Interview: "Risque Business"

Los Angeles Daily News, Written By Janet Weeks
October 19th, 1997


Promoting 'Boogie Nights' proves challenging

With "Boogie Nights," the marketing department at New Line Cinema faces a daunting challenge: selling mainstream America on the story of a teen-ager with a gift in his pocket so special it makes adult-film producers happy to see him.

It's a Boy-Meets-Pornographer tale woven with sex, nudity, drugs, violence and one very large prosthetic device -- not exactly the elements of a feel-good hit. No space aliens, no dinosaurs, no president in jeopardy. Featuring Mark Wahlberg, Burt Reynolds and Julianne Moore, it also has no
"bankable" celebrities.

And to make New Line's job even, ahem, more difficult, a decision was made with the promotional campaign to downplay the film's sexual context. Indeed, the "P" word -- pornography -- has been all but banned from the studio's vocabulary.

"Our strategy is that this film is an important film to see and not a pornographic film," says Mitchell Goldman, New Line's president of marketing and distribution. "It's not about that. (Pornography) is only the backdrop. We're not playing that card."