Boogie Nights (New Line Platinum Series)

Boogie Nights (New Line Platinum Series)
by Paul Thomas Anderson

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• From Hollywood's hottest new director comes the outrageous epic that throws the covers back on California's adult entertainment industry in the swinging seventies. It's a touching and often humorous portrait of a most unusual family of filmakers, broughtRunning Time: 155 min. Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY Rating: R Age: 794043503320 UPC: 794043503320 Manufacturer

DVD Reviews of Boogie Nights (New Line Platinum Series)

DVD Review: Fady Ghaly's reviews
Summary: 5 Stars

For this thirty-one-year-old—twenty-seven at the time—this was a breakthrough film he, in fact, had great inspiration to make long before it was even released at the early age of seventeen. It was then that he put together a 30-minute short film that was written and shot like a Spinal Tap documentary regarding the rise and fall of the illustrious Dirk Diggler. The short film, simply entitled “The Dirk Diggler Story”, was shot on video and edited from VCR to VCR. His father narrated it in a way that had you think you were watching an E! true Hollywood story, but soon enough a documentary was something it was far from looking like. Although school as a teenager never appealed to him as he had lacked to show any enthusiasm, Anderson’s story was ultimately re-written into a feature film that was far from merely being one to come and go and become long forgotten. And who says you’ll go nowhere in life without having to go to school? Anderson always wanted to be a filmmaker, and watching movies was the only education he needed.

The year is nineteen-seventy-seven. The city is Los Angeles, and adult filmmaker Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds) meets Eddie Adams (Mark Wahlberg), a well-endowed dishwasher in a nightclub who may just be the answer Jack’s been looking for to revolutionize the adult entertainment industry. “I got a feeling,” Jack tells him, “that behind those jeans is something wonderful just waiting to get out.” He recruits Eddie to be his newest star and Eddie, thirsty for fame, promptly agrees, changing his name to Dirk Diggler. Soon Dirk is the hottest, most talked about star in the adult entertainment industry, alongside Amber Waves (Julianne Moore), the veteran star who mourns for the son she’s strictly not permitted to visit because of her lifestyle and the inappropriate environment which encircles her, and Rollergirl (Heather Graham), a high school dropout who’s apparently never even had the slightest thought of removing her roller skates. On the peripherals, Little Bill (William H. Macy) seethes with rage while his wife cheats on him in public, Buck Swope (Don Cheadle) tries to elude the stigma of being a porn actor, and Reed Rothchild (John C. Reilly) refuses to deal with the “aging cycle” as he strives to have others think differently of him by persistently acting out as someone he’s clearly no longer capable of being, while Maurice T. Rodriguez (Luis Guzman) is a club manager who dreams of being in one of Jack’s films and yet fears that his genitals may not be large enough. (One of the many deleted scenes in both DVDs will show that.)
The good times roll and throughout them did I ever laugh (especially in such classic scenes as the ones where both Dirk and Reed are joined when playing the rolls of Brock & Chest in a James Bond-like series), but before long Dirk falls victim to the pressures of stardom and a drug habit that ruins his career, as, in reality, has it to so many others in this industry, while Jack struggles with porn’s conversion from film to cheaper videotapes.

Anderson set out to write a narrative that had a large and complex cast of characters, which proved to be a challenge because of the enormity of the project. But at the same time, completing the feat on schedule with a modest budget was his greatest reward. At the heart of the narrative is how the diverse players in an adult entertainment industry come together to form a makeshift family—comically dysfunctional in many ways—but a family nonetheless. Their lives are entwined in mutual experiences that range from the flourishing highs to the brooding lows. “These characters are all searching for their dignity,” says Anderson. “They’re just trying to find themselves.”

He initially had Leonardo DiCaprio in mind for the lead roll of Dirk Diggler, but, and I don’t know about you but thankfully, DiCaprio couldn’t get involved in the project because he was busy with another—James Cameron’s ever so long and tedious and gushy Titanic, which makes men who are watching it feel like women, or made me feel that way, anyway. So he ultimately, after seeing what Mark Wahlberg can do in The Basketball Diaries and Fear, came across him in a coffee shop with the script, and one director’s dream took a major step to becoming a reality from there. Now I don’t know about you but casting Wahlberg for the lead roll was a very wise choice to make, as Anderson himself admitted and even went as far as saying that he was glad he got Wahlberg instead, because by making that choice, Wahlberg then grew to be this very flamboyant actor with plenty of other rolls as significant as the one here being thrown at him, as that particular roll was the one that obviously claimed him to fame, as Heather Graham’s in the film too did the same. (Others say Graham’s roll in Drugstore Cowboy was the one to do so, but I think it merely got her noticed.) And if you’re wondering why John C. Reilly has yet been in all of Anderson’s feature films, including one of his short ones entitled “Flagpole Special”, it’s simply because Reilly, next to the middle-aged, sad-looking Philip Baker Hall, happens to be his most beloved actor. (“The simple look of his face makes me smile,” Anderson acknowledges.)

Boogie Nights, a classic Hollywood story that can relate to many others in the industry who’ve hit the low road, is an exhilarating ride along the underbelly of the nineteen-seventies, featuring colorful camera work, a dynamic seventies soundtrack, and tremendous performances from the entire cast, most distinguishably Reynolds’ in an Oscar-nominated comeback roll. (...)

Boogie Nights has the quality of many great films, in that it always appears to be alive and involves us in the moment-to-moment sensation of seeing these people’s lives as they are lived. In his profession, Anderson is a proficient reporter who fills his screen with understated, genuine details. The man is in love with his camera, and somewhat of a showoff in sequences inspired by Robert De Niro’s rehearsal in the mirror in Raging Bull, the renowned nightclub entrance in Goodfellas, and a shot in I Am Cuba where the camera pursues a woman inside a swimming pool.
Boogie Nights is, beyond any doubt, what good drama is all about, what brilliant directing is all made of.

Description of Boogie Nights (New Line Platinum Series)