BOOGIE NIGHTS
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Capsule: The ups and downs of the pornographic
film industry in the 70s and early 80s come to the
screen as we follow one porno super-star and his
director. The film is witty, intelligent, and
occasionally a little raunchy, but always fun to
watch. This is a film with several eccentric
characterizations and is a sort of HOLLYWOOD
BOULEVARD for the porno film industry. Rating: 8
(0 to 10), high +2 (-4 to +4) There are some light
spoilers in this review.
New York Critics: 14 positive, 3 negative, 5 mixed
There certainly is nothing unusual in a film about a rise to fame and a fall of some entertainment sensation. In the field of popular music there is THE ROSE, IDOLMAKER, THE COMMITMENTS and THAT THING YOU DO. Another rise and fall film might be KNIGHTRIDERS, a personal favorite. If you want to stretch a point CITIZEN KANE is about the same theme. What is unusual is to see a good film set in the world of pornographic films.
Jack Horner (played by Burt Reynolds) is a super-mellow director of pornographic films, but he has a dream. He no longer wants to make just good pornographic films, he wants to make good films that also happen to be pornographic. His dream is a continuing series with James Bond-like plots framing his usual show-everything explicit sex scenes. He wants his audiences to want to know how things come out, not just to see what things come out. But it is tough to be experimental in a medium with such a high budget. As Horner puts it, "Before you turn around, you've spent maybe twenty, twenty-five, thirty thousand dollars on a movie." And Horner has a new star for his series. Eddie Adams (Mark Wahlberg) is a bus boy at a San Fernando Valley night club. Eddie's home life is a mess and he is looking for an excuse to leave. Horner sees something in Eddie that could make him a sex-film star. When things get bad enough at home Eddie agrees to make one film for Jack.
At Jack's insistence he chooses a new name for himself and Dirk Diggler sounds "sharp" to him. But this is not just an invitation to a one-time job. It is an adoption into something between a repertory company and a family, a tightly knit group who make Horner's low budget films. In fact, one of several running gags in the film is that it is always the same faces showing up in the films, only in different parts. Among the regulars are Rollergirl (Heather Graham) who never removes her roller-skates, even when making love. In spite of her silly- looking persona she demands to be taken on her own terms, especially by her lovers. William Macy plays Little Bill whose wife's cheating on him is about as subtle as a billboard on Broadway. Perhaps the most normal of the crew is Buck Swope (Don Cheadle) who is acting in pornography only long enough to earn enough to open a hi-fi store and whose country-western persona seems out of place for an Afro- American. If the company is a family, the father is Horner and it has porno star Amber Waves (Julianne Moore) as the nurturing mother. Then funding the who operation is The Colonel (Robert Ridgely) who produces and likes what he produces. The general format of the film is sort of a rise and fall as Horner pulls his dream all together, but has problems keeping it all together in the face of monstrous egos, the changing market, and the easy availability of cocaine. The film's longest segment takes place in 1977, then has shorter and shorter pieces showing how the group fares as the years go by.
The best performance is certainly the super-mellow Burt Reynolds who is trying hard to hold on to what pretensions his group has. Julianne Moore is certainly a scene stealer, sustaining the group in a motherly way, but unable to get custody of her own child because of her business. Bill Macy, who has become familiar in mostly unsavory roles manages to generate real pathos in what is basically a comic situation-a wife who cares so little for her husband that she is willing to have sex on a driveway with a crowd standing around and watching.
BOOGIE NIGHTS creates a very plausible look at a moment in the history of the pornographic film when it looked like it might get some respectability from the mainstream. I give it an 8 on the 0 to 10 scale and a high +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
mleeper@lucent.com
Copyright 1998 Mark R. Leeper
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