a real film
by Douglas Messerli
Paul
Thomas Anderson (writer and director) Boogie
Nights / 1997

Perhaps it’s simply that the porn
world—despite its cutthroat ethics and tendency to destroy its own—is far less destructive
and far more in touch with the “real” world than the financial shams created by
the latter. The goal of filmmaker Jack Horner (lovingly played by Burt
Reynolds) is to take his smut to a new level, to make, what he describes as a “real
film.” In short, even though he knows he is only producing a trashy vision of
experience, his desire is to create art. Belfort does just the opposite, using
art through the lie of his Stratton Oakmont, to create meaninglessness, junk
stocks that have no value whatsoever. Horner’s world is filled with wacky
dreamers: a would-be mother in Maggie/”Amber Waves” (Julianne Moore), a
cowboy-loving would-be entrepreneur in Buck Swope (Don Cheadle), a would-be
monogamous husband in “Little” Bill Thompson (William H. Macy), a serious actor
in Reed Rothchild (John C. Reilly), and, a successful gay lover in the case of
Scotty J. (Philip Seymour Hoffman) who is not so secretly enamored with Eddie.
Only Eddie, transformed into porn star Dirk Diggler, seems to have no “real”
dreams; he simply has a gift that demands being employed.
Yet, while Scorsese’s characters seem,
time and again, awarded for their greed, Anderson’s more loveable figures are
almost all severely punished just for having participated in the filmmaking of
love. It somehow seems unfair that Maggie cannot win custody of her child
because she is seen as a unfit mother, that Buck cannot get a loan, for the
same reason, to open his stereo shop, that Scotty J. is rejected just for
attempting to declare his love, and “Little” Bill is in love with a nymphomaniac
who fucks everyone in sight. Even Jack Horner is defeated by the shift in the
porn world from film to video, and, in the end, must shift from his James
Bond-like imitations to what has now become a porn standard, movies about a
roaming automobile that picks up unsuspecting boys off the street to have sex
with its occupant, Rollergirl (Heather Graham), whom oddly enough, never removes
her roller skates. The sad sequence in which we see them in action results in
the accidental pick-up of a boy she knew from high school, who brutally mocks
his former classmate until they are forced to beat him and toss him out.
In the end, however, Anderson’s film is
far more forgiving of its “sinners” than is Scorsese’s more orgiastic porn
flick. For Boggie Night is a true
satire, almost a snap-shot of a long ago age of excess with a bit of nostalgia
thrown in. And, at film’s close, if some of its characters have been destroyed
by their dreams, others go on in ludicrous belief, or, at least, in a suspension
of disbelief—including Eddie, who addicted to cocaine and methamphetamine is briefly
forced into prostitution before making up with Jack. By film’s end, in 1985—two
years before Jordan Belfort went to work on Wall Street—Eddie is back on the
job, hoping he might be able to get an erection and successfully perform in the
new work before him. At last we get a quick view of the man behind the curtain—the
long limp cock which everybody else has already ogled.
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