“There are shadows in life, baby.” A review of and essay on Boogie Nights (1997)

After garnering little acclaim with Hard Eight, P.T. Anderson refused to go unnoticed with his second feature, the sprawling, black-humored, porn satire Boogie Nights. While watching it, I felt even more dismayed at the lack of appreciation for his first film, as he would likely not have felt the mad urge to overcompensate wildly with the crowded antics of Boogie Nights. If Hard Eight is like a magician who does one ingenious trick well, then Boogie Nights is the more popular attraction in the next tent who can juggle chainsaws while reciting the alphabet backwards riding a unicycle on a tightrope elevated over a pit of starving wolverines.

I know his earliest film was a 32 minute short titled “The Dirk Diggler Story” but since it was only 32 minutes, it probably maintained its focus on just a handful of characters, as opposed to the 10 or so in Boogie Nights. That is not including Thomas Jane, Melora Walters, Philip Baker Hall, Ricky Jay, and Alfred Molina’s parts, er, roles. This is a busy, busy movie, and yet, each time I watch it (this would be my 4th or 5th time returning to it) it inspires further and further benumbed indifference. The only thing keeping me afloat this time were the performances, which are across-the-board brilliant. I do not like Mark Wahlberg , so it is not without difficulty that I write that he is incredible as the sweetly dim Eddie Adams. After getting hooked up with Rollergirl (Heather Graham) through prolific porno director Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds), he is walking home from the restaurant where he busses tables when Horner’s car pulls up besides him on the sidewalk. Amber Waves (Julianne Moore) and Rollergirl are in the car with Jack, who calls to Eddie:

Jack: Eddie!

Eddie: Hi.

Jack: Wanna ride?

Eddie: Jack?

Jack: Yeah. Wanna ride?

Eddie: Uh..well. I…I’m goin’ really far……

Rollergirl: Do you remember me from a couple hours ago?

Eddie: Yeah…I remember…

…………

Amber: Come with us sweetie.

Eddie: ………‘Kay.

It’s impossible to capture the comic impact of Wahlberg’s delivery of those few beats and then innocently, “ ‘kay.” His sweet innocence is also hilarious when Jack first introduces him to the even dimmer Reed Rothchild (John C. Reilly) at a big party at Jack’s house. Eddie is completely oblivious to Reed's ham-fisted efforts at sizing him up. Reed, in the middle of mixing margheritas, abruptly asks Eddie if he works out and how much he can squat. Then he asks Eddie if he’s seen Star Wars and tells him that people have told him he looks like Han Solo…..and then another abrupt question for Eddie:

Reed: What do you bench?

Eddie: (bashful) You tell first…

Reed: I asked you first.

Eddie: (bashful)…same time…

Reed: …cool…

No amount of ellipses can illustrate the perfect, perfect comic timing of this exchange. And there are many, many wonderfully hilarious moments. I saw shades of Dr. Steve Brule (John C. Reilly’s hysterically obtuse character on Tim & Eric’s Awesome Show) when Reed recites a poem from memory that he composed while sitting in a jacuzzi with Eddie:

“I love you. You love me. Going down the sugar tree. We'll go down the sugar tree, and see lots of bees: playing. Playing. But the bees won't sting…because you love me.”

More comic invention, delivered with relish by brilliant actors: After Burt Reynolds, Amber, and Rollergirl pick up Eddie, they take him to a diner where Jack explains that it takes more than looking photogenic to be a successful porn actor:

"But you can work out in the morning, you can work out at noon, you can work out at night. Doesn't matter…if you don't have those juices flowing…down there…in the Mr. Torpedo area…in the fun zone."

Again, it’s all in Reynold’s delivery...

...but if you’ve seen the film, I would hope you recognize this line and found it as amusing as I did. It is this very giddiness I felt at the light-hearted moments that had me off balance when the film lurches into the blackest of tragedy (Little Bill’s story, for example). The movie wants to be too many things at once, and instead of finding a fascinating individual and exploring the nuances of him or her, it procrastinates with subplots upon subplots, many of which are entertaining and involving, most of which unnecessarily pad the running time. I understand that the film wants to be an epic, and create an archetype for the adult film industry, thus has bigger things on its mind than just exploring the main issue, which, as I see it, is the short term seduction of fornicating willy-nilly without commitment inevitably leading to the long-term consequences of feeling an utter, utter emptiness inside. Sex is a good thing, says Boogie Nights; it is fun. But when indulged in a vacuum, it bears no fruits (the deepening of a relationship, sowing affection or love, maturing empathy or character), nothing but a momentary animal gratification that hardly fills the building void this very same behavior has left in its wake. Eddie talks about how every one is blessed with “one special thing” and his one special thing is his enormous dong. He rides his monumental cock’s coattails for a couple years before he falls prey to the delusion that he has earned a status as someone more substantial than a gigantic penis with a man attached to it.


In fact he is not the only porn star in the film laboring under such a delusion – Buck Swope (Don Cheadle), who, interestingly, we never get to see doing anything remotely sexual, is shocked when he attempts to apply for a loan from the bank to pursue a career as the owner of his own stereo/speaker/electronics store and is rejected. He asks why, and the bank manager informs him that they don’t do business with “pornographers.” “I am an actor!” Buck informs him, and when the man repeats the word “pornographer,” Buck exclaims, “Stop saying that!”

I was going to write “when Buck attempts to pursue a legitimate career” but stopped because isn’t a porn actor’s work as legitimate as any other line of work? Is it? Whether you feel it is or it isn’t, one must admit that the majority of inhabitants of the United States, especially in Reagan's 80's, find pornography to be a necessary evil. They’ll jack off to it in private and not talk about it, but as soon as someone starts talking frankly about it and treating it like it’s not something meant only to be enjoyed under a code of silence, these same people will stand up in righteous indignation. I’m not sure if Boogie Nights reaches any conclusions, but it asks several essential questions. But it could’ve asked those questions without pointless detours. We have many scenes detailing Buck’s desire to form a unique identity (at first he wants to be “The Cowboy”, which is ironic, you see, because he is black). He is counseled by Becky Barnett (Nicole Parker) to try something else (her identity, she declares, is “Chocolate Love”). In addition to being an apparent porn star, he works at a stereo store where he heart-breakingly defers to his prick boss when the man screeches “…that cowboy Western shit is dead” and then there’s the business with the applying for the loan and his relationship with Melora Walters and a strange, surreal episode which begins as an innocent trip to the donut shop and ends as a nightmarish bloodbath. Buck’s entire story is fun and entertaining and all, but is any of it necessary? It’s all making the exact same point that the Dirk Diggler story is making, which is that a history in the porn industry leads to disappointment and dead-ends once you’re out of it. Ditto with Amber Wave’s subplot about losing custody of her son because of her history in the porn industry and how the scarlet letter of her career forever damns her to loss of credibility and trustworthiness in her bids to win back custody of the boy. Same point, different character.


Consider “The Dirk Diggler Story” was 32 minutes long. Boogie Nights is 155 minutes. I haven’t seen “The Dirk Diggler Story” but I assume it had a beginning, a middle, and an end. Boogie Nights has a beginning, a middle, 15 wacky rest stops, a detour to crazy town, ten different tourist attractions, a promise that the end is coming soon, another zany trip down a back road, and then a denouement, and then a coda, and an end. When I say a promise that it will end soon, I’m speaking of the title card, “Long Way Down (One Last Thing)” which struck me as P.T. acknowledging the unnecessary lengths to which the film has gone and is ensuring us, “This will be the last gratuitous detour. Last one. Seriously.” The reason I’m okay with all these unnecessary subplots, and characters, and detours is because they are all (well most) exciting, especially the trip to Rahad Jackson’s drug mansion. I love that scene. I also love Dirk and Reed’s pathetic attempts to begin careers as pop musicians. I would not remove any of Scotty J.’s hideously awkward scenes either, because Philip Seymour Hoffman is so goddamn good. Also goddamn good are Thomas Jane as Todd Parker, Ricky Jay as Kurt Longjohn, and Robert Ridgley is too convincing as a guy admitting to a weakness for child pornography, but that is not to say he is unlikable. All the characters have their own charms. Alfred Molina stands out, an astonishing feat among so many colorful people. However, the scene of two young men visiting a barely clothed psychotic drug-dealer acquaintance of a third friend was already done in Mathieu Kassovitz’s La Haine. The temperamental drug dealer plays Russian roulette in front of them in that too, although none of the three friends are looking to rob him. Despite not being original, the Alfred Molina scene is fucking awesome, and puts Rick Springfield’s Jesse’s Girl to uncanny good use. There is also a sustained shot of Dirk sitting and watching, just a shot of his face, that is held for a good minute and a half or so that harkens to the moment in Milos Forman’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest near the end when the camera considers Randall P. McMurphy (Jack Nicholson) as he just sits and thinks. It's not clear exactly what is going through either Dirk's mind or Randall's, but from their facial expressions in both scenes, what is clear is that both are in the midst of epiphanies.


When I mentioned earlier that the film has bigger things on its mind than exploring the fundamental point, I meant that P.T. Anderson wants to create a world. Hence, the sizable population and the repeating of the same point in several different realms – this career choice leaves no one unscathed.


A simultaneously touching and frustrating aspect of the film is the perspective of Amber, Jack, Dirk, and Rollergirl as a kind of surrogate family. Amber calls Dirk her “baby boy” and dotes on him. She also has sex with him, so it’s kind of weird, but I suspect a lot of men have been in sexual relations with women who nurtured them as if they were their children. Or something. And let it be known, Julianne Moore looks much, much, much better au naturale (as seen below) than covered in garish make-up. She looks so trashy and used-up and pale when wearing make-up, and I’m sure this effect is deliberate.




Joanna Gleason, who plays Dirk’s monstrously bitter mother, is exceptional too, in her two scenes. There is a fierce shouting match between her and Eddie that is so raw it left my mouth agape. It’s also funny how inarticulate Eddie is when having a verbal duel. He later proves himself to be even more ill-equipped to expound on violence in the media, the technical aspects of making his videos, and History:



This is another devastating point Anderson makes about individuals who place so much value on sex, putting all their eggs in one basket, the, uh, sex basket, that they find, when it is time to summon some other talent, they are left grasping for mental resources that they were too busy fucking to cultivate.

Ultimately, despite all the parts I love and the incisive satire, the film is not much more than a frenzied collage composed by a virtuoso. It does not feel assembled properly so much as a bright orange suitcase stuffed with items and then forced shut. But I am not confused as to why it is so loved and admired. The first time I saw it, I was amazed as well, but it diminishes with each consecutive viewing, and its epic length seems less and less warranted, as if by virtue of length alone, the film might be imbued with importance. In this case, more is less.

Grade: B+


* Coming Soon: A review of P.T. Anderson's third picture, Magnolia (1999)

* A review of P.T. Anderson's first picture, Hard Eight (1996)