The first time I ever visited Sherman Oaks and saw the childhood home of my old roommate Miles (this was back when we lived in San Diego, before he got famous), I mentioned to him that I felt like I’d been there before.
“It looks familiar?” he asked me.
“Yeah.”
“That’s because it’s been in the background of every porn movie you’ve ever seen.”
He explained that, to his knowledge, no porn had been filmed specifically in his house, but that the architecture was very typical for homes in the Valley. This was when I first learned that the San Fernando Valley is the pornography capital of the world. In Boogie Nights, and later in Magnolia, Paul Thomas Anderson treats the San Fernando Valley with the same reverence that Michael Mann reserves for Los Angeles in Heat and Collateral and John Hughes holds for Chicago in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
From the very beginning of the film, when the muted undertones of Michael Penn’s composition “Big Top” are shattered by the energy of the Emotions’ classic “Best of My Love,” it’s clear that music is going to be a very important aspect of the movie. The collection of ’70s and early ’80s songs Anderson uses in his film blend seamlessly into the scenes, gliding along perfectly in the background until the appropriate moments when the music itself is brought forward and allowed to speak as though it were a character itself. In Boogie Nights, Paul Thomas Anderson demonstrates just how much a great soundtrack, when properly presented, can add to an already excellent film.
