Boogie Nights: Special Edition

By:
In-House Review - Aug 09 2004

Essentially a heterosexual tale of the rise and fall of a mightily endowed porn star (Mark Wahlberg), this fast-paced, multicharactered drama offers some homosexual moments as well. Wahlberg stars as Eddie Adams, an unassuming suburban teen who, with the support of XXX-director Jack (Burt Reynolds) becomes Dirk Diggler, a swaggering superstar of straight smut. This being capitalist America, Dirk soon finds that adulation and success inevitably brings greed, and a tumultuous downfall. One of Dirk's early admirers is Scotty (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a geeky, uncomfortable in his own body production assistant who immediately falls in love with the charming Dirk. But when his awkward sexual advance is rejected, Scotty is horrified by his own stupidity. But instead of killing himself (which the film hints at and the audience, trained by so many similar film situations, expects), he rebounds. But the filmmaker has no more use for him after this and pushes him to the background. In another, more troubling scene, Dirk, in a -addicted free fall, succumbs to the lowest of the low: gay male prostitution. But a gang of gay-bashers soon puts an end to this career alternative. A great film that rambles through the 1970s and '80s porn culture with assuredness and insight but whose gay angles are glimpsed at but never really satisfactorily explored.