Boogie Nights: Classic or Dud

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Really? Wow. I think I empathized with every character in that movie (except maybe Samuel L Jackson.)

― Alex in SF, Thursday, 22 March 2007 17:38 (seventeen years ago) link

Really? Gwyneth Paltrow and John C. Reilly have never been so affecting. What about the tension between Hall's studied cool and Sam Jackson's thuggery?

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Thursday, 22 March 2007 17:40 (seventeen years ago) link

Two words: Roller Girl. Or is that one hyphenated word?

― Spencer Chow, Thursday, 22 March 2007 17:41 (seventeen years ago) link

God, I forgot about Roller Girl...her character hasn't worn particularly well either.

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Thursday, 22 March 2007 17:43 (seventeen years ago) link

Gwyneth Paltrow?

― Dr Morbius, Thursday, 22 March 2007 17:44 (seventeen years ago) link

She's in Hard Eight.

― C. Grisso/McCain, Thursday, 22 March 2007 17:45 (seventeen years ago) link

its been a long time since I've seen Hard 8 (10 years?). Had no idea it was called "Sydney" originally...?

― Shakey Mo Collier, Thursday, 22 March 2007 17:46 (seventeen years ago) link

also I hate Gwyneth Paltrow in general.

― Shakey Mo Collier, Thursday, 22 March 2007 17:46 (seventeen years ago) link

her character hasn't worn particularly well either.

Please elaborate?

― Spencer Chow, Thursday, 22 March 2007 17:48 (seventeen years ago) link

She wasn't given anything to do except skate! I can see Heather Graham petitioning P.T. Anderson and him saying, "No, sorry, don't have anything...well, wait. Wanna play `Roller Girl'?" She projects nothing, she ain't sexy – it's a cute, throwaway character.

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Thursday, 22 March 2007 17:52 (seventeen years ago) link

I assume he means the crap bits about her dropping out of high school, and that whole "dark side of the business" thing that PTA somehow magically both over- and underplays.

― kenan, Thursday, 22 March 2007 17:53 (seventeen years ago) link

I have discovered people will assume Wrong Things about you if you tell a person this is your favorite movie during introductory small talk.

― Abbott, Thursday, 22 March 2007 18:45 (seventeen years ago) link

like that you haven't seen Raging Bull?

― Dr Morbius, Thursday, 22 March 2007 19:13 (seventeen years ago) link

Or maybe that you saw Raging Bull and thought it was a steaming load in comparison?

― Deric W. Haircare, Thursday, 22 March 2007 19:32 (seventeen years ago) link

Roller girl "she ain't sexy" = no.

― Spencer Chow, Thursday, 22 March 2007 19:35 (seventeen years ago) link

admit it, abbott, you can't get enough of the porn

― kenan, Thursday, 22 March 2007 19:37 (seventeen years ago) link

I admit it, but by that logic, Fashionistas or something should be my favorite movie.

― Abbott, Thursday, 22 March 2007 19:41 (seventeen years ago) link

Roller girl "she ain't sexy" = no.

Spencer Chow on Thursday, March 22, 2007 2:35 PM (5 minutes ago)

yeah seriously!

― latebloomer, Thursday, 22 March 2007 19:41 (seventeen years ago) link

Blame my faggotty instincts then. Or dislike of bony, red knees.

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Thursday, 22 March 2007 19:43 (seventeen years ago) link

hahaha the knees aren't where my eyes are focusin' broseph

― latebloomer, Thursday, 22 March 2007 19:44 (seventeen years ago) link

I have discovered people will assume Wrong Things about you if you tell a person this is your favorite movie during introductory small talk

i was gonna say, what, it's not like you said an actual porn movie was your favorite, but then i imagined you saying that, and making the situation even more awesome

― gff, Thursday, 22 March 2007 19:46 (seventeen years ago) link

Boogie Nights was good, but its no The Devil in Miss Jones!

― Shakey Mo Collier, Thursday, 22 March 2007 19:51 (seventeen years ago) link

Genital Hospital

― kenan, Thursday, 22 March 2007 20:05 (seventeen years ago) link

yes we have all seen a porno

― gff, Thursday, 22 March 2007 20:13 (seventeen years ago) link

I have never actually seen one of those old pornos, especially not the ones with spoofy names. I may have seen Deepthroat once, sneaking around through somone's parents' stuff. Anyway that's not how I roll, all 70's style.

― kenan, Thursday, 22 March 2007 20:14 (seventeen years ago) link

porn WAS pretty weird back when it had mainstream/arthouse aspirations. and was only available in movie theaters.

― Shakey Mo Collier, Thursday, 22 March 2007 20:16 (seventeen years ago) link

One time my sister came over to my house to watch Orgazmo, which I hadn't seen in a couple of years. I said, "Oh good, it's already in the VCR," so I pressed play. It was way grainier and fuzzier than I remembered, "Wow, looks like they tried to give it that '70s porn vibe and everything." And then the words came up on the screen: BEHIND THE GREEN DOOR...wrong tape.

― Abbott, Thursday, 22 March 2007 20:47 (seventeen years ago) link

I admit that a lot of my fondness for Boogie Nights is related to an enduring fascination with the 70s porn industry and films in particular. but maybe that's another thread...

― Shakey Mo Collier, Thursday, 22 March 2007 20:50 (seventeen years ago) link

Tomorrow night in El Paso they're showing Deep Throat at the drive-in! I guess it was released in El Paso first, 30 years ago.

― Abbott, Thursday, 22 March 2007 21:03 (seventeen years ago) link

Magnolia >>> Boogie Nights (both are amazing, though)

― Tape Store, Thursday, 22 March 2007 21:35 (seventeen years ago) link

deep throat at the drive in? Like, can't you see that from the highway?

― kenan, Thursday, 22 March 2007 21:37 (seventeen years ago) link

i was just having a conversation last night about how great the comedy is in this movie.

i say classic.

― s1ocki, Thursday, 22 March 2007 22:55 (seventeen years ago) link

yeah if there's one thing this movie has that its Scorsese sources don't, its a lot of good jokes.

― Shakey Mo Collier, Thursday, 22 March 2007 22:58 (seventeen years ago) link

feel, feel, feel...feel the heat.

― Granny Dainger, Thursday, 22 March 2007 22:58 (seventeen years ago) link

"so do you work out?"

― Shakey Mo Collier, Thursday, 22 March 2007 22:58 (seventeen years ago) link

"Hey, are those lizard?"

― Shakey Mo Collier, Thursday, 22 March 2007 23:03 (seventeen years ago) link

"No, they're Italian."

― Shakey Mo Collier, Thursday, 22 March 2007 23:03 (seventeen years ago) link

scorsese has jokes but not as comedic as they are here. really funny improv stuff.

― s1ocki, Thursday, 22 March 2007 23:11 (seventeen years ago) link

the departed was the funniest fucking movie of last year.

― max, Thursday, 22 March 2007 23:15 (seventeen years ago) link

uh please note I didn't say that Scorsese can't be funny. He has lots of teh funnies depending on what film your watching. But the Scorsese films that PTA copped from for Boogie Nights (primarily Raging Bull and Goodfellas) are not broadly comic in the way Boogie Nights is.

― Shakey Mo Collier, Thursday, 22 March 2007 23:17 (seventeen years ago) link

When I first saw Boogie Nights I didn't enjoy it much because I felt that the turn toward darkness was way too extreme. I felt like it took too negative a view of the porn world. I prefer the happy-go-lucky porn fantasy. However, the movie has grown on me over the years. John C. Reilly's performance is pure comic gold.

Magnolia starts out with lots of promise, but goes way too far over to the darkside. I can't really handle the 30 minute long deathbed speech. Once the characters start lipsyncing to Aimee Mann, I have to turn it off. But again, I love John C. Reilly as the rappin' cop.

― Moodles, Friday, 23 March 2007 03:55 (seventeen years ago) link

― nathalie, Friday, 23 March 2007 08:39 (seventeen years ago) link

deep throat at the drive in? Like, can't you see that from the highway?

kenan on Thursday, 22 March 2007 21:37 (Yesterday)

HAHAHA, I first read this post without seeing the one it was responding to, and I was like "Uh, I guess if you're really well endowed, and she's bobbing her head A LOT"

― Hurting 2, Friday, 23 March 2007 15:19 (seventeen years ago) link

On the train last week there was a crude, homemade sticker with a picture of John C. Reilly, and it just said, "Support John C. Reilly." And I thought, right on.

― kenan, Friday, 23 March 2007 15:59 (seventeen years ago) link

I felt like it took too negative a view of the porn world.

Is such a thing possible? Some nasty shit has gone on there...

I don't remember which of BN's laughs were intentional, amid all the pomposity. While I found Molina's perf excellent, I didn't find his scene fall-on-the-floor particularly funny, cuz I don't find yapping coke freaks hilarious.

Also, to find John C. Reilly a plausible porn star, he'd need a big bad mustache.

― Dr Morbius, Friday, 23 March 2007 18:58 (seventeen years ago) link

I think I am going to buy this at lunch at the local $10 DVD sale

― Shakey Mo Collier, Friday, 23 March 2007 19:00 (seventeen years ago) link

Nath, we quit watching...BTGD is pretty crap tho. Marilyn Chambers gets kidnapped and then put in a hypnotic trance or something. She goes out onto a stage in front of an audience of assorted weirdos all glammed out. A black guy comes out w/tribal makeup/necklaces and big white pants w/a hole cut out for his dong, they're playing all this wacky drum music, it's totally offensive & not sexy. Then she blows a guy while giving two others handjobs; the guys aresuspended in head-level swings. The only good thing abt it is the money shot, they play some scary-ass synth drone like a more malignant Tangerine Dream, and it does that '70s video effect of black silhoutte/solid color background, transposed over one another and in super slow motion. -fin-

― Abbott, Friday, 23 March 2007 19:06 (seventeen years ago) link

Sorry to derail. I love Boogie Nights and I do think it's fucking hilarious. It felt a little too long tho.

PHS buying a sports car to win a man's love>>>>>>>>>>>>WHM buying braces to win a man's love

― Abbott, Friday, 23 March 2007 19:08 (seventeen years ago) link

The scene with "The Touch" is absolutely one of my favorite scenes of any movie, ever.

― nickalicious, Friday, 23 March 2007 19:17 (seventeen years ago) link

this movie's about as deep as 'pulp fiction' which isn't to say it's bad (it's extremely entertaining) but its overtures at depth are just window dressing. and the turn towards the darkside just feels mechanical and meaningless (because after all it's not really a downward slide for anyone, it's just one or two bad nights on the town).

― botero, Friday, 23 March 2007 19:32 (seventeen years ago) link

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last time I saw this movie it gave me really weird nightmares and I don't know why

― frogbs, Thursday, 8 July 2021 14:35 (two years ago) link

Both BN and IV are pretty cartoony, but imo Inherent Vice tries too hard and isn’t very funny, while Boogie Nights tries much, much too hard, but has funny moments, even if it’s too glib about its characters’ suffering, in that very 1990s post-Tarantino way

― Chuck_Tatum, Thursday, 8 July 2021 15:09 (two years ago) link

otm. yeah when i rewatched BN a few years ago and it felt a lot more broad and sitcom-y than i remembered, constantly telling you that its characters are idiots in a specific way that feels very of its time now. still funny imo.

i completely forgot that the mp/yp construction was in Boogie Nights. ive definitely heard it at various times over the years since and never clocked it as a BN reference. mindblowing if thats actually the coinage.

― nobody like my rap (One Eye Open), Thursday, 8 July 2021 15:23 (two years ago) link

Boogie Nights has so many characters that are poorly hiding their personal issues and pain, with most of the tragedies played off as comedic as to not turn it into a different movie

That’s probably the through-line in a lot of PTA’s work, whether he’s cloaking tragedy with comedy or presenting genuinely harrowing things punctuated with a series of punchlines

― mh, Thursday, 8 July 2021 15:39 (two years ago) link

I suppose that glibness about tragedy is also just a sign of a filmmaker in their 20s

― Chuck_Tatum, Thursday, 8 July 2021 15:58 (two years ago) link

It does allow some moments of real pain, particularly for Julianne Moore's character. But some things, like William H. Macy's character, are definitely played more kind of as pathetic punchlines.

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Thursday, 8 July 2021 16:01 (two years ago) link

imo Inherent Vice tries too hard and isn’t very funny

sigh

― STOCK FIST-PUMPER BRAD (BradNelson), Thursday, 8 July 2021 16:14 (two years ago) link

pretty much all of his films are very funny though

― STOCK FIST-PUMPER BRAD (BradNelson), Thursday, 8 July 2021 16:16 (two years ago) link

I think PTA absolutely views most of his own films as comedies

― Mr. Cacciatore (Moodles), Thursday, 8 July 2021 16:23 (two years ago) link

The final line of There Will Be Blood makes me crack up every time

― mh, Thursday, 8 July 2021 17:54 (two years ago) link

I can't remember it, but my brain wants to say it's "nobody's perfect!"

― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 8 July 2021 17:56 (two years ago) link

I could’ve sworn it was “ain’t I stinker?”

― Western® with Bacon Flavor, Thursday, 8 July 2021 18:25 (two years ago) link

I thought it was Slim Pickens saying “Yahooo!”
#OneThread

― Planck Generation (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, 8 July 2021 18:27 (two years ago) link

“I’M FINISHED!”

― mh, Thursday, 8 July 2021 18:30 (two years ago) link

two years pass...

Our 70mm run of Paul Thomas Anderson's BOOGIE NIGHTS must end Thursday! Below are 📸 of the actual print you will see!

Don't miss the party of the summer. 🎟️: https://t.co/oXN2lvB3jY pic.twitter.com/xs6VIJ7fUj
— Film at Lincoln Center (@FilmLinc) August 22, 2023

might hit this up, hardly remember the movie

― (•̪●) (carne asada), Tuesday, 22 August 2023 18:44 (eight months ago) link

saw it for the first time last year... it absolutely ruled as a big screen experience.

― got it in the blood, the kid's a pelican (Doctor Casino), Tuesday, 22 August 2023 19:36 (eight months ago) link

His name is...Carne Asada.

His partner's name is...Doctor Casino.

Those are great names!

― clemenza, Tuesday, 22 August 2023 19:37 (eight months ago) link

"You know my reputation. 70 millimeters of tough load..."

― an icon of a worried-looking, long-haired, bespectacled man (C. Grisso/McCain), Tuesday, 22 August 2023 23:00 (eight months ago) link

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