THE LIFE OF A DREAMER, THE DAYS OF A BUSINESS AND THE NIGHTS IN BETWEEN.
The movie that looked like it might reenergize Burt Reynolds’s career (it didn’t really) is a fascinating look at the American porn industry in the late 1970s. In order to better understand the industry, Reynolds visited real porn sets. He later told Maxim, “I didn’t like it. When you meet those people, you want to put rubber gloves on and go take a bath.” There is something about that world that fascinates at first, but getting to know it better only makes you realize just how dirty it is. Boogie Nights addresses all of those sentiments.
Looking for new talent
The year is 1977. Jack Horner (Reynolds), a director of “exotic films”, is always looking for new talent and finds it in Eddie Adams (Mark Wahlberg), an impressively hung 17-year-old who works at a night club in Torrance, California, making money on the side by letting guys pay him to masturbate in front of them. Eddie dropped out of high school and isn’t really heading anywhere, which makes him an ideal subject for Jack. After an audition where Eddie has sex with one of Jack’s stars, Rollergirl (Heather Graham), the director knows that he’s found a star to rival John Holmes. Eddie takes the name of Dirk Diggler and finds success together with Reed Rothchild (John C. Reilly) in a string of porn flicks with action movie content.
As the decade draws to a close, Jack’s ambition to make high-quality pornography is threatened by the advent of video, and Eddie’s addiction to drugs.
Things take a turn for the worse
Drugs and violence are always part of these people’s lives. William H. Macy plays an assistant director who’s married to a porn star (played by a real one, Nina Hartley) who insists on screwing other men right in his face. As video begins to dominate the industry, things take a turn for the worse, and director Paul Thomas Anderson (in his broad commercial breakthrough) seems to argue that the 1980s is the time when pornography completely went down the drain. But he also shows us why this business was rotten from the beginning, lacking any kind of morals and constantly having to confront its own seediness in the shape of bloody overdoses and mental collapses. Young Eddie still finds it attractive because of the easy money, girls and a certain glamor to his stardom… but in the end few in the business can resist falling off the precipice.
The film is expertly cast, with Burt Reynolds as the paternal filmmaker who thinks too highly of himself.
Anderson was obviously inspired by Martin Scorsese; this film could just as easily have been made by him. The master’s style is evident in the editing, the characters and the way Anderson tells his story. The film is expertly cast, with Reynolds as the paternal filmmaker who thinks too highly of himself, and Wahlberg as the kid who uses his one talent to the hilt. The supporting cast has brilliant work from actors like Julianne Moore as Eddie’s maternal sex mentor; Macy as the humiliated assistant director; and Philip Seymour Hoffman as the goofy boom operator who has a crush on Dirk Diggler.
An important part of Boogie Nights is also the attention to period details (another Scorsese trait) in the shape of clothes, music and the whole feel of what porn looked like in the ’70s.
There’s a now-famous scene in the film where Eddie opens his pants and shows us his highly-touted, huge dick. Made of rubber, Wahlberg allegedly kept it as a souvenir. Perhaps that fake penis reminds him of the dark side of Hollywood where all it takes to succeed is a lack of inhibition. Unlike Dirk Diggler though, he was able to find a real career.
Boogie Nights 1997-U.S. 152 min. Color. Widescreen. Written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. Cinematography: Robert Elswit. Cast: Mark Wahlberg (Eddie Adams/Dirk Diggler), Burt Reynolds (Jack Horner), Julianne Moore (Amber Waves), John C. Reilly, Don Cheadle, Heather Graham, Philip Seymour Hoffman, William H. Macy, Alfred Molina, Luis Guzmán, Philip Baker Hall, Thomas Jane, Robert Downey, Sr.
Trivia: Co-produced by Anderson. Developed from a short Anderson made in 1988. Leonardo DiCaprio and Joaquin Phoenix were considered for the part of Dirk; Sydney Pollack, Bill Murray and Warren Beatty as Jack; and Gwyneth Paltrow and Drew Barrymore as Rollergirl.
Golden Globe: Best Supporting Actor (Reynolds).
Quote: “What can you expect when you’re on top? You know? It’s like Napoleon. When he was the king, you know, people were just constantly trying to conquer him, you know, in the Roman Empire. So, it’s history repeating itself all over again.” (Wahlberg)
Last word: “My memories of first discovering porno film in my pre-adolescence and then my stronger memories from adolescence which is the second half of the movie are certainly the grounding for any research that I did, and you know, I’ve just seen a million porno movies and I’ve read a lot about it. Sort of a general fascination with it. When I wrote the script I had never physically been to a porno set. I stayed away until after I’d written it. (Then) I kind of went and verified what I thought was the truth and was in fact the truth.” (Anderson, Indiewire)