I SAW IT ON TAPE - Boogie Nights

I loved Titanic when it came out - I still do. I didn't get addicted to it the way the megafans did (I think my father went back over a dozen times) but I enjoyed sampling the mania from a safe distance. What I did find exhilarating was that, for many months, the most popular thing in the world was a movie - whether loved or hated, it generated a lotta discussion about the medium as a whole, and just having that in the air brought my interest in the art form to even greater heights. The sorta peak of that excitement for me was Oscar night in March of '98 - it's still the highest rated Academy Award telecast to date, and watching it made me feel like I was part of something; suddenly the entire planet was into the same stuff I was into, and we were celebrating with this glittery pageant. I'd watched the show faithfully, since the beginning of the decade, but suddenly I became real invested in Academy history (like past winners, nominees, etc.) which provided me a kinda built-in "watch list" for the foreseeable future. 

My newly-increased craving for old classics generated a weekly routine for me wherein I'd consult the list and rent a stack of videos every Friday for nearly the entirety of 1998 (I pulled out part of this list when I talked about my Bad Lieutenant adventures). Alongside the parade of "significant" Cinema, I was still keeping up on new stuff (this was, after all, the 90s), up to and including all the very prestigious pictures of the moment -- like the movies that threatened the Titanic momentum during Awards Season: L.A. Confidential, Good Will Hunting, As Good as It Gets, The Sweet Hereafter, and the whimsically titled Boogie Nights. For as much as I was paying attention around this time I really knew nothing about it, except that it was a big deal that Burt Reynolds was nominated for (and then lost) an Oscar. At that point I was already burnt out on heavy-handed Dramas with depressing sex stuff - at 15 years old, nudity and intimacy was fast becoming a signifier of shame and violence, and for the most part I found it to be equal parts distressing and boring. Based on its mountain of accolades, that's what I was expecting from Boogie Nights. 

I rented it on some Friday night in April or May of '98, along with I Shot Andy Warhol which I watched first because I was admittedly more excited about it (of course, by the end of the evening nearly every detail of that movie escaped me). I didn't intentionally construct a double feature of 20th Century Period Films but it definitely helped to better accentuate how Boogie Nights was and is the best to ever do it; 90s Cinema seemed obsessed with the 60s, 70s, and 80s and this was the first to feel truly accurate to me. My journey in watching this movie was probably similar to everyone else's: a fun, vibrant, funny first half, then the "80s" title card comes up and the level of talent and ingenuity starts to really sink in, and then the Alfred Molina scene plays out and suddenly it becomes apparent that this film is actually better than most of the great movies it draws its inspiration from. At least, that's what I felt. Never have I been hit with such a surprise: having a mild interest in something and it becomes love at first sight. I immediately sought out Hard Eight (which is another story) but I was most excited for whatever this filmmaker did next (which, of course, is yet another story). 

- Paul