Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights endures as one of the quintessential films of the 1990s, a tragicomic, stylish mashup of Martin Scorsese and Robert Altman that provides an inside look at the 1970s San Fernando Valley porn industry. Dirk Diggler (Mark Wahlberg) is a kid with an overbearing mother and passive father who dreams of a life filled with fast cars, karate, and stardom. After a particularly nasty fight with his mom, Dirk runs away from home into the waiting arms of porn director Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds). Thus, Dirk enters into a sort of island of misfit toys filled with lost and broken people desperate to find a new makeshift family within the porn industry.

There’s Amber Waves (Julianne Moore) longing to be a mother despite her many flaws, Roller Girl (Heather Graham) looking for parents who accept her for who she is, Buck Swope (Don Cheadle) striving to be a respectable family man, Maurice Rodriguez (Luis Guzmán) longing to show his brothers back home that he’s a success, Little Bill (William H. Macy) perpetually wounded by his wife’s infidelity, and finally, Jack Horner attempting to be the patriarchal glue that binds all these people together. By analyzing each of these characters’ story arcs, we’ll see how Boogie Nights is more about the struggle of finding a family than the highs and lows of the smut business.

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Dirk Diggler's Search for a Mother

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Dirk’s most important familial relationship is definitely with his mother and, in a sense, he has two of them: his actual biological mom and his porn industry mom, Amber Waves. His biological mother is condescending, judgmental, and displays few signs of warmth. Amber takes on the bizarre role of a maternal figure who is also Dirk’s co-star. Despite being a pretty awful mother on all fronts (she introduces Dirk to cocaine and enables his narcissism), Amber is also everything Dirk’s biological mom is not. She’s warm, accepting, and nonjudgmental, and supports Dirk’s aspirations. Dirk’s failure to find the mom he actually needs is one of the tragedies at the heart of Boogie Nights. Paul Thomas Anderson obviously has great sympathy for the wayward souls in his film, yet he doesn’t shy away from the reality that seeking out genuine relationships in the 1970s porn industry is perhaps not the best idea.

Jack Horner Means Business

Burt Reynolds as Jack Horner in Boogie Nights
Image Via New Line Cinema

Jack, unlike Dirk’s biological father, takes an interest in Dirk’s dreams and makes him a star. But their relationship is contingent upon Dirk making money for Jack and once their professional relationship sours, their personal one does as well. Jack, unlike Amber, seems disinterested in being a committed father figure. His primary ambition in life is to be the world’s greatest porn director. Jack may want to be at the head of a functioning family but doesn’t seem to know what to do when things get dysfunctional. His redeeming moment with Dirk towards the end of the film shows that Jack is not all about business, however, and does have genuine feelings towards Dirk.

Amber Waves' Tragic Motherhood

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Image via New Line Cinema

Amber may be the most complex and interesting character in the film, in no small part thanks to Julianne Moore’s fantastic performance. Amber has biological children of her own but after a messy divorce, her profession and proclivity towards drug use alienate her from her kids. In Jack Horner’s porn universe, she becomes a warm and supportive maternal figure who also does cocaine with the young adults she is supposedly mothering. On some level, Amber must know that her own life choices prevent her from being an active presence in the lives of her biological children, yet she cannot resist the allure of drugs and sex. Amber is a tragic character who never quite acquires the happy family she’s looking for.

Roller Girl Just Wants to Find Her Place in the World

Heather Graham as Roller Girl in Boogie Nights
Image Via New Line Cinema

Roller Girl’s real name isn’t revealed until the third act of the film and it’s revealed by a former high school classmate who is about to have sex with her on camera. Roller Girl seems to have constructed a secret identity for herself by always wearing skates. She uses this persona to avoid confronting who she is and where she came from. Boogie Nights gives us a few clues as to her background. She seems to struggle in school, both academically and socially, and runs off with Jack Horner and company to find her place in the world. After Dirk has a falling out with Jack, Amber becomes more attentive to Roller Girl and the two characters share a surreal scene in which, in between snorting lines of cocaine, Amber says she will be Roller Girl’s mom. This scene seems to capture the film’s theme in a nutshell.

Buck Swope and the "Family Man" Ideal

Don Cheadle as Buck Swope in Boogie Nights
Image Via New Line Cinema

Buck is always in search of an identity. He’s a cowboy who works as a salesman in a stereo store in between porn gigs, then he tries out different “looks” while he attempts to raise the funds necessary to open his own stereo store. Unlike many of Boogie Night’s characters, Buck seems to reach some kind of happiness by the film’s conclusion. While he cannot take out a bank loan thanks to his porn career, he does come by a small fortune through some tragic yet beneficial means. Buck’s dream of being a business owner and family man is realized by the end of his story arc, and his tender moments with his wife and son are among the most unassumingly heartwarming scenes in the film.

Maurice Rodriguez Wants to Prove That He Made It

Luis Guzman as Maurice Rodriguez in Boogie Nights
Image Via New Line Cinema

Aside from being utterly hilarious, Luiz Guzman’s nightclub-owning character Maurice also reinforces the film’s theme of people in search of familial relationships. Maurice is from Puerto Rico and comes to California with big ambitions. Also like Buck, he seems to realize them by the film’s conclusion, having successfully brought his brothers out to the Valley to help him manage his club. Of course, Maurice being a source of comic relief, even this achievement is slightly marred by the fact that the new neon sign atop his club has his family’s last name spelled wrong.

Little Bill

William H Macy as Little Bill in Boogie Nights
Image Via New Line Cinema

While Boogie Nights does not explicitly reveal the inner mind of Little Bill too often, it is abundantly clear that he hates his wife’s constant infidelity. Bill is always searching for his wife and always finding her with another man. His dysfunctional relationship with his spouse speaks to the challenges of trying to create a family in an environment that rewards hedonism. Little Bill is the film’s darkest character, ultimately murdering his wife and one of her lovers before committing suicide. While Amber’s substance abuse speaks to the incongruity of creating a wholesome family in a debaucherous industry, Little Bill’s arc comments on the challenge of maintaining lasting monogamous relationships and the dark corners a dysfunctional family can send people to. This challenge ultimately cannot be overcome by Little Bill, who explodes in an awful act of violence that changes the tone of the film and precedes the downward spiral of many of the film’s characters.