Boogie Nights

"Boogie Nights" is a film full of life, and of the past twenty years in movie making, very few have come close to its raw youthful energy. When I say it's full of life, I mean it never stops moving, there is always something going on, it doesn't slow down. It's long at over two and a half hours, but it doesn't overstay its welcome, it feels lean and never overstuffed. There is a vitality in it that only comes from a hungry young filmmaker who has something to say, and something to prove. Much of it is derivative, but in a sense that it feels inspired rather than ripped off; in that way it's its own original masterpiece.

"Boogie Nights" is a film about dreamers, and a surrogate family that is its own support group; the difference here is that the family is made up of people from the porn industry. It tells the story of a rising young porn actor named Eddie Adams(Mark Wahlberg). Eddie has a rather large endowment which makes him special at least to adult film director Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds)who sees him one night working in a nightclub. Jack soon brings Eddie home with him where he becomes part of the porn initiated, and pretty soon he even changes his name permanently to the more appropriate Dirk Digglier. Soon we meet more members of what will become Dirk's extended family; among them are Reed (John C. Reilly) another working adult film actor who will act as Dirk's sidekick, Amber (Julianne Moore)a woman who loses her son in a custody battle and thus mothers Dirk when she can, Rollergirl (Heather Graham) a young girl who never finished high school and gets her name by never taking her roller skates off even while having sex, and Buck(Don Cheadle), an adult film actor who has a dream of one day owning his own electronics store.

The story begins in 1977, when porn could still be shown in movie theatres, and was shot in film rather than video tape. It starts almost innocently with Dirk a young naive upstart with big dreams of success, there's a footloose and fancy free introduction to this world he is inhabiting; this is established by the almost ongoing music by the film's soundtrack and the long camera tracking shots which float through the whole party vibe interacting with all the characters. There isn't much depravity or perverseness going on that we would usually associate with the porn industry, although we do get the sense that it's all there in the background and that would more come into the play with the film's darker second half. But this whole beginning plays like one big party, which one could imagine it was back in the 70s. The characters are ones with big creative aspirations; Jack for one wants to someday direct a film that isn't just about people having sex, but having a story people stay to see because of the characters and the story. You could sense a budding wannabe auteur in Jack that could be seen in other Hollywood filmmakers who try desperately to put their own signature on a genre film. Dirk and Reed even collaborate with Jack on a series of films they make up where they play a couple of hard boiled cops in one the films hilarious send ups of porn films.

But soon the ending of the glitz and glamour is at hand and is foreshadowed with a brilliant set piece feature Jack's assistant director Little Bill (William H. Macy). We are introduced to Little Bill early on in the beginning as a man who is married to a porn actress (real life porn actress Nina Hartley) who constantly embarrasses him publicly by having sex with randam strangers. On the night of ringing in 1980, Little Bill has enough and pulling a gun on his wife and her lover killing them both, after which killing himself in the process.

The reprecussions come swiftly afterwards as Jack's producer Colonel James (Robert Ridgely)is arrested for child pornography, soon Jack must jump onto a new producer (Phillip Baker Hall) who wants him to make cheaper movies on video. Dirk in the meantime becomes jealous that Jack is replacing him with a new kid and in a coke fueled rage runs out on him.

The second half of the film shows these characters split apart and suffering when they aren't together, Amber is shown in a custody hearing with her ex-husband, but her reputation doesn't help matters; we see her outside the courthouse crying, and Moore cuts right to the core in this scene. Jack ends up beating a young guy almost to death after he insults both him and Rollergirl in the back of a limo. Dirk becomes desperate for money and prostitutes himself; he is picked up one night by a man in a truck.

But harmony does come in the end with these characters as they come back to the people who love them and who care about them, and that's what I found the film to be about, finding those people who don't judge you and support you no matter who you are. If you think of it that way, "Boogie Nights" is a very old fashioned film about finding acceptance. The characters do seem try to turn there life around in the end, and you left with hope for all of them.

The film was directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, who was a young virtuoso back then. This was only his second feature, and like Dirk in his film, you could sense a rising star behind the camera. As he does with his follow-up film "Magnolia", Anderson owes a lot to the filmmakers who came before him, namely Robert Altman who's ensemble pieces was an obvious inspiration, and Martin Scorsese who moved his camera with just as much freedom and energy; in fact it's hard not to think of the film's opening shot and not of Scorsese's copacobana scene in "Goodfellas" which this film tries to out do multiple times.But I don't fault Anderson for showing off a bit, it's part of the film's charm, it's not fully original, at times it seems like a throwback to the innovative character driven American films of the seventies, but it also has its own original point of view. Anderson creates these wonderful eccentric types that he obviously loved when he decided to write them. Not much fun is being made of them at their expense, and when it does happen, we are reminded that these are human beings with dreams that are a bit on the deluded side, who are we to judge? Who can say they've never had dreams?

Filling all these parts in this expansive world is a virtual who's who of indie actors at the time. Along with Moore, Macy, Cheadle, and Reilly, we also get Phillip Seymour Hoffman as a gay sound man who's secretly in love with Dirk, Thomas Jane as a drug dealer, and Luis Guzman as a nightclub owner who wants more than anything to be in one of Jack's films. Everyone of these guys would be a main stay in both indie and mainstream movies later on.

Wahlberg for his part was mostly known as an underwear model and occasional rapper, this film would make him a star. I remember early reviews of his performance complaining that he came off rather whiny, but if you watch it again, Wahlberg has rarely ever made such an open and honest portrayal since. His character comes off as more shallow in parts than whiny, which is what he's supposed to be. Wahlberg has since become known for his buff tough guy roles, but here is much smaller in stature with a real vulnerability insecurity that gets hidden by arrogance. In the film's best scene (one of the best scenes filmed in the past 20 years) when Dirk and his friends are held up in the house of a drug dealer (Alfred Molina), there is a moment the camera holds on Walhberg's face where we see the moment of clarity come when he realizes how far down he's gone; it's the kind of thing I don't think Wahlberg has been asked to do since, but there is such a wide range of feeling and emotion, it's where the audience and the character are on the same page, he needs to get the hell out of there.

I've seen "Boogie Nights" several times now, it's the kind of film that works on you so well on a visceral level. It's exciting and alive. Paul Thomas Anderson has lately gone on to a different aesthetic that feels more bleak and less freewheling with "There Will be Blood" and "The Master". There is much to admire in those films, and structurally "Boogie Nights" is probably more flawed I feel more excitement when watching it. The film is brimming with the type of passion you can only get from a young filmmaker. It's one of the films of the 90s people will always remember. I cling to the story of a surrogate family that helps you out and doesn't judge you, it's a rather optimistic message for a band of misfits.

If you look at the final scene in the film, it works as a visual reminder of the last scene in Scorsese's "Raging Bull, something I think was deliberate on Anderson's part. Both films have the main character looking into a mirror reciting lines from a movie; Dirk's lines come from his latest porn film that he's about to shoot a scene for, he's prepping himself for the scene, and in the end we see he reveals his real "talent" to us as a way to psych himself up. In "Raging Bull" we have De Niro reciting lines from what is sure to be a much better film "On the Waterfront" then shadow boxers in the mirror to psych himself up. Anderson might've been going for a comparison between these two men, both dreamers with ambition, both damaged by their own vices, but despite their flaws and setbacks they are looking for what most people do from the world, acceptance