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[dramatic music]
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[singer vocalizing]
[gate clattering]
- When I first signed with an agent, they said,
"Oh, yeah, you're gonna have to get naked,
and everybody knows that winning the Oscar represents
that you're not gonna get naked anymore."
[crew chattering indistinctly]
- You're out there while the men are
on the sides wearing parkas.
You're just standing there with no shirt on.
Everybody's standing, staring at you.
- A lot of the nudity that was asked of me
was not in the contract.
I thought, at the time, "This is what paying your dues is."
- I was afraid if I said no
that it would make me too vulnerable.
For some reason, sayin no
would make me more vulnerable than being naked.
- Did I have to be topless?
Probably not.
- Already as an artist, as an actor,
my body no longer belongs to me.
You are giving over your likeness to a character,
and then that character becomes something
that belongs to the world, and that's crazy.
- This idea of, "Oh, I'm less of a true actor
if I do nudity," as if it's this negative thing,
but who decided that?
Who?
- [Director] Zoom in if you can.
- I wanted to be naked so there's a sense of normalcy
about what our bodies represent,
not just for trans people but period.
[crate thudding] [metal clinking]
- [Crew] Yeah, can we just...
- All these movies
that I watched growing up chipped away
at my sense of who I was, how to know who I was,
how to know what I wanted.
- [Director] Okay, marks, everyone.
- [Joey] How do we find our desire
when we're so used to being looked at?
- [Director] Interior bedroom night, this is a closed set,
so if you're not in this scene or working this scene,
please exit the stage.
- What we see over and over again is women have to fight
for ownership of their own body.
- [Crew] Okay, here we go.
- Quiet please. - Quiet.
- [Crew] Roll sound.
- [Crew] Camera speeds.
- [Crew] Scene 20, take five, marker.
- [Crew] 'Kay, robe's off.
- [Crew] Action.
[projector clattering]
[singer vocalizing]
- Everybody learns how to behave
and sex and other things from the movies,
our notions of ourselves, our notions of beauty,
our notions of romance,
what sex is allowed to be, and who it's allowed to be with.
- How to kiss, how to have sex,
how to be tender, how to be violent.
I mean, there are so many things we learn from movies,
particularly when we're younger.
[projector clattering]
- It's hard to talk about sex,
but here we have all of these examples of movies,
and television, and now the Internet
to show us what we are thinking
about our relation to sex through media.
- Sex education.
[students laughing]
- Don't have sex 'cause you will get pregnant and die.
- That's it then for the penis.
Let's move on
to the, the --
female privates.
- We are sex ed,
the TV industry and the film industry.
We are sex ed.
- When I didn't think I was gonna make it
as a filmmaker, as a director,
I really wanted to do sex education curriculums
in high schools 'cause I just find so many things,
like, so shocking about what women
and girls, like, aren't ever told about sex.
- [Joey] Which is probably
why I'm really fascinated as a director
[door slamming]
with what happens behind closed doors.
[film rustling]
- I was raised so conservative and so Christian
that I remember watching "Ace Ventura" [laughs],
and it was the first time I realized
that sex wasn't just the penis going into the vagina --
[bed clanging]
...because the bed was shaking back and forth, realizing
that there was, like, an actual movement that happened.
- For me, the sex scene that sticks out is "Love Jones."
There was, like, one moment within the scene where
Larenz actually kissed her nipple,
and I was like, "Whoa."
Like, "They're allowed to put this in movies?"
Like, "This is crazy.
Oh, this is what sex looks like.
This is how I'm supposed to look as a woman."
- [Stacy] When I was a teenager I remember watching
"Fast Times at Ridgemont High,"
and there was Phoebe Cates,
- Hi, Brent.
- who was the object of desire,
and so wanted,
and so unattainable, and I remember thinking, like,
"I really wanna be her."
- I desperately wanted to be the object.
[singer vocalizing]
[energetic music] [projector clattering]
- There's a long tradition in American movies of showgirls,
of literally showing girls,
identical-looking women opening their legs in unison
going back to the earliest musicals.
[energetic music continues]
- The idealized and commodified --
sexuality of women,
it's as old an invention as film.
[pensive music]
- Eadweard Muybridge was a photographer
who would give lectures, and he would show
very, very short sequences of motion.
[slides clicking]
When he got to the women,
he fundamentally didn't know what purposeful activity
to give them to do,
and so he had them flirt fans,
or walk up some stairs, or walk down some stairs.
One woman is gazing longingly at another woman.
So, the men act,
and the women are always aware of being looked at.
[slides clicking] [pensive music continues]
[dramatic music]
[keys clattering] - [Writer] Jane, 30s,
beautiful but pissed.
Jane, an attractive and fit nurse in her late 30s.
Jane 40s, looks 35.
Jane's the Harvard type. Pretty, Hispanic.
Smart as shit and beautiful.
- We need a woman who's strong-willed but hot.
She has to be strong-willed but hot, --
meaning that a strong-willed woman is
usually not attractive.
- The bimbo hot mamacita,
seductress, voluptuous, curvaceous, sassy.
[dramatic music continues]
- I make you feel real nice today, Doug.
I played this one character who was
an Asian masseuse,
[laughing] and I remember
when that casting breakdown was being faxed to me
and was [laughing] like, "Is she also a bad driver,
and is she good at math?"
I mean, how many stereotypes can you roll
into this one character?
[projector clattering]
- You read so many scripts, and you're like,
"This is what you're gonna do,
[film bursting in flame]
this, and then you're gonna get money to make this,
and then you're gonna put this thought out into the world
with these characters?"
- When I first started my TV writing career,
they were always looking for a female writer to hire.
It's terrible to say,
but at the time I felt really fortunate.
I was like, "Oh, they're looking for a female writer.
I could be that female writer,"
but of course I wasn't putting it together, like,
'cause they already have a writer's room of 11 guys.
And there wasn't a lot of interest
in authentic female stories.
I'll put it that way.
- In some ways, I think there's
a [laughing] lotta 20 and 30 something male writers,
who they'd admit, "I'm not really sure I wanna to know
what's in a woman's head," you know,
and, "I'd rather stand out here
and put a gun in a guy's hand,
and I'll write that story."
In some respects, we may have been shirking it.
- They were just telling their stories,
and in their stories, many times,
we were one-dimensional objects.
- It's limited choices, and that's just
because it comes from limited imaginations.
[switch clicking] [projector clattering]
- You bad girl.
- Mm, you'll find out.
- In the very early cinema, shockingly,
you find something different.
[upbeat music]
- In the late 20s, early 30s,
we did have a lot of women writing screenplays.
I mean a lot.
I would say, like, 50-50.
- Let's all, let's run.
- [Mick] What you're seeing is
the modern woman expressed on screen.
- I don't believe in what you believe, that's all.
I don't wanna get married.
- I'm the doctor.
- [Mick] And very importantly,
you can have a woman be very sexually adventurous.
- Hold me close.
- The 20s and 30s was the sexiest time
for women in movies, the Betty Davises, the May Wests,
- A little bit spicy but not too raw,
you know what I mean? [laughs]
- [Jane] the Garbos, they were naughty women.
They were dangerous women.
- Mm, your hand is shaking.
[horseback rider laughing]
- Women who starred in the movies had
a lot of power in those days, and they'd draw box office,
and they were saying, "I wanna do stuff that's real."
- I wanna do it and not have somebody tell me
I ought to do something else.
[propeller clattering]
[airplane engine roaring]
- Women in film were enjoying free expression.
[actor laughing]
And all of a sudden, this vein was just cut off.
It was just gone.
- The vulgar, the cheap, and the tawdry is out.
There is no room on the screen, at any time,
for pictures which offend against common decency.
- [Linda] The Hollywood production code was invented
so that Hollywood could police itself
and, in that policing,
prevent any kind of state censorship.
[audience laughing]
- Night. - Night.
- [Linda] Couples are sleeping in separate beds,
[gentle lilting music]
keep both feet firmly planted on the floor.
Kisses were only allowed to be three seconds long,
and what the kiss would lead to could never be shown,
no sexual relations between white and black characters.
- [Mick] There was no sex allowed outside of marriage.
- Goodbye mother.
- But also sex outside of marriage,
to the extent that it could be shown,
had to be shown as something that was tragic.
- [Lover] Goodbye, baby.
[gunshots blasting]
- We had different groups of people
locked into a certain representation.
- Just hold on and suck in.
- [Stephane] They're servants.
They're the sidekick.
- Turn me loose, you fool, turn me loose.
It's Ashley.
- [Stephane] Hattie McDaniel, who was crazily talented,
had to perfect the ability to play Mammy.
- What's that rustling noise I hear?
- Lordy, Mr. Rhett, that ain't nothing
but my red silk petticoat you done give me.
- Black women had to be positioned in this way
in which they were sexually non-threatening
to white women on screen.
Later on, they were hypersexual or deviant.
- I suggest that, while you're on this ship,
you wear something a little less revealing.
- Does it bother the captain?
- [Stephane] Hollywood didn't have in mind
black female actresses as leading ladies.
[suspenseful music]
- Anna May Wong was the first Chinese American movie star.
She was always cast as the dragon lady.
- Ronald. - Uh, Joan.
- The person who would - [gunshot]
steal your husband.
With the code, interracial marriage was not acceptable.
It prevented her from ever being a leading lady.
- Don't do anything foolish.
- Women's roles were destroyed.
- Now, you listen to me.
You're going to marry Phil Marshall
and keep your mouth shut till you die.
- Just at a time
when women in film were enjoying some agency.
[gentle apprehensive music]
[actors chattering indistinctly]
- After my first movie, when I started going on auditions,
I hated asking for anything,
and just by dint of being there,
you're kind of in this position,
you know, to say, "Alms for the poor?"
- He's just like, "Forget that I'm famous."
He's just like, you know. - I know.
- The feedback I would get, you know,
going in for, like, these female leads would be like,
"Is she sexy enough?"
- Do it like Shakespeare but sexy.
- Okay.
- Right there.
- Thanks, okay, nice to meet you.
- [Rose] You're being dissected immediately
for your body.
And it's something about being in a long hallway
with all these girls
with tight tops and miniskirts on and a big dream.
- The amount of parts that say "nudity required"
or, like, "simulated sex required"
creates the situation
where all women have to decide yes or no
before they even get to audition for the role.
- You will lose out on work
if you are not willing to do nudity.
- At the the big studios,
they called it Bikini Day.
[paper rustling]
They would write a part for a girl that had to be
in a bikini for no apparent reason.
So, then they would have auditions for said
bikini girl,
and that would be the day they could get
all of the producers there and the director there
to decide on other, more important roles.
- A shocking pink.
[footsteps plodding]
- When I was younger I definitely went to auditions
for the, you know, sexy teenager.
[glitzy music]
- [Presenter] Lorimar presents
Blake Edwards' "S.O.B."
- We were all required to come in wearing a bikini.
I was very well endowed,
and I got the part.
[dramatic music]
We were about to shoot.
Blake Edwards, he said, "Okay, so Rosanna,
when you come in, you know what?
Let's just lose the bikini top.
Okay, everybody, let's go, "
and I was like, "Um, Mr., Mr. Edwards,
you mean take my, take my bikini top off?"
I was 19 at the time.
And he goes, "Yeah, what, do you have a problem with that?"
And I said, "Well, I didn't know I was gonna be nude.
I didn't know I was gonna be naked."
And he goes, "Oh, man, Tony," to his, you know, producer.
He goes, "Call her agent."
And I just remembered, like, everybody waiting for me
and then him looking, you know, holding out,
and I was such in a panic, and I did it,
and I felt very humiliated and very sad about it.
But you know, this was those days.
It was a completely different consciousness.
You were expected to do these things.
[dramatic music continues]
[waves lapping]
[birds chirping]
- The best way to do this, to get the right head motion,
and also the DP's gonna have to put
the camera in the right place is you make a fist,
you put your thumb here.
[actor laughing]
You suck your own thumb.
[actor laughing]
And if you put the camera right behind them,
- [Actor] Mm-hmm, it just looks like-
- then you get the whole- - [Actor] Yeah.
- Thing.
And it gets the right- - Freaky.
- Yeah, oh, yeah, wow.
- The guy's head movement. - The look of it.
- Yep. - Wow.
Did not know that.
- Wow.
- [Actor] Yep, okay.
- Today, we're gonna be getting to the core
of what does it mean to be an intimacy coordinator
and, like, how does all this stuff function.
We're gonna talk about the three most common types
or, like, themes in choreography,
which are romance, passion, dominance,
so like, what sorts of touch are associated
and then what are some, like, hints
in terms of often dialogue that we're going
in the direction of this theme.
Romance typically has a gentle
but solid feeling at the same time.
See how light he's being?
- [Students] Yeah.
- [Amanda] Long, soft, continuous strokes
over different areas of the body,
- [Student] This guy's- - That reads romantic.
They're about to go into passion, and here we go,
[romantic music] [lips smacking]
[lover moaning]
It's kind of animalistic, and they kind of just, like, allow
themselves to get lost in the experience,
and it's a bit out of control.
[lovers moaning]
So, the last one's dominance.
- [Amanda] The energy tends to be cool, calm, collected.
- [Amanda] It can be sadistic. [lever clanging]
[actor breathing heavily]
It can be punishing.
[actor breathing heavily] [tape creaking]
- Just is occurring to me how fraught this is for men.
- A lot of them are afraid of, like,
"What if I, like, cross another person's boundaries?"
Or, "What if I, like, harm her or do something?" you know.
- And you have to do a good job.
It needs to look a certain way.
I mean it's a lot of- - Mm-hmm.
- Ooh. - Yeah.
- It's, like, an exaggeration
of everything in the culture happening right there.
- [Amanda] Yeah.
- [Student] Mm-hmm.
[tense music] - Okay, here we go,
let's lock it up, please.
- [Crew] Belle Rose, take one.
- All right, quiet now, on a bell.
[bell ringing]
And roll please.
- Speed.
[slate clacking]
- If there's gonna be nudity or a sex scene in a movie,
SAG has certain requirements.
[metal clanging]
They have to send you, in writing,
what the sex or the nudity is going to entail.
[tense music continues]
- The nudity rider is a very thorough list
of what can or cannot be shown
and what you will or will not do.
- You have these
fairly dry conversations
about boob, side boob, nipple, flank.
That's a big one, flank.
- Let me see your tits.
[footsteps plodding]
- [Writer] For the purposes of this nudity consent rider,
player agrees that player services will require
nudity and/or simulated sex scenes in accordance
with the terms and conditions provided herein.
- Very nice.
- I'll show the side of my breast but not my nipple.
I'll show my rear end,
but I only want [eraser scratching]
part of the butt crack to show.
- It's sometimes a little odd to go through
how specific it is,
[pen etching]
you know, whether you're going to see
the nipple or not, the areola or not.
- It even gets as specific as, like, if you have a position,
if you're doing, like, doggie style, for example,
it includes the anal cavity.
- And even with the nudity rider,
it's not entirely perfect.
- [Executive] Thought that's what you wanted.
- No.
- It has definitely happened where people thought
a scene was gonna get portrayed one way,
and they arrive, and all of a sudden the director has
this other, really creative idea.
The sex scene wasn't, "Oh, we're making love."
It's very harsh,
[lovers moaning]
things that they would not have agreed to
if they had understood [lover moaning]
how the director was going to film that nude scene.
- [Crew] Video.
[slate clacking]
- And if it's not SAG, you don't have protections.
There's a whole arena of movies
where you're not covered by a union.
You have no protections.
- I went on set, and I discovered
that I had two nude scenes, not one.
I was told that it was gonna be empowering.
In this industry, things happen so fast.
They don't really, you know, sit down with you like,
"Oh, we're thinking about doing it this way
or this other way."
When I saw the final product,
I didn't think it was tasteful at all.
[tense music continues]
- [Crew] Talent to set.
- And that's why it's really so important on a set
to have a person who can help you enforce your rights.
- [Director] Action.
[brush grating]
- The hair I'm using is human hair.
It's permed and straightened,
and I've got two or three different colors here,
and I'm blending the colors together.
[fingers brushing cloth]
Actors that are doing mainstream entertainment
are not signing up to do a real sex scene.
They're not really having sex,
but they have to really look like they are,
so a merkin is
essentially a pubic hair wig.
[scissors slicing]
And a lot of ladies say they like wearing
the modesty garment with the merkin over it
'cause they look totally naked,
but they don't feel like they are.
They feel like they're wearing an item of clothing still,
so they feel safe.
And then, when it's done, it's very natural looking.
I like to present them in nice little boxes.
Kinda makes everybody kinda comfortable
about the whole situation, which can be very awkward.
- [Actor] Hi, good morning.
- Hi. - Hi.
- Do you have any skin allergies?
- No.
- Perfect.
[singer vocalzing]
- The experience of shooting a sex scene is,
like, the least sexy thing in the world.
[machine buzzing]
♪ Ba, ba [hand rubbing]
- [Zoe] They will have a modesty garment on,
which is a very small pair of panties
that has no sides and no back.
- [Zoe] Some people are very nervous.
It's not something they do every day.
- [Director] And action, it's a rehearsal.
[bed creaking]
- [Jessica] It's also strange because you usually just meet,
and there you are touching each other
and laying all over each other.
- [Director] One, let's have her on top now, roll over.
- [Director] That's great.
Hold there.
- [Jessica] With rehearsal,
we just kind of walk through the steps.
- [Director] Okay, now start over.
- Here's the position, or now they're on the couch,
or now you're sitting here.
- Go right, left up, down, spin in a circle and land,
and then the guy's gonna yank your head back.
- You don't go to school and learn
how to, you know, choreograph sex scenes.
- [Crew] Cameras rolling.
- I was on set and was working on a film
that required quite a bit of nudity.
The DP tried to sneakily and very slowly move the camera
so that it could shoot the lower part of me nude
as well as the upper part.
Every day that I went to work after that,
I thought about, how much had they shot
that we hadn't caught?
- Playing an intimate scene with another partner,
you know, is awkward,
and not intimate at all, and very disconnected.
When I watched it, the nakedness
of my body being turned
into an image for anyone to see,
suddenly I realized my body wasn't mine.
- You're simulating sex,
but there's only so much simulating you can do.
You can't simulate a kiss.
You have to really kiss someone,
and you have to really touch their naked body.
Like I almost, when I have had to do sex scenes,
and I've done many, it's almost like I go into
a blackout,
like I just have to get it over with.
I wake up that morning with so much dread.
- Oftentimes, I did what I normally do
when I get freaked out.
I just kind of leave my body and float up to the ceiling.
- [Sheryl] My first tendency is almost go numb to it
because it's too intense.
And yet, if I do that, then I'm not present,
and I'm not doing the best work as an actor
that I can do.
[actors breathing heavily]
- With American puritanism, it's hard to talk about sex.
Sex is taboo.
It is the realm of real people in real bodies having
relations with one another.
That's not so comfortable to the filmmakers.
- Say mercy. - No.
- Come on. - No.
- Say mercy. - No.
- The first sex scene I ever did was
on my first feature, "D.E.B.S.,"
and I was so nervous.
- Nobody feels comfortable talking about sex, period.
[laughs] Nobody feels comfortable
saying they're uncomfortable.
- It's a moment of intimacy.
- Trying to have, like, a 10 minute conversation
with a director or a producer to be like,
"So, you're are okay with these things?"
check, check, check is not
a very thorough way to define your boundaries.
- There is so much shame around the body,
around desire.
There are a lot of directors who don't know how to talk
about sex because it remains
this forbidden area of our lives.
[door thudding]
[dramatic music]
- Oh, God, oh, Jesus Christ.
- [Linda] The 1960s and the early '70s were
the era of sexual revolution.
Everything was changing,
and with the rise of hardcore pornography on big screens,
the avant garde like Andy Warhol's art films
and the Europeans leading the way,
I think it just became absurd for movies to pretend
that the era of the code was still operating.
- Mom. this is John.
[upbeat music]
- [Linda] The world of European sexual liberty-
- He is.
- and American prudery sort of come together
in the career of Jane Fonda.
- Man, you sure do look different.
- Oh, boy, you not only don't talk much, you don't say much.
In the first part of my career
when I was playing ingenue roles here
in the United States,
I was never asked to take my clothes off.
I mean, this was late '50s, early '60s.
It wasn't until I went to France [laughs]
under the guidance of Roger Vadim.
I fell in love with him, and I eventually married him.
I knew what I was getting into.
He never made a movie where women weren't undressed.
So, I knew that was coming along, and it did,
and I did it.
[upbeat music]
Roger promised me that he would use the letters
of the titles to cover the important things,
which was only partly realized.
I was utterly terrified.
I was 30.
I should have known better,
but I was at a place in my life
when, if you were asked to do something,
especially by a man, you did it.
[upbeat music continues]
I didn't know anything about nudity clauses,
and contracts, and all those other things.
I just did what I was told,
and so I just got drunk [laughs] basically.
- Now, it was possible to play with different rules,
but the different rules were not
a whole lot different from the old rules.
I think these early films show
how, for men, sex is a very homosocial relation,
whether it's Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman
in "Midnight Cowboy,"
- [Linda] or Art Garfunkel and Jack Nicholson
in "Carnal Knowledge."
- What do you say?
- [Linda] What the man is often doing is proving
his virility to his friends via a woman.
Breasts were now completely available for looking at,
but male frontal nudity was really frowned on.
- Real portrayal of romance and intimacy
as it's practiced in life weren't part
of the American cinematic lexicon
for decades, and decades, and decades.
[upbeat music]
And suddenly, when censorship lifted in the 1960s,
we went from having romance without sex
to having sex without romance.
[lover moaning]
- Oh, yeah, wait, why don't you turn out the lights?
[confrontational music]
- In the '70s so-called blaxploitation films,
you see a lot of sex, drugs, lots of female nudity,
and these different characters
who were not Sidney Poitier being accepted
into a white world.
You have bad-ass heroes, right, Black heroes.
They spoke to the Black Power movement
and the Black feminist movement.
- You want me to crawl, white motherfucker?
- What are you doing?
Put that down.
- You wanna spit on me and make me crawl?
- The people loved it [laughs].
We were breaking all kinds of records.
- [Stephane] Black women were, quote, "sex goddesses"
for the very first time.
- For our hue, it was new.
How many love scenes did you see of us in any movie
during that period of the '60s and '70s?
None.
- But, of course, there was controversy
from the very beginning.
- [laughing] Hey.
- There's harems of women who are
at the disposal of these men,
which really highlighted their sexual bodies,
[funky music]
sort of an extreme voyeuristic eroticism.
♪ Live any let die
- Turn around slowly.
- [Stephane] Course, you had Gloria Hendry,
who was first Black woman being a Bond girl.
- Oh, beautiful, brave, and now resourceful.
- [Stephane] It was really a watershed moment.
[peaceful music]
But the film only goes so far.
- [Gloria] I think that the white people were scared
of the repercussions of their base,
having a black actress wind up with Bond.
- Oh, James.
[dramatic music]
[dart whooshing]
- She's killed, of course.
A Black actress couldn't possibly wind up with Bond.
[brooding music]
- Out of 5,000 pairs of legs, I was chosen,
and I thought, "Wow, no one's ever gonna know
that it's me on the screen."
It was just like a cattle call, and they were like,
"Your legs, yes.
Your legs, no.
Your legs, maybe."
- [Director] Okay, let's bring in the body double.
Okay, good, stay right in there.
- Hi. - Hi.
- I'm Mindy, pleased to meet you.
- [Actor] Nice to meet you.
- Our body is on the film that you're seeing.
You're there to make the actress look perfect,
[water pattering]
perfect legs, perfect breasts, perfect body.
- I think the public would be shocked to find out
how many hands aren't really the hand
[laughs] of the talent or the butt of the talent.
- Kim Basinger, Madonna, Barbara Streisand.
In "Pretty Woman," the whole opening scene
where she's getting dressed to meet Richard Gear,
that's my body.
Body doubling is really hush-hush.
- I was Janet Lee's acting double
in the shower scene of "Psycho."
You don't see her face.
That's me.
[creepy music]
[bather screaming]
That's the back of my head,
my hands, my arms, my belly button.
[dramatic music]
Janet Lee wrote her biography, and she let on
that she did the whole thing.
[clicks tongue] Pissed me off [laughs]
that I wasn't recognized.
[fire crackling]
- In "Rising Sun," I was the live body sushi plate.
[glass shattering] [residents screaming]
- [Police Officer] Police. - SWAT team was breaking
through the window, and I'm there nude
with the sushi on me,
and I remember looking away saying,
"I'm not gonna get cut by the glass."
But if your a body double,
they pull you out like a chicken dinner.
You're like, "Bring out the breast,
bring out the thighs, bring out the leg."
They just think, "Oh, you're just there."
You're just kind of not real.
[mouse clicking]
- Somebody in the producing department wants there
to be less smile lines,
[mouse clicking]
so it aged her down slightly.
My work consists of visual effects, generally,
but a lot of requests I get from clients is
to do beauty work.
[mouse clicking]
She's got her little mole here, just sample it
and erase it.
Removing blemishes, freckles, pubic hair,
slimming people up, making 'em look younger.
It was a heavily guarded secret when it first came out.
Now, most people on television and film get it done.
As far as making somebody look younger,
it's mostly a request for women,
cleaning up, like, bags under the eyes or neck wrinkles.
I get asked to do face replacements a lot,
and usually, that has to do with stunts.
So, if there's a stunt double, and their face is visible,
then we put the actual actor's face on the stunt.
But they're starting to do this
more often for beauty purposes,
so you get a stunt body or a body double.
In "Game of Thrones," it was somebody else's body,
and her head was literally stitched
right on top of that body.
There was a request that came in from a client for me
to remove a postnatal belly
because this actress had just given birth.
So, that was just a matter of taking her body,
rotoing it out, cutting it out, squeezing it,
and then basically putting it right back on
and cleaning up the background
wherever her belly would've been.
[mouse clicking]
This is before, and that's after.
[mouse clicking]
Actors and actresses buy into it, and they persist it,
and they ask for it because they believe
that this is important, and this is needed,
and that we need to portray our best selves.
We should all be looking like China dolls.
You know, we should all have flawless faces.
- Whatever we do, we always wanna look our very best.
- I don't respond to ultra beauty in my life.
I like flaws, and I like to see natural people.
I feel like I'm part of the problem
instead of the solution for that.
[bathers chattering indistinctly]
- Dammit, it's Barbara McNeil.
I can't see a thing.
- [Mick] In American movies,
[footsteps plodding] - Mind if I join you?
- [Mick] there has always been limits
to who's allowed to be sexual.
[bather sighs] [water sloshing]
- I worked for a television producer earlier in my career,
who, when we were casting day-player roles, said
"There are no fat women in my shows."
And I remember, at the time, going,
"Wow, like, he's created a whole universe,"
and it's true, in his brand, there are no fat women.
I'm fat.
That's not a bad word.
And I am fat naked and in front of a lover, too.
I only see that as a joke.
- I get it.
You're self-conscious about your body.
Don't worry, I was gonna shut the lights off anyway.
- But then it causes for us to be like,
"Turn off the lights.
Don't see me."
What we see on the screen affects
what you take into the bedroom.
- You're cool with going out the back again, right?
- Um.
- It is very few, very few,
extremely rare, and far between to see people
with disabilities in sexual situations.
So, people don't genuinely think that it exists.
- I don't want you to miss all the things
that someone else could give you.
[dramatic music] Luisa.
- I once told my manager,
"I'm not gonna play anybody in a hospital.
I'm not gonna play anymore lawyers
or desexualized trans people,
and I'm not gonna play anyone
who visits anybody in a hospital,"
and I didn't work for two years.
So, if I keep taking the hormones.
- You'd be feeding the cancer.
- Are you saying, if I become a woman, I could die?
- In Hollywood, exclusion is part of the story.
- Hey, try this.
- [Angela] When I was a teenager,
there wasn't that much queer representation at all.
- So, what do you think? [utensil clinking]
- You'd, like, scour the video store
for, like, obtuse glances between women on video boxes.
- In the "Color Purple," these women love each other.
They see each other sexually,
but doesn't go full on into sex scenes.
[brooding music]
- [Lover] You two have met, haven't you?
- [Angela] Or, it's about some weird male fantasy spectacle.
- And we have to remember the sensors are
white, cisgender, heteronormative men
who said, "Look, if you're gonna do this,
if you're gonna be naked, we wanna see two women together
'cause that's art."
Right?
Penises are pornography.
Tits are art.
[singer vocalizing]
- Film has been
men showing other men what they see.
- What is visual pleasure?
- It's not actually about watching two other people.
All it is is about the male fantasy.
- I don't know anything that I saw growing up that told me
that I could have the agenda
of being the one who wanted the pleasure.
Nobody actually tells a woman that, when she has sex,
you know, there is a space
where she gets to have the pleasure.
She's not the one just giving pleasure.
- How women are satisfied, what that looks like,
how that works in real life,
like, it's still a mystery, I think, to so many people.
[singer vocalizing]
- [Lover] Tell me what you think.
- Honestly?
- Think about all the movies
where men would be having an important conversation-
- Here's to old friends.
- and hot women would just be sitting at the table
while it's happening just, like,
kind of just there as decoration.
- This round's on me.
- [Joey] The way in which women can just be
kind of present but unnecessary.
- You be the man, and you be the woman.
- You had to cast those two girls,
and they had to sit there fake fucking all day,
and it's kind of a bummer [laughs].
- I think it really does damage to girls in particular.
That's what bothers me, girls feeling that they have
to behave a certain way and look a certain way.
Without even consciously realizing it,
they will just assume that they are less than.
That they don't quite count as much.
- The more that we perpetuate and condone women
as being merely sex objects,
the more readily boys grow into men thinking
that that's how women wanna be treated.
It's in every movie and TV show they've ever watched.
[dramatic music continues]
[footsteps plodding]
[passenger whistling]
- Actors who are starting out are used in these films
that ask for nudity and sex scenes
because they don't know how to advocate for themselves,
or they don't have the power to advocate for themselves.
An A-list actor who's asked to do a nude scene,
they can have a body double.
They get to say, "The light has to be dim,
and the actor can only touch me from here to here."
It's like I have never had
that much protection in a film,
but I've done nudity a lot.
[laughs] Like, I've done sex scenes a lot.
It's like, "Oh, you have to pay your dues,
and you just have to be grateful
that you're here at all."
- I'm not some great, fabulous beauty.
When I walk into a room, people don't turn around
and go, like, "Who's that girl?
Put her in the picture."
- I started taking classes at James Franco's acting school.
When James took a chance on me, I was so grateful.
The way that I got hired for "The Long Home" was
by getting a text message from James.
[camera clicking] He said,
"I want you to be in my movie.
Nudity will be required.
You're playing a prostitute.
Do you wanna do it?"
[camera clicking] And I said,
"Absolutely, like, no questions asked, yes."
[dramatic music continues]
- Hey, Candy, they want you.
- And then, things started to sort of get a little tricky
because there were some scenes that were added that weren't
in the script that required nudity,
and one actress didn't wanna do it.
The next thing I know, she's on a plane back to LA,
and she's not in the movie.
And I realized, if I do something like that,
if I say, "I'm uncomfortable with this,
I don't wanna do this," I'll lose my job.
- Sarah Scott is an actress
whose most recent work includes
an appearance on the Seth McFarland show "The Orville,"
and she played Courtney Love in the film
"Soaked in Bleach."
Thank you for having the courage
to come in and talk to us.
This is an incident that happened in May of '18, 2018.
- Mm-hmm, it's an independent TV pilot.
It was the last scene of the day.
[phone buttons clicking]
I remember being really cold that night
and made mention of it.
My scene partner cuddled up to me
and said he would keep me warm.
Knowing that we were about to start kissing,
I just kind of went with that.
That was fine.
He cuddled up to me, and didn't think much of it.
At that point, he took my hand under the covers
and brought it over to his erection.
[characters breathing heavily]
I pulled my hand back
and looked back over my shoulder, like,
"What the fuck?"
And he just said, "Sorry."
[Sarah S. sighs]
I've thought a lot about this.
I'm not upset with myself
that I didn't do something in the moment.
I'm very well aware that that's very common.
A lot of the women I've spoken to don't ever say anything,
and I think being in a professional setting,
I also just wanted to be a professional
and keep going and finish the day off.
- Cut, terrific.
- And so, after the day had wrapped up,
and I was getting ready to leave for the night,
my co-star walks through my dressing room
and starts telling me that he's got a hard on.
He's gotta go jerk off in the bathroom.
When I turned around, he had taken out his penis
and started to masturbate in front of me,
two feet in front of me,
and that's when I left.
- So, he did, however, in the "LA Times," give
a statement saying that he was apologizing.
He said he admitted that he had put
your hand on his penis during a sex scene,
but he said you were sexually aggressive.
- It was really disturbing to see what a convincing case
he made in playing this sort of doe-eyed,
innocent, embarrassed,
"Oops, you know, I misread the situation,"
and then even used the words
that, "I just mistook this for a perk of our jobs."
It just became so clear to me that I was dealing
with someone who was a a predator.
[somber music]
I've been a proud union member for over 15 years.
That's how I have my health insurance
and support my family.
So, the way that I see myself is
that I'm kind of a blue-collar working actor.
- Okay, ladies, I wanna see ya dance,
and I wanna see ya smile.
And you.
- I started to get this feeling like I was
the first actress
to ever call the union and say,
"Hey, I've been sexually violated at work."
- It's interesting because
the SAG-AFTRA basic agreement is
800 pages or something like that,
and nudity is, like, a page,
if that. - Hmm.
It's like-
- Yeah. - Wow.
It's, like, I literally have it-
- Wow. - Right here on,
it's half a page.
It's this. - Wow.
[Amanda laughs] - And sexual harassment is
not mentioned in 800 pages.
- Really? - Yeah.
- [Sarah S.] Mm-hmm.
- [Amanda] Yeah - Interesting.
- Yeah. - Hmm.
- The situations, like, that I've been in,
I think that, like, the gentleman, you know,
whatever happened, it wouldn't have happened
had I been more famous or more powerful than than he.
I was told by someone in the legal department verbatim
that, quote, I "probably wouldn't be satisfied
with the result of the hearing."
And I interpreted that as basically
nothing's gonna happen.
[somber music continues]
When the "LA Times" article came out,
a lot of actresses reached out to me just telling me,
[sniffs] you know, how proud they were
and how,
how many actresses had similar experiences
but never said anything,
and that made my stomach turn,
just the realization that this is such a widespread problem
in this industry.
[singers vocalizing]
- What does it mean for boys and girls
to grow up in a culture where they see men
being aggressive in film to get the girl?
They pull women into these passionate kisses.
- Stop it [inhales deeply].
- Maybe she resists a little bit, like, right at first,
but he can kiss her into submission.
[dramatic music]
- Wait a minute, wait a minute.
- [Stephane] Now that's a really common scene.
- [Linda] Hollywood certainly knows
how to do violence very, very well,
much better than it knows how to do sex.
When sex and violence come together, it's rape.
- [breathing heavily] No, no.
- There's so many rape scenes in movies
because a lot of times, you know,
scripts are written, and they imagine
that this is the only way
a female character can get strong is if she's raped
for no apparent reason other than they think
something bad needs to happen to her so she can rise up
and go murder all the people in revenge.
What kind of message does that send out?
- My name is Buck, [laughs]
and I'm here to fuck. [machine beeping]
- Your name is Buck, and you came here to fuck.
Right?
- Wait a minute, wait.
[door thudding] [orderly yelling]
- There's some hatred for women going on
when you have to brutalize people, you know,
and treat them as subhuman but then
get the glory that you create strong female characters.
That's not strong women.
Those are brutalized women that have to survive --
- and look good while doing so.
[dramatic music]
- In the age of the Internet,
actors have to make these decision of,
"If I'm nude, it's going to get GIF'd
and played on a loop."
You can't regulate that anymore.
[fingers tapping]
The nudity will get repurposed to do all sorts of things.
They'll put other people's faces on.
[laptop clicks]
It's kind of not what they signed up for.
[dramatic music continues]
- You have to literally go and fight them
on every single website these things appear on,
and even if you win,
the next day, it shows up on a different website.
- The producer basically responded by saying,
"This is just what happens.
This is part of being an actor."
[pensive music]
- When "Jennifer's Body" was coming out,
we were at a new point where we were seeing
how social media can be used as a tool to shape perception.
In the film, I wanted to comment on the tropes
around how we look at girls and women's bodies
looking back at late '70s,
early '80s horror slasher films.
But what that requires is using the tropes.
[vampire howling]
[victim yelling]
There was a decision on the part of the studio,
I think, to market the film to young boys
as opposed to young women
as if to promise something with Megan Fox
that they were never gonna get.
[crowd cheering]
I was shocked by the reaction
and the way social media kind of worked
so quickly against the film.
[keys clattering]
[dramatic music continues]
[messages bleeping]
[keys clattering]
[message bleeping]
There was so much adolescent angst
about some lack [laughing] of male relevance
[dramatic music continues]
and I think, since then, we've seen
how much warfare is waged against women
by using their bodies against them.
- Now, uh, pull your dress up and let me see your legs.
- The Hollywood machine is something to be survived.
[light clicking]
- [Boss] Turn around a second.
- Something wrong?
- Matter of fact, everything is very, very right.
- It's very common to go to hotel rooms
and to be asked to audition.
[dramatic music continues]
That was kind of a thing back when I started.
- He's ready for you.
- Thank you.
[door clicking]
- I was raised to believe [laughing]
that you never wanted
to make a man uncomfortable.
[shoe clicking]
You didn't wanna make
him feel like [bather yelling]
he had done something wrong.
- He grabbed me,
tried to kiss me.
- So, if he advances on you, you know, your thing is
to kind of giggle and ease yourself out of there.
[character laughs]
- After I got blacklisted, I started being harassed
behind the scenes by my monster.
[dramatic music]
- He, he has detectives on staff.
[light clicking]
[crew chattering indistinctly]
- Harvey Weinstein is not the only one.
We have situations now where
it's taken a while for a client
to be willing to come out against somebody,
and you know, the studio makes excuses.
- I can file a complaint for you if that's what you want,
but I think you know how it would come off.
- You see all the people that protect Harvey, this predator,
and the many, many predators there are in this town
that are very big guys in the business.
[crowd chattering indistinctly]
- [Sarah T.K.] There are so many other men.
[door slamming]
They're not Harvey Weinsteins,
but I don't wanna wait
until these people are all Harvey Weinstein.
I want them to stop doing it now.
[secretary screaming] - Dorothy, please.
Look, I want you.
- Men feel entitled-
[light clicking]
- [Crew] You probably just wanna try to do [indistinct].
- [Crew] Okay. [case clicking]
- by a lot of stuff that's rolling around in their heads
that has sexualized women
and embraced them as sexual commodities to the extent
that they feel comfortable doing that.
[dramatic music continues]
- If you're wearing something, please get naked.
- I believe in only two things,
the First Amendment and boobs.
- She needs to drop a few.
- [Host] What do you think about this?
- Gretchen's beautiful.
- Ooh, beautiful, you look beautiful.
- I love the women's movement,
especially when walking behind it.
- You know, when you're sold as a sex symbol,
it's like the message that men out there in the world get is
that they can all touch you and that they own you.
- It makes her a slut, right?
- He began running his hands over my body
and grinding into me.
- [Rose] Because you've turned them.
- Nice, nice.
- [Rose] You've made them do it.
- [Donald Trump] You can do anything.
- [Interviewer] Whatever you want.
- [Donald Trump] Grab 'em by the pussy.
[interviewer laughing]
- [Crowd] Oh. - You can do anything.
- [Bystander] Yes.
[crowd cheering]
- It really didn't feel that there was a system in place
for this kind of a complaint.
- [Senator] How sure can this committee be
on the accuracy of your statements?
[body thudding]
- What you wanna do is destroy this guy's life.
[gate clanging]
- Are you interested in writing a book?
[body thudding]
- Nobody has made amends.
- [Bystander] Shame.
- Nobody has apologized. [bell ringing]
Nobody has taken ownership- - [Crowd] Whore, whore.
- [Sarah T.K.] of having done this to us.
[hands thudding] - Categorically
and unequivocally deny the allegation
against me by Dr. Ford.
- I have not been guilty of sexual misconduct.
- The allegation is completely false.
[character grunting]
- These allegations are false.
- It's just not true.
- Not true.
[dramatic music continues]
- [Sarah T.K.] It can't just be on our shoulders,
and we can't continue to be gaslit by these people.
We're made to feel like we're crazy for being uncomfortable.
- [Speaker] No, no.
- Nasty one. - I undressed her.
- Where things go. - In fact, he never did.
- [Speaker] He would sit here and watch it.
- I have no idea
who this woman is. - It is today.
- Are you a scorned woman?
- All right, you guys ready to move
into a little bit of rehearsal?
You're gonna be taking off her shirt.
- Okay. - And from what I understand,
it's a pretty wide neck,
- Yeah. - so you shouldn't have
any issue just coming up and pulling it over-
- Mm-hmm. - Jennifer's head, yeah.
And then, as we discussed, you will take your bra off.
- Mm-hmm.
- You know, you can- - Yeah.
- position yourself on the edge of the bed here.
- [Jennifer] Yep. - Right.
Maybe you could place Dan's hand
somewhere on- - Yeah.
- your upper inner thigh
on the left leg. - So, like, maybe right here-
- [Dan] There? - would be fine.
- [Dan] And then here.
- [Jennifer] Yeah.
- Okay, move your head a little bit.
And you can cheat it so that your head is not so turned.
Yeah.
- [Dan] And then I'll rest it
right here. - and I'll be like this.
- [Sarah S.] Great. - [Dan] Mm-hmm.
- Love to see you touching his head,
tugging on his hair a little.
- [Jennifer] Okay.
- [Sarah S.] How does that feel for both of you?
- [Jennifer] I'm fine. - [Dan] Yeah.
- Okay.
Okay, great.
[funky upbeat music]
- On season one, we had a moment where there were
some criticisms of our lead actor, James Franco,
for stuff that had happened not on our set
but had happened on indie films that he had worked on.
But nonetheless, I felt the need
to ask all the principal cast members,
"Did you have any problems on our set?"
Emily Meade rather bravely said,
"Things didn't go right on set.
One day, I'll tell you about it."
[gentle pensive music]
[door clicking shut]
- [Bystander] Whoa, baby.
- I was playing a prostitute turned porn star.
I was 26.
And I was starting to realize how much I was having
to constantly dissociate to, like, show up to my job.
- [Actor] Oh, that's, yeah, oh, yeah.
- There were circumstances where I wound up having to do
a very intimate sex scene
with a completely random background actor.
I was not willing to be on the show
with things the way they were,
wanting to protect the women involved in this show.
- Emily basically said, "We can do this better,"
and then it was our job to listen.
- The best thing I could come up with was
that there should be a person who is there,
who their sole job is to facilitate, protect,
and just be there for sex scenes
like a stunt coordinator.
[gunshots blasting] [victim grunting]
[gun thudding] [body thudding]
- God.
- There are entire departments of people
who are there to make sure nobody gets hurt
when we're simulating violence.
[wheels screeching]
But we hadn't, to this point, hired somebody
whose sole area of expertise was,
"Let's make sure nobody gets, you know,
emotionally hurt or physically hurt, you know,
when we're simulating intimacy."
[defiant music]
- I'm there to make sure the actors are safe
but also to check in and make sure
what is happening on set is consensual
and what is happening is what was agreed to.
- I don't wanna disappoint anybody.
That was probably always the hardest part for me,
having to, like, look someone in the eyes,
a man specifically, and, like, disappoint them
about what I'm willing to do sexually.
She could go tell the director, like,
"Emily's feeling a little strange about this,"
warn the director of that so they can roll their eyes
or have whatever private [laughs]
reaction they want to,
and I don't have to see it
and [laughs] feel insecure or embarrassed.
- Let's go, sweetheart.
[footsteps plodding]
Are we good?
- It was just the process of having that conversation,
and feeling like I had a choice,
and like I wasn't in a corner.
- All right, first up is Lori and Andy.
- "The Deuce" wound up being
the first network television show
to have an intimacy coordinator,
and then HBO wound up being
the first network to have
network-wide intimacy coordinators used.
- There are certain things
that might have been acceptable
five years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago
that are not acceptable now.
And I think it took Time's Up.
It took Me Too.
It took this entire shift for people to look
at scenes like this and say, "We can do better."
[dramatic music] [glass shattering]
[bat thudding] - You're gonna listen to me.
- Wait, hey, Dorothy. [bat thudding]
- whether you like it or not.
[dramatic music]
- There's clearly a deeply entrenched
terror of male privilege [case rustling]
and power being taken away.
- I'm not gonna be stopped by three dumb-witted broads.
- I wanted to show that you could
cut off the head of power
instead of biting at ankles, that, if everybody is
always kind of complaining about the same thing,
maybe we can do something about it.
[machines churning]
[dramatic music continues]
- I do feel optimistic,
but Hollywood is definitely sexist,
definitely racist place,
and it's going to take a lot
to dismantle those systems.
- The Me Too movement ushered in a greater level
of the magnifying glass.
That long-held patriarchal power
in Hollywood was rendered
vulnerable really for the very first time
in a very real way.
- Harvey Weinstein surrendering to police-
- Leslie Moonves's- - on sex crime charges.
- career at CBS came to an end
in September- - Chief Roy Price has
been suspended - after multiple women-
- in the wake of- - came forward.
- sexual harassment accusations from-
- James Franco snubbed by the Oscars in the wake-
- The Screen Actors Guild found actor Kip Pardue
guilty of serious misconduct.
[dramatic music]
[footsteps plodding]
[actor breathing heavily]
- I think that many films have women in peril.
Some Prince Charming has to come and save us,
[footsteps plodding]
and we come to believe that we innately don't have
the power to save ourselves, but we do.
[energetic music]
[character speaking in foreign language]
- [Patti] Women are finally finding a voice.
[energetic music continues]
- Before doing "Vida," I hadn't experienced too much
in the roles of getting to play an American like me,
a Latina like me.
[gate clanging]
[lover moaning]
It is by design that we are seeing a woman pursue
her sexuality and pleasure in a very unapologetic fashion.
[lips smacking]
- We haven't gotten a chance to, us, like, create
complicated images of ourselves,
and these girls I created were, shitty, messy.
They made really bad decisions.
[camera clicking]
Dominant culture gets to tell
all that, you know, all the time.
[vocalist singing in foreign language]
- When do we get to say it?
[energetic music]
The sex scenes started in the writer's room.
These girls, they knew exactly how to get off,
what they wanted.
[vocalist singing in foreign language]
- It progressed the story.
It wasn't just gratuitous.
- Tanya brought me into the editing room just to make sure
I was completely comfortable with the way
that certain things were being shot.
You know, "Is this all right?"
- Okay?
- [Mishel] It's nice to have somebody checking in on you
even after the fact.
[dynamic music]
- "The Sex Lives of College Girls" is
about freshmen college suitemates
who are navigating their sexuality.
- So, how does this work?
[pulsing dance music]
Do we just take our clothes off and go inside?
- Fuck it, I'm going in.
I have a disability.
My character, clearly, will also have a disability,
but who my character is is not predicated on the fact
that I'm a disabled woman.
Honey, I pull.
Hey.
It's still about my sexuality.
- Do any of you know where a girl named Sarah is?
- No.
- Sorry.
- I don't.
It's the most refreshing thing to have a character,
especially a wheelchair user, be sexy, be sex positive,
be sexual, to be seen as desired and loved
because we deserve it, too.
[bright energetic music]
- There was a time in my life when I felt free
[character moaning]
Ow.
[infant suckling]
Ah, Jesus.
- I always knew that it would be noisy to make a show
about female desire and sexuality,
about a woman who wants sex,
who admits she's had sex,
that she wants to have more of it, and not punishing her
for her desire is in itself a revolutionary act.
When you make that woman a mother,
it is just charging straight into these opinions in society
that martyrdom is the ideal for mothers.
♪ Each morning
- [Child] Morning, mommy. [air whooshing]
[hands thudding] [mother exhales]
- I also felt like we cannot tell this whole story
and just not even have one shot of a penis.
[intense music]
We put it in the cut, and the Netflix executives were
very nervous about it and asked us
to consider taking it out.
They were concerned that it would be off-putting to women.
Not heterosexual women [laughs].
[pensive music]
- I think everything I've been doing has been an attempt
to investigate the male gaze,
all these ways in which the camera has kind of stood
in for an assumed masculine protagonist
and to to kind of reset it, saying, you know,
[sultry music] "I'm the subject.
You're the object."
Consent doesn't have to be this kind of,
like, mushy thing
that's, like, shrouded in questions about
shame and gender.
[sultry music continues]
When I'm filming, I'm always wanting to, like, put
the camera into the place of the character's desire.
So, it's like, instead of taking the camera
up here or out here, I'm always,
like, literally imagining
the camera moving down into, like, the gut.
[lover breathing heavily]
- Joey really opened up in me my sensitivity
as a human being translated
into what I could bring to the camera.
[relaxing music]
The camera's approach is honoring the
space for the actors.
Joey would say that I had a mussy and would say,
"Jimmy, shoot from your mussy,"
'cause I don't think that a man only has a male gaze,
or a woman would only have a female gaze.
[lover moaning]
- I wanted to be naked
because, first of all, that had never been done.
- All right.
- And the second reason was that I wanted to show
this relationship and these two human beings are
just like, they have conversations
after people take showers, and they're naked.
[sighs] We can't afford any more bills.
I can't believe I have to say this.
Trans people actually have sex.
We have sex with other people.
Isn't that weird?
I know, strange, but it's true.
[sultry music]
Everybody is doing this thing called love.
- I'm really interested in pursuing
the notion of female desire,
[sultry music continues]
be it ambition, or sex,
or romance with the idea that there is a subjectivity
and often a voraciousness
that comes from a female perspective.
[mellow music]
- In terms of making films, the most important thing is
women have been doing this forever, you know,
that we're not the first.
Women were putting the camera in a place of empathy,
yearning, longing, wanting.
- [Stephane] There is a rediscovery
of lost Black films
that celebrate romance and intimacy.
These films have always existed.
[vocalizing]
- It's changing.
- You can feel it.
You can feel it in the writer's rooms.
You can feel it talking to producers.
When I'm on the set of "Grace and Frankie,"
half the people there are women.
Trust me, when I started out in '58, '59,
there wasn't a woman,
except maybe the script supervisor, on the set.
We're making vibrators for women with arthritis.
- Yes, vibrators.
- We're making things for people like us
because we are sick and tired of being dismissed
by people like you.
- Mic drop.
- Okay, come on in.
- [Stephane] I'm hoping that there will be
a more seismic shift happening more rapidly now.
- Hey.
[crew member speaking indistinctly]
- Yeah, sure.
- I think we need more-
- [Stephane] You'll see more women green light a series,
[ladders creaking]
- to green light a movie, [metal scraping]
and when you see that,
you'll see more movies that empower women.
[slate clicking]
- Okay, and cut.
- Actresses, for the first time
since I would say the 30s, have power.
- Men want to be looking at women
in the way that you look at a protagonist in a movie,
which is as yourself.
- And for some reason,
I think men weren't making that kind of transference.
Now, it's happening.
- The beauty of film, and television, and media is
that we have the ability to reach people's living rooms.
And when you see somebody that maybe doesn't look like you,
but emotionally, you see yourself
reflected in that way,
all of a sudden, that person becomes more familiar to you.
- We have consumed, for a very long time, ourselves
outside of our own lens
that we are still figuring out what that means.
- I think Hollywood is
no longer just a place of entertainment.
I think that the power that Hollywood holds is
so great that it should put its power to good use,
which is representation.
- Hey, check this one out. [projector clattering]
- And I think nudity and sex, it's a really beautiful way
to show things without telling them
and is a vital part of storytelling.
And I actually feel better doing it
with an intimacy coordinator now.
- I have done something and been involved in something
that is important and I hope permanent in this industry,
and, yeah, it's pretty surreal.
It's really, it feels very good [laughs].
[energetic music]
♪ I'm feeling myself
♪ Can't even lie
♪ I'm not that thing on the shelf ♪
♪ I'm feeling myself
♪ 'Cause I'm doing it better than anyone else ♪
- [Joey] We're just getting started.
- All right, fellas.
- Getting the cameras into the hands of the people
who want them and deserve them.
- [Speaker] Fuck yeah, mom.
- Women don't stay silent forever.
- Some women will see some of these amazing pieces of work
by women and start to kind of center themselves
in their lives, you know?
But it's not filmmaking's job to do it.
It's the world's job to center female pleasure.
It's the world's job to understand consent.
You know, it's not female filmmakers' job to teach it.
We got enough to do.
[joey chuckles] ♪ I'm feeling myself
♪ Can't even lie
♪ I'm not that thing on the shelf ♪
♪ I'm feeling myself
♪ 'Cause I'm doing it better than anyone else ♪
♪ Feeling myself
♪ I'm feeling myself
♪ Can't even lie
♪ I'm not that thing on the shelf ♪
♪ I'm feeling myself
♪ 'Cause I'm doing it better than anyone else ♪
♪ Feeling myself
♪ I'm feeling myself
♪ [vocalizing]