text: Everything that you need to know about the pornography of the late 70s and early 80s is all wrapped up in Paul Thomas Anderson's BOOGIE NIGHTS. Although the film is completely fictional, it is actually supposedly based on the story of porno kingpin John Holmes.<br /><br />In Southern California in 1977, Eddie Adams (Mark Wahlberg) is working as a busboy in a nightclub. One of the regular customers is pornographer Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds) and two of his starlets, Amber Waves (Julianne Moore) and Rollergirl (Heather Graham). Jack and Eddie meet and Jack realizes that Eddie is well...a little...gifted.<br /><br />So Eddie stars in Jack's films under the pseudonym of "Dirk Diggler." He becomes a "big" porno star (no pun intended) and seems to be on top of everything. Then comes the 80s when video replaces film and Jack's porno empire begins to collapse, along with Dirk Diggler and everybody else working in the field.<br /><br />BOOGIE NIGHTS is a really well-filmed drama. There is a little bit of violence, but P.T. Anderson makes it more stylized. And it kind of is a scathing approach to the degradations of pornography, especially when VHS became the standard medium for making pornos.<br /><br />A lot of bizarre and unique characters are introduced. William H. Macy has an interesting role as someone working on the films, whose wife keeps having sex with everybody. I especially liked Don Cheadle's role as Buck the stereo salesman. The best performance is BOOGIE NIGHTS was definitely Burt Reynolds. A 90s classic!