Why won't Hollywood do HARDCORE porn?

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Gordon
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#1 Post by Gordon » Thu Jun 22, 2006 7:36 pm

Well, what is the hold-up? The hardcore industry is awful, with rubbish plots/context, 'actors', lighting, etc. In, out, in, out - BORING! Eroticism is part of life, yet it is absent from mainstream pornography! Most people who have Internet access, look at porn or have looked at porn, yet it is always sniggled at or swept under the carpet. Meanwhile, everyone acts all 'sophisticated' when it comes to sex. Fucking bollocks.

De Palma, initially announced Body Double as "the first mainstream Hollywood hardcore porno" with Annette Haven, but Columbia said uh-uh. That was 1984! Then AIDS came along that's all she wrote and fair enough, but hardcore porno without condoms thrives in the Modern Age.

Thoughts?

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Glass
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#2 Post by Glass » Thu Jun 22, 2006 7:52 pm

9 Songs, Brown Bunny.. wait, that's not Hollywood. Wasn't Hollywood just good-evil formula, blockbusters, special effects, biopics etc?

Really, first I don't think any big star will do hardcore (they do have certain glossy images to hold up, remember? and they do have families, wives, kids etc), second; want to look at someone as Tom Cruise do porn..? :|

leave it to arthouse section bitte.

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Cinephrenic
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#3 Post by Cinephrenic » Thu Jun 22, 2006 8:01 pm

If one thing hollywood learned from hardcore porn from the 70's-80's is that its cheaper and smarter just to show "fucking" than cheesy plots and scripts to the horny viewer. Isn't that the whole point in pornography?

Let the annual porno thread 2006 begin.... =P~

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Glass
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#4 Post by Glass » Thu Jun 22, 2006 8:07 pm

A real black and white noir with some hardcore could be quite grounbreaking =P~

Maybe a new project for Clooney 8-)

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Gordon
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#5 Post by Gordon » Thu Jun 22, 2006 8:15 pm

But the point is that mainstream Hollywood films still have 'sex scenes'. Meanwhile, every other aspect of them, is geared towards either realism or fantasy, so where does actual, representational sex stand?! Ridiculous. Is it only a matter of time, or what? The world is on the verge of a Dionysian orgy before North Korea launches the nukes, so why not?

There are no facts, only interpretations. :wink:

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sevenarts
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#6 Post by sevenarts » Thu Jun 22, 2006 10:31 pm

Not Hollywood either, but I just watched Cronenberg's Crash tonight, and that struck me like it very much has an unspoken porn influence to it. Not that I'm saying it's "just" porn or anything, but the rhythm (heh) of the scenes and the way the sex scenes were shot was very pornographic. The difference, of course, is that the "plot" parts in between sex scenes subverted and commented upon the sex rather than just being filler or setup. Actually, the more I think about it, the more apt I find it to think about this film as the ultimate example of "porn with a plot."

As for Hollywood attempting porn... Really, could there be a worse idea?

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zedz
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#7 Post by zedz » Thu Jun 22, 2006 10:57 pm

This discussion may be best carried on in relation to John Cameron Mitchell's very sweet Shortbus, which grafts hardcore sex scenes onto a fairly standard indie ensemble template. The movie is funny and fun, and makes a good argument for the viability of real sex as an element of regular filmmaking, as opposed to porn-industry dreck or arthouse alienation. hey! Sex can be fun!

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Fletch F. Fletch
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#8 Post by Fletch F. Fletch » Fri Jun 23, 2006 9:06 am

Well, a mainstream porn film was dabbled with briefly in Hollywood with Terry Southern and Mike Nichols. Here's an excerpt of an interview with Southern:
Blue Movie was based on an idea that Stanley Kubrick had. Somebody came by one day with some porn footage. So we looked at it, and he said, "Wouldn't it be interesting if one day someone who was an artist would do that - using really beautiful actors and good equipment." So that was the genesis. Of course I was hoping he would do it as a film. But he's surprisingly puritanical and shy. When he read part of it, still in manuscript, he said, "Congratulations, you've written the definitive blow job." There actually was a tremendous amount of interest in doing Blue Movie. It nearly happened a couple of times, and one of those times it was fantastic. Ringo Starr had the option - he had it for a couple of years. And John Cally, who was a very hip Producer at MGM - he produced The Loved One that I worked on, and he became the President of Warner Brothers for a brief time, so he was in this heavy decision-making position, and said, "Well now it's time to do Blue Movie." He was convinced that the first studio to come out with a quality full length film showing erection and penetration, using stars, would go over the top. "It'll be like Gone With The Wind," he kept saying. Super enthusiastic about it. So he got Mike Nichols to direct. And since John was practically living with Julie Andrews at the time, he was able to get her of all people, as the girl. John's diabolical genius envisioned Mary Poppins getting banged for the world. And so Mike Nichols was ready to go - ready to do it - I couldn't believe it - so John called Nichols, put me on the other phone and said, "Terry Southern's here now, and he's worried you're not going to do erection and penetration." It could actually be cut in, or simulated, but it had to look like it - you know, like a pan instead of a cut. So he said, "yes." And they reassured me on the phone. So I went to see Ringo, and I said, "Look, there's this chance to do this." He said, "Right, right, right. . .just make sure you've got a proper deal." I think they might try to use Buck Henry on the script. But the whole thing got bogged down in lawyers. It turned out that Mike Nichols has something like a superstition about allowing other people to be cut into his projects. And the deal fell through, in a grotesque hangup between Nichols and Ringo's lawyers. But if it had been done, with those kind of credentuals, between Nichols and Julie Andrews, they could hardly have dismissed it as shabby porn.
Source: http://www.carminestreet.com/smoke_sign ... y.southern

brunosh
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#9 Post by brunosh » Fri Jun 23, 2006 9:19 am

This article from Mark Kermode is very much to the point: http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/fea ... 03,00.html.

His concern about momentary destruction of the fictional world rings true with me up to a point, but I would pick him up on his reason for excepting Shortbus. Or was he really already familiar with the actors in Battle in Heaven, Romance, The Idiots, etc.?

Cinesimilitude
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#10 Post by Cinesimilitude » Fri Jun 23, 2006 11:16 am

Less is more guys... some of the hottest sex scenes out there contain no nudity at all, and the ones that are closest to hardcore or actual penetration are just fucking awkward. It weakens the film in my opinion.

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toiletduck!
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#11 Post by toiletduck! » Fri Jun 23, 2006 11:32 am

But might fucking awkward be the intention of a sex scene? Or numerous other reasons aside from being 'hot'?

Then again, this is Hollywood we're talking about.

-Toilet Dcuk

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Lino
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#12 Post by Lino » Fri Jun 23, 2006 11:33 am

SncDthMnky wrote:Less is more guys... some of the hottest sex scenes out there contain no nudity at all, and the ones that are closest to hardcore or actual penetration are just fucking awkward. It weakens the film in my opinion.
Surely you haven't seen The Empire of the Senses, one of the most gorgeously shot and emotionally involving movies ever. Not to mention the superb acting from the two main leads. If you ask me, this is the way Hollywood should have gone ages ago.

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Barmy
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#13 Post by Barmy » Fri Jun 23, 2006 11:51 am

With VERY few exceptions, unsimulated sex has never been properly handled in cinema. There's that French tw*t directress whose name temporarily escapes me, plus horrifically tedious films like The Idiots and 9 Songs (one of the worst films ever). I actually liked Brown Bunny except for the sex scene. Ditto Caligula--the sex scenes were the worst parts. Who needs it?

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toiletduck!
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#14 Post by toiletduck! » Fri Jun 23, 2006 12:29 pm

Barmy wrote:With VERY few exceptions, unsimulated sex has never been properly handled in cinema. There's that French tw*t directress whose name temporarily escapes me, plus horrifically tedious films like The Idiots and 9 Songs (one of the worst films ever). I actually liked Brown Bunny except for the sex scene. Ditto Caligula--the sex scenes were the worst parts. Who needs it?
I know it's trite and cliched to ask this by now, but can you please elaborate?

There are so many divergent reasons for such a strong reaction against these scenes, and almost any one of them has a great discussion lying underneath. This, on the other hand, gets us nowhere.

-Toilet Dcuk

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Barmy
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#15 Post by Barmy » Fri Jun 23, 2006 12:43 pm

Because in many cases the sex is there primarily to generate controversy. Would anyone have even heard of Brown Bunny or 9 Songs if they didn't have the sex scenes? The sex scenes in the films I identified are not interesting either from a visual or thematic standpoint. Yes, 9 Songs is largely ABOUT the sex, but visually it is banal and just plain ugly. I'll try to think of an example where sex scenes worked for me, but at the moment I can't think of any.

PS I hate to sound like a fuddy duddy but Russ Meyer was right when he said something to the effect that penetration and oral/genital scenes (I assume that is what this thread is about) are virtually impossible to depict photogenically.

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pianocrash
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#16 Post by pianocrash » Fri Jun 23, 2006 1:02 pm

I have to agree with annie, oshima's ai no corrida is the shining example of the complete package, so to speak. What I believe is such a restraint with the idea of penetration & so forth in a "proper" film is the seriousness of it all, or at least the taboo of seriousness which seems to be where every attempt goes wrong. Which is why I'm happy that jcm's shortbus actually seeks to identify with the humor (and, let's face it, humanity) of the act so graphic that the world turns all granny at the sheer mention of it. This is why I probably am so gleeful when legitimate porn seeks to remake old classics (eon mckai). But only sometimes. More like recently. Hurrah.

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toiletduck!
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#17 Post by toiletduck! » Fri Jun 23, 2006 1:45 pm

Barmy wrote:PS I hate to sound like a fuddy duddy but Russ Meyer was right when he said something to the effect that penetration and oral/genital scenes (I assume that is what this thread is about) are virtually impossible to depict photogenically.
I think that the big problem is the hang up that society has on the big bad p-word (sorry, penetration, as opposed to penis, pussy, (anal) plug, or any other sexually related p-words). If simulated sex can by depicted photogenically, there's no reason the real thing can't either. The assumption being made is that if the sex involves penetration, the penetration must be the focal point, which leads to sex for sex's sake, a choice interesting in its own right, but still rather limited.

Think of any example of an effective (simulated) sex scene. Is there any reason that scene couldn't have been unsimulated and shot in the exact same manner? Violence is one thing -- no, we can't really kill an actor to depict death on screen, if only for the limiting factor of only getting one take -- but aside from 'fuddy duddy' moral hangups (which, IMHO, are quite silly when we consider that through the entertainment industry we vastly support a career choice that really boils down to lying for a living), what is preventing sex on film from being the real deal? And, the bigger question, how would this affect the performances and, in turn, the film? One would imagine that a certain amount of verisimilitude would present itself that all but the finest of actors are unable to tap into in a simulated scene. But, jesus, imagine trying to control THAT stream of consciousness and subtext in the name of performance. Paradoxically enough, I have my doubts that the current Hollywood crop could pull off an actual sex scene convincingly.

-Toilet Dcuk

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Michael
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#18 Post by Michael » Fri Jun 23, 2006 2:25 pm

What about my fave Wild at Heart? Its theatrical release was pretty wide. The sex scenes are HOT.. the type of sex I want everyday.

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Kudzu
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#19 Post by Kudzu » Fri Jun 23, 2006 3:09 pm

Barmy wrote:That French tw*t directress whose name temporarily escapes me...
Breillat?

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Gordon
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#20 Post by Gordon » Fri Jun 23, 2006 4:55 pm

The type of film that I envision, would not have close-ups of nobs and fannies with spunk everywhere, but just an authentic lovemaking scene that was montaged, as in Roeg's, Don't Look Now. I feel that modern pornography has really debased sensual, erotic art simply by working on its own terms and created what is now regarded as the standard image of human sexuality. Everything else imaginable has and still is shown in mainstream motion pictures with painstaking verisimilitude, but sex scenes are still naff, both in hardcore porn and in Hollywood movies. Something has to be done to save erotic art from falling completely into a sterile and irrecoverable abyss and one of the ways would be to let great filmmakers to incorporate genuine sex scenes into their work. Otherwise, it will remain the domain of any money-hungry twerp with a video camera and the stable of models at the cookie-cutter studio

Hollywood has had to compensate with stronger and stronger violence, which ironically and unfortunately, has ended up skewing the public's perception of sexuality in art. Procreation, erotica and porn are now one and the same in the mind of the general public. It is no longer percieved as mysterious. Actually, nothing is percieved as mysterious anymore and that is the great tragedy of modern man - that it has all been 'solved', so let decadence reign. But not as far as I'm concerned. W.R: Mysteries of the Organism would be quite welcome on DVD at present. Instead, we get a pointless biopic of Alfred Kinsey; pointless, in that the most interesting thing about him today, is the questions that he didn't ask.

I am not particularly interested in seeing Hollywood's Big Studios producing films with real sex scenes, just broadly seeing the taboos disolved and new bold ideas and images incorporated into unusual and novel stories. I would rather see a biopic of Timothy Leary or Carl Jung than Alfred Kinsey, but that's just me. Jung's life, in greatest sense of the word, lends itself far more to Cinema than the life of a groundbreaking zoologist, frankly.

Darren Aronofsky's film of Hubert Selby's, Requiem for a Dream was a step in the right direction. The Fountain, also sounds fascinating.

I suppose that my core desire is to see a new no-holds-barred Hollywood that makes thought-provoking, disturbing, enlightening films, but with the cliches dropped - and the treatment of sex would be a logical first step.

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Barmy
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#21 Post by Barmy » Fri Jun 23, 2006 5:09 pm

Not sure Don't Look Now qualifies as hardcore.

The trend, of course, is in the opposite direction. It's increasingly rare even to see frontal nudity, let alone real sex, in "mainstream" films. I'm more annoyed by the fakey towel/sheet etc. placement than the absence of f***ing.

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Gordon
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#22 Post by Gordon » Fri Jun 23, 2006 5:48 pm

Barmy wrote:Not sure Don't Look Now qualifies as hardcore.
Of course it doesn't; I wasn't suggesting it was, merely using it as an example of lovemaking in mainstream Cinema that approaches high art, which is honest, beautiful and imaginative.
The trend, of course, is in the opposite direction. It's increasingly rare even to see frontal nudity, let alone real sex, in "mainstream" films. I'm more annoyed by the fakey towel/sheet etc. placement than the absence of f***ing.
I agree; that is a very tiresome cop-out.

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Jay
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#23 Post by Jay » Fri Jun 23, 2006 5:58 pm

Gordon McMurphy wrote:Is it only a matter of time, or what? The world is on the verge of a Dionysian orgy before North Korea launches the nukes, so why not?

There are no facts, only interpretations. :wink:
Would that this scenario were so. I've been waiting for this freakin' orgy since I was ten, but obviously I've been begging and sacrificing to the wrong god.

Satan out,
Dionysus in.
Jump and shout...
Let the party begin!

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John Cope
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#24 Post by John Cope » Fri Jun 23, 2006 7:16 pm

The whole question of why Hollywood does not do hardcore is slightly absurd, isn't it? I mean, it is Hollywood we're talking about. This community would have no problem making and distributing anything that made money but it won't produce porn because on one hand the whims of the supposed marketplace (the US rather than the global market, an illusion which will slowly fade with time) are dictated by a prevailing residue of puritanism and a socially encouraged hypocritical bearing. A friend once told me that Hollywood excels at pretending to be liberal when, in reality, they are conservative to their core, they reflect their constituency. On the other hand, the way the present Hollywood power structure probably sees itself would not allow for anything resembling hardcore to emerge in this or the next generation. There is just too much of a privileged assumption that celebrity culture is equivalent to the new aristocracy and in a legitimately aristocratic tradition. It's unlikely that those who wish to see themselves as highly placed models of a sort would consent to being seen as highly paid whores--the overtness of the analogy would probably be too much to accept, even with a very smart script to help sell their efforts as art. Only a few (somebody like Kubrick, of course) could pull this off and only then because the emphasis on star turns would be turned down. If it wasn't, the public inclination to howl about the size of McConaughey's big dick and how it compares to John Holmes would be unavoidable. We'd get more of that nonsense over how the NC-17 was the same as XXX, which would simply confuse the whole point of having it in the first place as no one seemed capable of making a distinction.

Of course, it is true that graphic sex certainly does not inherently equal art even if it does equal provocation. Context is always critical. Don't Look Now is an excellent example of a film that clearly understood what made sex valuable is an emotional investment and that the replication of this triggered empathy and relatability. Crash is much more about structure and design, employing a pornographic sensibilty in that way but transcending it through the recognition of what is lost on the purely formalist level. As Donald Sutherland so astutely noted in his interview on the UK Casanova disc, pornography seems primarily about athleticism rather than eroticism and that shift in prioritization has been reflected in what is fetishized in the culture. It is a restrictive rather than expansive arena, one which functions well to satisfy the often complicated psychological demands of its audience but is unsteady when venturing into emotional terrain, particularly when it is conceptual and abstract. And, yes, I am thinking of Carax's Pola X.

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bunuelian
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#25 Post by bunuelian » Fri Jun 23, 2006 7:53 pm

Hollywood's fear is not their own guilt. Every time I read this nonsense about Hollywood being so square I have to laugh my ass off. Those people are all about sex. The problem is that Congress likes to wave its dick in their faces whenever there's any insinuation of moral turpitude seeping between the cracks of the Hollywood-censor pact. Joe Lieberman will call a committee, the representatives of Jesus will swarm forth, and the form will be rendered unworkable by legislative sleight-of-hand. Why pick this fight when there are easier and more profitable roads?

As for why actual penetration isn't the norm: would you want to fuck everyone you work with? What if she's a bad kisser?

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