Death And Taxes (And Porn)

So I finally got my taxes done today.
Looks like being a homeowner saved my bacon, as I not only don’t have to pay anything in despite winning $10,000, I’m actually getting the largest refund I’ve ever gotten in my life.
Whoo-hoo!
(And whew!)
Of course, I didn’t luck out and get the attractive-ish woman who had this slight Linda Hamilton thing going on and who seemed really friendly. Instead I got the 1850s schoolmarm whose single forced attempt at a smile (an attempt that seemed to be made only because doing so is a company-mandated policy) was actually kind of frightening.
Oh well, it’s not like it would have mattered if I had gotten the attractive one anyway, though it is simply another example of how my luck runs when it comes to that sort of thing.
There are certain movies that, when I happen to see that they’re on, I am powerless to do anything but watch, no matter how late into it that I’m tuning in.
One such movie is Strange Days.
Another is Army of Darkness (even though I own the DVD and I hate when I find myself watching a movie that I own on TV).
Still another, and that I watched this one last night is my point, is Boogie Nights.
What makes this movie so irresistible? Is it because it’s about porn? Sure, but that’s not all. Is it the fact that the movie contains a naked Heather Graham? Yes, but it’s more than that. I actually really enjoy the movie, for a lot of reasons that I can’t really articulate.
In any case, after watching it last night I started thinking about John Holmes, the real-life porn king upon whose life much of the movie was loosely based, and found myself wondering who some of the other characters may have been based on, so I did a little reading online.
Ultimately this led me to back to the Wonderland Murders in which Holmes was implicated (and which, in an odd fashion, Liberace’s boyfriend was involved in).
The murders are touched upon in Boogie Nights (in a scene that features two actors who later appeared in movies based on Marvel Comics characters: Alfred Molina, who played Dr. Octopus in Spider-Man 2, and Thomas Jane, who starred in The Punisher), but are more closely examined in the movie Wonderland, in which Val Kilmer stars as Holmes.
Wonderland is itself a movie that I’ve sat through a couple of times.
Like Boogie Nights, it has some interesting cinematic touches that make it sort of fascinating to watch (in Boogie Nights it’s the long cuts; in Wonderland it’s the multiple POV manner in which the story is told) , and honestly, I have to confess that there’s just something compelling about the more lurid aspects of both movies.
Until I saw Wonderland I was only vaguely aware of the fact that Holmes – who died in 1988 of AIDS-related illness – had been involved in some sort of shady undertaking that had resulted in some murders, but I wasn’t really up on the details. In 1981, when the murders happened, I didn’t even know who Holmes was, as I was only 9. Of course it wasn’t too much longer until, thanks to puberty and the efforts of the Porn Fairy, I learned who he was (and learned a lot more besides). After all, you can’t just look at the pictures all the time, so eventually, especially if you’re nerdy, you actually do start reading the articles, and I remember Hustler dubbing Holmes “Asshole of the Month” for his involvement in the murders.
In any case, it’s not really the murders themselves or even Holmes or the question of just how involved he was in the murders that I find most fascinating about Wonderland.
That honor goes to the rather complex and interesting relationship that existed between Dawn Schiller (Kate Bosworth), Holmes’ girlfriend at the time, a girl who’d been involved with him since she was 15, and Holmes’ wife, Sharon (Lisa Kudrow).
It’s already interesting enough to note that, despite the fact that they were estranged for 10 years, during which Holmes engaged in much of his porn work, Sharon didn’t actually divorce him until 1985.
What’s more interesting is the motherly affection that she demonstrates towards Dawn.
While the movie demonstrates this quite clearly, there’s no real explanation for it.
In any case, while I was reading up on the whole thing last night I learned that after airing Boogie Nights IFC was also playing Wonderland, so I watched it again, and once again found myself fascinated by the Dawn-Sharon dynamic.
Some quick Googling led me to discover that the real Dawn actually has a blog, and that she and Sharon are still close (Dawn left John shortly after the murders), and, in fact, Sharon is currently (as of February) staying with Dawn and her family.
From what I gleaned from skimming through Dawn’s blog, she and Sharon had much more of a history than could be touched upon in the movie.
In any case, my whole point, if I even have one, is that it’s sometimes amazing the sort of connections that people can form with each other under even the oddest of circumstances, like a woman who deeply loves and cares for her estranged husband’ s teenaged lover, for example.
And as is made clear in both movies, while Holmes’ life was fascinating in and of itself, it’s the lives of all the people surrounding him that really make the story interesting and meaningful.