Boogie Nights (1997)
Set in the late 1970’s, Boogie Nights tells the story of Dirk Diggler; a porn star famous for his extremely large… you know? Working as a bus boy in LA’s seedy nightclubs, he catches the eye of pornographic film director Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds) and offers the kid a shot. Dirk bursts onto the scene at the height of adult film entertainment, and becomes a worldwide sensation.
Over the next
several years, we follow Dirk and an assortment of other characters connected
to the industry, as they cash in on their success, ride the waves of excess and
deal with personal problems.
Obviously,
the pornographic film industry was the influence for Boogie Nights, and no film
had explored it so closely before. During the 1990’s, the world of porn was
taking the video industry over, as DVDs were still emerging and online porn
wasn’t around yet. At this turning point in our time (the late 90’s) we watched
a story of the adult film industry and the people who populate at a turning
point in their time (the late 70’s to early 80’’s). Only a skilled, up and
coming writer/director called Paul Thomas Anderson could do it justice.
A late
player in the decade, Boogie Nights still made a significant impact on cinema.
It took skilled veteran actors who had worked with the director before, and
threw an ageing former star (Burt Reynolds) and a young rising star (Mark
Wahlberg) into the mix for a cocktail of strong performances. It brought Reynolds
back into the mainstream after some duds earlier that decade, and helped Wahlberg’s
star continue to rise after he left The Funky Bunch to establish himself as a
serious actor. It also paved the way for more arthouse films to break into the
mainstream, and allowed its director to give us the brilliant “Magnolia”
two years later, which was a significant film of 1999 and made its own impact.
Keeping
with the growing tradition of movies from the 90’s, Boogie Nights was another
period piece. It seemed we just weren’t as interested in present times as much
as we were in revisiting the past, and gazing into it with an almost voyeuristic
eye. The film doesn’t hold back, taking the audience right into the middle of
the action. The era and scenes are recreated in vivid detail, and if you’ve
even wondered what a porn film looks like “behind the scenes”, here’s your
chance.
Boogie Nights had a tough time making it to the screen, due to the director’s low profile at the time, and the subject matter of the film. The director didn’t want to reduce the content on screen to justify a lesser rating, which is always the agenda of the studios to get more bums on seats. Andersons stayed true to his vision, and the film was given a solid R rating, due to its depiction of violence, drugs and mild pornography. Even if the 90’s were the last positive decade in history, the movies were mixing things up and not afraid to push the envelope for the sake of art and entertainment. This would be replicated again with “Eyes Wide Shut” in 1999, and eventually become the norm for all movies in the 2000’s.
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