Sunday, June 14, 2026 at 5:30 PM
Alamo Drafthouse Cinema - Downtown, Los Angeles
*"When I close my eyes, I see this thing, a sign, I see this name in bright blue neon lights with a purple outline. And this name is so bright and so sharp that the sign – it just blows up because the name is so powerful... It says, 'Dirk Diggler.'"* Though it wasn't his first film – that would be the excellent casino-set character study HARD EIGHT, aka SYDNEY – at just 26 years old, Paul Thomas Anderson jumped to the front of the line with BOOGIE NIGHTS, an expansion of a mockumentary-style short film he'd produced as a teenager. When BOOGIE NIGHTS landed right in the middle of '90s Hollywood's indie phase, it was a revelation – a compelling mixture of sweeping epic and intense character study of the sun-kissed 1970s porn industry. Its critical and commercial success positioned PTA as the Altman of the new millennium and propelled him forward to audacious projects like MAGNOLIA, PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE, and THERE WILL BE BLOOD. It also gave Burt Reynolds a meaty, Academy Award-nominated late-career role as auteur-ish pornographer Jack Horner, and boosted the profiles of brilliant performers like Julianne Moore, John C. Reilly, Don Cheadle, Philip Seymour Hoffman, William H. Macy, Heather Graham, Luis Guzman, Philip Baker Hall, and Alfred Molina. More than a pleasurable experience, BOOGIE NIGHTS is a big, bright shining star and one of the most important films of the 1990s.