Subject: review: Boogie Nights
From: "B. S. Blair" <bsb>
April 1998

Boogie Nights
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I checked this out at Fox Village dollar show. Fox Village is a total
piece of shit theatre near Wastegate Plaza on the west side of town.
The sound and technical quality of the films is abysmal, but you
can bring in whatever food and beverages you want (concealed) and
then break them out in full view later during the show. You will need
to yell 'focus' a lot at the beginning of films so that the kids
porking and getting high in the projection room will hear you.

The first half hour of this film totally sucked. The characters were
an uninspiring cheesy bunch of losers and I wished they would all
die. I was getting so pissed that I would have walked out, but
Cheryl had not yet finished her taco bell sludge, so that would
have been rude.

Then Burt Reynolds (porno producer) says that his ultimate goal 
is to make a porno film so good that people will stay in the theatre
after they 'come'. That was when the film started getting good. I
found myself starting to give a fuck about some of the characters and
the film actually started to become entertaining and meaningful.

The film explores some interesting issues and the disco fashion/
music cheese factor was high.  The soundtrack for the film rules,
including one of my personal favorites, Magnet and Steel, by Walter
Egan who looks like a skinny computer geek with the hair of Larry
Fine and tight white satin pants.

The film explores how, no matter how fucked up people are, they try
to set up surrogate support mechanisms ("families") for themselves.
Fate and circumstance play a big part in this film.  The film states,
do what you must to get by, but don't take more than you need. Keep
the original purpose in mind. Greedy bastards piss people off and
get their asses kicked. Greedy bastards piss off Fate and die.

Apply these themes to the various scenes in the film. The fratboy
scene with rollergirl in the limo, the male porno stars in the
pedophile drug king's lair, the black dude in the donut shop robbery.

The film also explores drugs and addiction, how people
get new acquaintances into doing drugs (intentionally,
unintentionally). Drugs suck because they distract you from greater
things (your kids, getting a hard-on, humility, gratefulness,
working rather than stealing).

The most hilarious part of the film involves the porno stars making
uninspired studio recordings that are a cross between Toto, Eye
of the Tiger, and my friends' junior high band.  Pain and Torment;
I could not stop laughing.  Nobody else in the theatre was laughing
though, which often happens to me. "La freak. C'est chic". <-
original soundtrack sampling

I totally forgot the name of the porno star main character, which
is sad. All I can think of is 'Dick Trickle', but that's a race car
dude. Maybe it was Dirk Diggler, star of Rambone, Romancing the
Bone, and Willie's Wonka and the Chocolate Colostomy.

Personally, I give this film a '3' on the bone-a-rama scale, but
I give it a '1' on the viewing scale due to the pacing issues with
the first part of the film.