Amazon.com Essentials:
Even if the notorious 1970s porn-filmmaking milieu doesn't
exactly turn you on, don't let it turn you off to this movie's
extraordinary virtues, either. Boogie Nights is one of the key
movies of the 1990s, and among the most ambitious and exuberantly
alive American movies in years. It's also the breakthrough for an
amazing new director, whose dazzling kaleidoscopic style here recalls
the Robert Altman of Nashville and the Martin Scorsese of
GoodFellas. Although loosely based on the sleazy life and times
of real-life porn legend John Holmes, at heart it's a classic
Hollywood rise-and-fall fable: a naive, good-looking young busboy is
discovered in a San Fernando Valley disco by a famous motion picture
producer, becomes a hotshot movie star, lives the high life, and then
loses everything when he gets too big for his britches, succumbs to
insobriety, and is left behind by new times and new technology. Of
course, it ain't exactly A Star Is Born or Singin' in the
Rain. Writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson (in only his second
feature!) puts his own affectionately sardonic twist on the old
showbiz biopic formula: the ambitious upstart changes his name and
achieves stardom in porno films as "Dirk Diggler." Instead
of drinking to excess, he snorts cocaine (the classic drug of '70s
hedonism); and it's the coming of home video (rather than talkies)
that helps to dash his big-screen dreams. As for the britches
... well, the controversial "money shot" explains
everything. And the cast is one of the great ensembles of the '90s,
including Oscar nominees Burt Reynolds and Julianne Moore, Mark
Wahlberg (who really can act--from the waist up, too!), Heather Graham
(as Rollergirl), William H. Macy, John C. Reilly, and Ricky Jay. DVD
extras include nine deleted scenes and a commentary track from
Anderson. --Jim Emerson
Amazon.com Essentials:
Even if the notorious 1970s porn-filmmaking milieu doesn't
exactly turn you on, don't let it turn you off to this movie's
extraordinary virtues, either. Boogie Nights is one of the key
movies of the 1990s, and among the most ambitious and exuberantly
alive American movies in years. It's also the breakthrough for an
amazing new director, whose dazzling kaleidoscopic style here recalls
the Robert Altman of Nashville and the Martin Scorsese of
GoodFellas. Although loosely based on the sleazy life and times
of real-life porn legend John Holmes, at heart it's a classic
Hollywood rise-and-fall fable: a naive, good-looking young busboy is
discovered in a San Fernando Valley disco by a famous motion picture
producer, becomes a hotshot movie star, lives the high life, and then
loses everything when he gets too big for his britches, succumbs to
insobriety, and is left behind by new times and new technology. Of
course, it ain't exactly A Star Is Born or Singin' in the
Rain. Writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson (in only his second
feature!) puts his own affectionately sardonic twist on the old
showbiz biopic formula: the ambitious upstart changes his name and
achieves stardom in porno films as "Dirk Diggler." Instead
of drinking to excess, he snorts cocaine (the classic drug of '70s
hedonism); and it's the coming of home video (rather than talkies)
that helps to dash his big-screen dreams. As for the britches
... well, the controversial "money shot" explains
everything. And the cast is one of the great ensembles of the '90s,
including Oscar nominees Burt Reynolds and Julianne Moore, Mark
Wahlberg (who really can act--from the waist up, too!), Heather Graham
(as Rollergirl), William H. Macy, John C. Reilly, and Ricky Jay. --Jim Emerson
