Boogie Nights: Depiction, Endorsement, and the Wounded Humanity of P.T. Anderson’s Film

'If there is an overriding message to be gleaned from the freewheeling, nonjudgmental tone Anderson imbues within Boogie Nights, a film he both wrote and directed, it’s that these people are not simply depraved animals slamming into each other under the California sun; they are damaged, sometimes deluded human beings, who have earnest if occasionally misguided dreams, love one another, and are worthy of our attention and our empathy, if not our approbation.'