MOVIES MADE ME #8: MAGNOLIA

I can’t remember who told me to see this movie in the theater, but I remember they wouldn’t tell me what it was about. So when I sat down to watch this three-hour opus for the first time, I had no idea what I was getting into.

When the movie was over, the only thing I could think to compare it to was Robert Altman’s SHORT CUTS. Both movies consist of a series of loosely connected, character-driven vignettes. The vignettes in SHORT CUTS are all based on stories by Raymond Carver, who was one of my favorite writers when I was in college. I struggled valiantly to write like him… and must have had some small measure of success because my friend Dave once commented that all of my short stories were variations on a Carver-esque theme, about “love, where it should be but isn’t.”

The same theme haunts the characters in MAGNOLIA, which boasts beautifully raw performances from some of the best character actors around: Philip Seymour Hoffman, John C. Reilly, William H. Macy, Julianne Moore, Philip Baker Hall, Jason Robards… and Tom Cruise in a strangely prescient role. But what blew me away about MAGNOLIA was the way the storyteller was able to pull all of those characters together in a meaningful way.

Writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson had already made two feature films prior to MAGNOLIA – the character drama HARD EIGHT (1996) and an ode to the 70s porn milieu, BOOGIE NIGHTS (1997). The latter was a big enough commercial hit that New Line Cinema gave Anderson the freedom to make a sprawling, 3-hour piece of impenetrably personal abstract art. MAGNOLIA is a character study as well as an ode to a particular milieu (the title is a reference to Magnolia Boulevard, a road that spans the entire length of the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles, connecting a wide variety of eccentric dreamers), but it’s much more ambitious than that: It’s a film that expresses a complicated worldview.

Recently I read Charles Fort’s Books of the Damned for the first time – and I’m convinced that they must have been the main inspiration for MAGNOLIA. Fort’s fourth book Wild Talents (published in 1932) even begins the same way that MAGNOLIA begins – with the newspaper account of the hanging of three men for a murder in Greenberry Hill, London. (Their surnames: Green, Berry and Hill… a striking coincidence.) In MAGNOLIA, Anderson goes on to add his own “tales of the damned,” then settles into the San Fernando Valley to begin illustrating, obliquely, Fort’s philosophy. As explained in The Book of the Damned:

It is our expression that the flux between that which isn’t and that which won’t be , or the state that is commonly and absurdly called “existence,” is a rhythm of heavens and hells: that the damned won’t stay damned; that salvation only precedes perdition. The inference is that some day our accursed tatterdemalions will be sleek angels. Then the sub-inference is that some later day, back they’ll go whence they came.

Fort goes on to say that “not one of us is a real person, if physically, we’re continuous with environment; if, psychically, there is nothing to us but expression of relation to environment… I conceive of one inter-continuous nexus, in which and of which all seeming things are only different expressions, but in which all things are localizations of one attempt to break away and become real things, or to establish entity or positive difference or final demarcation or unmodified independence – or personality or soul, as it is called in human phenomena…”

What is MAGNOLIA but a series of inter-related struggles for a feeling of harmony?

I remember sitting on the edge of my seat as I watched the film, persuaded by Jon Brion’s dread-filled, slow-building Hitchockian score that all of the characters were headed for some kind of monumental crisis. (The game show sequence is especially nerve-wracking.) The moment when the buildup finally gets resolved is one of MAGNOLIA’s most divisive sequences. Critics either loved or hated the moment when all of the characters – unbeknownst to each other – begin singing the same song (Aimee Mann’s “Wise Up”). For some, it broke the spell of “realistic” drama. For me, it brought wonder into the “real” world. The film’s final sequence (based on another historical account that is explored in Fort’s Wild Talents) was even more startling… and equally spellbinding.

Anderson obviously knew (though maybe only on a subconscious level) that his film was about transcending everyday reality, and he was able to successfully guide all of the fragments of his created universe toward a breakthrough that is simultaneously harmonious and chaotic. It seems to me that the viewer’s response depends on their own worldview. You have to ask yourself, Just how mysterious is the world we live in?

It would seem that Anderson pulled off this juggling act simply by following his own storytelling instincts… or his own instinctive beliefs about the world we live in. Take, for example, his method of working with composer Jon Brion. Anderson says, “Jon and I would watch a monitor and I would move my hands as an indication of the mood required. Jon would sit at the keyboard and let his eyes dart from the monitor to my body language and let his hands play. Essentially, Jon would play to what my hands were trying to say musically. He would watch my face grimace and he would play that.”

Anderson turned to music, it seems, because words couldn’t do justice to the ideas in his head. Even the title, he says, is not as simple as it seems. In addition to being a reference to Magnolia Boulevard, it is for him a reminder of Magonia – a mysterious “cloud realm” in medieval French mythology, whose inhabitants used “weather magic” to create storms. In one interview Anderson described the realm as a “limbo,” which again echoes Fort’s sentiments:

So, then, in general metaphysical terms, our expression is that, like a purgatory, all that is commonly called “existence,” which we call Intermediateness, is quasi-existence, neither real nor unreal, but expressions of attempt to become real, or to generate for or recruit a real existence.

The characters, in the end, are “saved” by the filmmaker’s concept of a world in which anything is possible. And, for me, that's the beauty of the film.

The Valley

When we first moved to L.A., I wasn’t sure I wanted to live in the San Fernando Valley. Known simply as “the valley” to Angelinos, the moniker is synonymous with middle-class suburbia (remember "Valley Girl" with Nicholas Cage?) and the porn industry. Suffice it to say that the valley has a somewhat déclassé reputation, especially among its neighbors to the south.

I have a feeling that this has always been the case. The valley was scarcely livable before the turn of the 20th century, when a few ruthless businessmen bought up the land, and irrigated it with water from an aqueduct that was unknowingly financed by the residents of Los Angeles. (If this sounds familiar, it’s because the L.A. “water wars” served as a backdrop for the movie “Chinatown.”)

Once the aqueduct was completed (in 1913), the Valley was quickly annexed by the City of Los Angeles – much to the chagrin, one imagines, of city residents. The Valley has been growing ever since, becoming a city in its own right. Beginning in the 1970s, there have been numerous attempts at secession. In the 2002 city elections, supporters argued that Valley residents are paying equal taxes for unequal public services. Opponents to the south blocked the secession... but, despite the technicalities, the Valley and the City of Los Angeles seem to exist independent of each other - two cities, divided by the Santa Monica Mountains.

After a few weeks in L.A., we eventually settled in Studio City on the southern fringe of the valley. Most of our trips in the past few months have taken us south or west, but this weekend we decided to explore the north side of the mountains – following a map of forgotten filming locations.




Suburban Hell (the Brady Bunch house)


The Los Angeles "River"


Forget it, Jake...

We started in Tujunga, on a residential street that hugs the edge of the San Gabriel Mountains in the northwest corner of the valley. This was the location of Elliot’s house in Steven Spielberg’s “E.T. – The Extra Terrestrial” (1982). The forest scenes were filmed in Northern California (hence the redwoods) and the neighborhood bike chase was shot in Northridge, but Tujunga was E.T.’s home away from home – with the mountains out back and a nice view of the valley in front. The early morning fog was a nice touch.



Next, we headed south to Pasadena, to see The Gamble House, a genuine tourist destination that appears on the National Historic Register. Most people visit this oversized 1908 bungalow for its unique architecture… but not me. I visited it because it was Doc Brown’s 1955 house in “Back to the Future.”



From Pasadena, we headed east to North Hollywood, and visited two locations that only a true movie geek could appreciate. First: the 7-11 at the corner of Magnolia and Tujunga. This is where Lloyd Dobler’s first date with Diane Court ended in Cameron Crowe’s directorial debut, “Say Anything.” As they were walking across the parking lot, Lloyd pointed out some glass for Diane to walk around. Later in the movie she says, “I always think of that whenever people say ‘What are you doing with Lloyd Dobler?’”

I remember that because I watched the movie at least 8 million times when I was in high school. Like I said, it takes a true geek... someone who would make his girlfriend accompany him to a sketchy 7-11 in North Hollywood and snap photos while a homeless guy stares at them.



Next stop: The Fox Fire Room cocktail lounge on Magnolia Boulevard. This is where “quiz kid” Donnie Smith met the love of his life (a male bartender with braces), in Paul Thomas Anderson’s opus “Magnolia.”

I can practically hear the jukebox playing old Supertramp hits, while Donnie whines, “I have lots of love to give… I just don’t know where to put it.”

If you continue east to Reseda and go up a few blocks, you can also visit the electronics shop where Donnie absent-mindedly drove his car through the front window. A block away from that is another P.T. Anderson shooting location – La Iglesia Christiana Nuevo Empezar, which doubled as the Hot Traxx disco in “Boogie Nights.”





In the afternoon, we took the 101 to the far western side of the valley, and found that Canoga Park lives up to the cliché that everything in suburbia looks exactly the same.

This is also where we found Brad and Stacy’s house from “Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” written by Cameron Crowe. Scenes set at the school were filmed at two locations in the valley: Canoga Park High and Van Nuys High. The front of Van Nuys is recognizable from the beginning of the movie.

Other nearby locations for this film include the Encino Little League Field (“The Point”), the Sherman Oaks Galleria (unrecognizable from the film, now that it has been converted into an outdoor mall), the Santa Monica Promenade (featured as the front of Ridgemont mall), and a coffee shop in Brentwood that doubled as the “All-American Burger” where Brad worked.





We headed back east, through Reseda, and passed by the apartment building where Daniel Larusso and Mr. Miyagi lived in “The Karate Kid.” It looks pretty dingy these days but, as I recall, it looked pretty dingy in 1984 too. (I suppose the point of this drive-by was not to scout a future place to live, but to celebrate the fact that we are living in the same city where some of my favorite films were shot.)

Another fan has compiled an exhaustive list of filming locations from "The Karate Kid," including Allie's house in nearby Encino.



With a proper amount of nostalgic thoughts, we headed back to our street in Studio City…

… which is currently the shooting location of “Bratz: The Movie,” starring Paula Abdul. Instead of turning on the TV, we just look out the window… and get a casual reminder of just how BORING production can be.

That said, I have no doubt that “Bratz” will be an instant classic, and that we’ll soon have movie geeks trolling through our own neighborhood, snapping photos and saying “This is where…”

Then again, maybe not.