All but one of the principal characters are introduced in the opening shot of Boogie Nights, as the camera weaves and tracks its way through a '70s dance club. That one missing person can be seen at the beginning of the very next shot. Turns out that missing person will be the only one of these principal characters who is not alive at the end of the film. That may be a coincidence, but I tend to think there are few accidents in Paul Thomas Anderson's films and it's little touches like these that make them a delight to view.
The explosive follow-up to Hard 8 shows all the confidence of a veteran filmmaker paired with all the energy of a fresh new talent. Given that one of the film's points is the constantly changing nature of films (it ends in the middle of the early '80s after videocassettes have been introduced to the market), a far-fetched, but interesting comparison could be made to then 27-year old Anderson himself. Here, the veteran filmmaker Jack Horner (a nod to the nursery rhyme?) is played by Burt Reynolds, and the up and coming talent Eddie Adams (a.k.a. Dirk Diggler) is played by Mark Wahlberg. Jack dreams of making the ultimate porn flick, and in Dirk and co-star Reed Rothchild (John C. Reilly), he sees the potential for profit. He rescues Dirk from busboy purgatory and takes him under his wing to become the next "big thing". Although inevitably the mentor and the student must fall on different sides of the fence, when their relationship is positive and strong, it has a familial feel.
As a painter uses a canvas, so too are there many supporting players that give Boogie Nights its texture and colour. Heather Graham plays the mainstay kitten Rollergirl, Julianne Moore is Jack's porn-starring wife Amber Waves, an underutilized William H. Macy plays the assistant director Little Bill, Luis Guzmán plays a porn-aspiring club owner and Philip Seymour Hoffman is the fey Scotty J. Two of the more memorable scenes involve Alfred Molina as, of all things, a Night Ranger-loving drug dealer, and the always-watchable Don Cheadle plays Buck, a hi-fi stereo salesman who wants to go into business for himself -- if only an opportunity would present itself to him.
One might expect Boogie Nights to glorify nudity and sex, but it features very few actual porn scenes, and most of the more graphic parts come off as unsexy. Eventually, as several of the characters take more and more drugs, their hues begin to fade. All that's left are lonely, everyday people with their own sets of problems, cumulatively choosing to bask in the glories of what used to be.
