One of my favorite movies.
The A.V. Club had a great deconstruction of the Rahad Jackson/“Sister Christian” scene a few weeks ago. They pointed out one important detail I had never noticed: Alfred Molina never flinches at the sound of the firecrackers.
Are you kidding, that’s the coolest part! He’s just in this insane flow…
Mark Wahlberg’s long, paralyzed stare in that scene might be the best bit of acting he’s ever done. You can see Dirk’s brain just freezing and crashing from the overload of trying to figure out how to get out of there alive. PTA being willing to let the camera hold that stare so long (almost a full minute) was a great decision too.
Hmm, I’ve always felt that scene was thrown in merely to fill up 30 extra seconds of “Jessie’s Girl”. 
Boogie Nights is a fantastic movie, no doubt. It’s a shame Burt Reynolds didn’t win an Oscar for his performance, especially since it’s the closest he’ll ever come to earning one.
Well, the Academy likes to reward its own, and Hollywood has despised Burt for so long (not without good reason) that they couldn’t begrudge him a well-deserved nomination, but a win? Never (especially against a feel-good Robin Williams).
The real crime was Julianne Moore losing to…Kim Basinger??? She gave maybe the 5th best performance in L.A. Confidential, and has never had a career that screamed “overdue”. It’s been speculated that Moore’s strongest scenes (like after the custody proceeding) were toward the second half of the film, which most older Academy members never even got to after turning off “that porn movie” screener at home midway through.
Absolutely. I always mention this scene when discussing this movie amongst friends/interested parties. I take that scene as a culmination of thoughts by Eddie/Dirk (“How did I get HERE?”).
As almost everyone else has stated, the soundtrack for this movie is probably the best (save for “Goodfellas”). I love this movie and will watch it every single time I see it on TV (usually my indie cable station).
One thing that always “bothered” me from the movie was, what was with Eddie’s mom? She was scary. Why was she so jealous of the girls, him staying out, etc. She seemed to get more mad than a mom should be at those situations? Am I reading more into that than I should?
Final Thought? One of my Top 10 Movies of all time. And Mark Wahlberg is HOT in the movie, too.
As much as I loved Boogie Nights, I was rooting for Robert Forster in Jackie Brown that year. And while I agree that it’s way too bad Moore lost to Basinger (who I did like), better Basinger than the odds-on favorite, Gloria Stuart! I loved, ADORED, Titanic, but Stuart was the weak link in the movie for me. I thought she was awful.
Not arguing which song it was, because I seriously do not know.
But posting only to let you know that I am, in fact, a chick. I get that “he” stuff all the time though; that’s what you get for choosing an androgynous screen name.
:: shrugs ::
No big whoop.
Approximately 1 year ago, I discovered that this is a real song. I’m sure everyone else already knew that, but I didn’t.
And what made it even better, is that I discovered it while viewing Transformers: The move (the cartoon) clips on youtube.
This (BG) movie is one of my favorites as well. The scenes are great, the soundtrack, is of course great, and the acting is some of my favorite.
I should have made my username be Chest Rockwell.
Great bit of trivia! Sadly, only one of them has won (the best of a great group, PS Hoffman).
It’s funny, because I have an “Overdue Oscar” list, and 4 of the 6 nominees from this film are on it (Burt misses the cut, as this is one of his only Oscar worthy performances, despite having made several fun movies. Mark Wahlberg also misses the list. He’s too new to be snubbed yet. He hasn’t turned in as many great performance as the others.)
Ranking them in order of worth:
She’s naked in every movie she’s been in since her career tanked. I think she was happy to get the work on a studio release!
Feel…feel…feel MY HEAT!
Great stuff. I had just started law school when this one came out, and I went with a new friend. When they broke into “You’ve Got the Touch”, I knew this guy would be a lifelong bud, as we turned to each other and said “HOLY SHIT! TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE!” Geek nirvana.
Harry Reames, the male lead, is still alive. If you want to hear the story about the making of Deep Throat, I recommend an EXCELLENT documentary: Inside Deep Throat.
I always wondered if the firecrackers were added in as SFX.
LA Confidential is one of my favorite films ever, but I gotta agree. Bassinger stunk. That was the only award where I was rooting AGAINST LAC!
People better than Bassinger in the film:
Cite? I only wish this were true…
Yeah, I gave Basinger too much credit (8th or 9th best is more like it), though a Stuart win would’ve still been a “give-the-veteran-a-bone” tribute, which I would’ve minded less than Basinger’s inexplicable victory.
And Forster’s nomination was so out of left field (but so richly deserved), that I was rooting for him, too–though since he was on his 4th nod by then, Williams seemed inevitable.
What I like about the studio scene is that Marky Mark was a singer before making this movie, so he actually had to TRY to sing that bad. Not being a singer I don’t know, but always imagined that trying to sing horribly when you can naturally sing must be a difficult feat. Like trying to pretend to not know how to dance when you are good at it, your body will just do it anyway on auto-pilot.
I love that the storyline about Buck & his wife- forget her character’s name- isn’t just paper thin about a black guy who likes C&W. Buck isn’t really “into” C&W anyway- it’s just the most recent thing that was considered popular at the time, so Buck latched onto it because he’s so lost. He tried being the flashy porn star in wigs and costumes, then realized how stupid that was. Then he tried being the guy really feeling the whole 70’s Urban Cowboy thing, then realized he didn’t really fit in there either. The whole time, he’s trying to make the porn star thing work, but eventually realized that wasn’t what he wanted out of life. Here’s a guy whose real personality is to be in a normal loving relationship with a wife, maybe a kid, with a house & a picket fence. He had to try on so many different personalities to finally discover who he was. And he’s a fairly minor character in the film.
Always wondered what was up with her too.
As a mother she would know her son was… well, endowed. Is she overly protective? Religious? Is her sex life non-existent and she’s projecting her frustrations on the son she knows is having a wild one? His parent’s marriage is projected as dull and suburban. Eddie from Torrance has one God-given gift and he uses it to leave. But what was it he was leaving? Overbearing mom to be sure, but where was she coming from with such venom?
Not that it matters much, I really enjoyed the movie regardless. I just like that there are so many ways you can take that scene.
Hyperbole maybe, but she’s out there!
Google the phrase “Heather Graham celebrity movie archive”
A few choice films you will find at this must-bookmark site:
Killing Me Softly (there are so many scenes in this one, it could count as three!)
Adrift In Manhattan
Broken
Just wash your hands before you type my thank you post…
That was beautiful. I love Buck and his wife (Jessie St. Vincent was her stage name, I don’t remember if we found out her real name, and played by the lovely Melora Walters, who was so good and so devastating as Philip Baker Hall’s daughter in Magnolia), and you just encapsulated exactly why I love him. A minor character, but a complex character. Don Cheadle was perfect in the role.
Not too mention Julianne Moore’s crappy acting in the porn movie scenes.
I remember reading an interview where she was asked how, since she’s naturally such a good actress, she managed to come off so stiff and self-conscious in those scenes. Her answer was that these were some of the most challenging in the movie and that her solution was to distract herself as much as possible by thinking too much about her body language, specifically about what to do with her hands, where to place them, what gestures to make and when. Basically, focussing on the mechanics of acting instead of the meaning.
Not really an earthshaking revelation but an interesting insight, nevertheless.
I agree, a great shot. My take on it is a little more detailed. When he started staring into the camera, Rick Springfield was singing “I feel so dirty when they start talkin’ cute”. Dirk was a failed porn star who couldn’t get his dick hard. My impression was that the line reminded him of the feelings he used to have getting turned on when he was younger, before he started having sex on camera for a living and got hooked on speed. Feelings he hadn’t experienced in a long time.
Yes, a great movie.
She was sexually attracted to him. Which she knew was wrong. So she was trying to drive him away so she wouldn’t have to deal with these disturbing thoughts and feelings. That was my take on it, anyway.
What about the gay-bashers who beat up Dirk??
The guy that conned Dirk into driving with him seemed to be enjoying the demo a tad too much…