sex movie shortbus released
Shortbus makes sex funny
By ian caddell
5-Oct-2006 found at straight.com
John
Cameron Mitchell (standing, centre) found actors who didn’t care what
graphic sex scenes did to their careers.
TORONTO—John Cameron Mitchell, who gave himself a starring role in the
first film he directed, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, decided that he
would refrain from taking on a lead role in his second film, Shortbus.
The openly gay filmmaker says, however, that he did allow himself an Alfred
Hitchcock–style cameo in the film, which features graphic sex. “I was in
this scene where I ate out a woman. I did it because I had never done it before
and because I wanted to show everyone that I was willing to go there too.”
Mitchell was taking Shortbus where no American art film had gone
before. His cast, which includes Vancouver radio host Sook-Yin Lee, had been
hired with the knowledge that they would be performing sexual acts on-screen.
They agreed to get involved with the film despite the fact that they would have
to give up two years of their lives to production and that it was entirely
possible that they would never work in film after that.
In a hotel room during the Toronto International Film Festival, Mitchell says
that he didn’t know what the film was going to look like when he started
assembling his cast. “All I knew was that I wanted to use this cinematic
language called sex and use it in ways that we had never seen before. I wanted
to connect it to humour because all the films I had seen about sex in the past
were bleak, and things ended badly. I knew that the actors would be creating the
film with me because that way they could feel safe. I knew it would take years
to develop and that it would take place in New York and that it would include
different sexualities and genders and that it would centre on a salon. And I
knew that it was going to be difficult to find professional actors, because they
are frightened of unusual things.”
The film, which opens Friday (October 6) in Vancouver, centres on the sexual
relationships of a group of New Yorkers who find themselves drawn to a sex salon
called Shortbus. Sofia (Lee) goes there because she’s a sex therapist who
can’t have an orgasm. James (Paul Dawson) and Jamie (PJ DeBoy) are a gay
couple who think that having sex with other men at the salon might save their
relationship, while Severin (Lindsay Beamish) is paid to deliver sexual
stimulation to others through S&M but can’t find fulfilment for herself.
Mitchell says that the reaction of the actors to the sexual scenes changed as
the movie developed. “We had a couple of sexual rehearsals and some people
were nervous with the sex, but when we shot they weren’t nervous at all. For
others it was, like, ‘Bring it on’ during rehearsals, but then they would
get nervous on the day we shot. I forced them to change the lines every take.
They still had to hit the beats of every scene, but they could add a beat. They
could paraphrase. If they didn’t get a hard-on right away, that was fine,
because I told them that anything we shot was useful. Sometimes we used
Viagra.”
The fact that the movie is getting a theatrical release has been the biggest
surprise to Mitchell, who admits that he assumed the film would be too graphic
to appeal to distributors. (The film is rated restricted.) He did feel, however,
that if people saw it they would be able to relate to its theme: that although
sex is feared, it can also be funny.
“We were ready to self-distribute when we went to Cannes,” he says. “We
thought ‘They are all going to be freaked out by it,’ but we had 12 offers
from distributors for [the rights to] North America. We sold it all over the
world. We got the deal we wanted, moneywise, from Think Film, and they think
it’s great.
“I made the movie because I wanted people to talk about sex in the open. I
grew up in a conservative Catholic family, and I am aware that people who grow
up in sexually oppressive environments are the people who ask questions later in
life. It is a natural progression. I am working things out, and some of our
actors also came from conservative backgrounds and were trying to work their way
out of that. I think that the people who are most afraid of this film are
probably the ones who should see it the most, because I have been told that by
the end of the movie the sex was the last thing a lot of people were thinking
about. I always saw it as being a pretty softhearted, old-fashioned film that
had sex, and I think sex is the funniest thing in the world.”
