Episode 262: HARD EIGHT (1996)

You’ve seen movies like Paul Thomas Anderson’s 1996 directorial debut, HARD EIGHT. In fact, if you called it part of the PULP FICTION (1994) neo-noir craze, you wouldn’t be wrong.

Sydney (Philip Baker Hall) is an avuncular elder hustler who takes John (John C. Reilly) and Clementine (Gwyneth Paltrow) under his wing, keeping new blood small-timer Jimmy (Samuel L. Jackson) at bay while he sets up a better life for the young lovebirds. When things go south, Sydney goes to extreme measures to preserve the fiction he’s built so he can stay the person he thinks he is – the person he wants John and Clementine to see.

In this Dry Run discussion, we compare and contrast different takes about what HARD EIGHT is trying to ‘say,’ if anything, and the value of a frictionless story if it’s competently told.

“Meet Sydney: On Paul Thomas Anderson’s Hard Eight (1996)” by MH Rowe for Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/2024/01/14/meet-sydney-on-paul-thomas-andersons-hard-eight-1996/

Get tickets to “THE FIFTEENTH FILM NOIR FESTIVAL: NEO-NOIR” (Winter 2024 at the Trylon and the Heights Theater): https://www.trylon.org/films/category/neo-noir/

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Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Closing audio: “Sydney’s Work Walk” by Jon Brion and Michael Penn from the HARD EIGHT soundtrack.