Boogie Nights
ブギーナイツ
Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
The San Fernando Valley porn industry from 1977 to 1984, as a family drama.
In 1977 Eddie Adams, a seventeen-year-old high-school dropout, lives with his parents in Torrance, California, and washes dishes at a Reseda nightclub. His mother drinks and abuses him. At the club Jack Horner, a director of pornographic films, recruits him, a minor, for his films. After one more fight at home he moves into Jack's San Fernando Valley house and its makeshift family: Amber Waves, Jack's leading lady, who mothers the newcomers while fighting her ex-husband for her son; Rollergirl, who never takes off her skates; Buck Swope, who dreams of a stereo shop; and Reed Rothchild, who becomes Eddie's best friend.
Eddie renames himself Dirk Diggler and becomes the biggest star of the late seventies. He buys a house and an orange Corvette, and with Reed dreams up a hit series of action films. On New Year's Eve 1979, Jack's assistant director, Little Bill, finds his wife with another man once too often; he kills them both, then takes his own life.
The eighties bring cocaine and videotape. The drug leaves Dirk volatile and unable to perform, and after a row with Jack over a younger rival he is fired; he and Reed chase a music career they cannot pay for. Jack, who believes in film, is pushed into cheap video work after his financier, the Colonel, is jailed for possessing child pornography, and one shoot ends with Jack and Rollergirl beating a man who insulted her. Amber loses custody of her son because of her work, her record and her drug use. Buck, married to the actress Jessie St. Vincent and soon to be a father, is refused a bank loan because of his past; caught in a doughnut-shop hold-up that leaves three people dead, he walks away with the money.
Broke, Dirk tries selling himself and is beaten and robbed. He, Reed and their friend Todd try to sell a dealer, Rahad Jackson, baking soda as cocaine; Todd tries to rob him as well, kills Rahad's bodyguard and is killed by Rahad. Dirk and Reed barely escape. Dirk goes home to Jack, and they make up. By 1984 the family has regrouped: Buck opens his shop, Rollergirl studies for her diploma, Jessie gives birth to their son, and Dirk, Jack and Amber get ready to film again.
Starring
Mark Wahlbergas Eddie Adams / Dirk Diggler
A dishwasher from Torrance who becomes the porn industry's biggest star as Dirk Diggler, then loses nearly everything to cocaine.
Eddie Adams / Dirk Diggler’s story
Eddie Adams is seventeen, washes dishes in a Reseda nightclub and goes home to a mother who drinks and abuses him. Jack Horner, a director of pornographic films, recruits him while he is still a minor. After one more fight at home Eddie moves into Jack's house, names himself Dirk Diggler and becomes the biggest star in the business. The eighties bring cocaine: it leaves him unable to perform and quick to rage, and after a row with Jack over a younger rival he is fired. Broke, he tries selling himself and is beaten and robbed, then barely escapes a drug deal that ends in a shooting. He goes home to Jack, and they make up. In the last scene he stands before a mirror, telling himself he is a star.
Burt Reynoldsas Jack Horner
A director of pornographic films who dreams of making a truly good one, and heads a family of performers nobody else wanted.
Jack Horner’s story
Jack Horner shoots pornographic films on film stock and dreams of one so good that audiences will stay after the sex to see how the story ends: a film that is true and right and dramatic. He keeps a household of performers in his San Fernando Valley house like a family, with Amber, his partner and leading lady, beside him, and recruits Eddie, a dishwasher still under age, to be his star. When Dirk turns on him over a younger rival, Jack fires him. When his financier, the Colonel, is jailed for possessing child pornography, Jack gives in to videotape and hates the work; one limousine shoot ends with him and Rollergirl beating a man who insulted her. When Dirk comes home broken, Jack takes him back, and in 1984 he is ready to shoot again.
Julianne Mooreas Amber Waves
Jack's leading lady, who mothers the young newcomers while losing her own son in a custody fight.
Amber Waves’s story
Amber Waves has been with Jack from the start, his partner and his leading lady, and in his house full of performers she is the one who mothers the newcomers. When Rollergirl breaks down, crying that she needs a mother, Amber holds her. Her own son is with her ex-husband. She goes to court to win custody and loses: the judge finds her unfit because of her work, her criminal record and her cocaine. When the family comes back together in 1984, she films a television advertisement for Buck's new stereo shop and gets ready to make films again with Jack and Dirk. When Jack praises her beauty, she smiles, and her face falls as soon as he has left the room; she is left looking at herself in the mirror.
Heather Grahamas Rollergirl
A young performer who never takes off her roller skates, and who ends the film studying for her diploma.
Don Cheadleas Buck Swope
A performer who dreams of opening his own stereo shop and is refused a loan because of his past.
Why it matters
Boogie Nights treats the pornography business of the San Fernando Valley as a workplace and a family rather than a scandal. Jack Horner's house is full of people nobody else had a use for, and the film takes seriously both what they give one another and what the work takes from them. Its issues are concrete: the stigma that follows sex workers when they try to live outside the industry, so that Amber loses her son in court and Buck cannot get a loan; the cocaine that fuels the good years and wrecks the bad ones; a young man whose worth has been reduced to one part of his body. It also records a real change, from films shot for cinemas to cheap videotape, and what that did to people who believed they were making something. Dirk Diggler is modelled on the actor John Holmes, and the film earned three Academy Award nominations.