Business in the 1970s sex industry is booming as a young no-hoper but with personal assets determines to become successful as a porn star.
Kicked out of home, school drop-out Eddie Homes (Mark Wahlberg) finds his way into the porn film industry when successful producer Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds) discovers the well-endowed teenager. Re-named Dirk Diggler, he rises to fame as he and Reed Rothchild (John C. Reilly) form a successful on screen partnership. But a strutting ego and drug addiction see his fame to be short-lived.
Intertwined narratives of Horner’s ‘family’ including actress Amber (Julianne Moore) fighting to win custody of her child and camera operator Little Bill’s (William H. Macy) troublesome marriage create a compendium of frank and compelling vignettes around Homes’ rise and fall. In only his second film, writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson explores themes recurrent in future films of flawed, self-destructive yet likeable characters who are on the margins of their time and place.
Nominated for 3 Oscars in 1998 – supporting actor (Reynolds), supporting actress (Moore), original script
Rating: 69%
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will Be Blood, Licorice Pizza)
Writer: Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will Be Blood, Licorice Pizza)
Main cast: Mark Wahlberg (The Departed, The Fighter), Julianne Moore (Still Alice, Maps to the Stars), Burt Reynolds (Deliverance, Smokey & the Bandit)
An Opinion or Two 