Make Hollywood Horny Again
A week-long celebration of erotic thrillers.
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Jennifer Tilly tells us how it all came to be.
Actors are always saying, Oh, sex scenes are so technical.
Everyones standing around and watching.
Theres a reason why people are always having affairs with their leading men.
Like, Can you put your hand on my thigh here so my butt doesnt look so big?
Can you hold my breast up so it looks more plump and juicy?
You would never, ever say those things to a man.
Between takes, I would say, Gina, theres a shoe sale at Barneys.
If we finish early, we should go over to Barneys and shop for shoes!
So it was surprisingly unsexy.
But then when you saw it on screen.
I was blown away.
Violet and Corky have chemistry.
They have it in buckets.
They said, That way he cant cut into it without it looking really obvious and intrusive.
So the day we were supposed to shoot the love scene, it was a closed set.
But there were monitors in the hallway, and everybody was clustered around the monitors watching.
They would yell, Toes!
and Gina would curl her toes like she was about to come.
Then they would say, Hand!
and my hand was on her crotch, and I would kind of move my fingers a little bit.
And then they would say, Face!
and it would be on Ginas face, and Gina would come.
So it was very, very technical, and we did eight takes.
They took the film to the ratings board and they instantly got a NC-17.
The Wachowskis said, Its homophobia!
And the Wachowskis said, Let me get this straight.
If they werent such good actors, you would let it go through?
And the MPAA sort of said, Well … yeah.
It was really sad.
The take that we ended up using, it was before we got all the kinks out.
The makeup person had sprayed us with sweat, so it looked like we were really going at it.
It was sort of more graphic.
And Gina didnt like this other take.
She said, I was overacting with my feet!
My breasts are really big, so it was a little more pornographic than Ginas fashion-plate breasts.
And in this take I was down on her, so my breasts were touching her breasts.
But because you miss the hand, the MPAA said it was all right.
The way the sex scene was done had a lot to do with Susie.
All of us on the movie were concerned with authenticity.
So when Gina goes into the lesbian bar, its not a bunch of soap-opera actresses.
Its not a bunch of pretty actresses in hot dresses.
Its a real lesbian bar, with real people.
Even the smallest part, everybody in that was a real person who really hung out in the bar.
It wasnt a male fantasy of what a lesbian looks like.
That was Susies contribution, too.
For the sex scene, she said, Women have a sex organ.
Its called a hand!
The way it was set up was Susies input.
There was a real attention to detail in this film that added a deepness to it.
