The 'That Guy' Featured Film of the Week--'Boogie Nights'

THE 'THAT GUY' FEATURED FILM OF THE WEEK

July 14, 2001

BOOGIE NIGHTS (1997)
Written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

CAST
Mark Wahlberg as Eddie Adams/Dirk Diggler
Burt Reynolds as Jack Horner
Luis Guzman as Maurice T. Rodriguez
Julianne Moore as Amber Waves/Maggie
Don Cheadle as Buck Swope
Philip Baker Hall as Floyd Gondolli
Philip Seymour Hoffman as Scotty
Heather Graham as Rollergirl/Brandy
William H. Macy as Little Bill
Thomas Jane as Todd Parker
John C. Reilly as Reed Rothchild

WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS

Back before we found out that sex can kill, during the seventies there was
nothing really dirty or shameful about pornographic movies. Oh sure, there
were some of your more hardcore snuff films, and you wouldn't be inviting
your grandmother to a viewing of The Devil in Miss Jones, but come
on, they really weren't that bad. Most of your "mainstream" movies just
featured rather ordinary looking men and women having sex in the standard
three or four positions on avocado shag rugs or in what looks like someone's
living room. They rarely even ventured into same sex clinches, and money
shots were yet to be the norm. Seventies porn was promoted, though not
entirely accepted, as a tool for couples to enhance their own love life and
enthuse in the pleasures of naked flesh.

Then AIDS hit the ground running, real sex suddenly wasn't as readily available anymore, and porno became a substitute rather than an enhancer. While this was a great boon for the industry, it was a bit of a blow to mankind (no pun intended), as we were gifted with thousands of movies that appealed to fetishes of every kind, from the standard lesbian and bondage stuff, to the stuff that couldn't possibly appeal to more than .0000001 of the porn-watching community (come on, can you think of anybody who's really turned on by a German scheissen movie, or one of those Japanese bulimia videos?). Though some similarities to seventies porn remain (i.e. bad lighting and an anonymous pseudo-jazz disco soundtrack), most of this era's porn seems more designed to shock than to titillate (again, no pun intended), with entire movies devoted to how many different synthetic objects can be inserted into the human vagina (i.e. a standard American football, as seen at the website Steak & Cheese), and actresses with surgically-enhanced breasts the size of a standard American basketball, also as seen at the website Steak & Cheese. Once you get past the constant flow of bodily fluids and the variety of gaping orifices, however, today's porn for the most part is probably just as harmless as seventies porn, but one
thing's for sure.

It ain't sexy anymore.

Boogie Nights is reminiscent of those heady days of seventies porn, when the weirdest, most unbelievable thing about it was the fact that it was people having real sex on camera. No midgets screwing 600 pound women, nobody sticking their arm up to the elbow into somebody's rectum, none of that Kundalini-style wrapping your leg around the back of your neck and bending the penis at a 45 degree angle stuff. Just straight people having hot sex
with each other, just like the rest of us--only with better looking partners. Seventies porn was better, and if you don't believe that after watching Boogie Nights, then a slap on the wrist and a viewing of Taboo XIV for you. True, writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson paints a mighty rosy portrait--venereal disease, accidental pregnancy, and all other potential pitfalls of casual, unprotected sex aren't mentioned, and if a character has a drug problem, it's treated more as a side effect of the time period rather than the industry he/she works in. But, rosy or not, one thing is
certain--porn makers back then were far more interested in producing a sexy film to please the audience, rather than churning out an unremarkable, poorly made product to be sold in the backs of less than reputable stores at a 1000% markup.

Mark Wahlberg is Eddie Adams, an aimless California teenager who busses tables for a living, suplementing his career by doing some minor hustling. Eddie is a good kid, a sweet kid, a little naive and about as dumb as a bag of sawdust (at one point, he compares his travails to Napoleon defeating his enemies during the Roman Empire). Eddie's well-scrubbed good looks catch the eye of a porn actress around his age who goes by the name of Rollergirl (Heather Graham), but it's his abnormally large dingus that really impresses her, and she introduces him to her
director, Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds, in a performance many critics stated was the comeback of the year). Jack offers Eddie the opportunity to make serious money with his natural talent, but Eddie, flattered yet embarrassed,
declines. Later, however, he's driven out of his house by his verbally abusive mother (Joanna Gleason), and having nowhere else to go, shows up at Jack's home. Jack immediately takes in the wayward teen, and manages to
talk him into "auditioning" with Rollergirl. While we don't actually see the "audition", the knowing look on Jack's face as he watches them is enough to let us know that, as they say in the old movies, a star is born.

When Eddie finally takes Jack up on his offer, he quickly realizes that he's gained both the recognition he's craved, and the family he needs, albeit a rather strange, somewhat dysfunctional family. There's the gruff but loving and proud father figure Jack, and a mother figure in "Amber Waves" (Julianne Moore), an aging (for a porn star) but still beautiful actress who is supporting both a cocaine habit and a legal battle to regain visitation rights with her young son. "Siblings" come by way of frequent co-star Rollergirl, who has virtually no interest in Eddie off camera, and the gregariously goofy Reed Rothchild (John C. Reilly, the least likely porn actor since Ron Jeremy), and there's a host of various uncles and cousins in the other actors and film crew members that stay or hang out at Jack's home.
These include Buck Swope (Don Cheadle), a stereo salesman by day who eventually marries and has a child with one of his co-stars, and who craves respectability by being able to earn enough money to open his own stereo shop, Little Bill (William H. Macy), a sad sack production assistant whose wife gets more action than the actors, Floyd Gondolli (Philip Baker Hall), the mysterious financial backer of Jack's films, who introduces himself to Eddie by saying, "So, Jack tells me you've got a great big cock.", Maurice (Luis Guzman), a bit player/hanger-on who desperately wants to be moved up to leading man status, and Todd (Thomas Jane), a drug dealer/hanger-on who
frequently accompanies Eddie and Reed on their misadventures (and who nearly gets them killed, more on that later). He's also the unwitting object of a massive crush for Scotty (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a shy, homely assistant who nobody seems to be aware is gay. Though Scotty isn't a principal character, Hoffman still earns top acting honors here--never has anyone so accurately portrayed the raw, naked emotions of unrequited love like he
does. Look carefully during most of the scenes in which he and Mark Wahlberg are on screen at the same time--he mimics Wahlberg's mannerisms and at times is even dressed like him. Scotty feels that to be with Eddie, he
has to be like Eddie--and haven't we all been there?

But I digress. Once Eddie gets comfortable baring it all and doing his business for the camera, he also gets comfortable with the idea of becoming a "great big shining star" in the industry, and creates a new persona to go with it. He calls himself "Dirk Diggler"--a name that literally appears on screen and explodes in a fiery burst of light. Later, he and Reed work together to create a second alter ego, that of "Brock Landers", a sort of adult movie answer to Mike Hammer, who solves crimes and beds beautiful
women with the help of his partner "Chest Rockwell" (Reed's alter ego). Eddie/Dirk finds enormous success, winning multiple awards for his "acting" (is that what the kids are calling it?) and earning enough money to buy his every heart's desire, including plenty of cocaine, lizard skin shoes and a hot red sports car (of which Scotty goes and buys in an identical color). As we all know, however, with fame comes a huge ego, and even sweet, naive Eddie falls victim to it, becoming harsh and demanding towards Jack, the man who made it all possible. After one too many temper tantrums, Eddie is ousted from the "family", quickly replaced with a younger, more malleable actor.

Around this same time, Little Bill, driven to a rage by his wife's constant, blatant infidelity (when he demands "What the fuck are you doing?" as she straddles some faceless stud, she gives Little Bill a look of disdain and snaps, "What the fuck does it look like I'm doing?"), shoots her, her new lover, and himself at a New Year's Party. The violent, shocking incident takes place at a party celebrating the beginning of 1980, symbolically marking the
downward decline of the characters and the adult film industry in general. Eddie, without any movies to make, is forced to turn a trick or two for spare cash, and is beaten by a client turned gay basher. Rollergirl makes the mistake of picking up a man who turns out to be an old classmate, and who she later beats the shit out of because he calls her by her real name. Amber loses all parental rights to her son in court, and both women fall further into heavy drug use. After witnessing and being the only survivor of a bloody doughnut shop robbery, Buck steals the loot for his own use. Finally, Jack gets an unsettling dose of reality when he realizes that his preferred style of making adult films is quickly going out of fashion. Gondolli correctly predicts that video is the wave of the future in porno, and while Jack stubbornly refuses to give up the warm ambience of film stock for a while, it's inevitable that he'll have to give in eventually, simply because video is so much cheaper to produce.

The nadir is reached when Todd gets Eddie and Reed to accompany him to drug kingpin Rahad Jackson's house, where they'll attempt to steal money and drugs from him. Neither, Eddie, Reed, or Todd are the sharpest bits in the drill, so we know that certain disaster would be afoot if they were to try crossing a big time dealer, even if the dealer in question is as loopy as Rahad (played by Alfred Molina), who serenades the guys with 'Sister Christian'
and 'Jessie's Girl', and who allows his kept Asian houseboy to throw lit firecrackers around the living room. Nevertheless, Todd, who's apparently watched way too many Scorsese films, comes out with both guns blazing, and a mighty shootout ensues, leaving Eddie and Reed literally running for their lives. It's at this point that Eddie realizes the real world is too dangerous even for a porno star, and he is ill-equipped to make it on his own. He returns to Jack's fold, and at the film's end, we see him a few years later, slightly older looking, slightly worse for wear (and wearing a Miami Vice pastel shirt and white suit combo!), still starring in adult films and still convincing himself that he's a star.

I mention that the character of Todd Parker probably watched too many Scorsese films, and the same thing can be said for Boogie Nights's writer/director, Paul Thomas Anderson. There are definite influences from Scorsese's work present here, most prominently Goodfellas, in that the film rapid-fire alternates between black comedy, serious social commentary, and graphic violence. But unlike Brian DePalma, who frequently borrows from Alfred Hitchcock without putting any of his own personal touches on it, Anderson takes his Scorsese influences and builds off of them, merely using them as a jump board for his own talents. Influenced by other directors or not, Anderson is brilliant at setting the right mood and ambience for a scene, if not for a whole movie. Much credit should go to cinematographer Robert Elswit, but Boogie Nights actually looks like it was filmed in the seventies, with a slightly grainy film quality and orangey looking lighting. Anderson also wisely relies on facial expressions and tight, close-up reaction shots of his actors rather than meaningless dialogue--one of the best examples of this include when Jack Horner and his crew get their first really good look at Eddie/Dirk's skills, as he films his first sex scene with Amber. Each of the actors' reactions vary somewhat between awe, disbelief, and downright shock (Scotty practically hyperventilates). Another good example is during the 'Sister Christian' drug buy scene, when as the music blasts and firecrackers explode all around him, Anderson chooses a tight close-up of Eddie to convey the ridiculousness of the situation. Many critics didn't know what to make of this shot, which basically amounts to over thirty seconds of Mark Wahlberg's face with the same expression on it, but it's really quite effective, as to look into Eddie's eyes is to see the dawning realization that things have gone too far.

Anderson also really knows how to get the best out of his actors. Stand outs include the previously mentioned Philip Seymour Hoffman, and also Julianne Moore, Heather Graham, and, yes, even Burt Reynolds. Mark Wahlberg, whose most notable film credit before this was a video called Form...Focus...Fitness: the Marky Mark Workout, is really quite remarkable in this movie. He's completely believable as Eddie Adams/Dirk Diggler, who goes from lost lamb to super-stud to has-been to in under two and half hours. He's not afraid to look silly, as he does in some of the sex scenes (surprisingly, for a movie about the porn industry, there are only four or five fairly graphic scenes), nor is he afraid to look like an emotional wreck on screen. You can thoroughly understand why Jack Horner believes him to be more special than the average guy (besides his obvious asset)--it's his innocence that makes him sexy.

Paul Thomas Anderson does not offer judgement on the porno movie industry, nor expects the audience to do so. Few of the characters' problems seem directly related to their profession, and none of them look like they're involved in it under duress. He does seem to suggest, as mentioned above, that back then the directors and actors did seem more interested in producing a product that would look both sexy and classy at the same time, and that after a while sexy and classy were pushed aside for cheap and fast. One of the last scenes we see of Jack working on a movie shows him filming two surgically-enhanced bimbos tastelessly French kissing in a hot tub, and appeasing another actress's demand to be sodomized by her co-star. Bob Dylan never mentioned anything about porno, but the times they have a-changed there, too.

DID YOU KNOW...
--The movie is loosely based on the discovery and rise to stardom of the infamously well-endowed real life porn star John "Johnny Wadd" Holmes, though it leaves out Holmes's implication in a torture-murder case in the early 80's, and ends on an ambiguously upbeat note, as opposed to having Eddie/Dirk die of AIDS like his real-life counterpart.
--It's also an elaboration of a short film Paul Thomas Anderson made when he was just 17 years old, a Spinal Tap-style documentary entitled The Dirk Diggler Story. Anderson's father narrated it, and it starred Robert Ridgely as Jack Horner. Ridgely was later cast in Boogie Nights as the Colonel.
--The role of Eddie/Dirk was originally offered to Leonardo DiCaprio, who turned it down in favor of Titanic. Mark Wahlberg, DiCaprio's co-star in The Baskeball Diaries,was 25 when he was cast as 17 year-old Eddie/Dirk.
--Inspired by a similar scene in Goodfellas, Paul Thomas Anderson filmed the opening sequence as a three minute long, unbroken Steadi-cam tracking scene, and managed to introduce most of the principal characters in the process.
--All of the actors who appeared in the dance sequence had to be taught how to disco dance. The dancing was choreographed by Adam Shankman.
--The song Eddie/Dirk butchers is called 'The Touch', and was originally featured in the Transformers movie. Mark Wahlberg claimed he wasn't deliberately trying to sound like a bad singer, he really was that bad. Gluttons for punishment can click here to bear witness to the horror.
--The original score was composed by Michael Penn. The original score for Paul Thomas Anderson's next film, Magnolia, was composed by Aimee Mann, who is married to Michael Penn.
--During the 'Sister Christian' drug buy scene, Joe G.M. Chan, the actor portraying Cosmo, was instructed to randomly throw lit firecrackers out of sight from the other actors, so their startled reactions would be authentic.
--Anderson deliberately led the audience to believe that Scotty, he of the unrequited gay crush, would commit suicide at the New Year's party, so that Little Bill's subsequent suicide would be more shocking.
--During his day job as a hi-fi salesman, Buck refers to a "TK-421 modification". TK-421 was also the number of the stormtrooper Luke Skywalker disguised himself as in Star Wars.
--Little Bill's unfaithful wife is played by real-life porn star Nina Hartley, star of such skin flick classics as Anal Annie and the Backdoor Housewives, Fatal Erection, Splendor in the Ass, and Here...Eat This!
--Julianne Moore, John C. Reilly, Philip Seymour Hoffman, William H. Macy, Philip Baker Hall, Luis Guzman, Melora Hardin, Thomas Jane, Ricky Jay, and Alfred Molina all appeared in Anderson's next film, Magnolia. Reilly, Hoffman, Hall and Walters have appeared in all of his movies.
--"Amber Waves" was the stage name of a porn actress on an episode of TV's Night Court. A curious, completely incorrect bit of trivia listed on the page for Boogie Nights at the Internet Movie Database claims that "Dirk Diggler" was originally the name of a character played by Fred Durst (????) on an episode of TV's Flipper (????).
--Amber's straight laced ex-husband is played by John Doe, one of the founders of the seminal punk band X.
--Ted Turner and Jane Fonda are rumored to have sent telegrams to Anderson telling him how much they enjoyed the movie.
--Needless to say, Mark Wahlberg wore a prosthetic penis over his own unit. In spite of all the fuss, Dirk's diggler is really only shown once, in a less than fifteen second long shot at the very end of the film.

Photos courtesy of Cigarettes and Coffee: The Definitive Paul Thomas Anderson Website

SOUND BITES
WARNING: Some of these soundbites contain adult language

Dirk's self-empowerment speech
Dirk: "I am a star. I'm a star, I'm a star, I'm a star. I am a big, bright shining star."

Eddie meets Floyd Gondolli
Floyd: "Jack says you got a great big cock."
Eddie: "Um, well, I guess so."
Floyd: "May I see it?"
Eddie: "Really?"
Floyd: "Please."

Jack gives an important piece of acting advice
Jack: "Listen, pal, you've gotta make it a little more sexy, you know, don't just ram it in there like that."

Floyd Gondolli doesn't ask for much...
Floyd: "I like simple pleasures, like butter in my ass and lollipops in my mouth. That's just me, that's just something that I enjoy, call me crazy, call me a pervert."

Reed Rothchild as Chest Rockwell
Reed/Chest: "Let's go get some of that Saturday night beaver."

Dirk reaps the benefits of success with a stylin' new pair of shoes
Dirk: "Look, these are great."
Reed: "Yeah, those are really cool. Are they lizard?"
Dirk: "No, they're Italian."

Little Bill discusses his marriage problems
Kurt: "Little Bill?"
Little Bill: "Hey, Kurt, how's it going?"
Kurt: "What's wrong with you?"
Little Bill: "Oh, my fucking wife, man. She's down there with some idiot's dick in her, everybody's standing around watching. Fucking embarassing."
Kurt: "Yeah, yeah, I know. Anyway, listen. For the shoot I wanna talk about the look, I wanna see about getting this new zoom lens..."

A spoiled star throws a hissy fit
Dirk: "You know what? I'm the biggest star here, man. That's the way it is! I wanna fuck, it's my big dick, so everybody get ready fucking now! You know what, yeah, I don't need this shit. You know, fuck you, fucking fuck all of you! You're not my boss! You're not the king of me! I am the fucking king of Dirk. You're nothing without me, Jack. You're fucking nothing, fuck this, man, I don't need this shit."
Reed: "I'm so sorry, Jack, I'm so sorry, I'm gonna take care of this, I'm gonna straighten him out..."

Scotty tries to win Dirk's affection
Scotty: "Do you like my car, Dirk?"
Dirk: "What? Yeah, yeah."
Scotty: "Cause I wanted to, you know, I wanted to make sure you thought it was cool or else I was gonna take it back."
Dirk: "Oh. It's great, Scotty."
Scotty: "Happy New Year."

And then, an awkward attempt at a kiss
Dirk: "Wait, wait, wait, fuck! What the fuck?"
Scotty: "I'm sorry, Dirk."
Dirk: "What the hell is the matter with you?"
Scotty: "I'm sorry, I, uh..."
Dirk: "Why did you do that, Scotty?"
Scotty: "Uh...you look at me sometimes."
Dirk: "What?"
Scotty: "I wanted to know if you like me."
Dirk: "Well, of course--yeah, I like you, Scotty. I--"
Scotty: "Can I kiss you?"
Dirk: "Scotty, I--"
Scotty: "Please, can I kiss you on the mouth?"
Dirk: "No!"
Scotty: "Please let me."
Dirk: "Scotty..."
Scotty: "I'm really sorry, I didn't mean to grab you like that, or scare you or anything."
Dirk: "It's alright, man."
Scotty: "Do you wanna kiss me, or..."
Dirk: "Scotty..."
Scotty: "No?"
Dirk: "What's the matter with you?"
Scotty: "Alright, forget it. I'm just, I'm really drunk. Really, I am, I'm just, I'm out of my head, I'm so, I'm really wasted. Please, Dirk, I'm really just wasted, I'm crazy right now."

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