BOOGIE NIGHTS
A Film Review by Brian Takeshita
Rating: *** out of ****
It is hard to imagine today, but in the late 1970's, porno movies were actually a lot like regular movies. They were shot on film and shown in theaters. Marquees and posters advertised the latest X-rated flicks in blatant view of motorists on the street. You actually bought a ticket from the guy at the box office, and walked into the theater. The problem was, you might have been seen doing so. In the early 80's, the adult film industry made a profound change. Most movies were shot on video with minuscule budgets, mass produced, and marketed through mail order. While losing the "artistic" quality of larger productions, the increased anonymity afforded by mail order resulted in a huge growth in sales. After all, the only one who might have known you were watching these tapes would have been your mailman. Today, the adult industry is booming like never before, even keeping up with the latest trends in technology; films are now available on CD-ROM and even DVD.
BOOGIE NIGHTS starts out in the earlier era of adult entertainment, when the filmmakers counted on star power to get viewers into the theater seats. "Exotic" film director Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds) notices a young dishwasher named Eddie Adams (Mark Wahlberg) in a nightclub and offers him a career in X-rated movies. Eddie has dropped out of school and faces continual verbal abuse from his mother at home, and so one evening, after his mother (Joanna Gleason) crosses the last line, the seventeen year old Eddie runs away, ending up at Jack Horner's house. To Eddie, Jack's offer is his ticket out of his little life and into one of stardom.
We meet a lot of colorful characters in the business. First there is Amber Waves (Julianne Moore), a porn queen who lives with Jack, but under apparently platonic circumstances. There's also a high school dropout-turned porn starlet who goes by the name "Rollergirl" (Heather Graham) because she never takes off her rollerskates, even while...ahem...acting. We also meet Buck (Don Cheadle), a black pornstar who is a hi-fi salesman on the side. He wears country-western outfits on the job and uses music to match when selling stereos, prompting the store manager to ask, "What kind of brother are you?" Another one of the male talents is Reed Rotchild (John C. Reilly), who's so insecure about himself that the first question he asks Eddie is, "You work out?" Behind the camera, we meet Jack's set manager Little Bill (William H. Macy), who regularly catches his wife having sex with other men. Scotty (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) is a set hand who is decidedly more attracted to the male actors than the female ones. Finally, sitting behind it all is a man called "The Colonel" (Robert Ridgely) who puts up the money to produce Jack's movies.
With such a cast of characters, there are a lot of possibilities for some great scenes, and the viewer is not disappointed. Take for example, a scene at a party where Little Bill sees a group of people gathered around in a circle. He goes to find out what everyone is looking at, to find his wife (played by real-life porn star Nina Hartley) having sex with a stranger. Little Bill demands to know what's going on, to which his wife responds with, "Bill, you're embarrassing me!" Another great one is when Eddie meets Reed, and each wants to find out how much the other benches at the gym. Just so one doesn't make up a figure higher than the other's, they agree to say their bench weights at the same time, "on three." They count to three and there's silence. Then Eddie says, "You didn't say anything."
Some of the scenes involving the shooting of a porn film may seem preposterous to the unindoctrinated, but director Paul Thomas Anderson makes no apologies. To his credit, the scenes are treated almost with the factual nature of a documentary, and very few attempts are made at colorizing the proceedings for the purpose of eliciting a laugh. The result is a surprisingly evenhanded representation of the filmmaking process, with laughs naturally occurring at actions which seem ridiculous to most, but which are simply another day's work for adult entertainment employees.
Anderson does a good job at presenting us with a film about journeys. We witness each character as he or she changes with the times or has the times run over them. Not one character is the same at the end of the movie, and that is something very satisfying. We even get to see the journey made by the industry itself, in it's move from film to mass marketed video. In a great scene, Horner is taping in the back of a limousine, saying they are "about to make film history....right here on videotape." Of all the journeys made, the most compelling is Eddie's, who we see progress from dishwasher to pornstar "Dirk Diggler" (the persona he assumes), his displacement from the industry, and his decent into drugs and crime. Wahlberg, perhaps still more widely known as a rapper than an actor, comes through with a great performance. I look forward to what he will do in the future.
The real joy of this movie, however, is watching Burt Reynolds. There has been much talk about the Jack Horner role being his comeback performance, and I do not doubt the truth to this. Over the last number of years, Reynolds has been playing mostly comical, tongue-in-cheek type roles which shied away from the kinds of characters he played in the past. Although he has been quite amusing in some of these cases, this has caused the public to in a way forget that he is capable of really putting forth as a good actor. Reynolds is sincere, and plays Horner without the indulgence in which another, less experienced actor might be tempted to engage. It definitely pays off.
There are only a few problems with BOOGIE NIGHTS, and only one that really bothers me. One of the major plot points is that Dirk Diggler was easily replaced by up and coming talent. This is one thing that the movie got wrong, as it is the women who are in constant danger of being the flavor of the month. Males have a much better chance of staying in for the long haul, often remaining in the business for a decade or more. The good thing is, if you didn't know this until now (and I'm sure most people don't), it won't detract one iota from enjoyment of the film. Make no mistake; there is a great deal of explicit language being tossed about, but most of the obscenities are the words themselves. Although there is a lot of sex going on, it is tastefully shot and often more alluded to than anything else. It would be a shame if the subject matter dissuades you from taking in this great film.
Review posted November 10, 1997
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