thing? I personally think, as a salesman, having a formula that works is sometimes necessary. You expect certain things when he rings the doorbell and offers you a new movie. It's a gamble of sorts, and that's why Hard Eight diving into the desperation of wayward characters without much grounding feels important.

It could mean everything or be totally nothing. For me, it feels like a good time to explain myself. I'm sure that I could explain away my mixed feelings on Tarantino, but they feel less significant. I'd rather explain an aspect of myself that may be a bit delusional, but is a secret niche that I have. I love films that celebrate Southern California's rich identity not as a disaster, but as something quirky. It's why I still like (500) Days of Summer in spite of modern reassessment. It's why I like Roman J. Israel, Esq. even if it's a bit of a bland and forgettable movie. I love having this as an identity, preserved on film for future generations to see. Even then, nobody does it like Anderson. Where everyone makes great movies, it feels like he's setting out to make art, and I really like mulling over everything and finding deeper meaning. It all started in front of that diner, and at that point it's up to you to determine whether you follow him on his career. For people like me, I'll take it.