"If I have it in me, you have it in you." Fans of Paul Thomas Anderson will know that line from the director's There Will Be Blood, and family has often been a theme in PTA's work. The line also seems like it might have been uttered by Paul's father, Ernie Anderson, who himself seems like he could have been a character in one of his son's movies.
Ernie was a local legend in Ohio, where he performed as Ghoulardi, a wildly popular horror-show host. In the '70s, he left for Studio City, California, where Paul was born in 1970, and became the voice of ABC, a gig that reportedly earned him over a million dollars a year. You'll probably remember Ernie's wonderful vocal talent on commercials for "The Loooovvvveee Boat," as well as America's Funniest Home Videos ("That's right, Bob!").
In the early '60s, Ernie was working as a voiceover announcer and comedian in Ohio when he was approached by WJW, a local station, about becoming a horror-show host. A number of schlocky B-movies were sold to stations across the country as part of the "Shock Theater" package, ushering in the era of hosts like Vampira and Zacherley. Yet Ghoulardi was like no spook-show host before or since. He wore a fright wig and a pointy, black, glued-on goatee, as well as a white lab coat, which made it easy to superimpose him into the movies he made fun of. As Ghoulardi, Anderson often spoke in a heavy accent; he also hated having to memorize scripts, so he would freely improvise comedic riffs about films such as The Brain From Planet Arous and Attack of the 50 Foot Woman. (Sample line: "This movie is so bad, if you look real close, you can see the strings that this spaceship flies on.")
But silly B-movies weren't Ghoulardi's only target. Ernie made fun of local Ohio personalities, like talk-show host Mike Douglas, WJW's weatherman Howard Hoffmann, and Dorothy Fuldheim, who was considered the grand dame of television in Ohio. Anderson would have Fuldheim's photo on the Ghoulardi set, and he'd scream, "DOOOR-OTHY!" in horror at the sight of her. On another episode, a fart was blasted off-screen and Anderson told viewers, "Howard Hoffmann isn't well..."
Ernie once lamented that he could have been another Howard Stern but he didn't have the cojones to go all the way with his humor. Yet Tom Feran, a reporter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer and author of Ghoulardi: Inside Cleveland TV's Wildest Ride, tells Esquire.com that "there are definitely parallels" between Anderson and Stern. "Ernie taunted his station bosses, made fun of some fans, and goofed on local celebrities," he says. "He delighted in doing things he was told not to do. I don't think he was as shrewd or calculating about his show and career as Howard was, but for his time, given prevailing standards, Ernie could be comparable to Stern."
Ernie's irreverence and anti-authority streak had an indelible influence on Paul, who would go on to make movies about antiheroes who don't fit into the mainstream, from the porn hustlers of Boogie Nights to Joaquin Phoenix's drunk vagrant in The Master. But he would also do a good bit more. Ernie inspired one of the best scenes in Boogie Nights, the firecracker segment at the climax of the film. Ghoulardi was famous for doing skits with fireworks, which he called "boom booms," and he would often blow up toy cars, action figures, and model airplanes that fans would send in. Fans would also mail in their own firecrackers for Ernie to light up, but he finally had to stop when one viewer sent in a powerful explosive that shook the building and burned up the set. In an interview I conducted with Paul Thomas Anderson for Creative Screenwriting at the time of Magnolia's release, he confirmed that the celebrated Boogie Nights scene "comes from my dad lighting off a bunch of firecrackers on his show." The finished scene had an extra element of tension and fear that Paul did not anticipate before the cameras rolled. "I just thought it was wonderfully goofy and thought that would be enough," he said.
Ghoulardi's on-air shenanigans drove Anderson's bosses crazy, but they also drove WJW's ratings through the roof. Ghoulardi reached a wide demographic in Ohio, and at one point he was even scoring higher ratings locally than Johnny Carson. "Teenagers thought he was cool, and adults who didn't deplore him loved the way he said things that weren't normally said on TV," says Feran.
When Ghoulardi made his first public appearance, he was swarmed by fans like a rock star. Kids dressed up like Ghoulardi for Halloween, and soon there was merchandise like bumper stickers, sweatshirts, and Ghoulardi milkshakes and apple cider at a local carhop restaurant. It was all too incredible to believe, and as a kid, Paul didn't believe it at first either. As PTA recalled to the Cleveland Sun, he would roll his eyes when his dad talked about his Ghoulardi days and he'd say, "You're my dad. You're just a knucklehead. You were never any big deal." But when Paul went to Ohio with his father, he was amazed that people kept recognizing him on the street. As Paul marveled to Feran, "I said, 'Wow, he's not full of shit. He was this huge thing.'"
When Ernie died in early 1997, it was front-page news in Ohio, and his memorial service had a quintessential Ernie touch. As Feran reported in his Ghoualrdi book, there's a recording of Ernie outtakes, dubbed "Mr. Wonderful," which played at his memorial. You can almost see it becoming a scene in a PTA movie some day: An event that's supposed to be somber broken up by a well-known, disembodied voice spewing angry obscenities out of nowhere, making his loved ones laugh and momentarily forget their sadness. While Ernie Anderson didn't live long enough to see his son become phenomenally successful, all of PTA's movies, including his latest Inherent Vice, have been released under the moniker the Ghoulardi Film Company, in his father's memory. (Right before the release of Boogie Nights, PTA was also considering making his next picture about his father's Ghoulardi years, but he wrote and directed Magnolia instead.)
What's unfortunate about Ghoulardi's legacy is how little there is to enjoy today. Only 18 minutes that were captured on kinescope have survived, so if you're expecting any episodes as a DVD or Blu-ray bonus feature, forget it. But for many who grew up with Ghoulardi, the memories still burn strong today, which is remarkable for a show and a character that are more than 50 years old and still virtually unknown outside of Ohio. "The show was like a supernova that made an indelible impression," Feran says. "It lasted long enough to be remembered, but not long enough to wear out its welcome." As PTA himself told the Cleveland Sun, "He made me, you know. He had a massive influence on me. He was very cutting-edge in a lot of the stuff that he did. He was a one-of-a-kind man. I mean, really one of a kind."
