Boogie Nights chronicles the rise and fall of Dirk Diggler, fantastically well-endowed pornstar, from the golden age of porn in the late 70s to its VHS-driven artistic decline in the early 80s. Talent-spotted in a nightclub by porn director Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds), fourteen-inch Dirk (Mark Wahlberg) quickly rises to the top of his profession, rocking the porn world with his performances and winning the coveted "Best Cock" award at the porn oscars for two years in a row. Life imitates art, however, and almost on the stroke of 1980, Dirk and the industry start to misfire. With his performance hampered by cocaine addiction and his industry standing threatened by up-and-coming young guns, Dirk withdraws from Jack's fold and plunges into a disastrous solo career, which eventually leads him into a world of drugs, crime and prostitution. Jack, in the meantime, is forced to shoot off cheap videotape flicks in the back of a limo. Who could have guessed the porn industry would turn out to be so seedy?
There's a lot to admire in Boogie Nights, most of it ripped straight out of better films, mainly Goodfellas and the works of Altman. Some sequences -- like Jack's entry into the nightclub, done in a single three-minute take, or the poolside sequence where we swing around and eavesdrop on different conversations -- may be dazzling, but they were rather more dazzling in the original movies. Anderson's constant stealing undermines whatever original material he may have brought to the party. I like the burning "Dirk Diggler" marquee, and the Superman-style scene where Dirk exercises his powers in front of the camera for the first time, and the "iris shot" taken from Scotty's point of view as he homes in on Dirk -- but are they stolen too? By that stage, it's hard to care. Anderson has cried wolf a few times too often.
Some might call this homage, but in reality "homage" is most often a critical weasel word used to dignify theft. It's easier to believe in homage when a director references truly iconic screen images, and uses those images to throw new light on his own work. Nothing of the sort happens in Boogie Nights. Instead, Anderson limps through the movie leaning on better directors' techniques, knowing he will get away with it. In today's critical climate, "homage" is a sure way to win praise; from Tarantino to the Coens, stealing is all the rage. There is an art to theft -- it can be done well; but if you can't be the first, it's a good idea to be the best. Anderson is neither.
As well as the outright steals, Boogie Nights comes laden with referential gimmicks -- porn movie in-jokes, which fly over my head, and geek in-jokes, which sadly don't. When Dirk attempts a career as a pop star, the first song on his demo tape is "The Touch", from Transformers: the Movie of all places. And then there is the scene where the "Colonel", from behind the glass wall of his prison cubicle, shouts "Are you my friend? Are you my friend?" at the departing Jack, which unless I'm mistaken is a bizarre reference to Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan. What is the point of this stuff? It might make the geeks in the audience feel pleased with themselves, but artistically it's a distraction. Boogie Nights is like a split screen between a movie and a pop trivia quiz, and the two work against each other. But here it's no different from most of its contemporaries.
It also follows the form by being a "soundtrack movie", one of many cinematic curses that I believe can be traced back to George Lucas. (American Graffiti, this time.) Boogie Nights is not a complete artistic experience, but instead merely part of a package which includes the soundtrack CD, the MP3 collection, and the "ironic" retro lifestyle. The non-stop 70s and 80s hits prop up the movie like a crutch, so that when you begin to tire of the on-screen stuff, you can depend on the groovy nostalgia to get you by. It's lazy stuff, and yet another distraction. I feel that I'm meant to be at least as impressed with the director's taste in music as with any of the other goings-on.
But in spite of all the above, the first half of Boogie Nights has an undeniable energy. It's trash, but it's amiable trash. The film apparently began life as a short Spinal Tap-style mock-documentary, and it remains entertaining while it sticks to this kind of comedy. When it ventures into drama, however, and even has a go at tragedy, I can't take it seriously -- and neither can Paul Thomas Anderson, who rarely misses an opportunity to mock his characters. Whether they're reciting awful poetry, confusing conjuring tricks with "evil forces", or thinking Napoleon was a Roman emperor, the people in Boogie Nights are constantly being shown up as really, really stoopid. Even walk-on parts don't escape Anderson's jeers: the fratboy summoned into Jack's limo has about five sentences to make a fool of himself, and does so in half that time. After a while, this simply becomes annoying. Why the superior attitude?
The worst example of condescension is the scene where Jack reviews the closing reels of his dire porno detective movie, proudly declaring "This is my best work." There's an obvious parallel here with Tim Burton's Ed Wood, who says "This is the one I'll be remembered for!" at the premiere of Plan 9, but the effect could hardly be more different. In Ed Wood, the joke is partly on Ed -- since his film will not be remembered for the reason he thinks -- but equally on us, since his film will be remembered. Ed Wood makes it clear that while its subject may not have achieved much, he did achieve something, and more, achieved it with passion and dignity. In Boogie Nights, by contrast, all that's conveyed is a sneer.
Here Boogie Nights also suffers in comparison to Spinal Tap. While Nigel Tufnel and friends might be relentlessly idiotic, the point of Spinal Tap is not so much to mock them as to satirise the "rockumentary", a genre where a great deal of solemnity is lavished on talentless rockers who patently aren't worth it. There's no obvious equivalent for the porn industry, so the satirical angle is absent from Boogie Nights. Instead, a few cliched buffoons are held up to ridicule. That some of them come across with a bit of life and dignity is more a tribute to the actors (such as William H. Macy, Heather Graham and the always-brilliant Philip Seymour Hoffman) than the script. Performances like these, however, are limited to the supporting roles; of the leads, Julianne Moore bores me, Burt Reynolds looks like he doesn't want to be there, and barely has a presence, and Mark Wahlberg is mildly likeable, but not enough to carry the movie.
The second half of Boogie Nights loses it badly, which is the inevitable result of slavishly copying Goodfellas. Anderson should have been warned. There's an unsubtle 70s good/80s bad transition, with parallels to Carter/Reagan and lo-tech/hi-tech that are never really worked out. The Spinal Tap mock-documentary is shoehorned in, preposterously directed by Moore's stoopid character. The story, which previously had some narrative drive, turns episodic and boring; one pedestrian or unbelievable scene follows another. (The shootout in the doughnut store is particularly bad.) Worst of all, it becomes preachy. Anderson hammers home the seediness of the porn industry -- as if that would enlighten anyone -- and takes up a similarly unenlightening "porn stars are people too" theme, which is undermined by his constant sneering. And the final scene -- which lifts from Raging Bull's lift from On the Waterfront -- is a pure cop-out.
And also, as it happens, a cock-out, as Dirk tops off his "I coulda been a contender" speech by whipping out his fake prosthetic langer. The effects team on Doctor Who could come up with a more convincing cock (and indeed did in the rarely-seen episode Lust of the Cybermen); but the scene is not only ridiculous, it's dull, and a bit sad. Earlier cock-shots were much more successful, avoiding the organ itself and concentrating instead on people's various awed reactions: humour in the best postcard tradition. Anderson's decision to ignore this and "deliver the meat" in the final scene smacks of desperation. It's an obvious (and failed) attempt to shock; by ending the movie with such a cheap stunt, Anderson seems to be conceding his lack of confidence in the material.