THE ANDERSONS: Boogie Nights (1997)
A film about a guy with a huge…well, you get the idea.
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CONTENT WARNING: Discussion of a murder-suicide, cocaine use, assault, verbal abuse, pornography, sex, genitalia, custody battles, addiction, violence, sexual assault. misogyny.
We’re back after a little time away, and we’re diving into two directors we both love but have a few films we need to catch up on. And they just so happen to have the same last name: Anderson. We’re kicking things off with modern-day maestro auteur, Paul Thomas Anderson, in a film that both established him but is also wildly different and unique in its subject matter, compared to his other films. Which is not to say that a film about pornography in the 1970’s isn’t within P.T.’s purview, but this film is loud, boisterous, and colorful, in contrast to some of the muted, strained tones of his other works. In many ways we’re watching a filmmaker fine-tune his skills in real time, which is pretty incredible considering this is still very early in his career. In fact the only weak link in this otherwise pretty fantastic script and film is actually one of the actors, and it’s only because he decided he hated pornography and hated the movie while doing it; and his performance was good enough to earn him an Oscar nomination. It’s truly one of the most nuanced, thoughtful films about a really complicated set of working relationships…and it happens to feature a lot of sex. Get ready for seriously R-rated fun as we talk about Boogie Nights this week on Macintosh & Maud Haven’t Seen What?!
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Intro music taken from the Second Movement of Ludwig von Beethoven's 9th Symphony. Licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Hong Kong (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 HK) license. To hear the full performance or get more information, visit the song page at the Internet Archive.
Excerpt of “Best of My Love” written by Maurice White and Al McKay, and performed by The Emotions. Copyright 1977 Columbia Records; Sony Pictures Entertainment, Inc.
Excerpts from the film Boogie Nights are © 1997 New Line Productions, Inc.
Excerpt of “Futureman’s Theme” from the original motion picture score to the film Bottle Rocket composed by Mark Mothersbaugh. ℗©1995 Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc.
