Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson • 1997 • United States
Starring Mark Wahlberg, Julianne Moore, Burt Reynolds
It’s 1977—back when sex was safe, pleasure was a business, and business was booming—and idealistic porn producer Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds) aspires to elevate his craft to an art form. Horner discovers Eddie Adams (Mark Wahlberg), a hot young talent working as a busboy in a nightclub, and welcomes him into the extended family of movie-makers, misfits, and hangers-on. Adams’s rise from nobody to a celebrity adult entertainer is meteoric, and soon the whole world seems to know his porn alter ego, “Dirk Diggler.” Now, when disco and drugs are in vogue, fashion is in flux, and the party never seems to stop, Adams’s dreams of turning sex into stardom are about to collide with cold, hard reality.
Up Next in The ’90s Do the ’70s
-
The Ice Storm
Directed by Ang Lee • 1997 • United States
Starring Kevin Kline, Joan Allen, Sigourney WeaverSuburban Connecticut, 1973. While Richard Nixon’s “I am not a crook” speech drones from the TV, the Hood and Carver families try to navigate a Thanksgiving break simmering with unspoken resentment, sexu...
-
Dead Presidents
Directed by Albert Hughes and Allen Hughes • 1995 • United States
Starring Larenz Tate, Keith David, Chris TuckerThe Hughes brothers’ ambitious follow-up to MENACE II SOCIETY is a searing look at the struggles of Black Vietnam War veterans as seen through the eyes of Anthony Curtis (Larenz Tate...
-
Summer of Sam
Directed by Spike Lee • 1999 • United States
Starring John Leguizamo, Adrien Brody, Mira SorvinoSpike Lee’s fever-pitch vision of murder, mass hysteria, and machismo run amok charts the escalating paranoia within an Italian American Bronx neighborhood during the sweltering summer of 1977 as the...
