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Boogie Nights: Paul Thomas Anderson
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One of the more frightening portrayals of life in the '70s to hit screens recently, Boogie Nights is full of kitsch and sprawls over a full decade of excess. Writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson, who hit-and-missed with Hard Eight, takes a dozen characters through 2 1/2 hours of meandering storylines, supporting players, drug/sex binges, and more costume changes than you can fathom. Because he has so much to say, and because everyone's story goes in a different direction, a lot of this film gets lost in the margins. Too many characters are too much alike, and most of them are too shallow to merit any screen time at all.
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Darkly comic, vastly entertaining and utterly original, Paul Thomas Anderson's "Boogie Nights" is one of the most ambitious films to have come out of Hollywood in some time. Spanning the height of the disco era, 1977-84, pic offers a visually stunning exploration of the adult entertainment industry, centering on a hard-core movie outfit whose members form a close-knit extended family. New Line release will need strong critical support to score commercially with mainstream viewers and become the event movie it deserves to be, though risque subject matter and epic running time might divide audiences and tarnish box office results. But no matter how prosperous "Boogie Nights" is at the B.O., it will no doubt establish Anderson as one of the hottest directors of the 1990s.
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This was ... the age 26-year-old director Paul Thomas Anderson chose to recreate in Boogie Nights, which tells the story of one Dirk Diggler's rise from staggeringly well-hung teenager to reigning porn stud. (The "filmmaker" who gives him his start is played by Burt Reynolds.) Dirk Diggler is based on a real woodsman - as male porn stars tend to be called - John Holmes, aka The King, who died of Aids in 1988. Many have suggested Margold was the inspiration for the Reynolds character. He hopes not. He says he doesn't like the film, calling it an adolescent wet dream, but it may simply be too close to home.
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"Everyone's blessed with one special thing," says Dirk Diggler (Mark Wahlberg), the porn-star hero of director Paul Thomas Anderson's sprawling Altman-esque ensemble drama Boogie Nights. Diggler is blessed with a very large "special thing," plus childlike enthusiasm, and both help catapult him to sex-film stardom under the guiding hand of adult-film director Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds). Set in late '7s and early '80s Los Angeles, Boogie Nights celebrates the era of eight-track tapes, disco, and cocaine. The times comevividly alive here, with a high-energy period soundtrack and a sharp cast that includes Julianne Moore (who earned an Oscar nomination for her role), Heather Graham, Don Cheadle, William H. Macy, John C. Reilly, and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Their beautifully rounded performances bring a lot of warmth and compassion to a story that has plenty of sex and drugs, but is ultimately about family and forgiveness. Wahlberg is winningly boyish in the lead, but it's Reynolds who holds the film together (he ... got an Oscar nomination) with his portrayal of a curiously asexual porn auteur and patriarch of an offbeat clan.
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Paul Thomas Anderson was 26 when he directed Boogie Nights, the same age as Orson Welles when Citizen Kane came out. What was that Welles quote about cinema being the greatest train set a boy ever had? Whatever it was, it certainly applies to Anderson and his riotous explosion of exuberant technique. It’s as if he’s taken all the best bits out of Scorsese, Altman and Demme, shaken them up and edited them together in a non-stop visual extravaganza. Mark Wahlberg is Eddie Adams, a malcontent late 70s Valley teenager blessed with a 14-inch cock. This attracts the attention of Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds), veteran director of ‘adult entertainments’, and soon Eddie – renamed Dirk Diggler – has embarked on a glittering rollercoaster of a career as a top porn star.
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BOOGIE NIGHTS is a unique treat, chock-full of profound moments, sparkling dialogue, phenomenal direction and terrific performances. Paul Thomas Anderson demonstrates why he deserves to be thought of as one of the best directors working in Hollywood today with his tour-de-force style. Although Burt initially had written off the film as crap, this may be Burt Reynolds' best performance in a movie to date, and Julianne Moore definitely delivers the best performance of the movie as the "mother" figure for the budding porn stars who is ... struggling to get custody of her own son back.
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Paul Thomas Anderson