Boogie Nights

How the soundtrack to Paul Thomas Anderson’s 1997 cult film, set against the backdrop of the 70s porn industry, helps to cement it as a modern classic.

January 1996. Paul Thomas Anderson’s debut film, Hard Eight, premieres at the Sundance Film Festival. It centres on a veteran Vegas gambler (Philip Baker Hall) and the young man who he befriends and mentors (John C. Reilly) as they become embroiled in a small-scale criminal plot, with supporting turns from Gwyneth Paltrow and Samuel L. Jackson. The film is an understated character study set in what some would describe as Swingers Vegas, a reference to the film that introduced the world to Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau. A Vegas with ageing casinos, where misfits and eccentrics could coexist with suited out of towners, hoping for the mythical big win. The old Vegas – before LED signs advertised EDM pool parties and a single drink cost you more than a hotel room for the night.

Having already surrendered to a studio-enforced name change – from the art-house flavoured Sydney, the name of Hall’s character, to the straightforward dice-themed Hard Eight – Anderson had to battle with the film’s producers for a year before they agreed to relinquish control and allow him to use his cut for the theatrical release. The bastardised film title and producer interference left a sour taste. Dent to the ego aside, Anderson used the experience of Hard Eight to ensure that the same situation wouldn’t be repeated – he would make something personal, without compromise, and bring his laser-focus vision to life.

Nothing croons I did it my way and sticks it to the doubters like reviving a character from a mockumentary that you made aged 17, so that’s exactly what Paul Thomas Anderson decided to do. Less than a year after Hard Eight was finally released, Anderson had reworked his 32-minute Spinal Tap-esque faux-documentary, made while at high school and starring his friends and family, in to an Oscar-nominated modern classic. The Dirk Diggler Story became Boogie Nights.

Boogie Nights is an odyssey through the golden age of porn during the late 70s and early 80s, following the story of young Eddie Adams as he ditches his job washing dishes at a local nightclub and is reborn as Dirk Diggler, the adult film industry’s biggest (wink) talent. Although the film takes place in the porn world, it’s not a film about porn. It’s a film about the people who live in that world – some are in front of the camera, some behind the camera, some trying to get in front of the camera, some trying to shake off the stigma of being associated with the industry, and some who just attend the drug-fuelled pool parties that often take place when there isn’t any sex to be filmed.

Anderson’s ambitious script, boasting at least 9 central characters with their own story arc, demanded flawless casting that would need to trickle down to even the eighth or ninth supporting role. Whereas most films with a modest budget would focus on a couple of lead roles and possibly the luxury of some familiar character actors in supporting parts, Boogie Nights is a full blown ensemble piece without a single misstep in its casting.

According to various interviews with Anderson, the film’s producers, and casting director Christine Sheaks, the lead role of Eddie Adams/Dirk Diggler went to their third choice. Anderson’s version of events for casting Dirk Diggler appears to have changed somewhat over the years – depending on which interview you hear, first choice Leonardo DiCaprio either flat out turned it down due to the racy nature of the script or he came on board only to get cold feet and bow out to do Titanic. Despite my personal love for Boogie Nights, it’s hard to argue with Leo’s choice from a career standpoint. Joaquin Phoenix was next in mind, but the sudden death of his brother made his involvement a non-starter. That meant it was a case of third-time lucky as Mark Wahlberg, at that point a very famous ex-popstar and Calvin Klein model with a couple of acting credits, came on board. Settling for third choice isn’t normally associated with the best result but in the case of Wahlberg’s casting, it turned out to be a masterstroke. Wahlberg is perfect as the wide-eyed, floppy-haired Eddie Adams before he transforms in to Dirk Diggler, capturing the slightly shy eager-to-please new kid on set before his descent in to coked-up cockiness. Given his inexperience as an actor at this point, you feel the parallels with Wahlberg’s own career at the time – brought in to a new world, not completely sure of himself, but possesses a special something that gives him longevity in the industry.

If casting Dirk Diggler meant finding a young, hot talent at the beginning of their career, casting veteran director Jack Horner sat at the opposite end of the acting spectrum. Again, there are obvious parallels between the character and the profile of actor suited for the role – a rich, successful filmmaker with a commanding presence, enjoying the twilight of his career. Jack Nicholson refused to read the script, Harvey Keitel couldn’t understand why he had been offered the part, and 60-year-old Warren Beatty thought he was better suited to playing teenage porno sensation Dirk Diggler – genuinely. What a legend. Eventually, Hollywood legend Burt Reynolds signed on, the macho all-American man and 70s star given a chance to return to the decade he’s most famous for. Despite a career full of iconic roles, it feels like Reynolds was born to play Jack Horner – the expertly maintained goatee, the contrast between the slick white hair and Californian permatan, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the gold jewellery was brought from home too – inch-perfect for a successful porn director. Sadly Reynolds distanced himself from Boogie Nights after filming wrapped, claiming he ‘hated’ Anderson owing to on-set tensions, and even sacked his agent who he said duped him in to making a film that made him feel ‘uncomfortable’. Ironically, and despite his dislike for the film and its director, Reynolds’ performance as Jack Horner earned him his first Golden Globe for film acting and his first and only Oscar nomination, for Best Supporting Actor. It’s said that his lack of campaigning to Academy members cost him the win, in what would have been a fitting way to sign off from Hollywood.

PTA with Heather Graham whilst filming Jack’s pool party

With Wahlberg and Reynolds on board, Diggler and Horner cast, the surrogate father and son combo secured, did Anderson and his producers stop there? Did they settle for anybody just to crack on and make the film? Nope. Step up some of the most respected actors of the 90s and beyond – Julianne Moore, Philip Seymour Hoffman, William H. Macy, John C. Reilly (before an entire generation knew him only as Dale Doback from Stepbrothers), Don Cheadle, Thomas Jane, and Heather Graham make up the rest of Horner’s production crew and extended porn family. Anderson also paid tribute to the industry that he was dramatising by using real adult film stars in smaller roles, like the judge, played by real-life porn star Veronica Hart, in a scene concerning Amber’s custody battle. Philip Baker Hall – Hard Eight’s Sydney – even drops by as one of Horner’s financiers, declaring ‘I like butter in my ass, and lollypops in my mouth’. As you do.

To borrow from Ryan Gosling’s shameless Wall Street banker in The Big Short; Boogie Night’s flawless casting is the ice cream and the way each actor inhibits their role is the hot fudge. Anderson’s script, charting the lives of a group of Californians at both the centre and periphery of the porn industry over two decades, which never slows or stumbles, is the banana. The heavy Scorsese and Robert Altman influence, Anderson’s thinly-veiled attempt to one-up his biggest influences with expert tracking shots and camera work, well, those are the nuts. So what’s the cherry on top of the Boogie Nights sundae? What pushes you further in to the 70s setting, and makes watching the film a party in itself? What takes this great film and lifts it to modern classic status? The soundtrack.

The 90s was the decade of the pop music film soundtrack, where the idea of releasing an album full of the songs licensed for a film was seen as an extension to the marketing and promotion of the film itself. Quentin Tarantino – a friend of Paul Thomas Anderson – is widely known as the director who spearheaded this movement, hand-picking a selection of songs from across the musical spectrum to use in his films as he burst on to the scene with Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. Tarantino might be the 90s’ leading exponent of the pop music/indie film crossover, but a lesser-known background figure was arguably just as influential in making this new trend happen and become somewhat of an industry standard move.

Karyn Rachtman is a music supervisor. Her job is to license music for use in a film, in essence to agree a fee with the artist or rights holder meaning that a song can appear in a film and its soundtrack, and to sometimes suggest appropriate songs for scenes themselves. In 1992, Tarantino was adamant that he would use Stealers Wheel’s ‘Stuck in the Middle with You’ for the now-iconic ear cutting scene in Reservoir Dogs, but his music supervisor was unable to secure the licensing rights. He was introduced to Rachtman, who bullishly managed to come out of a complicated negotiation with the song secured, and Tarantino brought her on-board to Reservoir Dogs full time. Rachtman further demonstrated her business savvy by shopping the Reservoir Dogs soundtrack album around to different record labels and ultimately using the record deal advance to fund the licensing of more songs – a chicken and egg scenario; securing money up front for a soundtrack album and using that money to secure more songs for said album. *Insert The Hangover math gif*.

This was the beginning of an illustrious career working on some of the most iconic soundtracks of the decade. Rachtman returned on Tarantino’s next project, Pulp Fiction, hitting another home run in the process. Everyone who has seen the film remembers one of the iconic musical moments, whether it’s the Dick Dale surf guitar theme song, Vincent Vega and Mia Wallace twisting to Chuck Berry at the Jack Rabbit Slim dance contest, or Kool and the Gang’s ‘Jungle Boogie’ playing from the car stereo while two hitmen discuss the French name for a quarter-pound cheeseburger. The soundtrack sold 4 million copies and the Washington Post called it ‘a milestone in creative music supervision’. Given her track record, who better to bring the music of the 70s and 80s to Boogie Nights?

The complete Boogie Nights soundtrack naturally mirrors the film itself – a journey from 70s funk, soul, and disco, in to the ballads and power-pop of the 80s, with a few old classics and jazz standards thrown in. The soundtrack was released in two volumes, both of which stand alone as great albums in their own right, and the film overall features a total of 40 songs (masterfully compiled in order of appearance by Spotify user Unterwasser). The beauty of Boogie Nights is that it’s not just good songs and good filmmaking, separate entities; it’s a marriage of the two things working perfectly together, the music having as much presence as the characters themselves.

Boogie Night’s opens with one of its most iconic scenes – an exhilarating start, visually and musically. The horns of The Emotions’ ‘Best of My Love’ blast out as the film’s title bursts on screen in the form of a neon nightclub sign, the electric energy from the song mirroring the literal electricity from the neon pink sign. As your brain processes the sound of the guitar and bass sliding up the neck to join the song’s main chord progression, the camera swings down from the sign to street level and follows Jack Horner’s car as it arrives outside another nightclub on the next block. A title card sets the scene – San Fernando Valley, 1977. Anderson introduces the world of the film by moving through it, as the same uninterrupted tracking shot lasts nearly three minutes; from the neon sign outside, through the entrance and in to the nightclub where we meet virtually all of the film’s main characters, while the camera moves seamlessly from the bar to the dancefloor, the dancefloor to the booths and back through the dancefloor, before settling on a slow-motion shot of Eddie Adams. The background noise from the club fades, telling us that Wahlberg’s Adams will be at the centre of the story. The shot of Heather Graham’s Rollergirl skating across the room, unable to avoid shaking her hips in time to the music, always sticks out as encapsulating how the pounding disco music of the era is ever-present in the world of Boogie Nights, in the air, in their psyche. The opening scene takes Scorsese’s Copacabana tracking shot from Goodfellas, where Henry and Karen enter the club’s backdoor and walk through the kitchen, chews it up and spits it out. Scorsese took the semi-subtle approach of entering through the back, avoiding the fuss of the main door – Paul Thomas Anderson says fuck that, we’re going in through the front.

If the opening scene is our introduction to the world of Boogie Nights, the pool party at Jack Horner’s house is when we become a fully-fledged member of the group. Eddie Adams arrives at Jack’s house having decided to leave home and is paraded around as the soon-to-be star of their films. Three Dog Night’s version of ‘Mama Told Me (Not to Come)’ soundtracks Eddie’s arrival – the shimmery Wurlitzer piano and reverb-laced rim shot mirroring the sun reflecting on the water of Jack’s pool, the laid back groove personified by people lounging by the water. We see Eddie’s first meeting with Reed Rothchild (John C. Reilly) and get a taste of Reilly’s hilarious improv chops, years before he went toe to toe with Will Ferrell in Stepbrothers, as he compares himself to Han Solo and barely manages to make a batch of margaritas. Anderson stops the camera’s movement, fixing on Adams and Rothschild’s verbal sparring for an unusual amount of time, convincing you that you’re lingering next to a genuine conversation. The music transitions to ‘Spill the Wine’ by War as more guests arrive at the party – a circus-esque piano line backed by Latin percussion, car doors closing in time with the drums. Anderson has the camera travel through the garden around the pool, exposing us to snippets of the conversations of the partygoers; discussing their porn look (‘chocolate love’), begging to be given a role in one of Jack’s films. You would be forgiven for thinking ‘Spill the Wine’ was written especially for this scene – it meanders along during the verse, sitting perfectly in the background while we hear from the characters, then bursts in to a samba-style crescendo just as Anderson shows a bikini-clad girl dive in to the pool, following her under water and back up in to the searing daytime heat. The pool party scene opens our eyes to parts of the lifestyle that might shock someone from an alternate straight-laced lifestyle, or be the central dramatic focus in another film, but to Jack’s friends it’s just a part of the world they live in. A tiny blonde’s first words as she arrives is to ask if there is ‘any coke at this party?’, and we find her five minutes later having overdosed, bleeding from the nose, foaming from the mouth, and having convulsions. No matter, she’s bundled in to the car by the driver of her much older date and taken to hospital, with barely the bat of a fake 70s eyelash for sympathy. The only consequence of the overdose is the chiselled partygoer who provided the powder confessing to have had two girls OD on him in the same week, as he’s told to ‘get some new shit’. We know that they do things a little differently at Jack’s house.

Jack’s pool party shows the group at the peak of their powers, having fun in between filming sex scenes. They drink cocktails, sunbathe, relax in the hot tub, and practice their questionable diving technique. Fast forward about 90 minutes and the carefree, sun-kissed partying is long gone. Eddie is now Dirk Diggler; he has ridden the wave of the porn industry, picked up some awards and a cocaine habit and is descending deeper in to a murky cycle of behaviour without Jack by his side to keep him on the straight and narrow. Todd (Thomas Jane) has concocted a plan where he will take a bag of baking soda to a notorious drug dealer and pass it off as high-quality cocaine, with Dirk and Reed coming along to add some ineffective muscle; the kind of plan only someone on a 48-hour cocaine bender could conceive. The trio arrive, looking absolutely drained, and are met by Alfred Molina’s Kimono and Y-front-wearing dealer, Rahad Jackson. Jackson is having a party of his own, freebasing cocaine and listening to his own meticulously arranged mixtape. Night Rider’s 80s power-pop smash hit ‘Sister Christian’ plays while Jackson babbles and postures to Dirk, Reed and Todd, who are squeezed on to the couch in front of him. As Jackson plays air-piano and air-drums in time with the music, a small Chinese houseguest stands in the corner setting off firecrackers, mimicking the sound of gunshots. As each firecracker explodes, the trio jump out of their skin on the couch. The dichotomy of the power-pop ballad beneath the loud firecracker bangs, the trio laughing nervously and looking like they are trying to hold back tears, while Molina’s Jackson is unaffected by the loud bangs, is masterfully crafted tension. Molina apparently wore earplugs with the song playing to mask the noise and stop him from jumping, which perfectly separates him from the three on the couch who are trying to rip him off. Jackson pulls out a gun for some casual Russian roulette showmanship while his huge bodyguard tests the baking soda disguised as cocaine. His mixtape jams and skips to the next song – Rick Springfield’s ‘Jessie’s Girl’ – even more upbeat and driving the contrast home even further. There’s something about uplifting, happy songs in moments of tension that work so well; Alex DeLarge bellowing ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ while breaking in to a house and assaulting the homeowners in Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, or Donovan’s ‘Atlantis’ soundtracking De Niro going to town on Billy Batts’ head in Goodfellas spring to mind. Back to Jackson’s living room where, despite being paid for the fake cocaine, Todd pulls out a gun and demands something else. You can almost taste the cocaine throat drip as Todd barely manages to utter his demands, ‘in the master bedroom, under the bed, in a floor safe – understand?’. Although he hasn’t had the same storied career as a lot of the other actors in the cast, Thomas Jane’s delivery is superb. Half-laughing, fighting with an involuntary coke-induced jaw clench, he appears to be just about managing to get his words out without having a full blown heart attack; all while Rick Springfield’s cheesy power-pop continues to blast out. Despite Dirk and Reed’s pleas, a shootout ensues and they just about manage to get out the door, accompanied by Nena’s ‘99 Luftballons’. Naturally.

These are some of the most expertly crafted scenes in film – unrivalled camera work, perfectly soundtracked, capturing the ecstatic highs and paranoid lows of the story and the wider era. There is a constant undertone of tragedy and paranoia in the air throughout the film, the uncomfortable coke-fuelled claustrophobia rubs off on you as you watch. The film aside, the alluring backstory alone is worthy of note; a 27-year-old director, stung by the experience of his first film, producing something that can comfortably sit beside other heavyweights of the era, like Pulp Fiction and Goodfellas. Although thrown a small bone by the Academy Awards in the form of a Best Original Screenplay nomination, you can’t help but surmise that the perception of a film about porn may have impacted its award chances and even its current standing today. It doesn’t feature on best or favourite film lists as frequently as the likes of a Pulp Fiction, which for me it comfortably trumps.

PTA on the set of There Will Be Blood with Daniel Day Lewis

As for Paul Thomas Anderson, the rest of his career to date has shifted away from the straight-up gritty storytelling seen in Boogie Nights. After present-day LA stories Magnolia and Punch-Drunk Love (for me, not a patch on Boogie Nights and both underwhelming), he returned to period pieces – the western epic There Will Be Blood, his most acclaimed film, followed by The Master, Inherent Vice and Phantom Thread. To me, his filmmaking has shifted to shining a light on complex characters, giving the actors room and space to chew up scenes, but without the same pace and excitement that was expertly employed in Boogie Nights. The good news is that we might get to return to Anderson’s world of 70s California sometime soon – his latest film Soggy Bottom, starring Bradley Cooper, is set for release this year. It follows a high school student who becomes an actor in the 1970s – sounds a lot like someone I know; a certain D. Diggler.