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Movie Details

Title:		Boogie Nights
Director:		Paul Thomas Anderson
Year:		1997
Genre:		Drama
Times Seen:		3
Last Seen:		11.22.25

Other Movies Seen By This Director (8)
- Inherent Vice
- Junun
- Licorice Pizza
- The Master
- One Battle After Another
- Phantom Thread
- Punch-Drunk Love
- There Will Be Blood

Notes History

Date Viewed	Venue	Note
11.22.25	Internet	According to this journal, I haven't seen this since 2008. I was going to watch a different movie tonight but I've been on a kick watching PTA-related podcasts for One Battle After Another. That led to a 4-hour Bill Simmons rewatchables that basically discussed the movie scene by scene and really made me want to watch it again, so here I am. You know, I'd probably have a similar feeling if I watched Big Lebowski again, or maybe Fight Club or LA Confidential or Austin Powers. All these late-90s movies I saw in college and got when the DVD format was young, I feel like I watched all of them so much. They basically live in my memory so I often feel like watching them would be time better suited seeing something new. I kind of wondered if I'd even seen this since 2004. And while I had no new discoveries or epiphanies with this viewing, I still had a great time, like revisiting old friends. I mean, all these people had careers. Becky Barnett's on the terrible Sex and the City reboot, Guzman and Cheadle and Reilly and Macy are all still working as far as I know. Julianne Moore's still killing it. Heather Graham and Melora Walters... I think they're still working? Wahlberg's in all those same-ass Peter Berg movies, Thomas Jane was in The Expanse, Alfred Molina was Doc Ock. Phill Hoffman became Phil Hoffman here and had a whole career, this was Burt Reynolds' last good performance, Philip Baker Hall, man. Nina Hartley and Veronica Hart... uhh... might still be working? All that to say, this movie feels more like a summer camp before everyone went their own way and got famous. The stereos' blasting good tunes (thanks to that TK-421) and the margaritas are cold and the pool's just right. It's a party on the screen but also in my memory. Seeing this for the first time, we were kinda late so I had to sit in the front row. You got used to it but it was not ideal, but still I remember being pleasantly surprised. They took a movie about porn and made it Goodfellas. But when that first DVD came out with the commentary and deleted scenes... that's when it really took off. Lines started getting quoted amongst us friends. I bought Sydney/Hard Eight and listened to that commentary so by the time a couple years later when Magnolia hit I was about as big a PTA fan as you could be. I can't tell you how many times I've seen this. I read the published script and found all the changes they didn't even shoot (or at least didn't put on the DVD). Really lived and breathed this for a while. Now it makes me feel old. That was almost 30 years ago! You can still see the same filmmaker in One Battle After Another but this is definitely the work of a young man full of excitement and out to make a point. Somewhere along the line, maybe PTA's interview on Marc Maron's podcast promoting Inherent Vice, PTA's personal recollection of this movie had basically been replaced with what everyone said it was. I think Magnolia comes from the same place that this does, but after Punch-Drunk Love and certainly after There Will Be Blood Anderson's in a different place. Then through The Master and Inherent Vice into Phantom Thread he's even more restrained. Now if you watch this and Licorice Pizza together, even though they take place in the same place at the same time they are so totally different in so many ways. I should watch Licorice Pizza again because I really loved it when I saw it but haven't revisited and it seems like it's not high on anyone else's lists. But anyway, it's not like I wish PTA would not grow as a filmmaker; I think his last two films show a level of mastery above the flashy early stuff. Confidence rather than cockiness maybe? But it's still fun to come back and see the quick-cut close-ups that establish all the early scenes or hear the tires screeching when Todd Parker crashes into the movie or see that I Am Cuba shot go into the pool, underwater, back above the water, then back under. Fun to visit this old friend again.
01.08.08	DVD	wow is this really the first movie I've seen this year? whew. I guess I've been watching too much TV. Did I mention that The Wire is good? So is this, but I feel like I've talked about this movie forever. I ended up watching this in two parts though (stopping after Amber Waves' documentary) and this is the first time I've watched the movie and kind of seen cracks in it. The second half without the stellar first half to carry it kind of splinters into pretty disparate scenes Dirk's whole drug problem is really sudden and a lot of ideas are thrown out fairly quickly when compared to how it began. I also really wish they had the scene at the end where Dirk revisits Cheryl in the deleted scenes. Afterward I watched the John Holmes doc on the second disc of Wonderland for comparison. They use a few clips from the Johnny Wadd movies and one scene where Holmes is standing next to his director that are near verbatim from the Boogie Nights homage. Pretty interesting. if, you know, you're into that kind of thing. So i really had no end-of-year reflection this year. I don't know if that's because I've been in a movie draught for the past month or what... I think this past year is more my usual average though. 2006 seems to be the pinnacle of movie-watching for me (I still can't believe I saw 70 movies that July). With Real Life things intruding into my free time I foresee no more all-night binges or 5-movie days in this coming year. Heck, I don't even have a South By badge. So we'll see what the future holds.
05.09.06	DVD	It's hard to believe that DVD is 9 years old. I believe it was the summer of 97 that I first saw the test market releases of The Wild Bunch, Goodfellas, Bonnie & Clyde, and Cool Hand Luke in Warner Brothers snapper cases on the shelves of Suncoast in the mall. With a little help from porn, DVD had taken off by the winter and all the major studios had committed to DVD releases by the next spring. I bring all of this up because Boogie Nights was the first movie for me where DVD elevated my enjoyment of the movie from Like to Love. When I first saw it in the theater, I was surprised by its quality but still felt it was just a porno version of Goodfellas. When the DVD came out though, oh man. Not only did it have a nifty mini-collage of stills on the paper fold-out, but it also had a music video directed by PTA, a commentary track, and 9 deleted scenes. Back then, that was a lot. Also back then, the 9 deleted scenes were actually deleted scenes... meaning scenes that were well worth watching if you were a fan of the movie, not just alternate takes or 15 seconds of snipped footage at the tail of a scene. One of these scenes was actually a full mag's worth of film; like 10 minutes of in-character improv of everyone trying to act in a porn movie and forgetting lines. I think this is the exact moment that I became a luis Guzman fan for life. Also, the commentary track still stands as one of the most interesting and easy to listen to tracks I've heard... I REALLY wish PTA would start recording them again... the tracks he laid down for his first two movies are amazing. So, as a byproduct of getting the nifty DVD, I watched this movie an awful lot. Every time I'd see it I'd notice something new; some minute detail going on in the background with a supporting character that adds to the immersiveness and authenticity of this world that PTA recreated. The first half of this movie is pretty hard to beat for me... it evokes my absolute best memories as a child in the Valley on hot summer days... My parents weren't pornographers or anything but just the palm trees and tiki torches and hanging out by the pool in the perfect weather and everything like that... it really gets it perfectly in my eye. I do have early memories of coming home from school and passing the Pussycat theater though... and all of the cars and fashions and houses in this movie seem absolutely right to me... And now that I think of it, I think this may be the movie that I've seen the most times without ever seeing it in pan&scan... Actually no, I think it's a close tie between this, The Big Lebowski, and Fight Club... but still... this was an early one that I've only seen in widescreen, which I only notice on a consciouss level because there's so much going on in the framing of this movie. With everything going on in the background, you can't afford to not see the whole screen. So anyway... this feels long and rambling. I still love this movie... it IS a tad long, and the title cards are apt because the last half hour is a long way down, but it's a good long and I don't mind...