Boogie Nights

Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Boogie Nights” is the story of a found family that runs a porno production company. It’s set in the United States during the pivot from late 1970s into the 1980s culture and all the changes that pivot precipitated. Maybe more importantly, it’s a story about a talented young man. I’m admittedly most interested in the porno aspect of this movie.

What is porn?

You might describe porn as the feeling of accomplishing something you weren’t strictly a part of. Watching someone else do the thing you think you need to do, I might say, if I could put it another way. Watching someone else build a house you think you need to build, or bake the banana bread you think you’d like to bake, or share the passionate sexual connection with someone you’d like to connect with. Then, as if it were you, feeling even a fragment of that accomplishment.

Mine, mine, mine.

We’re so boxed up as a society, so prone to take and not to give. We seem to be nurtured this way. Mine, mine, mine. Stay back! Don’t hurt me or I’ll hurt YOU. Much of the conflict in this movie occurs when characters put up barriers and refuse to give during an exchange. These conflicts seem to corrode the moral fabric of their world.

Breaking

Dirk is a worthy protagonist for us because he struggles with this in the extreme, and because he’s very inward-focused. He often talks to himself in the mirror, which is useful for us. He has to keep that connection with himself open and he knows it. What Dirk is capable of is something somewhat beyond porn. As far as we can tell, people dissolve into what Dirk is doing. He shares with them the connection he’s established with himself and they go blank, as if vacant. They have, in a sense, become perfect mirrors. That’s two degrees of separation that are eliminated through this cinematic expression, if you’re keeping track. And, by chance, if you disappear into one of these sequences, I would argue three.

Filmmakers and audiences

So this movie is porn, yes. It’s literally about filmmakers and audiences. And it’s honest porn. It shows us how rare that connection between artist and audience is and the struggles between those moments are graciously and gratuitously provided. It’s simply the finest metatextual investigatory film about what porn is and why it exists that I’ve seen. And it isn’t even PTA’s best film. Pretty incredible.