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"I like stories with good old-fashioned roots that obey the rules—you know, 'the gun on
the wall in the first act goes off in the third,' and so forth.
My favorite directors are the ones who know and embrace those rules, then pile something
completely punk rock on top of them."
That was a quote from Paul Thomas Anderson in an interview about his film "Boogie Nights".
And I have to say that I agree with him.
Often the best films aren't the ones that completely break the mold, but rather films
that know and embrace those that came before it, by delivering good old fashioned storytelling.
If we were to compare Anderson's "Boogie Nights" and Martin Scorcese's "Goodfellas" we can
find a lot of common ground.
They both follow the rise and fall of two young and ambitious men, who find themselves
a sense of belonging within a surrogate family, and whose greed and ego ultimately lead to
their own self-destruction.
But while they may share much of the same DNA, each film does plenty to establish itself
as its own unique film, showing us how a film can borrow many of its thematic or structural
elements and still maintain its own creative voice.
Act One: The Gun on the Wall In both Boogie Nights and Goodfellas, we start
with a young protagonist with a difficult life at home, seduced by a new world and all
of its possibilities.
There's a kind of romance happening, for the lifestyle, the community, and it's understandable
to see why.
From both Henry and Dirk's perspective, these people have it all, the women, the cars, the
house, the money, the connections, and they just want to get a piece of that for themselves.
Before long, they're more than just a participatory member, but a rising star whose come to earn
the respect of everyone who surrounds them.
They find something they're good at and embrace it, as Karen puts it in a line from Goodfellas,
"these guys aren't brain surgeons, they're regular blue collar guys" so they claw their
way to success the only way they know how, even if it means losing their real family
in the process.
But everything is working out for our protagonists, or so it seems at first glance.
Many seeds are planted in the first act of Boogie Nights that foreshadow the darker turn
the film will ultimately take.
At every point it's all kept light, even breaking for moments of levity despite the darker context
of some of the scenes.
Scorcese employs some foreshadowing of his own, if you can even call it that.
Mostly we just see character traits established early in the story that become important later
on, like Maury and Jimmy's money issues, or Henry's lack of empathy towards Karen.
But one scene in particular stands out as a great bit of foreshadowing.
Demonstrating Tommy's odd sense of humor and erratic, often violent behavior that we'll
see make a return in the next section.
The intensity builds and we're thinking that Henry might be in real danger here, until
he realizes it's all a big joke.
"I almost had him!"
But even when the scene quickly turns violent after the owner asks Tommy to pay his overdue
bill, the laughs only get louder.
Which brings us into Act Two.
Act Two: It's All Fun and Games...Until Someone Gets Hurt
The first act has gone quite well for our characters, the money is coming in, the family
bond still strong and everyone's happy.
They're living the dream, just like they always wanted, until around the half-way point of
each story, when the metaphorical gun on the wall finally goes off.
What started out as all fun and games has quickly turned into something completely different,
with what Paul Thomas Anderson would call "karmic debt" starting to be paid back in
full.
This too is true for the characters in Goodfellas, though they don't seem to be as aware, until
it's far too late.
Despite everything that's happened, Henry and Karen are in shambles after she finds
out about his mistress.
Henry's drug addiction worsens and he lies to Paulie's face to continue his Pittsburgh
operation, and of course we all know what happens with Tommy's erratic behavior.
But even worse than killing Spider, Tommy took out a made-man, something that you just
don't do in the Mafia.
But Henry and the others still live in blissful ignorance, their karmic debt remaining unpaid,
and after successfully pulling off the biggest heist in American history, their egos remain
unchecked and life continues on as normal, for a time.
Until paranoia sets in and Jimmy and Tommy start taking out everyone involved in the
heist so they can keep the cops off their trail, and hold on to the majority of the
money.
And even as the body count continues to climb, the lies, the betrayals, Henry still can't
see the downfall of everything he helped to create, at least not yet.
Act Three: A Sobering Wake-Up Call & Returning Home
Up until this point in both films, the characters have their taste of reality, but still continue
to live in denial.
Whether from pride or ego, or a desperate attempt to retain their old lifestyle, they
continue to make the same mistakes that led them down this darker path to begin with,
until they both receive a sobering wake-up call in a pivotal scene that perfectly captures
feelings of anxiety and paranoia of two sleep deprived drug addicts desperately clinging
on to what power they still have, with Dirk and Henry finally receiving some karmic justice
for their actions.
And in these scenes, Scorsese and PT Anderson are able to perfectly communicate these feelings
of Anxiety and Paranoia in their main characters to the audience through their deliberate choices
of cinematography, music, writing, and editing.
A fast moving camera vs. a slow methodical camera.
Fast cuts vs. long takes.
Diegetic vs. non-diegetic music.
It’s these types of decisions that create a mood of anxiety and paranoia in Goodfellas
and utter dread and claustrophobia in Boogie Nights.
Immediately following these incredibly tense scenes that challenge Dirk and Henry more
than ever before, they return to the patriarch of their respective surrogate families, in
desperate need of their help.
Dirk is forgiven and warmly embraced, welcomed back into the family, but Henry is turned
away, only given a bit of cash to help him with his troubles.
And this is where the two films really diverge.
In Goodfellas, the family has all but fallen apart, with most of the crew already dead,
and the few remaining unsure of who they can still trust.
So Henry enters a plea deal that will keep him out of prison, and get him into the Witness
Protection Program to keep his family safe, turning his back on the closest thing to a
family that he ever had.
But in Boogie Nights, the characters have suffered through the worst of it, and we see
something of a happy ending for everyone.
Reed performing his magic act, Buck and Jesse opening up their stereo store and welcoming
their first child into the world, Rollergirl goes back to school, with Jack and Dirk mending
fences and renewing their working relationship.
Both films can teach us a lot about the potential dangers of ego, pride, and selfish tendencies.
They each certainly have a lot to say about consequences, and how they may not always
be right around the corner, but one way or the other, karma is coming for you in the
end.
It serves to comment on the importance of family, and that even if they're not blood
it doesn't make those connections any less meaningful, and that you should never turn
your back on them.
But most of all what I love about comparing and contrasting these two films is what it
can teach us about writing, how if you boil a story down to its fundamental parts, most
of the greatest stories ever told follow a similar pattern or structure, and these two
films in particular certainly have more in common than most, but you'd be hardpressed
to find anyone claiming that Boogie Nights is a carbon copy of Goodfellas.
Because while they are made up of many of the same ingredients, from its tonal balancing
act that mixes big laughs with extreme violence, sometimes even in the same scene, to their
similar protagonists whose character arc follows roughly the same path, or its overlapping
cinematic language like the infamous long-takes or the era appropriate pop soundtracks, they
both earn their place in the history of cinema as some of the finest works from two virtuoso
filmmakers at the top of their game.
And part of the reason Scorsese and PT Anderson excel as filmmakers is because they know how
to effectively harness Visual Literacy in their films.
Visual Literacy is the concept that directors use the camera in order to communicate deeper
story ideas and emotions to the audience.
But instead of words, the vocabulary and grammar of this hidden language is expressed through
the camera and everything else at the director’s disposal.
To continue this conversation, click the link below to watch my video and learn more about
Visual Literacy and how directors Scorsese and PT Anderson used it to create different
moods in Goodfellas and Boogie Nights.
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