Boogie Nights

Paul Thomas Anderson’s film expands The Dirk Diggler Story, a mockumentary short he made at seventeen. Anderson says the short was much funnier, and that ten years shifted his view toward more sadness and drama, which explains why the second half turns punitive. The tonal swings are not accidents either. Anderson calls his models gearshift movies and names Murnau’s Sunrise and Demme’s Something Wild; the jump from farce to dread inside a scene is that choice at work. Dirk Diggler starts from the porn actor John Holmes, and the short came out of a 1981 documentary about him, Exhausted. Eddie was offered first to Leonardo DiCaprio, who turned it down for Titanic and recommended Mark Wahlberg in his place. At the 70th Academy Awards the film took three nominations: Burt Reynolds for Actor in a Supporting Role, Julianne Moore for Actress in a Supporting Role, and Paul Thomas Anderson for Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen. It won none of them. Reynolds did take the Golden Globe for supporting actor that same season. A good fit if you want the ensemble to take the story over from Dirk and the second half to become a catalogue of collapses. Not for viewers troubled by how long the film lets the adult film set look like a happy family.