BOOGIE NIGHTS
During the seven years the movie covers (1977-1984), Los Angeles was a busy place: pornographic films, drugs and disco were the rage. It was during those same years that one film maker of porno films made an attempt to legitimatize the genre and raise it to respectability. Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds) is one such who gives it a try. What happens next is what this film is all about, the ups and downs of all whom the pornographic industry touched.
BOOGIE NIGHTS, under the watchful eye of its 26-year old director, contains frontal nudity; despite this, at no time is there a single frame that can be thought of as erotic. Quite a feat.
All the characters in that industry want to be loved. All have an astigmatic view of the genre and their part in it. There is the story's star who changes his acting name from a simple Eddie Adams to Dirk Diggler (Mark Wahlberg), a name he feels is in keeping with the kind of roles he plays, someone who can put on a simulated (and not so simulated) act of making love any time he wishes. He is young and dashing and invincible, etc. etc. . . . or so he thinks. Everyone loves him; he has more money than he ever dreamed existed as well as women all around him. What more could an innocent, untalented, uneducated young man want?
As the industry grew, Jack Horner became a kind of father to everyone around him. At the same time he is well aware that Freud would have had a ball with any of them; in some way they are all sick or deficient but none can see it. They think they are just as good actors as in legitimate films. In his role as the "father" and film maker, Reynolds does a superb bit of underlaying.
Amber Waves (Julianne Moore) wants to be a star, to be adored and never stops to consider what is necessary to give up in order to achieve stardom in porno films. Then there is Rollergirl (Heather Graham) an innocent who all picture long moves on roller skates, lacking the intelligence to see the idiocy of that.
There are many more characters in the film, each meticulously drawn to show the era, the madness and finally the disillusionment. Fine acting helps make the film very real. There is Don Cheadle who keeps changing his wardrobe in attempts to find out who he is. Little Bill is played by William H Macy.
For one fleeting second during the period covered by the film, some thought that the film industry and the public would finally realize that porno films was a serious, real art form; that never happened.
Written and Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson.
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Copyright 1997 Ben Hoffman
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