MAN CRUSH MONDAY: Dirk Diggler from Boogie Nights
For those of you who haven’t seen the 1997 film Boogie Nights, the movie is centered around the main character a teenage busboy named Eddie Adams, played by Mark Wahlberg who resides in the San Fernando Valle in 1977. He is discovered by porn director Jack Horner, played by Burt Reynolads, who introduces Adams to the porn industry. Finding huge success in the industry Adams renames himself and as he assumes his new persona, adult-film sensation Dirk Diggler. Adams is brought into a supportive circle of friends who are also players in the adult industry, including fellow actors Amber Waves played by Julianne Moore, Roller Girl played by Heather Graham and Reed Rothchild played by John C. Reilly. Dirk fulfills all his goals, but a toxic combination of drugs and egotism threatens to take him back down.
Those Girlss
Boogie Nights Fun Facts!
Boigie Nights was written, directed and produced by Paul Thomas Anderson, who was inspired to write the movie as an ode to his younger days; when he grew up in Los Angele's San Frandeo Valley in the 1980's.
"He was growing up in Los Angeles’s San Fernando Valley, obsessed with the studios all around him. He wanted in and hustled plenty — sneaking onto sets, working a Betamax camera from the age of 12, filming everything — but he also gained entrée from his father, Ernie, who was famous from his voice-over work for ABC on shows like The Love Boat. Anderson also became consumed by porn and the Bizarro Hollywood industry that claimed the Valley as its Fertile Crescent. His relationship to the material differed from that of the average high schooler. There was the fucking, sure. But the real seduction was in the imagined backstories, the circumstantial tragicomedies of the casts and crews, which inspired Anderson to write and film The Dirk Diggler Story, a 32-minute mockumentary-style short about the pursuit, delusions, and costs of fame.” Grantland.
Mark Wahlberg on the script: " I was reluctant to even read the script because of the
subject matter. Showgirls had just come out. That movie was a disaster. And you know
coming from the underwear background, the music stuff, I was like, “Ehh, I don’t want to do
this.” But there was just so much hype around the script."
Paul Thomas Anderson on his first impression of Wahlberg: When I first met
Mark I sat down with him. I was excited to meet him because I’d seen Basketball Diaries.
“Let’s hope he’s a good guy because I know he’s a good actor and can do this part.”
And he’d only read thirty pages of the script. I thought what the fuck is this. Who is this
jackass? “Why have you only read thirty pages?
Reynolds Drama. A list of actors declined or were passed up for the role of Jack Horner,
which went to Burt Reynolds. The list includes Bill Murray, Harvey Keitel, and Albert Brooks.
Warren Beatty and Sydney Pollack also declined the role. After seeing a rough cut of the film,
Burt Reynolds regretted making it and fired his agent for recommending the role to him.
Reynolds ended up winning a Golden Globe and being nominated for an Academy Award for
his performance. According to an interview with PTA, Paul Thomas Anderson and Burt
Reynolds did not get along during filming. Anderson still planned to hire Reynolds for
Magnolia, but Reynolds became angry with Anderson during the film’s promotional tour
and turned the role down.
bloopers. He had a series of VHS tapes that only featured the funnier side of the porn
industry. These tapes helped show him a side of the business he didn’t often see. Anderson
simulated the dialog in the fake porn movies by adapting actual dialog from real porn movies.
He said he did it so people could not say the porn dialog “sounded fake”. 40 seconds were
cut from the final film in order to avoid an NC-17 rating. The movie was banned in South
Korea until 1999.
Roller Girl. Anderson states that he didn’t consider her for the part, because he had
never seen her do nudity in a film. He didn’t think she’d be up for it. Her agents had to
call him and ask why they weren’t thinking of her for the part.
"Virtually all costumes were sourced in Hollywood. Bridges explains, “We have such great
collections of clothes all over town and I used them all; Warner Brothers,Universal studios,
Palace Costume Company, EC2 (which was Bob Mackie’s costume house), Bill Hargate
Costumes and the now defunct Costume Collection. They all had an amazing variety of
clothing from the periods just sitting there waiting to be rented. I also made a two day trip to
St Louis, Missouri to a business that had ‘deadstock’ items. My assistant designer and I
scoured that 35,000 square foot warehouse for two days and spent $12,000.00 getting the
most incredible pieces, most of which amazingly enough were used some where on the
principal characters"(clothes on film)
The Man. The Legend. Dirk Diggler's Prosthetic Penis:
Paul Thomas Anderson on creating Dirk Diggler’s monster penis."We started creating
the prosthetic by building a wire-frame armature and then sculpting the penis in clay,"
Howard Berger, the special makeup effects supervisor, explained. "And then we took a
three-piece plaster mold and split it right down the center so it was one side, one side,
and then there was a back plug that had the core that created the receptacle in the testicles…
We sculpted a version that was 12 inches long, and we tested it and it was just way too big.
It looked just like a weird monster penis. The next one was seven inches; that was the penis
we went with. One of our artists, Garrett Immel, sculpted this penis to be slightly erect and
with the testicles and everything. We made a core that created a void that Mark could put
his own anatomy into.”
Mark Wahlberg was allowed to keep the prosthetic used in the final shot of the film.
He said it has begun to deteriorate.
