It was the 1970s, and Los Angeles was a metropolis of sleaze, a veritable wonderland of all things deemed disreputable. Just miles from the glitz and glamour of Hollywood, the San Fernando Valley was (and still is ) the adult-film capital of the world. With shades discreetly pulled down over windows, hundreds of these so-called “blue movies” were being filmed throughout the area at the time. This is the world that Paul Thomas Anderson’s 1997 film “Boogie Nights” captures.
“Boogie Nights” is an exquisitely crafted, Robert Altman-esque character piece set in the San Fernando Valley of the late ’70s and ’80s. Following an ensemble cast through its career highs and lows, the film is a sprawling epic about fame, sex, drugs and self-destruction. “Boogie Nights” will be playing this Saturday at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica.
Anderson’s masterwork tracks the rise and fall of a slew of pornographic actors and filmmakers. Among others, there is Eddie Adams (Mark Wahlberg), a wild-eyed kid whose rise to fame under the pseudonym Dirk Diggler leads him down a destructive path, Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds), an adult-film director who wants to elevate the sleazy stag film to the level of high art and Amber Waves (Julianne Moore), a part-time matriarch and part-time cocaine addict.
It’s a family story. The characters may not be related by blood, but their inextricable sense of unity and innumerable attempts to rebuild when the world around them is crumbling down reconstitutes the very definition of “family.”
“Boogie Nights” is a vibrant masterwork that captures a specific time and place so vividly. It is the era of the “porno chic,” a period when films like “Deep Throat” were making tens of millions of dollars and being written about in major publications like The New York Times and Newsweek. The Marilyn Chambers vehicle “Behind the Green Door” was even screened at the Cannes Film Festival.
Though only briefly, the pornographic film industry tangoed with mainstream commercial cinema and was oddly legitimized to a degree. These productions were no longer seen as being so taboo, and their presence became popular discussion points at suit-and-tie cocktail parties. As “Boogie Nights” chronicles in its final chapter, however, the arrival of videotape onto the scene in the 1980s changed the game by perverting the medium for many.
With its lengthy takes that figure prominently throughout its duration, “Boogie Nights” is an expansive and expertly choreographed piece of art. In the opening scene, a three-minute sequence uninterrupted by cuts, the camera focuses on a theater baring the film’s title, and then proceeds to cross the street, enter a club and follow the various central characters.
Ambitious and brilliantly executed, this scene, like the multitude of other similarly long, one-take sequences throughout the film, is a brilliant work of direction that becomes even more awe-inspiring when considering that director Paul Thomas Anderson was only 27 years old at the time the movie was made. Even at such a young age, Anderson shows a command of the medium like very few working in the industry.
Exuberant and ambitious, “Boogie Nights” is an epic film about the people working in an industry largely mysterious to most. With its expert direction and cinematography, it is a pinnacle of ’90s filmmaking.
What locally screened films do you think deserve their time in the spotlight? Email Colvin at icolvin@media.ucla.edu.