Boogie Nights

Boogie Nights was playing tonight on 70mm at the AFI Silver, and was a fantastic experience as expected.  Seeing the grain and dirt and vibrant colors was exhilarating, as if I had time traveled to the 1970s.  Later on in the film, during the infamous cocaine deal no less, the film actually stopped for a couple minutes and started again, and even then only a couple minutes later was it framed correctly.(my audience cheered when the projector head finally got realigned with the film frame).  I hadn’t seen the film since I was in high school, so it was such a rewarding revisit and I love it even more now that I’ve seen it in a packed house.  This time around I was surprised by how much humor was packed throughout the film, as my audiences laughed so much at each subtle joke, every ridiculous-sounding porn star name, all the way until it gets serious again, and when so there were gasps during the bursts of violence.  Such a great way to experience a fantastic film. What makes Boogie Nights work so well is how it manages to empathize with sex workers, in this case porn stars (some adult actors like Nina Hartley and Veronica Hart have cameos, adding to this level of empathy), rather than exploiting the porn industry for shock value.  We see Dirk Diggler, Amber Waves, Rollergirl and even Jack Horner as nuanced people who happen to be on the margins rather than perverted caricatures.  And by keeping the film’s portrayal of sexuality very Frank but not distastefully so, PTA enhances the audience’s empathy for the performers in an often exploitative industry.  He examines how the end of the “porno chic” golden age of porn ended with the rise of Reagan-era moralism (as evidenced Amber Waves losing custody of her children for being a former porn actress) as well as the rise of videotape, which led to adult films being taken even less seriously.  Sure, it’s funny to watch the bad acting and over-the-top stage names, but it’s not being an overly moralist shocker about the dangers of pornography, nor is it an outright endorsement of many of the industry’s disturbing attributes, and if anything a nostalgic tribute to 1970s culture. It’s such an entertaining and brilliantly crafted movie, full of style, complete with amazing long take tracking shots and plenty of whip-pans and flash-forwards and some of the best needle drops I’ve heard in film.  Seriously, the use of Sister Christian and Jessie’s Girl during the deal is unbearably tense.  Robert Elswit’s widescreen cinematography looked especially gorgeous on the big screen.  Clearly Scorsese’s Goodfellas was a primary inspiration for Boogie Nights; if Scorsese made a movie about pornography, it would be a lot like this and I’m here for it.  To find out Paul Thomas Anderson was only 26 when he directed Boogie Nights is amazing and inspiring.  Every actor in this cast does a brilliant job, from Julianne Moore to Phillip Seymour Hoffman (as Scotty, the awkward boom operator who has a crush on Dirk Diggler, probably the most underrated part of the film) to an often-naked Heather Graham to a career-reviving turn for Burt Reynolds… I even forgot Alfred Molina was the coke dealer.  But we need to discuss Dirk Diggler himself: I’ll admit I didn’t love Mark Wahlberg in the part when I first saw it.  I thought he paled in comparison to the acting titans he was onscreen with, and I thought Leonardo DiCaprio or Joaquin Phoenix should’ve been cast as PTA initially intended.  However, Wahlberg’s performance has grown on me; he feels like the Bostonian equivalent of a young John Travolta, and still feels natural in the part. More than anything, Boogie Nights has held up because it is such a consistently watchable, often subtly hilarious (my theater was laughing surprisingly hard), sometimes frightening and moving tale that ranks easily as one of Paul Thomas Anderson’s best and one of the most iconic movies of the past 30 years for good reason.