Summary:
Eddie Adams AKA Dirk Diggler, a teenager living in California in the late seventies and early eighties, gets wrapped up in the porn industry, for better or worse.
My Thoughts:
CONTENT WARNING: This film is about a seventeen year old man’s journey through the Californian pornography industry in the late 1970s and early 1980s. There are scenes that feature explicit sex and sex related dialogue, as well as scenes depicting drug use and addiction.
It had been a while since I’d entered the world of “Boogie Nights”; I’d only seen the film once, and that had been years ago. With the death of Burt Reynolds, I could think of no better time to revisit the film that earned him his Oscar nomination. As this film stood in my memory it was a great film, but not one that I tend to want to revisit that frequently due to its content. The story is an epic one, and the characters are as varied and diverse as can be; Paul Thomas Anderson has created a world that feels as tactile as the fishnet stockings the stars wear and simultaneously as alluring and repulsive as pornography itself. Boogie Nights is not a film that pulls punches, nor does it make any false promises. This is a film that shows the 70s and 80s porn industry for what it was; a mess of insanity, which was also a home to some people. What’s strange is that though none of the characters are moral citizens, they’re people that we come to care about over the course of the two and a half hour journey. While I certainly do not recommend this film to everyone, those that can make it through this harrowing odyssey of sex, drugs, and art will walk away with greater insight into a time that’s faded into history.
“Everybody has one special thing.”
When having dinner at a restaurant, Adult film director Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds, “Smokey and the Bandit”) comes across Eddie Adams (Mark Wahlberg, “The Happening”), a seventeen-year-old bus boy. Jack asks one of his porn stars, Rollergirl (Heather Graham, “Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me”), to check him out. After passing a sort of test, Horner invites Adams back to his home, where he introduces Eddie to his coterie including porn stars, Amber Waves (Julianne Moore, “The Big Lebowski”), Reed Rothchild (John C Reilly, “The Sisters Brothers”), Buck Swope (Don Cheadle, “Hotel Rwanda”), and Becky Barnett (Nicole Ari Parker, “Remember the Titans”), and various crew members including Little Bill (William H. Macy, “Fargo”) and Scotty J. (Philip Seymour Hoffman, ”Synecdoche New York”). Eddie becomes enamored with Horner’s lifestyle and becomes a porn star, taking on the name Dirk Diggler. As the film continues, we watch his rise, from a newcomer shooting his first film, raising through the ranks, all while trying to steer clear of the shadier side of the industry: the darker contacts, drug addiction, and just loosing himself in the fray.
While there are some really great performances in this film, the best aspect of it is the writing. Paul Thomas Anderson is amazing when it comes to bringing to life believable characters (I’d argue my three of his films are essentially character studies- “There Will Be Blood”, “The Master”, and “Phantom Thread”). He knows how to take a character and flesh them out so that they all seem to have urges, dreams, cares, and fears about the world that Anderson places them in, and in giving these characters more depth, the world feels far more tactile. The character relationships shift and change as things happen throughout the movie. Almost every character in this movie is dynamic- when we’re introduced to them in the beginning, they’re one way, and by the time we leave them, they’re different. What’s so impressive about this film is the way that Anderson works in all of the different character arcs without making the story feel overly complex, complicated, or an hour too long (there are some scenes in this movie that probably could’ve been trimmed, but for a two and a half hour film, it seems to move quickly). While the main story revolves around Eddie/Dirk’s rise to fame, this movie is essentially an ensemble piece- we spend time getting to know each and every character in their own separate scenes, fleshing out the members of the adoptive family that Dirk joins. I do want to mention, that while I think this script is great, I’d say that Anderson’s later scripts show a lot more complexity and depth.
The acting in this film is absolutely wonderful from most of the cast. As I mentioned above, this is essentially an ensemble piece, and everyone really gets his or her time to shine. Julianne Moore was probably my favorite part of the film; she played Amber Waves, a porn star with a young daughter, a coke habit, and a heart of gold. She delivers one of her most vulnerable performances as Amber, and it’s impossible not to empathize with her, even though she continues to make destructive choices. Julianne Moore was nominated for best supporting actress in this role, though she didn’t win (Kim Basinger won for her role as Lynn Bracken in “LA Confidential”). Burt Reynolds was also nominated for his role in this film, and I found this was easily the best performance I’ve ever seen him give. His role as Jack Horner is an interesting one; he’s a man holding on to a dying era, trying to build his legacy even as it slips out from underneath him. His character has a way of convincing you to believe that what he’s doing is real art, because he himself believes that so truly. There’s a scene when Dirk is proudly admiring one of his new films, and he talks to one of the other characters, saying, “this will be the film they remember me by;” I can certainly hope this is the movie for which we remember Burt Reynolds. If I have to say one negative thing about the acting, it’s that Marky Mark is a bit uneven at parts. This was still rather early in Marky Mark’s transition from a New Kid on the Block to the actor/producer/brand that he is today. It’s easy to see he was still adjusting to the new role he was playing, and he certainly gets by, he just doesn’t blow me out of the water like some of the other performances in the film.
Verdict:
This is a really good movie, but due to it’s content, it’s not a movie I have the urge to watch very frequently, nor do I really recommend it unless something really brings it to the forefront of my mind. But with Burt Reynolds leaving us, I could think of no better time to revisit this to remember him a bit longer. Burt may have gone but fractions of his life are forever immortalized in celluloid. It’s in these small fractured fragments of time captured on film that we remember the man for what he was: an actor with a career spanning decades and an icon that will last decades longer.
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