His relationship to the material differed from that of the average high schooler. But the real seduction was in the imagined backstories, the circumstantial tragicomedies of the casts and crews, which inspired Anderson to write and film .
During the process, Anderson squabbled with producers, barred them from the set, and refused to show any edited footage or make any significant suggested changes.
And so we’d give that to Mark and he would go in the bathroom and he’d do that and he’d come out and Garrett would glue it all down.
One of our artists, Garrett Immel, sculpted this penis to be slightly erect and with the testicles and everything.
We made a core that created a void that Mark could put his own anatomy into.
He wanted in and hustled plenty — sneaking onto sets, working a Betamax camera from the age of 12, filming everything — but he also gained entrée from his father, Ernie, who was famous from his voice-over work for ABC on shows like .
The Andersons had a pool — where funny-guy actors like Tim Conway and Robert Ridgely frequently lounged, cracking jokes and pouring drinks — and their own Shetland pony. Anderson also became consumed by porn and the Bizarro Hollywood industry that claimed the Valley as its Fertile Crescent.
The evening we arrived, we were meeting some people at a restaurant and a young guy introduces himself to us as Paul Thomas Anderson. And Paul didn’t have final cut and he didn’t have control over the marketing or the distribution plan. A blow job was a blow job, but the sex stuff was a bit confusing. He didn’t want the guys on the sofa to know when they were coming and they were pretty much full blast. He was an outsider, just because the other actors were grown-up as actors and he was a guy that was coming out of the music business. knew that he needed a change of tone or some sort of change of energy to keep the film going, to carry it through to its conclusion. And the reality is, when I wrote the movie and when we shot it, I wasn’t sure what to do — whether we should see it right away, like within the first forty-five minutes — get it out of the way, sort of mortalise it — or whether it should stay to the end.
He’s holding the largest script I ever saw in my life. I was trying to figure out: Is that in her butt or what? The guys were constantly jumping out of their skins, but Rahad, my character, was completely still. But that was a quality that Paul wanted, a guy who was not quite fitting into this world. That is Mark Wahlberg on the set after three days of firecrackers. I went to Paul’s office in Hollywood and it was wall-to-wall porn. I want to talk about what we need.” And the big thing we need on this film is Mark Wahlberg’s penis.They were particularly hung up on a few sex things, too: humping, clenching butt cheeks.They would say, “Dirk’s butt, while he’s having sex with Amber, too much.” And so we would cut whatever, 20 frames off it, and send it back and they would say, “Dirk’s butt, while he’s having sex with Amber, too much.” And we’d cut another six frames.” And she’s all kidding and laughing and she’s like, “Yours is bigger.” But Paul said, “You know what, I don’t want to talk about John Holmes and New Line doesn’t want to talk about it.” And he’s like, “Well, let’s just pull everyone out of the room and we’ll improv a little bit.” He really wanted a lot of innocence and fun. Mark proceeded to parade around the set with the dick hanging out of his jeans.He’d pose with his hands on his hips and everybody was laughing and We sculpted a version that was 12 inches long, and we tested it and it was just way too big. The next one was seven inches; that was the penis we went with.Paul basically told him just to keep lighting [firecrackers] willy-nilly. Paul gave me an earwig so I could hear the dialogue and the music but it dampened the sound of the firecrackers. It was also Paul off-camera with two two-by-fours, slapping them together to simulate the firecrackers. And it was smoky and it was hot and they were just on set like that for days. We sat and watched a couple John Holmes compilations.