This month’s cortandfatboy Midnight Movie is Paul Thomas Anderson’s 1997 epic Boogie Nights, a film that rattled my 17-year-old brain pretty hard when I first saw it in a Salt Lake City multiplex. Anderson’s still one of my favorite filmmakers, and Boogie Nights—made when he was 26 years old—is still a hell of thing. Last night, in fact, I recorded an audio commentary for the film alongside Cort, Fatboy, film critic Mike Russell, and comedian Big Jim Willig, and I said practically nothing on it, because once the movie started playing I got sucked right in—even though all those dudes were audio commentating all over the the dialogue and soundtrack, the film’s visuals were enough to make me tune out everything else. It’s a dark, weird, sad, funny saga, and even when it doesn’t fire on all cylinders, it’s well worth rewatching. So you should probably go see the movie tonight, and I’m not just saying that ’cause the Mercury‘s one of the sponsors. I’m mostly saying that because, you know. Dirk Diggler on the big screen, if you catch my drift.
Boogie Nights, Bagdad Theater, 3702 SE Hawthorne, 11 pm, $3, 21+
“We made an audio commentary in which I didn’t talk and everyone else was boring.”
@1- Ha! That’s pretty accurate.
The scenes where Dirk and Chest Rockwell are in the recording studio cutting a pop album are the highlights of the movie.