More sex, please. We're American.

I've got another rule: ALWAYS give the director final cut. In an age when so much emphasis is placed on the director as auteur, to take a project from his hands to his publicized objections and butcher it to your satisfaction is suicide.

Artistically, I'm in agreement, but don't movies that include explicit sex or nudity in a mature fashion (rather than in a comedy), films like The Dreamers and Red Road, do poorly at the box office? The majority of Americans still seem afraid of sex outside a comical situation, especially when they are going to the theater. On cable or DVD, it's another matter.

Here here on the sex point, Jim. One of the things I valued about "A History of Violence" is the way it showed, in an excellent early scene, a married couple (yes, MARRIED!) that was still sexually adventurous, willing to indulge in role-playing and even (gasp!) simultaneous oral sex (a.k.a. "69").

Of course, the problem is that Hollywood today (as much as I still love it) is geared toward teenagers, and so we get a teenaged view of sex...all titilation, no tits. (I'm actually quite proud I came up with that line). I can understand executives getting weak-kneed at the prospect of a sixteen year-old going with his parents to a film, only to have to endure an embarrassing four-minute scene of hot action. But please, a little variety! Make some movies for adults, for God's sakes.

Even removing sex from the equation, nudity in non-sexual situations is still scarce. Your example of the scene from "Short Cuts" is perfect. I've often thought it would be funny to have a scene of someone doing some mundane task in their house (say, cooking...or vacuuming) completely in the nude. Not to be immature or tee-hee-ish about it, but I know that I occasionally (when I'm alone, obviously) walk from the living room to my bedroom naked, and will sometimes even fix a sandwich or something in between. Hollywood should acknowledge the more relaxed ways in which people deal with their bodies.

DVC: You may be right. On the other hand, "Basic Instinct" and "Species" did pretty well. Maybe Americans only like naked women if they're mixed with carnage.

Then again, "Boogie Nights" did OK, and it was about the porn business.

"The Dreamers" and "Red Road" were both limited-distribution films in the US. "Art house" fare. I really liked both, but only "The Dreamers" tried to be explicitly sexy. Maybe it was too sexy -- or its attitude toward sex was too foreign -- for most Americans to handle (least of all in a public theater). Or maybe it's because it was in French. (It was in French, wasn't it?)

If people were turned off by "Red Road" (a Glaswegian film that required English subtitles), I don't think it was because of the nudity or the eroticism. That's one harrowing, unsexy movie!

I think if nudity was better integrated into regular old R-rated mainstream movies -- action movies, thrillers, comedies (and not just horror movies) -- people would like it. I guess the bigger problem would be getting marquee-name movie stars to disrobe. Still, I think filmmakers could be a little more creative with their camerawork and blocking. The sheet and the underwear have become laughable cliches.

But if your theory is generally correct, I wonder what it means? Do most Americans prefer sex under the covers with the lights out? Do they have sex in their underwear, or immediately put it back on when they're done? Do they avoid nudity in front of their spouses or significant others? Or are they just a bit prudish about seeing others "that way" in a mixed crowd?

Jim, you are right, Americans are just as open to nudity and sex in a thriller as they are in a comedy. But what was the last film to tackle sex seriously, in the way Last Tango did, that made money? Would The Dreamers have made money if it had received a wider release? I doubt it. Especially since it was rated NC-17, and we know what that means. (And it was in English with mostly French accents, BTW).

And yes, Red Road wasn't the least bit "sexy," though the trailer I saw featured some of the film's nudity as an enticement.

As for what it means if I am right about most Americans, I would vote for your last suggestion, they are "just a bit prudish about seeing others 'that way' in a mixed crowd."

Sorry to change the subject, but I fail to see how one equates At World's End with the examples of what's wrong with Hollywood. In fact, I'd go as far as to call it one of the greatest big budget films of all time.

I worked at a theater when it had its preview screening. I wasn’t really looking forward to seeing it, but I had some time to spare, so I sat in figuring that if it didn't look promising early on I could always just leave. Needless to say, I didn't.

Right off the bat, my eyes were wide and my jaw was hanging open. Not from any breakthrough in special effects design or anything like that, but at the daring of its implications.

In its unforgettable opening scene, politicians suspend civil rights and human beings at a mass hanging. In a horrifying parody of Disney's tradition of musical numbers, a condemned child (he needs to stand on a barrel just to reach his noose) leads the line of prisoners in a song of defiance and freedom. I wasn't sure whether to laugh at its wit or cry at its tragic beauty.

This scene sets the stage for a film about outcasts fighting to keep their world in an age where businessmen rule through betrayal and fear. The special effects aren't the shallow adrenaline rushes of typical action films; they feel more like paintings in motion. In some shots, the ships seem to sail through the stars.

When we first see the quirky Captain Jack Sparrow, his ship is in the middle of what appears to be a salt-flat that stretches on for eternity. He impatiently barks orders at himself in a futile attempt to get the ship moving. Then again, maybe it's not so futile, because it isn't long before an army of crabs assists the Black Pearl to sail over a desert to return to the sea.

These scenes seem more like something from Jodorowsky than Verbinski. Upon close inspection, one may notice more visual quotes to other films than The Descent. Not just stuff like Star Wars either. I'm talking Un Chien Andalou, Fitzcarraldo, and (whether by chance or intention) Pan's Labyrinth. When the bad guy finally meets his demise, he’s descending the stairs of his exploding ship, whose splintering wood and flying debris floating through the air looks suspiciously like the mansion at the end of Zabriskie Point. His last words: "It's just good business."

Yet, it's so much more.

I don't know anyone who takes himself seriously as a filmgoer an will dismiss a movie for being old, subtitled, or independent. On the other hand, I've met plenty who'll dismiss a film for not being those things. At the core, each is equally arrogant. I know these films seldom deliver, but if we scoff at them automatically, we could end up overlooking it when they do.

My advice to Hollywood is this: take the hint from Pirates 3. If you're gonna spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a film, make damn sure it counts for more than just a return on an investment.

PS, Hollywood: don't let Spiderman 4 suck as much as 3...

I think handling sex with an artistic integrity has kind of disappeared from our multiplex (for the time being.) Even the foreign art housey kind of films pale in comparison. I remember seeing a French film called "Romance" a few years back by Catherine Breillat, you can search Ebert's site for the info, but I found it to be thoughtless and pointless. Another big thing recently has been to show the darker side of sex with explicitly filmed rape scenes...ooo, the film maker is being dangerous!

Right now in Japan the psycho sexual thing is still pretty big, especially with it's anime, and certainly with Takashi Miike (my articles on him are here, http://philzine.wordpress.com/2006/08/10/the-japanese-noir-of-takashi-miike/#more-18 and here http://philzine.wordpress.com/2007/06/04/weekly-movie-update-may-23-june-3-depp-paprika-and-miike/#more-41.)

Jim, you use "Basic Instinct" as an example of a film that did well, but the thing is that it wasn't just about all the sex, it was about the big tease of sex! Showing you just enough and then pulling it away. If it was just about the sex "Basic Instinct 2" would have done much better business and that's how they sold that film. Come see Sharon Stone full on nude! Woo!...uh, no thanks.

I don't know if sex itself has ever been the reason why a film has done well or not...and I say that just now considering teenage sex romps, but as I've said, it's certainly not handled with the same maturity or meaning it may once have with films like "Last Tango in Paris".

Not only should Mr. and Ms. Hollywood consider watching HBO; they should chek out a fantastic BBC-series like Steven Moffat's Jeckyll to see what the future of screenwriting looks like.

And yes, way more nudity!

DVC said The majority of Americans still seem afraid of sex outside a comical situation.

I couldn't agree more. I'll probably sound a little angry here (so I apologize in advance) but I am so damn sick and tired of the f**king Sprawl-Mart, Soft Serve, Bright Blue Cotton Candy, Terrified of Alternative Viewpoints Corporatocracy this country is becoming. And I'm sick of that slow-witted, unread, backwards dingleberry in OUR White House pushing his jingoism down our collective throats. To him and all those born again Sprawl-Mart loving goons out there sex is dirty, unmitigated violence is not.

I have the great displeasure of being aquainted with some simple-minded dimwits from "God's Country" as I grew up in the South and married a woman from the Midwest. There's plenty of great people from both of those regions (myself and my wife included) but so many of the dunderheads I know who get all tingly in their nether regions shooting off high powered firearms, who speak so highly of bombing this country or that country off the map, who get all misty thinking about executing underage mentally retarded men in Texas will at the same time recoil in horror at the thought of two gay men or women in love with each other wanting to get married. Or two people having sex before getting married (oh the horror!).

So more sex in the movies? Not a chance. Sorry Jim, but that recommendation is going to fall on deaf ears. So long as too many people in this country equate sex with uncleanliness, and thus ungodliness, the box-office numbers will be in the cellar. God does a stunning amount of killing in the Bible, genocidal or otherwise. But he doesn't make love to anyone. Not once. He doesn't even have a wife. And when he does have a son, he makes sure the mother's a virgin - so there's no sex. 'Cause you know, sex is dirty.

Jim,

Your post made me think of an article that appeared on Nerve a couple years ago by Jonathan Lethem entitled "Donald Sutherland's Buttocks," which I encountered by accident and immediately read because, as he points out in the article, to a certain group of people that phrase can refer to only one thing. The essay isn't perfect by any means, but I think it's interesting. Lethem's posted it on his website. Here's the link:
http://www.jonathanlethem.com/sutherlands_butt.html

Jim, it's funny that you posted this this week. Just last week I was talking with a friend about how Jessica Alba (I think, coulda been Biel, who the hell cares?) said she would never do nudity in a movie. I pointed to the great "Don't Look Now", where Julie Christie (already Oscar-winner Julie Christie at this point, not like she was a struggling actress trying to make a name for herself) obviously didn't have too much of a problem doing nudity for a movie. I then pointed to Kate Winslet and Julianne Moore as basically the only modern actresses who don't seem to have too many issues with it. I remember hearing Jennifer Lopez talk about how she felt she had to do nudity when she was just starting out because she didn't have the power to say "no". I was thinking aloud about how it seemed like most movies in the 70's had nudity in them no matter what it was about, and movies with big stars in them, not just no name actresses randomly disrobing. I mean lets face it, life has a fair amount of nudity in it, if movies are supposed to be evoking some form of life, shouldn't they have a fair amount of nudity as well? I was trying to figure out when this practice seemed to wane, and couldn't really come up with anything. Regardless, great post Jim.

Just wanted to note that in your list of movies, Knocked Up and Superbad (and Ratatouille and The Bourne Ultimatum) have no nudity at all, while Hostel II and Chuck and Larry do.

It doesn't really weaken your argument, but some of us aren't expert critical thinkers so we pick at what we can.

"...how far are you willing to push it before audiences just get sick of it?"
That reminds me of one idea bandied about by cultural anthropologists (Jared Diamond, etc.), about aspects of social collapse. Societies like the Mayan get fed up with the blood-sacrifices, and piercing their baby-makers (!) at the behest of authorities (who obviously know what's best for them).
Plain ol' folks just run for the hills. Sometimes, people DO know what's best for themselves.
"Hostel" and "Saw"? I'd rather see "Wallace & Grommit".

It does seem like there was more sex scenes in mainstream theatrical movies ten years ago than there are this decade, and more movies where the lure was to see a star naked. How many movie posters do you see today that show a bare shouldered woman turning her head back to kiss the guy who's necking her? It was true on network television as well. Even Star Trek: Voyager tried to use steamy looking scenes in their previews whenever they could. Nowadays you get a lot of salacious dialogue in network television, and a lot of scantily clad bodies, but much less attempts at PG-13 level roll-in-the-sheets scenes.

I think that Hollywood just figures if people want sex scenes or nude celebrities they've got home video and the internet. The better to keep thrillers more action-oriented, and teenagers comfortable. The same with exotic historical and Sci-Fi films.

On the plus side, it's encouraging to consider that the Demi Moore version of The Scarlet Letter could not have been made today.

It's 100% a comfort thing. As soon as a movie advertises itself as 'sexy' or uses nudity to get bodies in the theatre, 'respectable' people are going to stay away. It's not that people don't want to see hollywood vixens get naked; it's that we don't want our friends and family and strangers to think that's what we want to see. If I'm watching a movie with, say, my parents, and there's a graphic sex scene, I'll feel extremely uncomfortable. Except for one new year's day when we all got drunk and watched Flesh Gordon. That was a strange night.

People love nudity and sex, they just don't want anyone else to know they do. And if I go to watch a movie whose main selling point is nudity and sex, I'm going to feel like everyone else who knows I saw that movie, from the ticket vendor on down, is thinking to themselves "heh heh, that guy just wants to get his rocks off on --insert starlets name here--'s tits."

That's why nudity doesn't sell these days. And, as someone above said, if people want to see nudity, nothing beats the internet!

P.S. It seems to me that the same argument ought to apply to torture porn, and in my own case it certainly does (though even if it didn't, I'd still never go to see one of those movies anyways). I guess that the kind of people who go to see a movie like Saw or Hostel just really don't care what other people think anyways.

'Cause you know, sex is dirty.

Sex is dirty; that's one of the many reasons it is so damned fun. :-)

I'll try posting this again since it didn't go through the first time:

Jim,

I don't know if the first "Basic Instinct" is really a good example. While it dealt with sex, the reason why it did so well is because it was a bigger tease than anything else. "Did we really see that?" The kind of films that sell themselves blatantly with sex don't seem to do so well. "Basic Instinct 2" grabbed onto the sex thing, selling itself with a fully nude Sharon Stone, which in theory doesn't even titillate as much as a playful glimpse.

Some of the teenage sex romps used to bring in business, but even the ones full of unrated bits don't do so well.

Even the art houses and foreign territories haven't handled the subject well, relying on hardcore rape scenes to show the brutality of it all, or treating it coldly and with no point of view whatsoever as so happened in that 1999 French film "Romance", though "Swimming Pool" was pretty good.

The Japanese films seem to deal with sex in a very bizarre psycho sexual way, anime and Takashi Miike (who I have a few articles on at my site) are a couple examples. But at least they deal with it in fresh ways.

The only people I can think of that handle it well stateside are David Lynch and, well...um...I just received "Inland Empire" via netflix...oh, yeah HBO and Showtime.

Advice? No more penguin movies. And stop giving away so much in trailers. Remember a tease is enough to get someone to want to see the full frontal - save it for the movie.

Oh, anonymous: Knocked Up DID have a little nudity. Or have you forgotten the "Now THAT'S how you get pink-eye!" scene?

Kyle mentions Jessica, Jessica, Julie, Julianne, Kate and Jennifer. But what about Brad, George, Matt, Tobey, Leo, and Russell? Why is it only women who are still allowed/encouraged to bare it all. Or should I say bear it all? If we're talking more nudity, let's get rid of the stupid double standard that says women can show everything, but god forbid we see a penis on the screen. You gotta appreciate Ewan McGregor, who has done all he can to advance the cause of male nudity in film. Time for other men to rise to the occasion.

Liz: Just to be a bit, er, anatomically correct, I have to say I've seen more male genitalia than female in non-porn movies. And I don't search it out, honest. Apples and oranges, I'd say, regarding double standards. But that said, any apples or oranges they want to show is all right with me.

I've posted about this to my blog, FYI.

I've come to the rule of thumb that with no shirt on women are about 50% naked and men are maybe 25% naked. Because of the weird skew right there, the algebra to creating something reasonably interpretable as "equality" requires a complex algebra that's unlikely to ever get dealt with.

As it goes, I've got to agree with Dane, seeing women's genitalia is absolutely unheard of in mainstream cinema... and practically so even in arthouse movies. The general region shows up on rare occasion, although certainly not any more often than the male region, and as such, the actual male genitalia make an appearance.

I'd say the concern over this would best be alleviated with more 100% naked people of both genders, but until then, I think the supposed double standard is overblown.

Dane and Neil, it's true that, due to the nature of our anatomy you rarely see women's genitalia. But you can argue semantics, anatomy and genitalia shots all you want, but if you count shots of topless women, full frontal nudity and shots from the rear (or rather, of the rear), male or female, women are still naked in movies a lot more than men.

Liz: I'm glad you agree. I didn't want to come across as too partisan because I wasn't arguing against the essence of your post. Call it semantics if you want, but I think accuracy in making one's case is important. It's sort of like in the earlier post about TotalFilm when spleendonkey took everyone to task for snobbery. I happened to agree that the reaction here was a bit overblown, but I don't think snobbery was the reason for it. That was just an easy label to throw, as is the phrase "double standard".

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