Director Paul Thomas Anderson's 1997 classic Boogie Nights takes the audience
on a vivid ride through the golden years of the porn industry. The story behind the film,
however, is almost as wild. This is the untold truth of Boogie Nights.
Paul Thomas Anderson's father, Ernie "Ghoulardi" Anderson, began his career in the 1960s as a
Cleveland television horror movie host. However, he eventually found success as a Hollywood voice
artist, counting comedians, actors and other Hollywood types among his friends.
Ernie had worked with Tim Conway at WJW-TV in Cleveland in the '60s. Conway left to star in
McHale's Navy, but eventually Ernie joined him in Los Angeles, and the rest is history.
According to Esquire, Ernie eventually bought a big house in the San Fernando Valley,
where he would frequently play host to his various funny friends,
like Conway and actor Harvey Korman — both of whom had a "flair for twisted humor."
For Paul's 12th birthday, Ernie bought him a Betamax camcorder. With the camcorder in hand,
Paul went on to make vignettes that followed his father and his zany Hollywood friends. According
to Esquire, Paul's father likely inspired Burt Reynolds' Jack Horner in Boogie Nights.
There were other inspirations as well. As Paul explained to the Philadelphia City Paper,
"[Growing up in the San Fernando Valley], porn was always around. There were these industrial-looking
buildings, with no signage, but you'd see people going in and out; you knew what they were doing."
Anderson has been described by many of the people involved in Boogie Nights as looking
like a kid when they first met him, which makes sense since he was 26 at the time that he was
looking to helm his first big Hollywood feature. However, Anderson had already made one movie about
Dirk and the porn industry when he was still in high school. That film, The Dirk Diggler Story,
was a visual first draft for what he would finally realize in Boogie Nights.
According to Grantland.com's oral history of the movie,
Paul Thomas Anderson claims to have had an epiphany about the name "Dirk Diggler" at 17.
He then wrote the name on a piece of paper, and began putting together a student film using a
camcorder and a Steadicam. Anderson pulled together his friends to play Dirk, Reed,
and various others in the low-budget film. He did have one star involved, though: his dad, Ernie.
Back in the '90s, John Lesher was a powerful talent agent. One of
his clients was Harmony Korine, a talented young writer whose career
began when he wrote Kids at age 19. As Deadline explained in a 2013 article,
Lesher championed Korine for years while an agent at UTA and Endeavor, and Lesher
continued that support as a producer. Yet Lesher had another wunderkind client at the time:
Paul Thomas Anderson. Michael de Luca, an exec at New Line Cinema at the time, told Grantland,
"I was talking with John [Lesher] about the movie 'Kids.' I passed when he brought it
to New Line [...] Just as a joke, I said to him, 'Don't let me pass on something this cool again,'
and later [...] John said, 'Remember when you said don't let you pass on something cool?'"
Lesher then described in the article how he met de Luca for drinks,
gave him the script for Boogie Nights, and the next day they were in business.
According to entertainment journalist Sharon Waxman, another reason for de Luca to pick up
Boogie Nights may have been that he was a, quote, "bad boy" at the time. Waxman told Grantland,
"[Michael de Luca] loved that life and he lived that life."
Whether it was good agenting or simply a case of
party boy meets party script, it seems as destined as Dirk Diggler for greatness.
At 23, Anderson got into the Sundance Film Festival with his short film
Cigarettes and Coffee. The following year, Anderson came back to the Sundance Lab and
expanded on Cigarettes and Coffee with his first feature, Hard Eight.
Paul Thomas Anderson titled it Sydney when he first conceived the idea in high school.
The idea for the film came after he watched a short Philip Baker Hall scene
as a consigliere named Sydney in Midnight Run. Sydney was Anderson's working title for the film,
and he was infuriated when his backers took final cut and the name away from him. The movie
had a budget of $3 million and starred Hall and John C. Reilly as the leads, Gwyneth Paltrow and
Samuel Jackson as top supporting actors, plus Philip Seymour Hoffman early in his career.
For a debut film from a 25-year-old kid, Hard Eight notched great reviews and paved the way
for Anderson's first studio feature. The budget for Boogie Nights was $15 million
and there were more actors and sets, but Hall, Reilly and Hoffman all returned to
work with Anderson on a movie that would help propel the careers of all four.
Despite the fact that the movie was an at times depressing story about the porn industry,
a lot of actors were circling the script. According to Grantland's oral history,
Drew Barrymore was Roller Girl at one point. The role of director/producer Jack Horner,
however, was offered to a lot of big talent. Bill Murray, Harvey Keitel,
Sydney Pollack and Albert Brooks were supposedly
all offered the role. But Paul Thomas Anderson discussed it extensively with Warren Beatty.
"I got to know Warren many years ago, about 20 years ago when I was
going to do 'Boogie Nights.' I sent him the script and asked him to be in it."
As Anderson said in an interview with Charlie Rose, Warren had shown a lot of interest in
playing the part of Jack Horner. However, Anderson ultimately made a realization that
Beatty didn't necessarily want to play the director. Anderson told Grantland,
"I started to figure out that Warren really wanted to play Dirk Diggler (Mark Wahlberg). 'You don't
really want to play Jack Horner. You want to be the kid in this movie.' He said, 'Yeah.'"
Horner eventually went to Burt Reynolds, and it's hard now imagining anybody else playing
it. Though it appears that Reynolds brought quite a few challenges to the production.
In an interview with GQ, Burt Reynolds was asked if he'd work with Anderson again. His answer?
"I don't think so. Personality-wise, we didn't fit."
According to the Grantland oral history, there was even a moment when Anderson
gave Reynolds perhaps less respect than he deserved, and it supposedly came to blows.
Burt Reynolds clarified to Conan O'Brien that he hadn't punched Anderson, but wanted to.
"No, I didn't want to hit him in the face — I just wanted to hit him."
According to The Hollywood Reporter's obituary for the actor, Reynolds was so unhappy with the
film and his place in it that he fired his agent after seeing it for the first time. It was ironic,
then, that he won his only film Golden Globe for his turn as Jack Horner.
Plus he was nominated for the best supporting actor Oscar,
although he eventually lost to Robin Williams for his turn in Good Will Hunting.
One of the most intense scenes in "Boogie Nights" occurs toward the end when Dirk,
Reed, played by John C. Reilly, and Todd Parker, played by Thomas Jane, are sitting in the living
room of a crazy rich man's house, looking to rip him off by selling him some fake dope.
In the scene, there's a random boy just walking around throwing firecrackers at the floor.
Many of the cast recalled how that was the craziest scene in the whole film,
and in large part that was due to the unexpected randomness of the constant
mini-explosions. Director Robert Downey Sr. said in Grantland's oral history,
"That idea came from a scene in my movie 'Putney Swope.' It's one of Paul's favorites. My thing
was the Asian guy who's throwing around firecrackers and just doesn't say a word."
Another inspiration, though, was Anderson's father. According to Esquire, Ernie Anderson liked
"tossing firecrackers around." So there you have it: Two showbiz fathers with a fondness
for firecrackers inspired one of the most insane scenes in a movie full of intense sequences.
A few characters, or at least character names,
made it to Boogie Nights from The Dirk Diggler Story. One of those is Reed Rothchild,
Dirk's best friend in the porn industry. In the original, though, Reed was very different.
Reed was played by Eddie Dalcour, a bodybuilder who was also Dirk's lover in that original
iteration. Dalcour features prominently in the student film since he was Dirk's best friend.
There's even a scene where they're both together in a hot tub. While the romantic
element of the Dirk/Reed relationship didn't make it into Boogie Nights,
one Dalcour item did — Reed's hot tub poem.
According to the oral history, Dalcour was constantly trying to get Anderson to crack
up on the set and was even invited to be in Boogie Nights. However, by that point
Dalcour had begun his career as a Christian minister, which would've been tough to square
with a film about drugs and porn. One of his improvisations was the poem that John C. Reilly
recites as Reed while in the hot tub with Dirk. It's a poem about love and honey trees and bees,
one so bad yet so amazing because of how well it sets up the duo's rock solid friendship.
"I love you. You love me. Going down the sugar tree."
"Did you write that?"
"Yeah. I write songs, too."
Anderson had been making movies since he was 12, and some of those early ones were
actually scripted films. In fact Anderson's early films all seemed
to march toward what he would eventually realize in Hard Eight and Boogie Nights.
Obviously The Dirk Diggler Story is a major stepping stone,
from the tale of Dirk's rise and fall to the fact that recording "The Touch" was featured in both
as an example of Dirk's failed second career. But according to Esquire, it becomes striking
how much of these films began when Anderson was still too young to actually buy pornography.
Esquire mentions how Anderson first told a teacher he was going to make a movie called
Sydney based solely on the snippet of Philip Baker Hall he'd seen in Midnight Run.
As a young teen, however, he made a Miami Vice parody called Brock Landers,
which went on to be the name of Dirk's monumental X-rated action series.
"Does this character have a name?"
"His name is Brock Landers."
Anderson also made a Young Guns parody called Young Buns, with erotic undertones.
If nothing else, Anderson was a student of film from a very early age,
and didn't just want to watch them but wanted to be part of them as well.
John Holmes was a very successful adult film actor known for having a heavy drug addiction
and, eventually, his possible role in the Wonderland Murders. According to Esquire,
Paul Thomas Anderson told a friend in high school that the idea for his next movie
was inspired by the sad life of Holmes. In a 1997 interview with Philadelphia City Paper,
Anderson explained how Dirk's career was very similar to that of Holmes:
"With the '80s and the drugs, everything's taken a toll on him. That happened in John
Holmes' life and it was reflected in the character he played [Johnny Wadd].
We did the same thing with Dirk, and in the movie I blame the drugs and ego-building."
In that same interview, he also specifically mentions the early Johnny Wadd films as
examples of great storytelling in porn. There was also a John Holmes documentary
called Exhausted that was one of the inspirations for Anderson to shoot The
Dirk Diggler Story as a mockumentary. It was such a big inspiration that the
documentary was even an added feature on a Criterion laserdisc of Boogie Nights,
with Anderson pointing out in the commentary how the film was a, quote, "major influence."
A final shocking fact to come out of Boogie Nights is that its star, a man still known
at the time as an underwear model and teen idol called Marky Mark, has said that he
probably wouldn't do Boogie Nights again despite having just a few acting credits at the time.
Yes, Mark Wahlberg said in a 2017 appearance that he hopes God forgives him for his poor acting
choices, and that Boogie Nights is at the top of the list. There was a lot of outcry about him
negating the movie that gave him serious acting cred. As Julianne Moore put it to Andy Cohen,
"Oh my God, I think he should thank God for 'Boogie Nights.' It made his career!"
Check out one of our newest videos right here!
Plus, even more Looper videos about your favorite stuff are coming soon.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss a single one.