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BOOGIE NIGHTS
Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
Watching BOOGIE NIGHTS is like watching two completely different films, with their own
unique style. This is not a bad thing. In fact, it is half of what makes this film so great. The first
half has an easy going atmosphere with a laid back camera. It takes place almost entirely in the
midst of parties and porno film shoots, and it is a lot of fun to watch. The second half is the polar
opposite. Its atmosphere is darker; about as happy as a five year-old at the dentist. The camera
whips around as if it were a humming bird.
The film’s large cast of characters are juggled around Eddie (Mark Wahlberg). As the film opens,
he works for a night club frequented by a porno director named Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds).
When Jack approaches him, Eddie asks if he wants to watch him masturbate, or just wants to see
his genitalia. This bit of dialogue is important for two reasons. It shows a willingness on Eddie’s
part, which prompts Jack to take him under his wing, and it sets up a powerful and disturbing
scene in the latter portion of the film. After a fight with his mother, Eddie is kicked out of his
house and has nowhere to turn but Jack. He changes his name to Dirk Diggler, and thus begins his
career in porno.
Jack’s goal is to create a porno film with a story so compelling that people will sit through after
doing what they came there to do. His ideals as a film-maker will not even allow him to convert to
filming on video tape when it is proposed to him by an investor.
The first half of BOOGIE NIGHTS, taking place in the late 1970s, chronicles the pleasures that
this life brings to Dirk and all the characters around him. The turning point is a New Year’s party
to celebrate the beginning of the 1980s. As the clock strikes midnight, a character whose wife had
constantly cheated on him (and in one funny scene said that he was embarrassing her when he
found her having sex in the middle of a driveway while surrounded by a group of onlookers)
murders her and turns the gun on himself right in the midst of the party. On this note, the darker
days are introduced.
After developing a cocaine habit and fighting with Jack, Dirk leaves the porno industry and
unsuccessfully attempts other facets of show business. Jack sells out and begins filming with
video. Dreams of other characters go unfulfilled. A woman looses the right to visit her son. The
film reaches its darkest moments when Dirk is involved in a drug deal and another character takes
a bag of stolen money from a robbery gone wrong. But as they say it is darkest before dawn, and
so things start to look up.
The film’s running joke is the size of Dirk’s penis. We watch the surprised expression on the faces
of everyone who sees it, but it is kept hidden from us until the final shot, which is reminiscent of
RAGING BULL’s closing shot. Before whipping it out in a room by himself, Dirk gives himself a
short pep talk into a mirror. The words of his monologue are comforting and reassuring, yet
seeing his and others’ stories end on an up note after all that they have done is not comforting.
This is an ironically happy ending if I have ever seen one.
My Rating: ***1/2
Review by Jared Mills
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