29. LE VOYEUR’S VOYEUR: A scene where you can see a movie (real or fictional) playing in your movie.
This is how a twenty-something wunderkind takes the neon-soaked excess of the 1970s and puts it through a gritty, Altman-esque wringer before dropping it into the cold synth-pop dawn of the 1980s. The engine driving this sprawling, empathetic two-and-a-half-hour American epic is Eddie Adams (Mark Wahlberg)—a high-school dropout with a miserable home life, an abusive alcoholic mother and a physical endowment that practically demands its own zip code. Obviously based on John Holmes — so much of this movie comes from the film Exhausted, a doc about that actor, as well as an earlier take, The Dirk Diggler Story — he is discovered dishwashing at a Reseda nightclub by auteur Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds, who had no interest in doing the role, feeling that he was promoting porn and letting his fans down; he even refused to do press); Eddie transforms into Dirk Diggler, the undisputed king of the Golden Age of Porn.
What starts as a sun-dappled, cocaine-dusted dream of disco balls, custom-painted Corvettes and found-family camaraderie in Jack’s Valley mansion inevitably curdles. Anderson’s script doesn’t just look at the sleaze; it looks at the work. These characters aren’t glamorous outlaws; they’re blue-collar artisans punching a very strange clock, complete with union grip dynamics, makeup trailer gossip and artistic aspirations.
Julianna Moore plays Porn queen Amber Waves, the mother of the group. She’s losing her battle against her own demons and the merciless family court system. In fact, her child-custody problems were inspired by Veronica Hart, who plays the judge in the scene where Amber and her husband argue in court over their son.
Reynolds’ character, Jack Horner, is suave, defensively artistic and fiercely protective of his celluloid stock over cheap videotape. He’s based on a combination of Gerard Damiano, the director of Deep Throat, who provided much of the physical inspiration, style and persona. Like Horner, Damiano saw himself as a legitimate auteur attempting to elevate adult cinema into mainstream narrative filmmaking. He also had the father-like ways of Bob Chinn, who mentored Holmes, and Bill Amerson, a porn producer and manager who influenced Horner’s business-minded, protective role over his stable of talent.
John C. Reilly plays Reed Rothchild, the lovable, dim-bulb co-star Chest Rockwell. He’s a best friend whose ambitions peak at matching silk robes and ill-fated recording studio demos of “The Touch.”
Philip Seymour Hoffman is Scotty J, a man portrayed with a crushing, unrequited heartbreak that hurts to watch every single time he stares longingly at Dirk’s Corvette. Scotty embodies the quiet, isolated and socially awkward technicians, sound engineers and camera operators who inhabited the fringes of the porn industry. These crew members often stayed in the background, desperately seeking connection or belonging among the movie’s more glamorous or outgoing stars.
William H. Macy is Little Bill. He symbolizes the quiet, agonizing embarrassment of a husband surrounded by a culture where his wife’s infidelity is not only public, but commodified and ignored by everyone around him. Macy plays Little Bill with a tight-lipped, suffocated dignity that makes his steady humiliation—constantly dismissed by his wife and ignored by his crewmates—one of the film’s most uncomfortable and poignant aspects. He’s way too close to real-life porn carpenter and sometime star Cal Jammer. His wife in the film is played by one of the longest-tenured porn stars ever, Nina Hartley.
Don Cheadle plays Buck Swope, a man trying to start his own business while constantly facing prejudice. He is one of the crossover performers in the late 1970s and early 1980s adult film industry who tried to leverage their porn careers into legitimate, mainstream small businesses. His last name is a direct tribute to the classic 1969 satirical indie film Putney Swope—not the last reference in this movie—directed by Robert Downey Sr. (who makes a cameo as the gun shop manager who refuses to grant Buck a commercial loan). Unlike many characters who spiral into tragedy during the film’s 1980s shift, Buck adapts. He drops his exaggerated, western-inspired “country” persona, settles down with Jessie St. Vincent (Melora Walters, based on adult actress Jesie St. James and producer Julia St. Vincent), buys his stereo store with cash following the bank robbery shootout and secures a happy ending—serving as a grounded emotional heart in the story.
Heather Graham is Rollergirl. She’s also a composite archetype, this time representing teenage runaways, youth-culture crossovers and disco-era novelties that entered the adult film industry in the late 1970s. She’s also Traci Lords in a way, including her backstory as an underage high school dropout who runs away from home. The fact that she beats a man nearly to death with one of her skates — which she rarely takes off — shows that while she may be innocent (while still an adult star), she will do anything for her new family.
Luiz Guzman is Maurice Rodriguez, who becomes T. T. Rodriguez, one of the peripheral hangers-on, club owners, and ambitious entrepreneurs who operated on the fringes of the 1970s San Fernando Valley night scene and adult entertainment industry. I can only assume that his nickname comes from Phillip Troy Rivera, the adult actor known as T.T. Boy.
Todd Parker (Thomas Jane) is modeled after the members of the Wonderland Gang, the real-life group of Los Angeles drug dealers and career criminals who collaborated with porn star John Holmes in 1981 to rob drug lord Eddie Nash. But more on that in a bit.
When the calendar flips to 1980 and beyond, the party stops. The disco lights flicker out, replaced by the grim realities of the early ’80s: rampant cocaine addiction, collapsing relationships and the video revolution threatening to replace rich 35mm film stock with cheap magnetic tape.
The movie’s second half is a masterclass in mounting dread, culminating in Alfred Molina’s unforgettable, nerve-shredding home invasion sequence featuring firecrackers, bad baking soda drug deals and sheer suburban panic. Yet, for all its harrowing lows—from Little Bill’s tragic New Year’s Eve snapping to Dirk’s desperate brush with street-corner prostitution—Anderson refuses to sneer at his characters.
Speaking of Putney Swope, the firecracker scene was inspired by a scene in that movie where a character sets off a firecracker, and everyone turns to look. Anderson called Downey to praise the scene and use it as the basis, and Downey approved. It’s also based on Anderson’s father, Cleveland horror host Ghoulardi, who used firecrackers to blow things up on air.
The closing moments of 1984 offer no easy fairy-tale endings, just a battered, patched-together family getting back behind the cameras, ready to yell action one more time. It’s enough to make you cheer. Or cry.
Many movies fit this description, but perhaps the best is Angels Live In My Town. It’s an attempt by Horner to combine pornographic content with mainstream narrative storytelling and high production values. Brock Landers is a brooding, leather-jacket-wearing vigilante seeking revenge for his murdered brother. Along with his sidekick Chest Rockwell, he cruises the city streets taking down low-level thugs, drug pushers and street scum. The film parodies 1970s buddy-cop TV shows (like Starsky & Hutch) and low-budget exploitation action films, complete with dramatic zooms, freeze-frames, over-the-top tough-guy dialogue and cheesy disco-funk scoring. The movie establishes Dirk as a legitimate adult film superstar. It spawns an entire franchise within the movie’s universe (Brock Landers sequels), solidifying his and Reed’s delusion that they are mainstream action stars rather than adult performers. This is much like how John Holmes made plenty of Johnny Wadd films.
“My name is Brock Landers. I’m a cop. I live in a city where angels live… and right now, the angels are crying.”
Here are a few more of my favorite movies within a movie:
See You Next Wednesday: John Landis got this title from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. It shows up in Schlock, Kentucky Fried Movie, The Blues Brothers, An American Werewolf in London, Coming Soon, Trading Places, Coming to America, and so many more.
The Equestrian Vortex: I love that the giallo-adjacent film Berberian Sound Studio used such a giallo-perfect name for this movie inside the movie.
Coed Frenzy: This is the film that Travolta is looking for a good scream for in Blow Out.
Crash Course: This is the movie that Chris MacNeil is making in The Exorcist.
Machete, Werewolf Women of the SS, Don’t, Thanksgiving, Hobo with a Shotgun: All of these trailers were made for Grindhouse, with Machete, Thanksgiving and Hobo with a Shotgun all eventually being made. I’m still hoping for Werewolf Women of the SS.
Operazione Dyne-O-Mite, Nebraska Jim, Tanner, Kill Me Quick Ringo, Said the Gringo, The 14 Fists of McCluskey: All mentioned in Once Upon a Time In Hollywood.
The Mutants of 2051 AD: This failed movie starts the adventure of Strange Brew.
