My edit machine is grinding out an MPEG2 encode. If I were smarter (and a little richer) I suppose I’d have a machine dedicated to rendering and encoding. Still, there’s something to be said to having pauses built into your work flow. Life is not supposed to run at maximum efficiency.

While the MPEG stream cooks, I’d like to give you a little more from Mr. Corliss and Mr. Spencer. From the conclusion of their respective columns:

Time’s Richard Corliss
Whatever Happened to Movie Sex?
“It’s terrific that a part-time moviemaker [Nichols] has directed so many films that cogently exploring the language of sex. But it does suggest that the rest of Hollywood isn’t really trying. Seeing “Closer,” teetering from empathy to exasperation with each of its characters as one would with a real lover, a moviegoer has to wonder: Why can’t there be a dozen, a hundred films like this? Where’s the good and bad sex in movies? Why can’t directors locate where we live, how we love and lie to each other, and get closer to it?”

AVN’s Colt Spencer
Porn-Again Fundamentalism: Is Adult Entertainment Dying a Slow Death?
It sure would be something if someone were to make an adult film today that carried the same potential for the cultural shift in ideology that Deep Throat inspired - something to really stir the pot and get people talking again. I say screw the House of Justice and the government; now is exactly the time to be making waves - when we have the most opportunity to be heard. (And remember that old adage, folks: controversy sells!) If it was done once before, it can certainly be done again. Of course, it would take something extremely original, innovative, and incendiary to ignite that kind of flame in the social consciousness again, but just think about what might happen if it did.

Both men are pining for the same era – the early Seventies – a time when it seemed as though sex might suddenly open up as legitimate area for filmmakers to explore. Of course it didn’t. Instead of great films about sex, we got herpes, HIV, the VCR, Ed Meese, and the camcorder; and sex on film took a hard left, right into a wall. But along with all this, it is our own discomfort with what sex actually looks like; with admiting, even to ourselves, that we actually like to look.

Says Corliss, “…the camera crept in for a microscopic, medicinal close-up; and I would sit there impatiently, my eyes fixed on the red EXIT sign, wondering atavistically if the ladies would please remove their clothes.”

Says Nichols, “I think sex in a movie is boring… Sex is very powerful as part of a fantasy… But to stare directly at it is to be wasting most of what’s available in drama and in film”

The VCR and HIV played a part, but ultimately it was shame, it was fear of what others would think if we admitted we wanted to see between her legs that drove depictions of explicit sexuality off the palette of images serious filmmakers are permitted to work with. Nichols might be willing to fight for his right to show us Ann-Margret’s tits*, but only a fool bent on career suicide (or a pornographer) would fight for the right to show us her pussy. No, if you want to make a grown up film with grown up money about grown up sex, you have to shoot it from the waist up.

I’ll agree with Nichols – so far, sex in movies is boring. I don’t watch porn. It’s not because I’m a prude (clearly), it’s because it’s boring. Uncrafted? Sure. Crass? You bet. But mostly I don’t watch because it’s just plain boring. And it’s not just porn sex that’s boring. Every year or so an European art-house picture drifts across my radar, offering the promise of cunts and cocks in a real movie. But inevitably these are films about loneliness and desperation and the havoc that sex visits on people’s lives. This is not where I live, how I love, or what I want to get close to. But mostly, it’s boring. But when Nichols goes on to say “But to stare directly at it is to be wasting most of what’s available in drama and in film”, I’ve got to stand up and say “No! No! No!”

Nichol’s comment has an Icarus-like undertone that speaks volumes to what’s wrong with our public attitudes about seeing the actual mechanics of sex. If you ask the Moral Majority et. al, the very sight of a cock going into a pussy will flood your brain with erototoxins, causing permanent damage; and if you’re Nichols, the mechanics aren’t dangerous, they’re merely banal, unworthy of serious cinematic exploration and celebration.

I don’t think the mechanics are dangerous, and I don’t think they’re banal either. I like looking down when I’m having sex – I always have. I love the way my erect cock looks, I have never been anything less than thrilled by a glimpse of my wife’s pussy, and I am always captivated by the sight of me going into her. I think making love is beautiful and I think its details are beautiful too.

And I don’t think I’m alone. For whatever gets said publicly (be it self-serving hysteria or studied indifference) I think all across the world men are admiring how their wives look, legs spread in welcoming anticipation. I think all around the world women are watching their husbands stroke themselves to readiness and thinking “I never get tired of watching his cock get hard.” I think all around the world, even as their flesh melts and becomes one, lovers are making a little extra space between their bodies so they can “look down”.

Seeing sex is not dangerous; there’s no such thing as “erototoxin”; it’s safe to make love with the lights on. But neither is it banal; staring directly at it is only as wasteful as staring long and lovingly at a kiss, or a flower, or a baby. If that makes me sound like an apologist for my films, so be it. This is where I live, this is how I love, this is what I want to be close to.

-T.C.

*Having come to New York well after the demise of the revival house (another casualty of the VCR), I only know about Ann-Margret’s tits and the other delights to be found in the very gritty and very adult films of the early seventies (like Carnel Knowlegde, Sunday Bloody Sunday, Klute, etc) because my of uncle’s vast laser disc collection and his determination to see that I receive a proper cinematic education. He doesn’t like porn either. I don’t know how he feels about “looking down”.

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