Apart from anything else, the film is about filmmaking. It captures the familial atmosphere of a film set as well as any film since Truffaut's "Day for Night." The focus is not on sex but on loneliness and desperation, leavened with a lot of humor, some of it dark, some of it lighthearted.

"Boogie Nights" is Anderson's second feature. When I saw the first one at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival, I felt I was watching the work of a born filmmaker.

"Hard Eight" starred John C. Reilly and Philip Baker Hall in the story of a relationship between an old gambler who shows the ropes to a broke kid in Nevada. As characters played by Gwyneth Paltrow and Samuel L. Jackson get involved, the story reveals hidden connections. It is a riveting debut film.

Reilly and Hall also have important roles in "Boogie Nights" - Reilly as the porno star's sidekick, Hall as the shadowy figure who finances the films. And the big cast also includes such actors as William H. Macy (the car salesman in "Fargo") and Don Cheadle ("Devil With a Blue Dress"). In a year of often disappointing films, here is a great one.

On his way from Los Angeles to the New York Film Festival, Anderson stopped for a few hours in Chicago, and we sat outside on a perfect October day and talked about how he had accomplished so much, so quickly.

Q. So you made a shorter version of this film as a kid, right?

A. Yeah. When I was 17, I wrote a half-hour short called the "The Dirk Diggler Story." I was so influenced by "Spinal Tap" that it was in my brain, so it was like, "Let's play it as a documentary." I'd seen this piece on "A Current Affair" on (porn actress) Shauna Grant, which was the cliched-but-true story of a girl from Iowa who comes to Hollywood on the bus, looking for dreams.

Q. So this is basically a Hollywood story, except it's about the porn industry.