Michael Blowhard writes:

Dear Blowhards --

Do you guys watch many softcore sex movies? I'm thinking of late-night-on-Cinemax specials. Guys at the office love to chortle over these movies and refer to them as "Skinemax movies."

Moviehistorywise, they're something distinct from the softcore sex movies of the '70s and before. "Emanuelle" was, in tacky movie-history terms, the turning point. Prior to "Emannuelle," there were skinflix -- women in masks and guys still wearing their socks, shown at private parties. There were Russ Meyer and Radley Metger pictures, there were the amusing medical films -- pictures that were given five minute warnings at the beginning and end, so you could pretend they were respectable, but that really existed for the sex that came in between. There were art movies with some flesh on display. (Arletty showed a little skin back in 19tk's tk, and Harriet Anderson was uninhibted in Bergman's 19tk "Monica.") There were saucy romps, from the Vadim pictures of the '50s and '60s to the British "Carry On" series. Through the '60s, mainstream American movies grew more and more uninhibited about showing some flesh, but they weren't movies you saw primarily for their sexual content.

In the alte '60s and early '70s, some oddball hybrids came along. "Barbarella" showcased Jane Fonda in a cheesy sci-fi spectacular. "I was Curious Yellow" had some rawness and pretentiions. But "Emannuelle" was the first of the softcore sex films that looked like a fashion layout. Somewat sophsticated eye candy -- or eye candy for people who prefer leafing through Vogue to looking at Playboy. It's been a genre ever since. Zalman King has worked the angle very successfully, although as far as i can tell his luck has been running out recently. Red Shoe Diaries, "Two Moon Junction," "Wild Orchid."

And in the hardcore world, Andrew Blake has developed a terrific hybrid out of the "Emanuelle" approach. I've only watched a couple of his movies, but they were pretty brilliant. He's a gifted fashion-type photographer. And it apparently occurred to him that the "acting" in most hardcore movies is a joke. The movies of his I watched, were like X-rated fashion layouts -- with smidgens of storylines, and with no dialog. All the words were delivered voice-over, as part of the sexy soundmix. Hot stuff. Overdone-up for my tastes. But not in that repulsive, demeaning way so much of the stylish hardcore porn is. This is hardcover porn that genuinely might appeal to a fair number of women.

When the Skinemax softcore genre was beginning to take shape back in the '80s, I was enthusiastic at first: maybe this would be the new B picture. B movies by and large don't exist at this point. What are currently the A movies are often basically B movie premises, only the movies themselves are overproduced and anxiously respectable -- B movie premises, in other words, but without any actual B-movie pleasures. (Humor, unrespectability, unself-consciousness.) Perhaps here -- with low budgets, no-name performers, less supervision, unrespectable themes and stories -- people would get a chance to work without self-consciousness. Perhaps terrific performers would emerge; perhaps genuine auteurs would.

As it turned out, that didn't seem to be the case. I don't have the inside info to know why, but the Skinemax movies turned out to be product. I tried a bit to make I haven't watched many, at least given the number of movies I do watch -- maybe a dozen, or a couple of dozen. (Zalman King I guess could be considered the topfliht of Skinemax movies ... But he's probably better thought of as a holdover from the '60s and '70s who found a niche in the Skinemax world.) A friend did the music for a number of softcore movies in that era. I lit up when he told me, and said, "So did you get to have some fun?" And he made a face. "It wasn't really any fun. I thought it would be but it wasn't. Thef act is that it was so bottom-line that it was all you could do to lay down a little something and then move on to the next assignment." Lesson, I guess: a clear eye on the bottom line is a fine thing that can help brnig out the best in creative work. But maybe a certain amount of looseness is necessary too, if a real spark is going to be created.

Like I say: it all seemed to be product. The sex scenes seemed turned out by the yard. The storylines were as dumb as the stories in narrative hardcore. No one seemed interested in (or able to) try anything inteeresting out. Worst of all, few of the girl performers really registered. The silicone and face jobs were depressing. I never enjoyed the woman-as-sexy-cow thing that Playboy peddlded, and it was all pre-digested, made to a template. The girls were just a blur of scarily-big boobs, cute tummies, g-strings and big hair and bigger lips. I guess the genre worked for many guys. Many of them seem to share the Playboy fantasy, and seem to enjoy the processing they give the girls -- the eagerness the girls are shown to embody the male fantasies. I never did. Even as a 13 year old, my tastes craved the "Sex in the Cinema" issues. No interest in centerfolds. I loved watching girls in actual situations, doing things. If sex happened to be part of what they were already doing, then it was fascinating. Titty bars. I like art-plus-sex; I seem to want the intimacy and the revelation of skin to coordinate with actual performance intinmacy and actual revelation of character.

Which way does this tip? It can tip in the art direction -- the film sof Bertran Blier or Catherine Breillat, for instance, or some of Bertoluccis. Or it can tip in the softcore direction, as with some of the Zalman King movies. There are oddball films that have their own kind of erotic identity -- "Baise Moi," for instance. It's a ragged, shot-on-video-for-nothing movie that struck me as lousy as I watched it. It's a punked-out, chix-get-revenge road movie, acted by a couple of porno performers. But my mind has often gone back to it since. A lot of it's a bore and beyond-raw -- it's a first movie by a couple of young women. But a couple of moments were genuinely hot, and the one girl was really something.The French do have a knack for putting onscreen one of those things that's fascinating about women: the women are self-motivated, they're "in charge" of what they're up to (at least to the extent that they're freely choosing how to interact with life, although no more capable than anyone is of dictating terms). But so far as sex goes, they're also "vulnerable." American women often seem to have terrible trouble with this. When they're in-charge, they're sexually frustrated. When they're vulnerable they're whimpering and scared. The french don't seem to have any trouble with the idea that a woman might be both in charge adn vulnerable. Perhaps they're less earnest than we are; perhaps they're more comfortable with paradox, irony and the occaional shoulder-shrugging "c'est comme ca."

All that said, the other night The Wife and I watched a Skinemax movie that was good enough to suggest what I'd hope the occasoinal Skinemax movie might be. It isn't really, really good, and I'm not sure I'm willing to take the resopnsiblity for recommending it enthusiastically to anyone. But I had a surprisingly OK-topretty-good time watching it.

"The Key to Sex" is a Cinemax late-night ultra-low-budget softcore sex pic that's a better than most Skinemax movies. It's very much like them. But it isn't just deadon the screen Playboy-esque eye candy. Like all the Skinemax movies (or so I gather) it was shot in around eight days. But the premise has some naughtiness and juice: the main chracter is a moviebiz flunky who's been assigned the chore of looking after his sleazy boss' mansion while the boss is away. But it's a sexy pad, and everyone wants to bum it. His roomie wants to party. The boss' actress girlfriend needs a place to tryst. His boss' partner needs a place where he can cheat. Meanwhile, the dork hero tries to get his work done, finish his own senitive screenplay, and yearns for a girl he hopes is a nice one.

There's some filmmaking -- modest but real -- going on. John Quinn, the director, shows actual interest in the quality of light, the texture of fabrics, the "feel" of situation, the tone of a moment. He isn't just creating sex-by-the-yard; he genuinely seems to like his characters, and to find the situations he's put them in appealing, sexy and funny.

Most important, though: he works well with performers. This is the only Skinemax movie I've watched -- not that I'm a big watcher of these things -- where the performers really make a mark. There's some actual back-and-forth give-and-take between the performers, who all seem surprisingly like surprisingly confident, spirited perofmers.Need stuff here about the girls. The boys aren't the faceless props they are in most porn. And nearly all the girls register bigtime.

John Quinn somehow found, on a ultra-low-budget situation, a way of givign his performers licences and encouragement to take some chances and have some fun. And they all with spirit and skill. TK is a hilariously over the top parody of a sleazy filmguy, rather like some of Eric Robert's more exhibitonistic displays. As the naughty, highstrung girlfriend, Maria Ford is an amusing, flashy-eyed diva with a twinkly naughtiness that reminded me of early Annette Bening. Monique Parent is a funny, sexy trouper who's very likable; she's hardbitten but vulnearble at the same time; she'd have made a good Bob Fosse dancer. And Jacqueline Lovell shows a lot of informal tomgirl bravado. She looks a bit like Cameron Diaz, and has some rowdiness and charm of her own. I responded by thinking: how neat, that three girls I've grown to like and feel some interest in hurl themselves so gamely into lovemaking scenes. The Wife responded, much more female-style: Some care and respect is being shown the girls, who obviously feel comfortable and happy, so on with the sex! "The Key to Sex," by the way, is also a bit mor explicit thatn most Skinemax movies I've seen,I can see tracking down other movies featuring all three women.

It's a talented and enjoyable shot at putting over a cheesy movie, in other words. a better-than-usual cheesy softcore entertainment. How pleasing that these people were able to show a little something of what they're capable of.

OK, OK: "The Key to Sex" is far from great. Even in modest pure-entertainment terms, the film coulda used a few more satirical touches; a few more locations; an act-two climax with many more people on screen. The dork is tiresome, the sex finally gets repetitive, etc. But the film has 'way more spirit than most Skinemax movies.

Mature verdict: the first third is surprisingly lively and sexy; the second somewhat less so; the last stretch is pretty routine. But screw the mature reaction: The Wife and I had a nice time watching the movie.

There are virtues in softcore routine. No pretentions, god knows. The basic moviegoing pelasures of juicy hook, sexy performers -- wondeirng about hte performers (are they married? what's their personal history? are they in touch with their high school friends?) is as much fun as taking in their actual performances. Whic is the case of course with respectable movies too: where would "the movies" be without the press, the critics, the tabloids? Would they still be "the movies" as we've known them (and, in my case anyway, enjoy them)? Would anyone really want the movies to be a dignified, academicized artform? Well, a few people might. But screw them. A big part of what I enjoy about the movies is the gaudy, tacky spectacle of them, and I think the argument can be made that a lot of the power and juice of "the movies" comes from what's tacky and (to some anyway) regrettable about them.

What am I looking for from a sex movie anyway? The French philosophical-sex-movie genre does seem to have its roots in erotica, even if the French porn tradition (wonderfully explicated by robert Darnton in The Forbidden Bestsellers of Pre-Revolutionary France) has very different roots than Anglo-American porn. In France, porn has evidnely always been a vehicle for philosophy, adn especially radical philosophy; anti-clericalism seems to have been the main drive behind much French porn and erotica.

"The Key to Sex" is very American by comparison; it's about nothing but titillation. Would John Quinn have liked to heap some "ideas" on top of his softcore action? I wonder. Me, I generally prefer to the mixture of highbrow and lowbrow -- the stars and the gutter -- that something like "Choses Secretes" represents. They enhance each other; I love the pull-push, sweet-sour notes. The Skinemax tradition is one I respect but that generally speaking doesn't interest me nearly as much. That said, if more Skinemax movies were like "The Keys to Sex," I wouldn't mind becoming a smalltime addict.

I learned a few things from cruising the interviews and news items at this site. A few examples:

• The first generation of performers is being replaced. I'm unsure why.
  
• A cycle of some sort seems to be ending. Perhaps business is off. More and more of the softcore movies are using hardcore performers. And the movies themselves are becoming raunchier.
  
• The films are generally shot on budgets of about $130,000.

I know almost nothing about the business, so if any visitors would care to enlighten, I'd certainly be interested and grateful. What state is it currently in?

Interesting to see how the three different actresses have experienced their careers. Monique Parent, who's very amusing and vervey in "The Key to Sex," comes across in her interview as a real showperson. She seems to enjoy her micro-celebrity. She grew up as a dancer and actor, and reminds me of the musicals hyper dynamos I knew. Fabulously talented creatures, but a little terrifying: everythign they do has to hit the back row of a big theater, and they've got that smack-it-hard kind of hoofer dynamism. Jacquieline Lovell is something else. She bailed out of the industry at one point - "Keys to Sex" was her ast movie. Wen to Florida, had a baby, and is now tryign to break into the legit movie business. Maria Ford is the angry one. She feels exploited and run down, and has had huge implants and had her face re-done.

John Quinn interview: http://www.sreviews.com/johnquinn1.htm
Monique Parent: http://www.sreviews.com/moniqueparent.htm
Jacqueline Lovell database: http://members.aol.com/jlmdb/index.html

Maria Ford: http://www.angelfire.com/film/mariaford/nudity.html

Best,

Michael