Burt Reynolds Was Great In This -- Even If He Hated It

The success of Paul Thomas Anderson (PTA) with making Boogie Nights at the young age of 26 got him "the biggest star in the business" one movie later -- Tom Cruise -- to appear in the ensemble cast of Magnolia.

PTA couldn't land anyone that major for Boogie Nights -- but he landed someone who HAD been that major. Burt Reynolds.

Reynolds had evidently been the Number One Movie star in the world during the late 70's and early 80s. He had the classic Deliverance on his resume, and the hit The Longest Yard, and the blockbuster Smokey and the Bandit. But he rather frittered it all away in the early 80's on a string of really silly, lousy movies like Canonball Run II and Smoker Ace. Add in some health problems, and by the 90s, Burt was over.

But still a name. And in Boogie Nights, he proved why he'd been so big to begin with./

There are a lot of good actors in Boogie Nights -- many at the beginning of their careers(Philllip Seymour Hoffman) some a ways in(William H. Macy.) And Mark Wahlberg was shooting for stardom.

But Burt WAS a star. Had been, at least. And his edgy charmisma makes him the planet around which all the other characters (and actors) orbit.

Reynolds famously hated Boogie Nights while he was making it, and fired his agent over having accepted it. And then he got the only Oscar nomination of his career. Supporting, though(as Cruise would be nominated for Magnolia.) Robin Williams beat Reynolds (For Oscar Bait Good Will Hunting) and Reynolds looked visibly peeved in the Oscar audience(well, maybe I imagined it.)

No matter. Its the work on the screen that matter. And Burt is the center of Boogie Nights.

He's a few years past the brawny muscular stud of Deliverance, well a couple of decades, actually. His hair is white -- including the frosting of big hair on top of his head that is really one of his hairpieces. The black and white beard and moustache -- and big swirling eyebrows -- give Burt a slightly Satanic look -- he's a smiling devil luring Wahlberg into a promised life of sex and wealth..but at what cost.

Burt's life of physical roles seems to have taken a toll. He moves in Boogie Nights with the aching stiffness of a football player whose tacklings have rendered walking a hard, painful thing to do.

But for all of Burt's frailty and age in the role, the authority he had -- and lost -- comes back in Boogie Nights. He always had a great voice -- deep and commanding and sexy -- and he doesn't do his high pitched goofy laugh here. Jack Horner is a tough man working in a very tough world -- making porn films with damaged people under the supervision of the Mafia.

Burt is clearly the "daddy" of his family of misfits -- sex workers who can barely function off stage.

But I think, in the end, the truly fascinating thing about Jack Horner and Reynolds' portrayal of him is that this macho, authoritative, supremely manipulative man proves to be: utterly delusional.

I mean, he thinks he is making "great films." He looks at a few completed reels with dramatics that look like a really bad Super 8 junior high production(the bad acting, the lousy sets, the terrible fight choreography) and it becomes clear: when nobody is having sex in Jack's movies, they are REALLY lousy movies. They aren't really movies. But Jack thinks they are. He sees classic work where the rest of us see schlock.

Jack Horner's delusion about the "movies" he makes (and tries to protect against the coming 80's video tape era) is the weird key to the character. In all other ways, he projects -- or tries to project -- a normality, and a professionalism about his work. But when we see how seriously he takes his ridiculously acted and written films, we get it: he's nuts. He is an insane man leading a group of broken people.

Speaking with authority, Jack Horner says that he is a film director who wants to make a porn movie where "the viewers sticks around to see how the story ends." But THAT goal is delusion, too.

Its almost cartoonish. One wonders if ANY porn director EVER saw his films as true art, or even competent Super 8/16 mm filmmaking.

Meanwhile, back at the porn: I would suspect that one reason Burt Reynolds hated his role in Boogie NIghts is because of all the "dirty talk" he had to say about the mechanics of sex films. A Number One Movie Star NEVER would have said language like that back in the day(though Paul Newman came close, in the hockey film Slapshot.) . But of course, Burt wasn't Number One anymore when he made Boogie Nights.

Anyway, with the courage and dedication of a acting professional who accepted a part and decided to do it well, Burt Reynolds says all those dirty words in Boogie Nights, and sells them -- and rather shocks us. I can't picture Robert Redford talking like that.

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