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Reitman Live Read of 'Boogie Nights (l-r): Scott Thompson, Jordan Hayes, Jason Sudeikis,Olivia Wilde, Jesse Eisenberg, Josh Brolin, Dakota Fanning, Jarod Einsohn, Marc-Andre Grondin, and Jason Reitman |
The casting choices for the live read of Boogie Nights were fairly strange. Jesse Eisenberg (Now You See Me) was cast in the role of Dirk Diggler, the aspiring porn star with the mammoth appendage, as originated by Mark Wahlberg in the 1997 film. Josh Brolin (appearing at the fest in Labor Day) read the role of porn director Jack Horner, as originated by Burt Reynolds. Olivia Wilde (Third Person) read as Amber Waves, the veteran porn star played by Julianne Moore in the film, while Dakota Fanning read the part of Roller Girl, originated by Heather Graham. Also in the cast were Scott Thompson, Jordan Hayes, Jason Sudeikis, Jarod Einsohn, and Marc-André Grondin. It was an odd mix of performers that brought varying degrees of success to the script.
The cast standouts were easily Josh Brolin and Jason
Sudeikis, who brought a different take on the characters from the original film
as well as an energy and bravado not matched by much the cast. (They played the
parts, whereas other merely read them.) Grondin, for one, was often inaudible,
while Cook was overbearingly nutty, playing Boogie
Nights like a puppy on coke. Other parts in the film struggled to fit into
the mould set by the actors who originated the roles in the film. Wilde, for
example, isn’t a bad actress, but it’s hard to live up to the dramatic heft set
by Julianne Moore in her heartbreaking turn. Eisenberg, similarly, felt miscast
as the lead. His awkward neuroses didn’t really fit the part of the young stud.
Moreover, his reading of the part betrayed the limits of his dramatic range as
Dirk Diggler didn’t appear too far away from Eisenberg’s other turns as
arrogant fast-talkers in films like The
Social Network or Now You See More.
What really didn’t work about this year’s live read,
however, was how it transformed Boogie
Nights into a comedy. Anderson’s script is admittedly humorous, but the
reading seemed to miss the point as many of the lines were read for laughs.
Perhaps comedy is inevitable when reading lines about foot-long penises and
smut-peddlers seeing the Oscar, but it just felt off.
Boogie Nights
might not have lived up to American
Beauty, though, for the differences between the two scripts and finished films.
American Beauty has a script that is
character-driven and dialogue-heavy. It could easily be a strong play, so it
works by affording actors weighty parts in which they can stretch their muscles
and show the audience what creating a performance is all about. Boogie Nights is a similarly strong
showpiece for actors, but it’s a tale that seems to be brought to life by more
than just a strong script. This year’s live read seemed driven by directions in
the script, whereas they merely served to illuminate what was between the lines
of American Beauty, as Reitman read
one character description after another so that the audience could keep track over
which of the nine actors on stage were playing which part in the exhaustive
ensemble. (Most actors played multiple parts, sometimes in the same scene.) It
was also hard to follow when the directions frequently reverted to ‘cut to this’
and ‘cut to that’ between line-readings.
The reading mostly called to mind how Boogie Nights is a great feat of filmmaking. It has an excellent
script, but it’s brought to life by Anderson’s cinematic eye, the tempo of the
editing, and, above all, the choices in casting. This year’s live read
succeeded in some levels in capturing the essence of Anderson’s screenplay, but,
unfortunately, it mostly showed how a great script alone doesn’t always ensure
greatness.
