Skin: A History of Nudity in the Movies (2020) Movie Script

- The first film I ever
saw where there was nudity,
yes, and I loved it, "Shampoo."
- [George] Sorry.
- "Caligula."
"Caligula," how old was I
when "Caligula" came out?
Was I 12, 11?
- So I never saw nudity in
a film, until I was in it.
They wouldn't even let me
go in to see my own film.
Which was hilarious
because I said,
I hate to say, but I was
the one who made it rated R.
- Wow, everybody's naked!
And they're touching
each other, oh my God.
- "Blue Lagoon," Brooke Shields.
- I mean I'm sure I did see,
"Fast Times at Ridgemont
High," when I was younger.
- Well Hedy Lamarr, I think, did
a Swedish picture called,
"Ekstase," "Ecstasy."
- "Bid Bad Mama."
So when we found out
that Angie Dickinson
was doing a nude scene, oh
yes, we went to the drive in.
- The one with Marlon Brando
with the French Movie,
the Bertolucci
movie, the butter.
[laughing]
Yeah, "Last Tango in Paris."
- My own movie with
my sister, Margo.
I don't think she was fully
nude, but she'd been raped,
and I saw her breasts,
and I was mortified.
- Pornos maybe I saw
when I was young.
[grunting]
- I'd never seen a
movie where an actress
just took her top off and
there was nothing underneath.
Whoa, wow, anything is possible.
[calm music]
- Right now we're in a very
interesting time where people
are very aware of power
dynamics, and especially
when they pertain to sexuality.
And this is all the
result of the Me Too
movement that hit
Hollywood in 2017.
- First though, we begin with
the growing Me Too movement.
Hundreds marching down
Hollywood Boulevard.
- Evidence of new rape
allegations against
Harvey Weinstein.
- Actor Richard Dreyfuss is
the latest big
name to be accused.
- [Reporter] A new
allegation of sexual assault.
- [Reporter] Claiming actor,
Steven Seagal,
sexually assaulted--
- Three women have now
accused Dustin Hoffman.
- Five women have come
forward accusing--
[all talking at once]
- Now with the #MeToo Movement,
think it's really important
for women to know that
nudity in film is a choice.
And it's never an expectation.
- For, "Striptease," when we
all had our final audition,
we had to all perform
a dance that we
choreographed ourself,
chose our own music.
And during that dance we
had to take off our top.
We didn't even
have the role yet,
and we're already doing nudity.
Which was awkward but I did it.
- You never audition
with nudity.
You never, I never had to
take my clothes to get a part.
- There is no just reason
for 30, 40, 50 people
milling around when a
nude scene is happening.
I think lawyers that
represent actresses
are getting very
aggressive in how they
are writing the nudity riders.
- There's an actual contract,
part of the contract,
called a nudity rider where
they get very specific
about what you will
and what you won't do.
So when you get on
set you're protected.
Because there are times
where you get on a set,
and you agreed to do a
certain amount of nudity,
and the director will
try to push those limits.
- We went to the set of the
HBO series, "The Deuce,"
where they have a new job
called Intimacy Coordinator.
- And if you are asking
your actors too simply
roll around naked with each
other, or even just with
a piece of cloth between them,
and get off on each other,
you're asking your
actors to do sex work.
And, besides being in violation
of our union standards,
is also not what these actors
are hired to do, I would hope.
- As an actress, I have to
say that once I did nudity,
I went from being
a girl to a woman.
As an actress, I became
an actress to an artist.
- There's something about being
free from the
hindrance of clothing.
There is a real essence of
strength of character and mind.
Because it's just raw me.
And I'm not trying to
be anything other than
what is my physicality and
what is my mind behind that.
- I didn't know if they were
saying I was a good actress,
or if I was, they just
liked to see me naked.
I think that the
whole idea of feeling,
when you're a young
actress, that here it goes,
it's inevitable, I'm
gonna have to do nudity
or I'm not gonna get anywhere
is part of a much bigger story.
- Nudity is never gonna go away.
It's something we're
always fascinated by.
I think it's educational.
- The purpose of art is
to take what we have now,
and argue with eternity that
it belongs in the
eternal dialogue.
That's what advances us as
a culture, us as a society.
I think that there's
that impulse to
hold on to anything
that is fleeting.
And the nude is just,
it's seen as perfection.
It's seen as eternal.
The human body between
then and now is,
the only difference is what
is sexually attractive,
what isn't sexually attractive,
and those things change too.
The day after Michelangelo died,
the Pope hired an artist to
come in and start painting.
Because in that time
span, nudity had gone
from something that
was acceptable,
and especially comprehensible.
All of a sudden nudity
was totally unacceptable.
So we see the pendulum of
conservative and liberal just.
And of course in cinema
it's the same thing.
When you're at a museum,
or you're at home
looking at a painting,
you're looking at that
illusionistic window.
It's almost the same
proportions as a cinema frame.
Cinema is painting,
it's got the movement,
the precise reproduction
and the narrative
of great Renaissance paintings.
[calm music]
- Probably 20 minutes
after they invented film,
somebody thought,
wouldn't it be neat
if we started
photographing naked people?
And so I think there's
been nudity since
the very early days, in
fact, you might even say
there's been nudity in films
from before there were films.
[calm music]
Eadweard Muybridge, a
famous photographer, began
experimenting photographing
animals and humans in motion.
And the human beings
were almost always naked.
- He was pioneering film maker.
And they were also
pioneering nudes.
- [Jonathan] And then
once movies kind of go out
to the public as
an entertainment
form, by the 1890s,
I'm sure there were
probably clandestine
nudies and photographs
of naked people.
At the turn to the 20th
century movies were
very very short, maybe
lasting a minute in length.
They were mostly
just, you might say,
sensations or attractions.
Georges Melies, in 1897 made
a film, "After the Ball,"
which featured a woman
who later became his wife.
- It's very quick, you
don't see a whole lot.
I think mostly
you see her rear.
But it was still
risque for the time,
something that
people had not seen.
So it caused quite a stir.
- Well around 1913, 1914 a
group of Eastern filmmakers
like Carl Laemmle, D.W.
Griffith, Cecil B. Demille,
decided that the
weather in New England,
and the unions in
New England weren't
worth dealing with much longer.
And they decided to
come out to California,
which is the perfect place
for motion picture making.
It's like God created a state
that'd be perfect for
this new industry art,
where you've basically
got great clear
weather, sunny weather.
And the key here is probably
1915, when D.W. Griffith
produces and directs,
"The Birth of a Nation,"
which I think you
can probably consider
the landmark flagship
motion picture that
begins what we think of as
the narrative feature film
that will be an
evening's entertainment.
- The thing that really invented
nudity in films in America,
ironically, was the greatest
inventor in American history.
And that would be
Thomas Alva Edison.
Edison claimed to have invented
the motion picture camera,
and the motion
picture projector.
He didn't, the Lumiere
brothers of France did.
But he was strong enough
in the United States
to say that he did
it, and got patents on
the motion picture
projector and camera.
So he then said that
anyone who wanted to show
a motion picture had
to pay a license fee.
And he formed something
called The Trust,
which was a monopoly that said
if you want to do a picture
in the United States, you
have to pay Thomas Edison
and The Trust in order
to show a picture.
People didn't want to pay that.
So a very small segment,
called The Independents,
decided we're gonna
make our own movies.
The problem they had was
they weren't powerful,
like the monopoly of The Trust,
so they had to come
up with a gimmick
that would be able to
allow them to compete.
And they said, maybe we
could show skin.
And they knew that it
had to have some kind of
redeeming social
importance, it couldn't be
considering prueent
or scandalous.
So they decided to make it
based on an artists model.
It was filmed in New York,
and the top artist model
was a woman named Audrey Munson.
And Audrey Munson is the
inspiration for at least 15
statues and sculptures that
are in New York City alone.
So they decided to
come up with a movie,
since she was the inspiration
of all these sculptors,
and they called
it, "Inspiration."
And that was in 1915.
And as long as you
were motionless,
and like a tableau,
and like a statue,
that wasn't considered
to be erotic, or sexual.
It was considered to be
artistic and classical.
It was a huge huge
success, no surprise.
And she followed up a
year later with, "Purity."
Again these all had
to have some kind of
redeeming social importance.
She played a dual role,
Purity and Virtue.
And she became the most
famous actress in America.
And it was a counterpoint
to the main guys
that were the big guys,
the Edison and The Trust.
They were putting on
people like Mary Pickford,
and Lillian Gish, and trying
to appeal to a huge audience.
And so they were
the girl next door.
So the contrast with The
Independents putting out
someone who is a nude
artist model was certainly,
piqued the public's attention.
This story became very
tragic, though, after that.
Because she drank mercury
in a suicide attempt.
And they said that she
was very close to death.
She somehow survived
for the next 74 years,
dying at age 104 in 1996.
But she was in a sanitarium
most of that time.
So it was a very sad end.
And people saw that as
somebody poses nude,
and it's the road to
ruin and degradation.
- "A Daughter of the Gods,"
starring Annette Kellermann
for Fox in 1916 has
nude swimming scenes.
Annette Kellermann was a
swimming star from Australia.
And she was already a star
really before she made movies.
- She held all the world
records for swimming.
And she also had gotten
arrested in Boston in 1907
because she a wore a
one piece bathing suit,
which was considered scandalous.
- [Jonathan] And the movies
that she made in Hollywood
were clearly designed to
exploit her swimming abilities.
And in deed, she appears naked,
although she has long hair
that artfully covers
certain parts of herself.
- She undress but
she has tresses,
and they come down and
they cover her breasts.
But, because she's
moving, as opposed to
what the artist model did,
it shifts from side to side.
And there are the first
glimpses of actually
bare female flesh
in an American film.
And, in fact, there was a movie
made of it called,
"Million Dollar Mermaid."
And it starred Esther
Williams in 1952.
So once the barrier of
showing nudity in film
had been crossed then it started
to seep more into the
mainstream movies.
And there was a movie in
1916 called "Intolerance,"
by the very famous
director, D.W. Griffith.
- And one of the historical
settings is Babylon.
It shows the debauchery that
was going on at the time,
which is I think 500 BC,
and how crazy things got.
And part of the debauchery is
the extras in the background
baring their
breasts, and orgies,
and kind of like a pre
Caligula, Caligula in many ways.
- So it enabled them to make
the argument that this had
redeeming social importance,
and that it was
based on history.
It was not a problem, the
audiences ate them up.
[ragtime music]
- From about 1915 to 1927,
the glorious age
of silent cinema,
you have the motion
picture studios creating
the modern assembly
line of production.
And at the time
movies were considered
a kind of disreputable medium.
- There was some big sex
scandals that happened.
In the early '20s, the
William Desmond Taylor
scandal where he was murdered.
And then there was the
Fatty Arbuckle problem.
- Headline making
scandals involving
drugs, death, suicide, rape.
Hollywood was configured as the
kind of Sodom on the Pacific.
- People don't
realize that movies
were really risque
back in the '20s.
- It was coming off of
something of a social revolution
with regard to women in the
1920s that was beginning
to get reflected
in sexual mores.
And those were getting
reflected in the movies.
And people who were against
where the future was heading,
didn't like it, wanted to head
it off, and so they thought
that it would be
necessary to have a code.
- Hollywood had a huge public
relations problem
as a result of this.
And of course, Hollywood
wants to appeal to everybody.
They make films for
the mass audience.
They don't want a black eye.
- In 1927, "Wings," came out.
And it became the first
Academy Award winning picture.
But it was scandalous
in its own way.
There were two men
kissing in the film.
And also Clara Bow,
who was considered
a very big star a the time,
she exposed her breasts.
And for an acclaimed
movie in a big production,
for that to happen it was
quite risque at the time.
- And so increasingly, in the
late 1920s various groups of
what at the time were
called moral guardians,
decide that Hollywood
really has a bad influence.
And this will only accelerate
in 1927 with the onset of sound.
Don't cry Tootsie don't cry
Goodbye Tootsie goodbye
- Almost overnight the whole
industry became sound oriented.
Silent movies were
done within a year.
It was during the depression,
people wanted to be cheered up.
So they had sound movies to
go to, they had musicals.
They had movies
that spoke to them.
A lot of the movies reflected
what was going on
in society then.
- Then you had sexual innuendo.
That's when you had Mae West.
- I shall die to make you happy.
- Ooh, but you wouldn't
be much use to me dead.
- I see a man in your life.
- What, only one?
- All of her films are
getting condemned ratings
from the new Legion of Decency.
- They set up a thing called
The Catholic Legion of Decency,
which rates movies A, B, or C.
And A is just totally fine.
B is we have some
qualms about this but,
if you have to see it, see it.
C is if you see it, you're
actually going to go to hell.
[buzzer buzzing]
They would give Catholics
the list in church,
and tell them what
movies to see.
But it turns out that Catholics
would take that list,
and go to the movies.
They would take the list, they'd
say oh, this must be good.
- I love the period right before
the production code kicks in.
When you're watching people like
Busby Berkeley
just push the limit
as far as cinema was
going to go right then.
All the girls are
meant to look naked.
And he knows exactly what
he's doing, and that he's
probably not gonna get
away with this in a year.
- And there were was
censorship boards
popping up all over the country.
Those censorship boards
were a huge nuisance,
because they would have to cut
their movies for each state.
New York State was
one of the worst.
And so a lot of the versions
of movies that would go out,
would be a lot more racy
outside of New York State.
- Movies had no first amendment
rights during this period.
In 1915 the Supreme
Court ruled that movies
are a business, pure and simple.
And just like meat, going
across interstate lines,
movies could be regulated by
the states, and by cities.
No first amendment
rights at all until 1952.
So if the state can regulate
your industry, why not go
for a self regulation
scheme that keeps the state,
the city, and especially
the feds off your back?
- They decided to try
to bring in somebody
who would go to
the various states,
and say look you don't
need censorship boards.
We'll censor ourselves
according to a code of conduct.
- And to allay those fears,
the moguls decide to
appoint a front man to head
The Motion Picture Producers
and Distributors of America,
which was a cartel of
the Hollywood producers.
Where, like a lot
of businessmen,
they come together
in order to regulate
their own art, and to
keep out competition.
- [Jonathan] And
he hired Will Hays,
who was the Postmaster
General of the United States.
- Who better to determine how
Hollywood polices themselves
than the former Postmaster
General of the United States?
- The Hays code was created
because middle America,
much as it is now,
was up in arms about
the scandals going
on in Hollywood.
- I mean the Catholics
had been at the work of
artistic censorship
for nearly 2000 years.
So they really
know how to do it.
- And so in 1930 Will
Hays gets together
with several key Catholic
individuals in Los Angeles,
and he formalizes his
don'ts and be carefuls.
He writes them out
into a much more
elaborate and specific
production code.
- I had to do a lot
of research into
the production code
administration cuts to film.
Which that was fascinating
too, just the minute detail.
The mere suggestion
flesh or indecency.
- Well, what the code
says about nudity is that
nudity is prohibited,
period, full stop.
And that nudity in fact, or
in silhouette, is prohibited.
And that other
characters in the film
looking at offscreen nudity
cannot even pretend it's there,
and gaze upon it licentiously.
- The nice thing about
Will Hays is that Will Hays
couldn't care less about
morality, couldn't care less.
He was making 100,000
dollars from the studios.
And was basically like
Jack Valenti later on.
He worked for the studios, and
he cared about the studios,
and that's where
his loyalty was.
- We look back at Will
Hays now and can have many,
many laughs about it
because everything was so,
thou shall not do this,
you should not have that.
No nudity, no this, no
that, and nothing licentious
or lecherous, and used
words that were very
value judgment triggers.
- The term pre-code
does not really refer to
before the code, but before
the enforcement of the code.
Because the code existed
throughout the pre-code era,
but it just wasn't
enforced, fortunately.
The studios thought
that the code, in 1930,
was a public relations
ploy and they had
absolutely no intention
of enforcing it.
- There were many
companies, of course,
in the red, facing bankruptcy,
who were desperate.
And in particular, Paramount
and Warner Brothers.
They felt they couldn't be
limited by the production code.
They needed their sex to sell
their movies during
these desperate times.
- So you have these
pre-code films
that really got away with a lot.
- [Mick] The movie
that really got them
to enforce the code was, "The
Sign of the Cross," from 1932.
- "Sign of the The Cross,"
is filled with sex,
filled with nudity,
filled with homosexuality,
filled with bestiality,
everything you can think of
that's not terribly Christian
that's in the Bible.
- [Mick] "Sign of the Cross,"
displays Claudette Colbert
in a way that the
production code
of 1934 certainly
would not have allowed.
- You see her breasts
bobbing up in the water,
but no one said
a word, pre-code.
And DeMille had a foot fetish.
And he had some kind
of really unhealthy
connection between nude
women and gorillas.
And in, "The Sign of the
Cross," we have a sequence where
a Christian woman
is tied to a post.
And this very horny looking
gorilla is walking towards her
as if there's gonna be
a sexual, this is 1932.
Because DeMille for all
his puritanical preaching,
he showed you every
vice under the sun.
- It's very interesting,
because it looks like,
had the code not come in,
there would have been nudity.
Because it was, nudity was
coming, it was really clear.
"Murder at the Vanities,"
you see the women are nude
but they're covering
their nipples.
And then you put me to sleep
Sweet marijuana marijuana
- That was followed one year
later, in 1933 by, "Ecstasy,"
which is one of the most
notorious movies ever made.
It was actually shot in Hungary.
- My father told me
about Hedy Lamarr,
and that he was
so struck by her.
Because that was really
for him the first,
I think probably the first
time he'd seen a nude woman.
So he would have been very
young when he saw, "Ecstasy."
And he probably saw an early
cut of it, because
of his father.
- [Jonathan] And the
scene takes place.
She's out in a lake
swimming, and she's draped
her clothes over her horse,
and the horse runs away.
So she has to run
after the horse
in order to retrieve
her clothes.
So she runs through the woods,
and she is full frontal nude.
- [Mick] The scene is something
that is just so eye popping,
in the context of Hollywood
film in the 1930s.
It's truly amazing.
Now the film, of course, didn't
get a production code seal.
- And then he said, a few
years later, when she came
to Hollywood she came
for dinner at the house.
And he told me he couldn't take
his eyes off of her breasts.
- [Jonathan] "Ecstasy,"
would have been censored
by city agencies,
by state agencies.
It would probably show
for a couple of nights
at your local theater before the
local cops came in
and shut it down.
And it might have been
shown in a censored version,
despite how it would
have been advertised.
Because there's nothing like it
in Hollywood cinema
in the '30s and '40s.
- That is maybe
the first sex scene
based on female
pleasure, full stop.
If you've seen it,
you know what I mean.
- Throughout the pre-code
era, you'd occasionally
get glimpses of nudity in film.
And maybe the most notorious
example, "Tarzan and His Mate."
- And this was a ploy used
by a lot of the producers.
Because if you set it in
a native country,
or native setting--
- Wait, Tarzan. [screaming]
[dress tearing]
- [Barry] People didn't
wear clothes in the jungle.
There's a scene
where Tarzan and Jane
swim underwater in the nude.
And a lot of of people that was,
or were supposed to think
that was Maureen O'Sullivan,
but it was not, it
was a body double.
And that's the first instance of
a body double being
used for a nude scene.
- In the context of Hollywood
cinema this was abhorrent.
And it have of a sort of
picture of what Hollywood cinema
might have been like had
not the production code
come in and busted
up the party in 1934.
- And then in the very
last pre-code movie,
which was actually
released after the code,
but it was approved,
somehow, before the code.
And then it wasn't, it didn't
go through the process.
It was, "Scarlet Empress."
And, "The Scarlet
Empress," actually begins
with a torture scene
of women getting
burned as witches and
they're all naked.
[calm music]
- Then the production
code came in in 1934.
And that was Joseph
Breen, who was a censor,
a religious man, a moral police.
And basically just decreed
that no film could be made
in America unless it
passed muster with him.
- He's the guy who quite
literally put his imprint
on every classical
Hollywood film.
- It may interest you to sit
in with us at a meeting of
the production code
administration in Hollywood,
where we are working for finer
and better motion pictures.
Form the very beginning
of the picture we work
with producers, authors,
and all who are connected
with the production to the
end, that the finished product
may be free from
reasonable objection.
- There's a strong case to
be made that the Hays code,
or rather the Breen code,
that's really what it was,
changed not only the
morality of movies,
but changed the
morality of the country
because of the influence
that movies had.
Breen was the guy who actually
regulated Hollywood cinema
from 1934 to 1954,
basically what we think of
as the classical
studio system era.
But they give Breen
the power to actually
forbid financing of
a motion picture.
Without Breen's green light,
a Hollywood studio, could not
get financing from the banks
in New York to make the film.
- If the code movies
that were made
in the '30s and '40s
teach us anything,
is that there are ways
around stuff to suggest
the most vile things without
actually having to show them.
- One of the first films
that defied the moral order
of the production code, and
the production code authority
is Howard Hughes', "The Outlaw."
- What do you know about that?
- Which is basically a
five year long dispute
that Howard Hughes has with the
Breen office beginning in '41
into '43, and then it gets
sort of released in '46,
in which it's advertising
campaign is perhaps the most,
in the Breen office eyes,
most offensive thing about it,
in which there'd be
billboards enticing audiences
with the tag line, "What
are the two great reasons
"to see Jane Russell
in The Outlaw?"
They actually hired a blimp
to go over San Francisco
advertising the film as
well, and the blimp imagery,
and Jane Russell imagery
is kind of obvious.
- For a long time nudity was
considered a career breaker.
And in 1952, Marilyn Monroe was
just starting to
make it as a starlet.
And a gossip columnist found
out that there had been
a calendar that Marilyn
had posed for in 1949.
So they called a
press conference.
And they asked
her, and they said
what did you have on
in the calendar photo?
And she said the radio.
So it went from being a
negative to a positive.
And I think that's
what changed
the whole ethos
of nudity in film.
- In the 1950s there's
a growing market
for what were calling nudies.
And these are basically
cheap 16, 35 millimeter
films sometimes, of films,
not production code films,
they would never get a
production code seal.
- In the mid to
late 50's you had
these things called nudist
films.
- In 1954 the New York
State Board of Appeals ruled
in the case of a motion picture
called, "Garden of Eden,"
that nudity per se
was not obscene.
And this, of course,
opens the floodgates
for filmmakers to
portray on screen nudity,
in a way they couldn't before.
- The production code was
starting to fall apart.
You had people like Otto
Preminger making movies
that were being show without
the seal of approval.
So the mores of the
world was changing.
- In nudie movies, originally,
it was like girls
playing volleyball.
And so they would chat,
and they would swim.
They were nudist camp
movies, basically.
Nothing ever happened in them,
they weren't very interesting.
In, "A Shot in the Dark,"
there's a very funny scene
in a nudist colony
with Peter Sellers,
which is a pretty
accurate representation
of what nudist colonies
were like at the time.
- And so if it was couched in
the terms of health,
fitness, exercise.
- There used to be theaters
that were called art theaters.
And they were in all towns,
all over the place,
mostly in cities.
- So the nudie cuties, they
wanted to stay under the radar.
Because that's how
they made their money.
- These films would also to
play to men at like a bachelor
party.
Somebody had set up a
16 millimeter projector,
and show what were called
either blue movies,
in the '20s or '30s,
or later stag films
or nudies in the '50s and '60s.
- Well, there was a subset
of nudie pictures, away from
the nudist camp movies,
which were basically boring,
in which they would add a
note of menace by having
somebody scary show up and
chase the girls around.
- These type of movies,
with the damsel in distress,
and damsel in undress were
referred to as monster nudies.
- [Joe] There was
a movie called,
"The Monster of Camp Sunshine,"
where it was supposed
to be a gorilla,
but it was played
by a chimpanzee.
And then Ed Wood, in his waning
years, was unfortunately
reduced to doing
some of these pictures,
"Orgy of the Dead," was one.
- It's an excuse for a
bunch of exotic dancers
to come out one by one
and do a really lame,
completely not sexy, dance.
- And then there's--
- Kiss me quick.
- Kiss me, quick.
- Kiss me quick.
- "Kiss me Quick," which
was a sort of a Russ Meyer
type movie that had the
guys in monster masks
playing Frankenstein,
and Dracula,
or their non-Universal
copyrightable versions.
And they would chase
the girls around.
There's no erotic content
whatsoever in these movies.
They're limp noodle movies.
They're just there to
have girls running around,
and get as much action
in the frame as possible.
- And then there was some
movies called nudie cuties.
If you made it more of a
comedy, you could somehow
insert some female nudity
in it, and get away with it.
They didn't want to
have things that might
inflame the public,
and make young men's
minds turn to dangerous things.
Doris Wishman was one of
the rare female directors
who would be doing
movies that had a lot of
what we could T and A in them.
And she did a series
of movies with
a very famous stripper
named Chesty Morgan,
who had 73 inch natural breasts.
And so she made a movie
with Chesty Morgan
called, "Agent 73."
And then she did another movie
with Chesty Morgan
called, "Deadly Weapons."
They were Chesty Morgan's
natural endowments.
- Doris Wishman did a
couple of monster nudies.
But Herschell Gordon Lewis
had a different take.
When he did, "Blood
Feast," it was a gore film.
It had nudity, and it had
a Playboy Playmate in it.
But the appeal of this movie
was that you were seeing gore
in a way that you had
never seen before.
Pull out the girls
tongue, and cut it off.
These were the progenitors
of today's gore movies.
They were incredibly crude.
And they were one of the
reasons for the creation of
the rating system because
they played drive ins.
And people would be
driving down the street,
and look up at the screen
with their kids in the car.
And there was this woman
being disemboweled.
So they were sort of like,
maybe we ought to do
something about this.
- Before, "The Godfather," was
even a thought in his head,
Francis Ford Coppola started
making a couple nudie cuties.
One is the called, "The
Bellboy and the Playgirls."
- Russ Meyer had
actually gotten his start
making these underground
movies, and one of them that was
one of the first American
movies that could be shown
with nudity was called,
"The Immoral Mr. Teas."
- Russ came along right
at the right time.
Because you had
these nudist films,
but they were really a dead end.
And he came up with
the preposterous idea
that Teas would be able to
see through women's clothes.
- And he goes to the dentist,
and he gets a shot of Novocaine.
And next thing he
knows, they're naked.
- We did it in four
days, cost $24,000.
- [Interviewer] Four days.
And it opened up the
floodgates of permissiveness
as we know it in these
United States today.
It was a quote
from Time Magazine.
I was glad to do it.
- It was like a money machine.
And now you had all these
people getting in on the act,
making what were
called nudie cuties.
But Russ came first, and
Russ scored the biggest.
- But it was so
outrageous for that time,
to see that much nudity,
and to deal with a man
who was a voyeur, who
was leching at women.
Heretofore they didn't have
anything of that nature.
- Yes the code was
still in affect,
but it didn't bother him
because he was distributing
his movies in a way that it
didn't require the system.
"The Immoral Mr.
Teas," was like his
peeing on Will Hays' grave.
- "Peeping Tom," was
a British art film.
Very disturbing
film, even today,
which has nudity in the
context of a kind of
voyeuristic murderer
who uses the camera
kind of as his
surrogate murder weapon.
It opened the the way for
foreign films with nudity
to be distributed in
the American market.
The landmark film here is the
Brigitte Bardot vehicle,
"And God Created Woman."
And it's a huge hit.
- The line was
CinemaScope was for
photographing snakes and
funerals, but Vadim uses her
stretched out across
the screen sunbathing.
It's as much a sort of
triumph of the medium
as this triumph of this
very sexual moment.
- When I waited in line
to see Brigitte Bardot
in, "God Created Woman,"
I go [gasping] oh wow.
Oh wow, I love it.
- Once they saw the
box office returns
for something like that, they
realize nudity is something
that Hollywood can
traffic in for profit.
- And I think that's what made
the beginning of the Indies.
And that's when the studio
system went belly up.
They couldn't compete with that.
[calm music]
- The landmark film
to me that shows
the production code
is walking wounded,
is Alfred Hitchcock's film,
"Psycho," which has everything
the Breen office would
not have approved.
It has sex, it has violence,
it has the relationship
between sex and violence.
- And that led to one
of the most famous
and harrowing scenes in
motion picture history.
Everyone, I think,
remembers that Janet Leigh
gets stabbed in the
shower by Anthony Perkins.
She would not do a nude scene,
she had a no nudity clause.
So they had to
get a body double.
And so they hired Marli Renfro,
who was an actress
and a nude model.
And because it was
not Janet Leigh,
Hitchcock had to
shoot it in such a way
that you couldn't tell who
was actually in the shower.
Then you have the swinging
'60s, as they were called.
You had the new
handsome president,
John F Kennedy after
Dwight D. Eisenhower
in a rather conservative period.
And things opened
up quite a bit.
Marilyn Monroe was the first
actress to prove that nudity
does not destroy a career,
it can even help a career.
Marilyn Monroe was
hired to do a film
called, "Something's
Gotta Give."
And it was kind of
her comeback film.
So she said I need
to make a splash,
literally in a swimming pool.
And then she went in her
dressing room and came out
with a blue bathrobe,
and nothing underneath.
And she said nobody looks
as good in the nude as I do.
The only nudity that survived
was a very quick glimpse.
She comes to the
edge of the pool,
and she sits it on
the edge of the pool.
And the way she seated you
cannot even see her rear end.
And as she gets up,
you can see one breast
from the side and
her entire rear end.
Marilyn had been tardy so much,
that they were not
that far into the film.
And on June eighth,
one week after
her 36th birthday, she
was fired, permanently.
She was the biggest
star in the world.
And if she would
do a nude scene,
who wouldn't do a nude scene?
Probably the foremost
Marilyn Monroe imitator,
at the time, was
Jayne Mansfield.
So she made a movie in 1963.
It was called,
"Promises Promises."
- You gotta remember,
there was Marilyn Monroe.
And then Jayne Mansfield was
right behind her as
far as popularity.
- [Joe] She takes a bubble bath.
The bubbles dissipated
very quickly,
and all of Jayne was on display.
- She liked to tease.
- [Tommy] Sandy?
- Do you want something, honey?
- No it's all right.
- And she knew this, and
this is her stock and trade.
- [Joe] Now, the
floodgates had been opened.
- [Jim] She was the first
celebrity, post Hays commission,
to do a nude scene here
in the United States.
- Marilyn Monroe had done it,
and Jayne Mansfield had done it.
Then Mamie Van Doren
did a movie called,
"Three Nuts in
Search of a Bolt."
I used to be a
stripper down on Main
Now I'm the main
attraction on the strip
- I tried to break
the doors down.
Jayne Mansfield was either one.
And Marilyn was
actually the first one.
Hef asked me to do
Playboy magazine
many times, and I
turned him down.
And I did it this time because
I had a movie
connection with him.
It was, "Three Nuts
in Search of a Bolt."
I did that movie
strictly for money.
There's a beer bath.
So I figured, why
not take a beer bath?
It's really makes me feel alive.
Beer bath, I don't
want to do a beer bath.
Come on he said yeah, it'll
make more money at the theaters.
And since I own the
movie, some of it.
I said, okay I'll do it.
That movie made a lot of
money, a lot of money.
And so did the layout
in the Playboy magazine.
That was the beginning of me
opening the door for nudity.
- Of course there
are films where
nudity is important
to the story.
"The Pawnbroker", has
nothing to do with sex,
but it does use nudity
in a very important way.
The film itself is
about a guy who suffered
trauma during World War II.
And part of the
trauma was seeing
these naked people
being murdered.
And so the idea that they
felt you had to cut that out
because of it's
prurient interest,
was pretty ludicrous
to most people.
"The Pawnbroker," was
one of the last films,
actually, that had a major
production code battle.
It made the production code look
really old fashioned
at that point.
The production code is gonna be
abandoned within a couple years.
- We started looking to the
Europeans, which had been,
of course, using nudity
long before we were.
[upbeat music]
Antonioni's "Blow-Up," now has
two things to recommend it.
One, it's his most
accessible movie.
- Couldn't you give us
just a couple of minutes?
- A couple of minutes?
I haven't even got
a couple of minutes
to have my appendix out.
- And two, it's the first film
to show pubic hair
in modern cinema.
- [Barry] David Hemmings
plays a photographer who
takes a picture, and he winds
up seeing two illicit lovers,
one played by Vanessa Redgrave.
- Give me those pictures.
You can't photograph
people like that.
- Who is topless in the film.
Then he meets two young, what
they used to call groupies,
and he takes them home with him.
There is a flash of Jane
Birkin's pubic hair.
Which is the first
time that's ever
been shown on an
American movie screen.
And it stayed in,
because it was quick.
- "I Am Curious, Yellow" was a
foreign film, it was Swedish.
And it had very explicit nudity.
And there were movies with
explicit nudity at the time.
But this was playing at your
neighborhood movie theater.
So it became a really big deal.
In fact I remember seeing
huge lines of people
waiting to go into the theater.
But then there was also a
group of protestors there
with signs, ban the film,
and pornography and stuff.
The movie itself could
be difficult to watch.
And it's very much of its time.
It's kind of like an
experimental film.
- The code started
crumbling in the '60s,
'cause the '60s were the '60s.
I mean there was a lot of
upheaval in our society.
We had a president shot,
and a lot of things
were going on in real
life that didn't match
the strident mores of the code.
And people were
rebelling against it.
- And as in physics,
every action
has an equal and
opposite reaction.
[calm music]
They said we need to
have a rating system
in order to determine
who can see these films.
- We are not censors at all.
What we do, and we don't
make value judgments.
There's not one of our
ratings that means a film
is good or bad, it just
indicates the level of content.
And then we give
descriptors along with
the level to show
all those elements
that are present at
that level in the film.
- There was that general
feeling of change
from the old classic
Hollywood which
pretty much died
around 1962 or '63.
Greeting greeting greetings
- "Greetings," came out in 1968,
and it was the first
film to be rated X.
It's a counterculture comedy.
Robert De Niro starts
to get involved
in being a peeping Tom.
- You've heard of pop art.
- Oh yes, sure.
- Well, this is called peep art.
- And eventually he figured out
how to make movies
using this obsession.
The X rating definitely
helped, they wanted the X.
The sex stuff is
mostly relegated to
Robert De Niro's scenes
where he's spying on women.
But there's also a scene
that involves Gerrit Graham,
who plays the character
that's obsessed
with the Kennedy assassination,
where there is a naked
woman on his bed.
And he starts tracing
the bullet trajectory
of the gun that killed Kennedy.
- I did my first
nude scene in 1968
in my first movie called,
"If," with this beautiful girl.
And I think it was the
first time in a studio movie
that a man and a woman
had been naked together.
So I went up to the director
and I said when we're
fighting on the floor,
wouldn't it be great if
just a cut and we're
naked like animals?
And he looked and he
went, you ask her.
So we come to the
end of the day,
she comes out in a
bathrobe, and just drops it.
And I said [grunting]
and they go,
okay get your trousers off.
And I went, it's a
bit cold in here.
And they, get your trousers off.
Well, the first
assistant director,
when we did the shot,
walked off the movie.
He was so outraged.
Subversive stuff.
This title of being
naked the most of any
young actor of that
period, was thrust upon me.
I did not go seeking it.
- Any venereal disease?
- No sir!
- Rats?
- No sir!
- Lice?
- No sir!
- Go over there for the bath!
- Yes sir!
- It was just that I came along
at the very moment that
the floodgates opened,
and they decided to
allow nudity in movies.
And about bloody time,
it was ridiculous.
I mean it was sort of the
line that was never crossed.
When that was breached,
holy God it was breached.
We all came rushing through.
- If you haven't seen
a Russ Meyer film,
I would say you're
in for a treat.
His films were his own genre.
- He's such a funny guy,
he's just like so dry.
He's like well, real
gruff, like well
she's a lot smaller
than most of my girls,
but maybe the women will
be able to relate better.
- Vixen is played
by Erika Gavin.
- Nudity was
definitely essential in
portraying who
this character is.
- And she's a nymphomaniac,
and all these different people
kind of come in,
and they meet her.
And she wants to have sex
with every one of them.
It includes her brother.
- Remember how you used
to wash my back, Judd?
And how we used to cuddle
in the tub together?
- We quit doing that
when you turned 12.
You said yourself,
it wasn't right.
- I don't care what
I said then, Judd.
This is now.
- She's just filled with lust.
- Like during the scene
with myself and Vincene,
Russ was down on the floor,
give it to her, yeah,
pounding the floor like
this, like just pounding.
He was laying on
the floor pounding.
And then he goes cut, lunch.
I gotta change my shorts.
[folk music]
- The late '60s, early '70s was
when everything really changed.
After Woodstock, when
everybody was rained on,
and was pretty
much naked anyway.
The floodgates began to open.
- In fact, "The Graduate,"
and, "Easy Rider,"
kind of opened the
door, and all the movies
that came before looked so
old fashioned in comparison.
- Of course American actresses
did not like to do nudity.
They thought that if they
did, their careers would
kind of be tainted in some way.
- It wasn't whether or not
you're gonna do the nudity.
It was when you were
gonna finally do it.
- European actresses
don't give a damn.
I mean are you kidding, no way.
Its just everything's
off if it's part of the,
the integral part of the script.
- "Women in Love," and
there's a nude wrestling scene
between Alan Bates
and Oliver Reed.
And it was weird, and
shocking, and surprising.
That's one of the few
male nudity things
that I remember
seeing in movies.
- When it was released
in the United States,
the American censors
cut this scene to where
you see Olie and Alan start
to get into each other,
and then it cuts to them
laying on the floor panting.
- Was it
too much for you?
- So what we get is
probably the best known
sodomy scene in a
major motion picture,
when it wasn't a sodomy scene
until they cut it that way.
Everybody's talking at me
- The first X rated movie
that became mainstream,
and that actually
won the Academy Award
was, "Midnight Cowboy."
It does have nudity in it.
But I think it's more rated X
because of the subject matter.
- So Sylvia Miles in,
"Midnight Cowboy,"
is a society lady, and
Jon Voight is a hustler.
And they hook up and have sex.
And the next day he asks her
for money, and she freaks out.
- You know Cass that's the funny
thing you mentioning money.
Because I was just about
to ask you for some.
- You were gonna
ask me for money?
- Hell, why you think I come all
the way up here from Texas for?
- Who the hell do you
think you're dealing with?
Some old slut on 42nd Street?
And I think, sometimes
I watch occasionally.
It'll come on and
I'll see that scene.
It's hard watching it you know.
I'm just so shocked
at how real I was.
In case you didn't
happen to notice it,
you big Texas Longhorn bull,
I'm one hell of
a gorgeous chick.
There was no arrangement
made about nudity.
No contract to deal
with things like that.
- And so you had brief
nudity from Sylvia Miles,
and from Brenda
Vaccaro, who were
two of his bolder conquests.
- "Midnight Cowboy," won
an Oscar and was rated X.
And that was the true
application of the X rating,
meant it was a more adult film.
- In 1969, a film came
out called, "Last Summer,"
that was X rated, and
it was known for being
a pioneering film because
of the male nudity in it.
- "Last Summer," is
basically four kids
left to their own devices in
a sort of a rich summer town.
- Hey come on,
let's go for a swim.
Bare ass?
- They'll see us.
- Not here, up the
beach, come on.
- She'll probably
go tell her mother.
- At the end of, "Last Summer,"
the rape scene is basically
very emotionally
fraught, because we
have been four friends.
And sex has been just
creeping up all the time.
But we've both been
pretty much in love
with the Barbara
Hershey character.
- Major truth.
I love you both.
- Yeah, and I love you too.
- And I love you too.
- And she finally manipulates
the pressure off of her
on to Cathy Burns's
character who's the girl.
So it ends up being
a shifting of power.
It's like filming a fight,
when there's a rape
scene going on.
It's like how are we
gonna choreograph this?
I especially didn't
feel like a pioneer
when I'm over a close
up of a handheld camera
on two two by fours on a
slant, with Frank Perry yelling
hump harder in my ear
through a bull horn.
Didn't quite think of
myself as a pioneer.
I didn't even really think about
the nudity when I got the job.
Being young, I was willing to
do whatever it took
to make a great film.
People seem to forget we lived
in a very different
time back then.
People didn't ask questions.
You're either gonna
do something or not.
There were no rules.
My uncle Alan, about
six months later,
said to me I took your Aunt
Levira to see your film.
I look up and there's 20 feet
of your ass up on the screen.
We used to change those
diapers, you know.
I was never sexually thought of
after I did, "Willard,"
for about 15 years.
I kissed that rat, and
that was the end of me
kissing any leading ladies
for quite a number of years.
[calm music]
- When Jack Valenti had
first created the ratings
in the late 1960s, he
had not copyrighted
or trademarked the X rating.
He said, basically, you want
to self rate yourself X,
without paying us a rating fee,
you can go ahead and do that.
This seemed like a reasonable
solution at the time.
But by the early 1970s we had
films like, "Deep Throat,"
coming out that proudly
self rated themselves X.
Not just X but triple X,
and that bragged about it.
- Once the the
pornographers realized that
there was a rating that they
could co-opt for themselves,
that wasn't copyrighted,
and meant adult,
they were after all the
adult film industry.
And so I think they felt
that it behooved them to
slap the X on their
product as well.
- By the early to mid
'70s there came to be
a confusion in a lot
of people's minds.
What's an X rated movie?
Is it hardcore pornography
like, "Deep Throat,"
"The Devil and Miss Jones,"
"Behind the Green Door?"
Or is it a Hollywood
adult film like,
"Midnight Cowboy," and,
"A Clockwork Orange?"
Singing in the rain
just singing in the rain
Just singing in the
rain in the rain
- Now there's a few things
in, "Clockwork Orange,"
Just cutting this cat
suit, and that was
enough to sell that, you
didn't need to do anymore.
I mean just to say, viddy well
little brother, viddy well.
I mean, that's all
you have to say.
- Viddy well, little
brother, viddy well.
- And this kind of
confusion realized itself,
you might say, in the pages
of the local newspaper.
If you wanted to go to a movie,
you looked up where it was
playing in a newspaper.
Well, for example,
the Los Angeles Times.
They got protests from
their readers protesting
why are you advertising,
"Deep Throat,"
and, "The Devil and Miss Jones?"
Our little kids are
being corrupted by this.
And so the Los Angeles
Times became one of the
first newspapers to ban
X rated ads for movies.
- Another early Hollywood
film that featured
male full frontal nudity
was a movie called,
"Drive He Said," directed
by Jack Nicholson.
- I'm going.
- Hey! [screaming
in foreign language]
- In, "Drive He Said,"
Michael Margotta
does a nude streaking scene
across a college campus.
And that was pretty new for
the early 1970s,
and pretty shocking.
- This was probably
the first time you saw,
except for the Oscars,
where we had a streaker
in that as well during
a David Niven speech.
- Quite likely--
[audience laughing]
- The '70s, with its
hedonism, and also sort of
the crass commercialization
of that freedom,
brought about exploitation
films, as well as art films,
and then just regular
Hollywood movies where it was
liberating for actors and
actresses to get nude on screen.
- In, "Carnal Knowledge,"
you have huge mega stars
like Jack Nicholson, and
Ann-Margret doing nude scenes,
wanting to do nude
scenes specifically.
And it kind of gives
tacit approval to
all kind of American stars
doing nude scenes in films.
Bye bye birdie
- Ann-Margret was a dancer
who had dated Elvis Presley,
and had been in,
"Bye Bye Birdie."
And she had done no nudity
in films, and it was
rather surprising in the
movie, "Carnal Knowledge."
- Where Jack Nicholson is in
the shower in the background.
And Ann-Margret's
lying on the bed.
- [Barry] And she's
reading the newspaper,
and she turns the
page of the newspaper.
And as she does that
she lifts her arm,
and her breast is exposed.
- And she gets up and
goes to the shower.
And you see her from
behind, but you go
wow, that's Ann-Margret
and she's naked.
And that was like, whoa.
- A lot of times after
the actresses kind of
broke their screen
nudity virginity,
when they finally did it and
saw that it wasn't that bad,
or that it didn't
hurt their career,
and they could get through it,
then they started doing
more and more nudity.
Ann-Margret followed up,
"Carnal Knowledge," by doing
a nude scene, a topless scene
in the movie, "Magic,"
with Anthony Hopkins.
- "The Last Picture Show,"
from Peter Bogdanovich
is a remarkable movie,
a wonderful film.
And it also partakes of these
kind of new freedoms
of this period.
- I know there was
a lot of talk about the
freedom of the screen.
And my producers on,
"The Last Picture Show,"
which we shot in '70,
really wanted nudity,
and the sexual
aspect of the story,
as they did in, "Easy
Rider," the year before,
the same producers.
It's a story about a small
town in Texas in 1951.
- What y'all doing
back here in the dark?
- The kids are coming of age.
- You see frontal nudity
in it as the people from
the high school take off
their clothes to skinny dip.
- You wanna join the club?
- Sure.
- Well, you gotta get undressed
up there on the diving board.
- [Tommy] So everybody
gets to watch.
[cheering and whistling]
- Cybill Shepherd was
not sure she wanted to do it.
- That's the rule.
- Yeah, I did it last Easter.
- [Agnes] Okay?
- Okay.
- But Bert Schneider,
the producer said,
if she doesn't want
to do the nude scene,
we don't want her
in the picture.
I said no, I'm going to cast
her.
And we'll see about
the nude scene.
Maybe she'll do it,
maybe she won't.
If she won't, we'll get a
double or something like that.
I wasn't gonna give
up her as an actress.
- It's wonderfully in
context of the film.
It's not at all exploitative.
It really works with the film.
- We sort of fell in love,
and actually that made
it tougher for me.
'Cause I wasn't sure I
wanted to do that either.
The scene in the swimming
pool, nobody was there
except Cybill, and me,
and the camera man.
- Did Peter need to
have Cybill Shepherd
be naked when she
jumped in the pool?
Probably not, but it is a
way of telling a story that's
different than it would have
been if she had clothes on.
So I mean, you can use
nudity to make story points.
[all cheering]
- I could be completely
murdered for saying this,
but Europe is like the land of
the 18 year old actress
and the 50 year old man.
And this is like a sort of
love story that makes sense.
This doesn't make sense in
America to American audiences.
This is something only
Europeans seem to really do.
You don't see that as much here.
- "Last Tango in
Paris," is a movie
that stars Marlon Brando.
He is looking at a
French apartment for rent
at the same time a
young French woman is.
And they agreed to
rent the apartment
and meet there just for sex.
There's been a lot of talk
about what the scene is
where he sodomized her and
uses butter as a lubricant.
Schneider claimed it
wasn't in the script,
claims it was sprung on her.
She said in an
interview I felt as if
I was being raped,
something like that.
- The press around this movie.
Did he really have sex with her?
Did he mistreat her?
Did he anally penetrate her?
- Everything outside
this place is bullshit.
- It certainly put
butter on the map.
- Stop!
- If you go back to her
interview, it really is
that's a leap from
what she's saying.
I mean she stayed in touch
with Brando, they were friends.
- Listen, why don't
you stop talking
about things that
don't matter here.
- And I would describe her in
that movie as nude
instead of naked.
There is something about
her that's coquettish.
And she's playing that.
- All the mysteries that you're
ever gonna know in
life are right here.
- The women in
prison genre began,
actually in the 1970s
with Roger Corman.
I'm a longtime woman
And I'm serving my time
- These were films that starred
a wonderful actress
named Pam Grier.
- Where do you want
to be buried, nigger?
- And it's Miss Nigger to you.
- Pam Grier should
rule the movies.
I mean if there was any
justice in the world.
- The first one, I think,
was, "The Big Dollhouse,"
"Women in Cages,"
"Twilight People."
And then, "Black
Mama White Mama,"
and then, "Coffy," "Foxy
Brown," and, "Sugar Hill."
And then I had a three
picture deal woo-hoo!.
- And Pam Grier
became the number one
action, kick ass
lady of the '70s.
- And it was basically
just a standard
prison plot, but it
was women in prison.
- Something has set in motion,
something where these women
are deprived of their freedom,
and their put all together
in these terrible situations.
- The cobra's venom
attacks the nervous system.
The victim dies in convulsions.
- And they were
frequently naked.
- Does this do a
little thing for you?
- [Mike] And always rebelling
at the end to get their freedom.
- These movies became
wildly popular,
especially in the Deep
South, and the Midwest.
- And European was more
accepting in nudity.
the rubenesque, Sophia
Loren, you could
show a little more bust on her.
In America they go
[gasping] oh my God.
When I was in, "The Arena,"
they gave us an option
to turn face the
camera, just act like
you're really showering,
you're bathing.
And I said well, I'm
not gonna cover up,
like the other characters are.
They're gonna pull
your clothes off.
And I had to be mentally
prepared to have that done,
because it had been
done to me as a child.
- The hint of
promised lesbianism,
if there were no
actual lesbian scenes.
- Okay, that's enough.
Hurry up so you can get out
of here and fix my hair.
Women in prison
oppressed, they're gonna
explode with sexual
appetites and attraction,
and they're just
gonna be borderline.
Well, yeah that's for when you
oppress anybody for a while.
And then plus they
didn't have wardrobe.
We just had T-shirts.
- And since nothing
succeeds like success,
they would churn out as
many of them as they could.
- [Announcer] "Caged Heat."
- Your guess is as
good as mine as to how
I got that part
in, "Caged Heat."
We have a violent sorority here.
[shirt tearing]
And very strong ways
of dealing with it.
- You can't do this to me.
[electricity crackling]
[groaning in pain]
- I mean yeah, it was rough.
For some reason it's
like people that go to
watch women wrestlers,
they love seeing all those
shower fights, which is where
the nudity would come in.
The shower scene was
really treacherous,
because of the fact that
there was no hot water.
It was freezing cold,
and here we were naked.
- "Alice in Wonderland,"
is the innocent blonde girl
who goes into a trippy
psychedelic world
of talking animals.
- Hey wait, I'd
like to talk to you.
- I can't wait when I'm late.
I'm supposed to be at the
Queen's party at 3:30.
If I'm late it could
mean my [mimics cutting]
The Queen's a bitch, tootaloo.
- And blood thirsty Queens.
- You misunderstand me, doll.
I don't want to
cut off your head.
I want you to give me some head.
I think that that fantasy world
was her journey into
sexual discovery.
She was a lot like me.
She was young, naive, and
I could relate to that.
Mr. Rabbit, wait for me.
- [Mike] And she's
incredibly beautiful,
incredibly radiant.
- I remember when I got
the part, I was so excited.
Like, oh my gosh, I
got my first film.
Right, yay.
But I didn't have an agent,
I didn't have an attorney.
I signed a contract, I don't
even know what I was signing.
I shouldn't be doing this.
If I had issues
with the nudity when
I read the script,
I don't remember.
It was a role, I was
playing a character.
And the character
needed to be naked.
- If it feels good, it is good.
Learn to trust yourself.
- I grew up in La Mirada,
and there was the
La Mirada Drive-in.
There was a spot where you
could see the drive-in movie.
- It looks nice.
- It's very nice.
- Indubitably nice.
- And there were
other kids there too.
And one of the kids was like,
I'm gonna bring
binoculars next time.
I was like, oh genius.
And I remember my
parents were like,
oh what do you
want for Christmas?
I want a pair of binoculars.
- When I was a kid, a
teenager, we'd sneak into
the drive-in and you'd
see an R rated movie.
You expected, you
demanded nudity.
There better be some
gratuitous nudity here.
Just all of a sudden,
out of nowhere,
the actress would drop her top.
And is it something
that would play
as well now, as
it did back then?
Probably not.
- And then, "Alice
in Wonderland," got
an R rated release.
- Which is where, then
it became popular,
because it obviously had
a much larger audience.
- That reflects the 1970s,
that it was so libertine
that they could show
a soft core porn movie
projected in public
in a drive-in theater.
I mean if that happened
now, without a doubt,
there would be, I mean you
know Twitter would explode.
- Take off your clothes.
- I don't like women
giving me orders.
- [Announcer] "I
Spit on Your Grave."
- Camille Keaton was a
model who had been in Italy.
And she made one of
the classics of horror,
that was called, "I
Spit on Your Grave."
- Camille Keaton is what
they call a scream queen.
And a scream queen is an
actress of a certain age,
that began her career
being chased around
by guys in hockey
masks, or what have you.
That's a scream queen.
[grunting]
- I can't believe that I'm
sitting here 40 years later,
and we're having an
interview about this film.
Now that means something
to me, I have chills.
The plot of the film
is about a woman
that goes off to write her book,
and she goes to the country.
Shortly thereafter, in the
secluded area she's in,
she gets raped by four men.
Stop it, stop it. [grunting]
- And she's stripped, and
totally exposed, and then
sets about for the rest of
the film to seek revenge.
And so there are a
number of scenes of her
taking off her
clothes seducing men,
and then exacting her revenge
on the men who had raped her.
[grunting]
- We were the first
to make a film
where a woman does go back and
get revenge on her attackers.
- They're all about
remaking European movies,
usually Ingmar Bergman,
like, "The Virgin Spring."
When you realize
where these movies,
what the inspirations
came from you go, whoa.
I mean this is kind of Toney for
a trashy exploitation movie.
- Well, when I read the script
I was very excited about it.
Here is a script
that can give me
the opportunity to
cry, be vulnerable.
I can be everything, I can kill.
The nudity, that
worried me a little bit.
I loved everything
else about the film.
She's a strong character.
[screaming in pain]
The director and I
were talking about
how these nude
scenes would be made.
And there was a lot of trust
and respect between all of us.
It came out in Chicago,
and immediately
was banned in over 200 theaters.
And I think it had to do
with not just me being nude,
what happens to me in the film,
the rape, and the revenge.
and it was so real like.
But what she did in the
film is certainly to show
women that they can be strong,
and that they can
face their attackers.
And I think they do
that today, more.
- Well they talk about,
in the '80s slasher films,
the final girl, who was
usually a virginal figure.
I believe that's all
about, "Halloween."
- "Halloween," might have
started this craze where
the good girl keeps her
clothes on, and she lives.
But the bad girl gets
undressed, or has sex.
- Oh, fantastic.
- [Irv] And she
gets slaughtered.
- A lot of teen
guys, underage guys,
were allowed to
see slasher films.
They were not allowed to
see teen sex comedies.
And the irony was, why
is it okay to see people
being killed and
slaughtered, but not okay
to see a naked body having sex?
- What I find so
funny about this idea,
of the good virgin who
keeps her clothes on,
is Jamie Lee Curtis herself
has made so much fun of it.
And her big quote
is that she didn't
show her tits until
she went legit.
It wasn't until she
moved out of horror films
into serious movies
that people started
to ask her to take
her shirt off.
- By the way, food
and rent are not
the only things around
here that cost money.
You sleep on the couch.
- Jamie Lee Curtis
was not the only star
to kind of perform in these
surprising nude scenes.
Take somebody like
Malcolm McDowell,
who went off of movies like,
"If," and, "Oh Lucky Man!",
and, "A Clockwork
Orange," to take the
really controversial
lead role in, "Caligula."
- Malcolm McDowell will always
be remembered for,
"A Clockwork Orange."
But he will also live
in infamy for playing
the title role in Tinto
Brass', "Caligula."
[squeals]
- Do I know what the
plot is of, "Caligula?"
I haven't got a fucking idea.
And it's a fascinating
part of Roman history.
- All anyone remembers from
it, is how mad Malcolm was.
- And I didn't want to
play him as a madman,
because that's boring
and there's no.
If he's mad, he's
mad, that's it.
There's no moral issue with it.
- [David] Sleeping
with his horse,
having sex with his
sister, burying people
up to the neck, and then
cutting their heads off.
All these scenes of torture.
- We kind of came up with
this thing that he was
an anarchist, that
he was destroying
the Roman Empire from the top.
Sound familiar?
- Caesar, emperor of
Rome, lord of the world.
- Lord of the world?
I didn't want to do
any nudity in Caligula,
because everybody else was nude
in that movie except
me, pretty much.
And they go would you,
I went nope, nope.
Everybody else can,
and I'm not going to.
So that's the way that was.
I know, I said
it's pretty stupid,
if I'm in a rainstorm,
not to be naked.
So I figured that was okay.
But no making love to this,
I didn't take my stuff off.
- More conviction.
- "Caligula," which was I guess,
one of the great porn
movies of all time.
We didn't know at the time,
but that's what it became.
- It is a pure X rated movie,
back when X meant something.
- I hated it because somewhere,
when you watch that
movie, you realize
there is really a wonderful
movie here that's been
sort of hijacked
by Bob Guccione,
who was the publisher
of Penthouse.
But he had absolutely no taste.
And all you had
to do was look at
his magazine to figure that out.
- Peter O'Toole,
and John Gielgud,
and Helen Mirren are
all in this movie.
- I know, he hates me.
- Because you are wise.
So, when I am gone,
watch out for Macro.
- He figured if I've
paid for these sets,
my business is pornography.
Hey, let's shoot a porno movie.
And the shot would
be of me close up.
When I shot that shot, I'm
looking at a pet falcon.
So cut, two lesbians
in the 69 position,
licking, and God
knows what else,
at it, humping, writhing around.
Come back to me,
quizzical smile.
And I sat there with
Mary, my then wife.
And we were like holy
fuck, what is this?
- There was a landmark
movie in 1979 called, "10,"
which was directed
by Blake Edwards,
the husband of Mary
Poppins, Julie Andrews.
And the idea of the movie is
looking for the perfect 10.
Bo Derek became the
go to actress in
the nude movies
of the early '80s.
And if you went to
a Bo Derek movie,
you would expect that several
times she would disrobe.
- George.
- I think in the
history of cinema,
it's always been considered
much more artistic
and acceptable if the
actress does nudity,
as opposed to if the
actor does nudity.
- I think this is
this hypocritical
side of the business.
And indeed, men in
general, isn't it?
Of course we want to
look at this beautiful,
voluptuous body of a woman.
But a man with a penis hanging
out, who wants to see that?
It doesn't have the
same sort of beauty.
Or not, at least, to
a heterosexual man.
[calm music]
- Nudity in American films
is slowly becoming more
like your European
films used to be.
- And then we go through
this kind of Renaissance
of directors like Paul
Mazursky, and Paul Schrader
with, "American Gigolo,"
with a new kind of freedom.
- What's amazing about,
"American Gigolo,"
which was a very popular
movie in 1980, is that
the star of the movie, Richard
Gere, showed his penis.
- So it still remains,
I think to this day it's
a little bit of a, I
don't want to say scandal.
But it's a little bit
shocking and surprising
when a major male star
consents to do nudity.
- Blake Edwards
made a movie called,
"S.O.B." about the
movie industry,
and put his wife, Julie
Andrews, as the star.
He played on the
fact that Julie was
a squeaky clean, Disney
heroine who never swore,
and was just the sound of music.
The hills are alive
with the sound of music
- The movie is a huge flop,
and there's no nudity in it.
And he decides I'm gonna
put some nudity in it.
And the only kind of nudity
he could come up with
that would be daring,
or would be box office,
is to have his wife
show her breasts.
[dramatic music]
[audience applauding]
- [Mat] It wasn't
a long nude scene,
but it was Mary Poppins naked.
And that is an
exciting thing to see.
- That was all done for comedy.
Yeah, I just think it's a
great send-up of Hollywood.
But Hollywood doesn't
always like send-ups.
- "The Happy Hooker
Goes Hollywood," right.
Well it's Xaviera Hollander,
who I never met, unfortunately.
But I was the third hooker.
The first one was Lynn Redgrave.
Then there was Joey Heatherton,
and then there was me.
- [Announcer] There back again,
Xavier Hollander and her girls.
Money comes easy to the
girls of Xaviera Hollander.
- Bouncy, bouncy.
- So Martine Beswick
is an actress
who was in tons of films
throughout the '60s and '70s.
And in fact she was in
a lot of Bond movies.
She was in, "From Russia with
Love," and, "Thunderball."
- Tell London I've made
contact with the girl.
- Well, it's not what
I'd call contact.
- Let's face it,
it's about a hooker.
I mean, what am I gonna do?
I'm gonna pretend
that she's gonna
have it off with
someone dressed?
- [New York Cop] Boys
downtown were right, Xaviera.
You are the best.
- Do they really say that?
- Oh yeah, and more.
But of course, they're
very respectful.
- Of course.
It's always a pleasure to
serve New York's finest.
Actually, it was
really a cute script.
And it was about a
film within a film.
And it was about Hollywood
trying to undermine this woman.
- And I gotta tell
you, one of the most
campy, great nude
scenes of all time
happens in that movie
where Martine Beswick
is completely naked at
the side of the pool,
rubbing oil on
Batman, Adam West,
while he smokes a cigarette.
And he's completely naked,
by the way, as is she.
Only in the late
'70s, early '80s
would you do a nude scene
that was this weird and crazy.
But it's classic.
[dramatic music]
- "The Howling,"
from 1981 is a great,
one of the great werewolf
movies ever made.
- And one of the conceits of
the movie is that during sex
is a particularly propitious
time to turn into a wolf.
- They're coming from
each side of the screen,
and the fire is getting
bigger and bigger,
and they're both naked.
- The sex scenes are not
all that much fun to do.
There are certain
visual aspects that
need to happen in a sex scene,
and things that you need
to be able to see, and not
see, and not be covered.
And then when they're on top
of each other,
they're animals now.
Do I think the scene would
have worked without the nudity?
Probably not, that
particular scene no.
Because the whole scene was
engineered toward the fact
that we were seeing
this woman naked.
And it's also a
beautifully lit scene,
and it's very attractive.
And it's sexy in its way.
- Yes, "The Howling II,"
I was contracted to
do that nude scene.
And started out with the
ripping, I call it the rip away,
the rip away dress, where
I tore my dress open
and then we have a threesome.
- So they make her
like a blonde werewolf.
She's in kind of a bodysuit,
but they've got hair
glued all over her
breasts, and down here.
Kind of a bush down here, fur.
And you'll have to ask
Philippe Mora about that,
because he's a crazy guy, and
he directed the two sequels.
And they're snarling at each
other, and Philippe was going,
this is got to be the first
three way in werewolf history.
[dramatic music]
- "Personal Best," is,
I think, the best movie
I've ever seen about
the athletic experience.
Margaux Hemingway plays this
track and field athlete.
And she falls in love with an
older woman who is
also an athlete.
- It was controversial,
there's no question.
It was the first
film of its kind.
- But this is a film that
explored a lesbian relationship,
not just as something that
was part of a male fantasy,
or in some sort
of soft core film.
And the subject was
treated with respect.
- There was enormous
controversy about this.
I mean it was
Margaux Hemingway's
doing a sex scene with a woman.
She winds up with a man
at the end of the film,
which was a claim that
lesbianism is a phase.
But the last line of
that movie restates
the women as the
important relationship.
- The nudity was again
a little more akin
to what real life
was all about it.
If two women are
in the steam room,
and they're athletes,
they're probably not gonna
have towels that go from below
their knees to their chins.
They're probably gonna
take the towels off,
and be naked, and
just continue to talk.
- Nudity is expected when
the story supports it.
It's really not about,
I need this gratuitous
moment of nudity
to accentuate this.
Now, there have been movies,
and there are tons of them,
where that's definitely the
reason why they put it in there.
I would say that, "Star
80," affected my career
far more than,
"Personal Best," did.
"Star 80," was more difficult
for people to watch.
- It's about this meteoric rise
of this girl who worked at
a Dairy Queen in Canada.
- May I take your order now?
- I'll like something
sweet, soft, and white, you.
- [Mike] To Playmate
of the Year,
and then co-starring in a
film by Peter Bogdanovich,
with whom she also had
a romantic relationship.
- You shouldn't chew gum,
it's got sugar in it.
- [Mike] That ends horrifically,
with pimpy husband,
Paul Schneider, murdering
her with a shotgun.
[gun fires]
And violating the corpse,
and then blowing
his own head off.
[gun fires]
- And in a film like, "Star 80,"
nudity is absolutely necessary.
It's like, well in
a Playboy movie,
or a movie about about Playboy.
- That's called the bunny dip.
- [Eric] You're gonna see
some breasts, it's their life.
- There was a big
misinterpretation
about how I got the role.
- It was so much
attention over her
breast augmentation,
it was ridiculous.
- Yeah, I wouldn't
have gotten the role,
had I not had breasts,
that's absolutely the truth.
- She had that
done for the movie.
Yeah she did, and so?
- But I did it for me.
I wouldn't have done
that because of a movie.
- August.
- Oh Mr. Hefner, thank you.
- I gotta be honest with you.
When I first got the script of,
"Star 80," I thought
it was horrible.
- What's wrong with him?
- Well, he's got the
personality of a pimp.
- But it's Bob Fosse.
- Bob Fosse did not
want me for that role.
You're Tom boyish, you're
from the mountains,
you're not a Playboy, you're
not a sexy, girly type girl.
And I wasn't.
And that's exactly why
I wanted to play her.
- I had a certain manager,
kept saying why
aren't you a star?
Why aren't you
still a superstar?
And I said with what
movies, with what work?
There is no work.
And he put me in a
certain movie called...
- [Announcer] "Chained Heat."
- There is a scene
with John Vernon.
Got a little too excited.
And I'm gonna be as polite
as I can about this.
He didn't follow the rules
of working with stunts.
[slap lands]
[crying]
He hit me hard.
Not okay.
No.
The movie I signed to do,
was not the movie
that we were filming.
They kept giving
us script changes.
And I'm thinking, this
is not okay with me.
My feeling is, I would rather
see a breast, even a penis,
then I would violence,
that's me. [laughing]
- The reason I think that
the women in prison movies
were so important,
especially in the '80s where,
"Rambo," and, "Commando,"
was coming out.
Women in prison, that works
worldwide, translates very well.
- This is what we need to
do, this is what is selling.
- Well yes, I mean we weren't
doing, "Shawshank Redemption."
- [Linda] If you didn't
agree to something,
you weren't gonna work.
- There is actually
a list of what
the producers, the directors,
and the distributors want.
We need three shower
scenes, we need two rapes,
we need this, we need that.
- You know for, "Valley
Girl," it was simply
a distribution deal, necessity.
- Atlantic Releasing said
it when I met with them.
And they said well,
we've made them agree.
You are going to
show naked breasts
in four scenes in this movie.
- It was like in the
contract as nudity.
We need three sets of boobs
in this particular film.
- Is that a problem for you?
I said no.
Is it a problem if I do it
whatever way I think of?
And they said no, we don't
care how we see them.
We just want to see them.
And so they would send me
little notes, more breasts.
- My manager, who was
a woman, said to me,
oh actresses do this all
the time, it's very common.
And it's okay, and it's nothing
to be embarrassed about.
- When I read the script,
I was like oh yeah,
I'll do this movie, but I
don't want to do the nudity.
They can probably just get
somebody else in the movie.
- And I thought that
was interesting,
because a woman is saying
that to me and not a man.
- And then I remember my
agent at the time saying,
okay well I'll talk to
them and tell them that.
And then what
happened was my agent
didn't talk to them
and tell them that.
- I was skeptical.
Is she saying that
because she wants me
to get the job and do the job?
Or is she saying that because
that is how it's
perceived in the world?
- Years later, it's all over
the internet forever and ever,
for the rest of my life,
which I don't mind.
'Cause I've done total
nudity in movies.
But to me I don't want
to be the pair of boobs
for that distribution
deal, I want to be
the pair of boobs 'cause
it matters to the scene.
- Well, I kind of felt like
nudity was an important element
in the sex scenes
in, "Fast Times,"
because it would
be uncomfortable.
- Yeah well, the see
with Jennifer Jason Leigh
in the dugout with the
older man, very tough scene
to watch, very hurtful,
very realistic.
- This is not how you
wanted it, or imagined it.
And your mind is
not in the space
that makes you feel the way
you thought you would feel.
I thought when I got lucky
enough to direct a movie that
I would be able to show it
from a different point of view.
- She takes nudity, and
intimacy, and the messiness
of being a young person
trying to figure it out.
And she looks at it through
a couple different angles.
- It's strange, you have
to tell them exactly
what they're doing,
where the hands,
where they're touching what.
Because it's almost like,
more than in other scenes,
they need the permission
to do the things.
And then to see a naked
guy for the first time,
would be quite a freak
out for a young girl.
But as it turned out, I
was not allowed to do that.
And they said if you have that
shot, you'll get an X rating.
When I saw the
scene cut together,
it did not occur to me like
oh that's an X rated scene.
To me X rated meant porn.
So we had to blow it up.
So just like in
every other film,
you saw a guy who's topless,
which is nothing essentially.
- I think I came.
Didn't you feel it?
- Yeah, I guess I did.
- So it was cut way down.
And they said see,
it's better now.
Like we improved your scene.
And, like thanks a lot.
- I don't know if we
could make it now.
Back then some of the
objections might be more from
the right wing, kind of
conservative Christian side.
Now, the objection might be
more from the left which is,
well, if someone's having sex,
someone's being exploited.
- I mean distinguishing
between essential nudity,
and exploitation nudity
is really tricky,
because sometimes they
clash even in the same film.
- To me the greatest
nude scene in
the history of movies
is Phoebe Cates
in, "Fast Times at
Ridgemont High."
Judge Reinhold then
steps into the bathroom,
takes a peek out the window
at Phoebe Cates in this
luminous red bikini.
[dramatic music]
- Hi Brad.
You know how cute I
always thought you were.
- You know, I feel
kind of uncomfortable
about the whole thing
because I didn't want to be,
oh I'm the one
that's insisting that
she do a topless scene,
but it was in the script,
and it was a scene
that was needed.
Because we wanted to
show the big disconnect
between what the
fantasy is, and then
the humiliation of
it not being that.
- Oh, wait just a minute.
- And I really told
her she had to talk to
the producer, Art
Linson, who handled it.
- Doesn't anybody
fucking knock anymore?
- I think the scene works,
and I think it helps
the humor of what happens to
Judge Reinhold after that.
- [Announcer] What
they're teaching
in private school
isn't private anymore.
Especially at the Cherryvale
Academy for Girls.
- Are are feeling
romantic now, my darling?
- "Private School," is a
classic bawdy farce plot.
Three guys dress in drag to
sneak into the girls academy.
- You only go
around once in life,
and you gotta grab for
all the nookie you can get.
- Well, first of all Phoebe
Cates, she was my idol.
She said, are you are you
worried about the nudity at all?
And I said, why would I be
worried about the nudity?
I said it's a great role,
I'm not worried about it.
She said oh good, I'm
so happy, 'cause I was
naked like 25 times
in, "Paradise."
And we just hit it off.
- "Private School,"
also contains one of
the best remembered
shower scenes, because
it goes on and on.
- So there's a boy
who's dressed as a girl,
who's hiding in the sauna.
And he's
voyeuristically watching
all these girls take showers.
And in the movie you see me
in the shower a long time.
Then you see me in the
locker room getting dressed.
Then it cuts back, and
I'm in the shower again.
I did so many shower
scenes, that I always
thought of myself as the
cleanest actress in Hollywood.
- Phoebe Cates and
Matthew Modine,
they were excited about
losing their virginity.
And then my character, Jordan,
was interested in Matthew
Modine's character.
So I tried to steal
him away from her.
- The scene of her horseback
riding is maybe the,
I don't know whether to say the
high point or the low point.
But it's the something
point of gratuitous nudity.
- [Linda] Surprise.
- [Richard] Because
not only does she
take off her top and
ride on the horse,
but then they give us
a slow motion replay.
- I said how about if
my helmet falls off?
And then my hair can blow
in the wind in slow motion.
And they said oh we love
it, that's a great idea.
When am I ever gonna
look this good again?
Why not have it on film
for the rest of time,
where I can remember, oh
my gosh I looked great?
And I had no problem
with any of it.
- Okay, "Last American Virgin,"
is a movie that is
very unexpected.
What do you do if two best
friends fall for the same girl?
She winds up choosing to be
with the guy who's more popular.
Gary is the guy who's shyer,
maybe he's not as confident.
But he falls for her as well.
And it's a very simple
story, it's a story
that I think happens
to a lot of people.
- Listen, will you
count me out, Rick?
- Hey, do you want
to get laid or not?
- Look, I'd rather screw
Godzilla than them.
- The love scene in, "Virgin,"
I think what I really loved
about it, it was slow.
And it was gentle,
and it was beautiful.
Again, guys would not
come in and see this film
unless they thought, I'm gonna
get to see some girls naked.
And then they learn
about this beauty,
this kind of romantic
aspect to it.
It kind of lures guys in
with the nudity aspect.
- [Mike] The movie is
crazy, it's full of pranks.
- That's nine inches.
- Oh my God, I'm having
a heart attack, help!
- Mel, can I borrow
your breath spray?
- I didn't want to be typecast
as someone who just did nudity.
I didn't have the the
choices that women do today.
And I'm very happy to
see that women today
have the choices where, they
can choose to do nudity or not.
If a woman's comfortable
with it, great.
and if they don't,
that's fine too.
It doesn't mean
you're going to be
given more or less
of an opportunity.
I think it just has to
do with who you are.
- "No Way Out," is a 1987 movie,
and it's where I think a
lot of people really became
Sean Young and
Kevin Costner fans.
- You're pretty
impressed with me.
- No.
- Yes, you are.
- I remember Roger
Donaldson said at the end
of the audition, when he
finally offered me the part.
He said well, lift up
your shirt let me see.
I don't want to make
sure you don't have
any scars or anything on you.
And so I was like, okay.
And it was really ridiculous
on a certain level.
It's not like you could
say to the producers,
I love this part but I
don't want to do the nudity.
That was like, you
had to do the nudity,
because that was what
they were banking on
as part of their sexy project.
- The key scene in that
movie, and the one I think
fans of '80s sex
scenes remember,
is in the limo when they're
driving around Washington.
- Well, I remember doing
the love scene and thinking
how retarded it was
that I was the only one
undressed, and
Kevin was nervous.
Kevin was really nervous.
And I remember turning
to him and saying
you're dressed, what
are you talking about?
Get it together, would you?
- There's a scene early in
the movie that's really sexy
where Sean Young
is in a mink coat,
and just opens it up in the
hallway of her apartment.
- Hey now, you better beat
it before I get arrested.
Bye, Nina.
- Oh, nice meeting you, Tom.
- People thought it was
a really sexy scene.
And they thought it
was kind of humorous,
and casual, and
very comfortable.
And it's interesting because
that's kind of good acting,
where really you're
in a situation where
you don't really want
to be, and you're trying
to make it look comfortable
and and authentic.
You don't have to say anything.
You never say a word.
So the double edge is,
always in show business,
is you want to be
attractive enough
that people want
you to be naked.
But you want to work with people
that aren't gonna abuse it.
- Traci Lords is obviously
famous for being a porn star
who got into the
business underage,
and then all of those films she
made quickly became illegal.
About 1987, she did
a movie produced
by Roger Corman called,
"Not of This Earth."
- It was my first
mainstream, leading role.
And it changed everything.
- Actually when you
get to know me better,
I'm really a
sweetheart of a guy.
- I bet Attila the
Hun felt the same way.
Well, when I read the script
for, "Not of This Earth,"
it was clear where there
was nudity in the film.
No Tommy, not here.
- Oh, you gotta be jacking me?
- I was jacking you before,
now I'm just telling
you something.
As in all of Roger Corman's,
or at least the ones I've seen,
and Jim Wynorski
films, you always had
the female character
that somehow
manages to lose her
top at some point.
And what do you do to earn your
keep, 'sides hassle nurses?
- [Jeremy] Most anything.
- Such as?
- [Jeremy] Such as fixing
meals that Johnson never eats.
- I mean all kinds of
bizarre ridiculous scenarios.
- Why don't you take
off them glasses?
You wouldn't want
to miss any of this.
- That's just the way that
they had their formula.
That's what they did.
[girls screaming]
And for me it wasn't
that big of a deal.
It was never a conversation that
I had with the
director, or Roger.
It was, here's this lead
role, do you want this?
[calm music]
- "Henry and June," was
the first film to receive
an NC-17 because that
was the first film
we happened to see
that hit that level
after we trademarked the rating.
- Then all of a
sudden X just became
a subset of the rating
system that became so onerous
that they had to
actually get rid of
the X rating altogether,
and change it
to NC-17, which is kind
of a toothless rating.
- "Henry and June," is about
the author Henry Miller,
who wrote a lot of
really tawdry novels.
And so his life, which
included his wife June,
and he having kind of
a strange polyamorous
sort of three-way
relationship with Anais Nin,
another author of
sort of erotica.
- And Henry and June
took full advantage
of that NC-17 rating
with the lesbian scene
between UMA Thurman
and Maria de Medeiros.
- Fred Ward, plays Henry Miller,
is naked in quite a
lot of that movie too.
And I applaud the fact
that the the sex scenes
were not, they didn't pull back.
Because the authors and
the people in question
were so kind of open
about their sexuality
"Bad Lieutenant," from 1992.
And this movie also
got an NC-17 rating.
But Harvey Keitel
is an actor who
has appeared nude in
quite a few movies.
But this one was the
most kind of out there.
And he looks like a guy
at the end of his rope.
Not just a bad police officer,
but he is a drug
addict, he's a murderer.
He's just an all
around bad person.
- [LT] You fucking stand there,
and you want me to do
every fucking thing.
- Keitel is drunk,
and he's very naked.
It's not disgusting
because he's naked in it,
the character is disgusting.
You know what's coming 'cause
it's so infamous in that movie.
But it's a powerful moment
for that character, I think.
- In 1992 the movie, "The
Crying Game," was released.
It really became a hit
because of a surprise,
a secret that was
supposed to be kept
about some big
revelation in the film.
- And it's like
the song, "Lola."
She walks like a woman,
and talks like a man.
[calm music]
- [Dil] You did
know, didn't you?
- It was stunning.
And it was done so brilliantly,
and it's a beautiful film,
and it's a great film.
But I think it also played
off of the fact that we expect
to see certain things in
movies when it comes to nudity.
We're taking male sexuality,
and we're playing with it.
And that makes most
men very uncomfortable.
- No, don't ask me in.
- Please, Jude.
- No, I can't pretend that much.
- It says as much about how we
expect to see things in movies
as about the movie itself,
and the characters in it.
- In the early mid
1990s there was
this just cluster
of erotic thrillers.
- There were so many movies
where women became empowered.
- "Basic Instinct," is
another film that had the kind
of publicity you can't
manufacture in advance.
- Are you sorry he's dead?
- Yeah.
I liked fucking him.
- You've got Michael Douglas.
- Games are over.
- Playing a sex
addict in the movie.
And he just literally is
up to his eyeballs
in Sharon Stone's
charisma.
- It's really really rare,
and certainly at the time
for any actress to do that
graphic of a nude scene,
where she uncrosses and
crosses her legs like that.
- It's one of the most famous
and iconic scenes in
contemporary cinema.
- But the scene that was
really surprising to
me was the beginning.
It wasn't just that
she was naked and to be
a tool of some other man's
sexual gratification.
She was naked, and
murdered a man.
And so that juxtaposition
of clearly intentional,
clearly acting and planning out
her plans but also naked
is stuck in my mind.
- One of the most empowering
images, or nudity in film
that I can recall, or
the first thing that
really struck me was Julianne
Moore in, "Short Cuts."
- It's more like she
is so in her scene
that she has no idea
that she's bottomless.
So it makes the scene
funny, and real,
and gives me more
empathy towards her.
- I wonder whether
anybody would even be
in the mood for a drink
if had to drive around
half the night looking
for an open market.
- Did he kiss you tits,
did you touch him?
- Touch him?
Touch him?
- She has done so much nudity
in so many different films
that it just seems like
it's part of her career.
It doesn't seem like
she's exploiting it,
or being exploited, it's
just that she's an actress
who is completely comfortable
with doing nudity.
- When the empathy is apt,
then you know it's necessary.
When when the empathy
is drained out,
there's objectification
happening.
- "Showgirls," is just an
old fashioned Hollywood story
about how a gal comes
to Vegas and wants
to get naked so she
can become a star.
I've seen it a
million times before.
It actually, basically,
is "All About Eve."
- Did you enjoy that out there?
- Yeah darling, I think I did.
- I hate you.
The Rena Riffel, Elizabeth
Berkley, lesbian pole dance.
Between the lighting, the music,
the bumping and grinding,
the reaction from the crowd.
It encapsulates everything,
"Showgirls," is about.
- It's like jumping off a
cliff, a short small cliff.
Like okay, I'm just gonna do it.
- Paul Verhoeven, and
screenwriter Joe Eszterhas
wanted to make the movie
NC-17, deliberately.
They wanted to get that rating.
- Was I just taken advantage
of, and I thought that
I was being a really
great committed actress,
but really they were
just turning me into
like a soft core porn
kind of performance?
That movie has like ruined my
personal life when it
comes to relationships.
I get like nudity
shamed all the time.
- When you do this, when
you're a smart director,
you make the audience accept it.
You're not saying
look, they're naked.
Okay, they're naked,
they would be naked.
The same way as if you
were making a movie
about construction
workers, you'd expect
the characters to
be wearing hardhats.
It really is the same thing.
- So Demi Moore in,
"Striptease," the nudity
was interesting
because she didn't look
anything like she did
in, "About Last Night."
The reason is she had
breast implants, and I think
she felt really good about
herself, she looked amazing.
Obviously did those nude scenes,
with Burt Reynolds especially,
that people remember.
- You just don't know
how much I worship you.
- How much?
- I wonder if you could
look at the trajectory
of nudity over one
actress' career?
- You can absolutely trace
an actor's career via
their nude scenes.
Take Teresa Russell,
for example,
where she started early
with, "Straight Time,"
then Nicolas Roeg's,
"Bad Timing,"
then, "Eureka,"
then, "Black Widow,"
then Ken Russell's,
"Whore," and, "Wild Things."
And a very eclectic group
of films from there as well.
Kathleen Turner shocked
everyone with some
explicit nudity in,
"Body Heat," from 1981.
And that was all
essential to the plot.
As her career went on, she was
seen in essential nude scenes
in, "Romancing the Stone,"
"Crimes of Passion,"
"A Breed Apart," and,
"War of the Roses."
"Tess," provided Nastassja
Kinski a lot of acclaim
in 1979 with an essential nude
scene, although she started
much earlier than that
in, "Stay as You Are,"
and, "Boarding School," in 1978.
and then her career kind of
exploded to feature other
important nude scenes
like, "Cat People,"
which is maybe her
most popular film.
And somebody else whose
career you can trace
via their nude scenes
is Melanie Griffith,
who appeared in
essential nude scenes in,
"Something Wild," "Nobody's
Fool," with Paul Newman,
"Night Moves," "Body Double,"
and quite a few other ones.
- A distinction needs to
be made about attitude
when you advise an actress
to take a role and
take her clothes off.
If the representative's,
or the producer's,
or the studio's thinking is
heartless, and not regarding
the artist as an artist,
then bye, not good.
- Kate Winslet was nude in like
probably her first 20 movies.
- The first time an
actress is nude in a film,
it's a big deal,
she's showing herself,
she's vulnerable, she's
sensitive, she's emotional.
And then it's hard
to kind of reconcile
her nudity with her
mind of a character.
- Like there are
movies where she did
full frontal nudity
and everything.
And they were quirky,
and they were great.
And it like really
showcased her as an actress,
that sort of was comfortable
in her own skin and everything.
- "Titanic," it
was a it was one of
the biggest grossing
movies ever.
And the nudity in
that was confined to
Kate getting her portrait
painted by Leonardo.
And it was what we
would call tasteful.
- And being a movie
that families,
and everybody were going to see,
I think when that moment
occurred they figured
we were gonna get the
traditional 1950s era shot,
where we saw the naked
back of the woman,
and the guy would see
it, and that'd be it.
But no, we actually saw Kate
Winslet's character topless.
- "Titanic," was a very very
interesting film for us,
as far as nudity is concerned,
because in our board
we had mostly all PG-13s,
except for one or
two of the fathers.
- But it's a beautiful moment,
and it's true to the story.
And it's actually one of
the most important scenes
in the movie, because
it's the moment where
we realized that she's
gonna be herself.
Surprising that it got through,
but it was the right thing.
"Boogie Nights," was
made in the '90s,
but it's actually
largely set in the 1970s
at the height of the porn
industry, when filmmakers
were making literally
hundreds of porn movies,
and showing them in theaters,
because this was
before the internet,
and before even cable TV
or anything like that.
- It, I think, gave a
very accurate picture
of what it's like
to be on a porn set,
and the chaos wrought of the
switchover from film to video.
- No no, we just keep shooting.
This is video.
We shoot, and shoot, and
then we deal with it later.
- Paul Thomas Anderson,
who directed it,
has this amazing cast,
with Burt Reynolds playing
kind of the father figure
who makes all these movies.
Julianne Moore is his wife,
who also still appears
in porn movies.
And then Heather Graham
plays roller girl,
who dropped out of high school,
and she still is on
her roller skates,
and is becoming a
pretty big porn star.
And then Mark Wahlberg,
who is discovered,
classic Hollywood
style because he has
a certain gift that
you just can't fake.
- He becomes the star
of porn in the '70s,
and then he gets embroiled
in drugs and crime,
and everything like that,
everything that kind of
was bad about the post
'70s porn industry.
- I want to fuck!
It's my big dick!
So everybody get
ready fucking now!
- It's also very true
to the subject matter.
You can't have a movie
about the porn industry,
and then cut away when there's
going to be the sexy scene.
So the first time Mark
Wahlberg's character
is introduced Heather
Graham's roller girl,
and Burt Reynolds
is there with them
and says you guys
want to go at it?
And she just whips off the
clothes, and skates over,
other than the skates,
completely naked.
- Are you ready?
- Yeah, are you?
- Oh yeah.
Your window last night
- Are you gonna take
your skates off?
- I don't take my skates off.
And don't fucking cum in me.
- Okay.
-Aim it at her tits, Eddie.
- Spoiler alert,
this movie came out
20 years ago, if
you haven't seen it.
But eventually we see
a lot of reaction shots
to people reacting
to what Mark Wahlberg
looks like with his clothes off.
We finally get the money
shot, so to speak, at the end.
- The end is, it's a gloss
on the end of, "Raging Bull."
- I could have been a contender,
I could have been somebody
instead of a bum,
which is what I am.
- He's ready to go on to
film a scene, and just to
check his confidence
he unbuttons his pants.
And you see for the first time
what everyone has talked
about in the movie.
- [David] What's he supposed
to have, this giant penis.
So it was a custom
made giant penis,
and we all got to
see it at the end.
- Looking in the mirror.
And then when he stands
up, his head's cut off.
So it's like the personality's
gone, he is his penis.
- The end of, "Boogie
Nights," I won't kid you,
we received a lot of comment
about, after we rated it R.
But I have to share with
you that the comments
came from the media,
not from parents.
They thought it
was a true rating.
They thought it was right on.
- The rebirth of sex
comedies was, "American Pie."
There hadn't really
been many for a while.
- Illegal channels?
- This is just a bad reception.
- [Television] Oh,
spank my hairy ass.
- What's that?
- [Television] Ooh, baby.
- You know what here,
just give me this please.
- The new generation coming up
hadn't really seen those
movies of the '80s.
So it was the right
time, right place.
And then it sparked
a big genre, again
going in the next wave.
- We all get laid
before we graduate.
- And it's relatable because we
all go through
that stage of life.
- That comes easier
for some than others.
One that it does not come
easy for is Jason Biggs in
the lead, who at one point
asks his friend, Steve Stifler.
- What exactly does
third base feel like?
- Like warm apple pie.
- Yeah?
- The most famous
scene in the movie,
of course, involves Jason Biggs
attempting to make love
to a warm apple pie,
and getting interrupted by
Eugene Levy, his father.
- [Jim] Oh yeah, oh.
- Jim?
- It's not what it looks like.
- Nadia's the foreign
exchange student.
She's just like everyone else,
finding herself, and
her sexuality, and boys.
- You need to change, right?
- Do you mind?
- No, no not at all.
Please you know just go ahead
and get un, get changed.
- If I hadn't done,
"American Pie,"
and I hadn't done
the role of Nadia,
and the nudity that
came along with it,
I might not have a career today.
- The scene of her stripping
down on the webcam is like,
that's burned into
the memories of like
kids who were in high
school and in the late '90s.
- So rather than,
as in, "Porkies,"
the guys spied on the girls
through holes in the wall,
in, "American Pie,"
the guys spied on
the naked girls
using the internet.
- I mean kids are taking
pictures of themselves,
and putting it on the
internet all the time.
So it's not as big of a deal.
You see it online every day,
you see it on
Instagram, or wherever.
I didn't really
think about the fact
that my character had nudity.
I was a struggling actor,
I was auditioning for
everything I could.
So when I got the role, I was
just so excited to get it.
I tried really hard to just go
in there and not be nervous.
We added some stuff that
wasn't actually in the script.
So like when I
walked to the mirror,
and I'm topless, and
I'm looking at myself,
I kind of look at
my stomach and think
you know I'm not happy
with the way I look.
'Cause that's what girls do.
Doing, "American Pie,"
and the role of Nadia,
changed everything
for me and my career.
I ended up getting
a three picture deal
with Miramax because of it.
- Looks like you could
use an extra hand.
- Jim.
- Well.
- Shame on you.
- [Jim] Yeah.
- So if something comes in now,
it is important what
kind of project it is.
And then what kind
of nudity is it?
Is it important for
what the script's about,
or is it gratuitous and
they're just throwing it
in there to get some
kind of a rating?
- And so that was kind of like
hey let's, we can do this again.
And there were so
many that there needed
to be a parody movie
a couple years later.
[calm music]
- I thought what a funny role.
I don't think I can get naked,
like I don't think I
can do that part of it.
- So, you've got your
class schedule, right?
- I don't need the
class schedule.
I only come to this school
to be object of lust
for poor nerds who cannot
get American pussy.
- To spoof the gratuitous nudity
in, "American Pie," they
just had Serena Vincent
walk around the school
completely nude.
- As though foreign
exchange students
are supposed to be naked.
- [Girl] 100% completely fake.
- [Girl] I agree, that's
not her natural hair color.
- Oh my God, I
can't believe she's
wearing the same outfit as me.
- I remember telling my agent,
like can I read for a
different role?
And they said no, this is the
one they want to see you for.
- But she went to class
nude, walked the halls nude,
went to prom nude, went to
the sporting events nude.
- She gets to sing a
little song topless.
Look at me my
breasts are perky yes
The comedy made it more fun
for me, and less intimidating.
However, shooting nude
scenes are one thing.
That's like one beast.
Dealing with the world
judging you afterwards
was something that I
wasn't prepared for.
I started off on a kids show.
I started off the
Yellow Power Ranger
on, "Power Rangers Lost Galaxy."
The most interesting thing
about the Power Rangers was
that a lot of Power
Rangers fans were offended
that one of my
next big roles was,
"Not Another Teen Movie,"
and, "Cabin Fever,"
because there was nudity
in, "Cabin Fever," as well.
I was offered many
many roles after,
"Not Another Teen Movie,"
and, "Cabin Fever,"
that were all about being nude.
So, that's an interesting
part of the business,
is like what casting directors,
and what the business,
and what the world sees
you as, as an actor.
But then watching yourself
on the big screen,
totally naked, I
wasn't prepared for it.
I didn't think about that part.
- I wasn't ready to
walk into a theater
and see myself naked that
big, on a big screen.
- And I attribute that
night of the premiere to me
becoming very ill, to the
point of where I almost died.
Seeing myself that
big on the screen,
I became totally anorexic
and I went down to 76 pounds.
- And then also I
wasn't prepared for
the entire world
picking your body apart.
- It was really
something, I had no,
I had no clue that something
like that could happen.
- "Terminator 3," is
about John Connor,
who has been living
off the grid.
The Terminator
actually is his ally,
and helps John Connor
from getting killed
by the evil new cyborg,
the TX, which is me.
- We have Kristanna Loken nude,
in the opening credits
sequence actually,
where she lands
from another time.
And there's a car that pulls up,
this beautiful sports
car convertible,
and naked she walks
through the street
to the car, and
she car jacks it.
- I like this car.
Well, I was familiar with
the nudity in the
Terminator franchise,
what we would call
the birthing scene.
When Arnold's character
comes to Earth
for the first time
from the future,
and Robert Patrick's character.
And I figured
there's not gonna be
anything different
with my character.
But I was just glad it was
the very last day of filming,
and I had all that time to get
in the best shape of my life.
Women that are
powerful, and that can
match men or best them in
battle, it really stand out.
What price do you
put on your body,
and what are you willing
to get naked for?
It's easier for a man to
just have his shirt off,
you know, and not have
anything thought of it,
other than a woman, even
if they're in bed together,
which I agree, the bed sheets
up here, it looks weird.
- No, I don't want
to be known as
the actress who
just does nudity.
And I didn't know if anybody
would take me seriously,
or let alone give me roles
that didn't demand that.
- As a woman if you have
your eyes open, and you have
a good solid brain on
your head, you can do it.
And there's nobody
saying that you can't,
in this day and age, except
the women themselves.
- So there's theories
of humor that say that
what funny things are,
are benign violations.
They're violations of
how the world should be.
But they're not threatening.
So for instance Ken Davitian
in, "Borat," you're not used
to seeing really heavy
dudes running around naked.
And so perceiving that makes
you feel uncomfortable,
and that kind of feeling
of a uncomfortableness
leads you to think
of it as funny.
- I had no idea who Sacha was.
I had never seen an Ali G.
But I know I auditioned
in character,
dressed with a suit that I
wore when I was 360 pounds.
The nudity that we did, I
never saw written on any paper.
The big superstars
gonna run around naked,
and I made sure he was
naked because he did it.
So I'll be darned if
I'm not gonna do it.
- The sequence where Borat,
and Ken Davitian's character,
who is a very large man,
he's over 300 pounds,
and having, having a
naked wrestling match
that just keeps
going, it just goes
on and on, and
doesn't shy away from.
I mean that's a movie that earns
it's graphic nudity MPAA rating.
- That scene with Ken
Davitian and Sacha Baron Cohen
is one of the
funniest nude scenes
I've ever seen in my life.
[speaking in foreign language]
- We had a naked
fight coordinator.
The television, a lamp, they
were all stunt equipment.
So he could hit me with it,
I could hit him with it.
I said, if I'm naked, people
are gonna go like this.
They'll go [grunting]
And they said yeah,
that's what we want.
It was the first time,
and the only time
I had control of anything.
But Sacha's the one that wanted
to go to the cliff and jump off.
Those are my testicle.
Sure he's gasping,
but I wasn't farting out
gas for him to die, it was
just a little accident.
- We made this movie called,
"Zack and Miri Make a Porno."
There was a little
bit of nudity in it,
more so than any of the
other movies I ever made.
But not, it's not graphic.
It's certainly a
misleading title.
You're not seeing
any penetration in,
"Zack and Miri Make a Porno."
- What?
- We're making a porno,
and we just need to know
what you would be, or would
not be, interested in doing.
- If anything.
- No anal.
- Oh, definitely no anal.
- Anal and hugging.
- I don't do ass stuff.
- Anal.
- Oh fuck.
- Oh wait, oral, I like anal.
- Yay.
Title got the movie greenlit.
But then when it came time
for the movie to come out,
some networks were
like, we won't
play a commercial for
this before midnight.
- You can see the MPAA
putting its fingers
even on just the topic of porn.
Because they had initially
wanted Kevin Smith to cut
the words, "make a
porno," out of the film
and just call it, "Zack and
Miri," which means nothing.
The draw of the movie is
that these two schlubs
want to go make a porn to save
their coffee shop, or
something like that, anyway.
- With this mailing list
we have almost 1000 people
that would definitely
buy a porno we were in,
just to be like hey I sit
next to the guy in Civics.
Look at his fucking dick.
- There's some adult actresses,
former adult actresses
in the movie.
You had Traci Lords, who
was obviously infamous,
although she's not
nude in the film.
- So a movie, huh?
That could be fun.
[calm music]
[flatulating]
[funky music]
- Her name, Bubbles.
- When you look at a film
like, "Zack and Miri,"
I think that comedy
and the nudity that
are actually in, "Zack
and Miri," were perfect.
I mean the scene
wouldn't have worked
if she hadn't been
fully bare and there.
- Kevin Smith ran into
a lot of problems,
just trying to get the movie
distributed and marketed.
- If it makes you
uncomfortable in any way,
you don't have to
show me anything
you don't want to
show me 'cause.
I love the movies.
- You might wander in
to see a movie called,
"Zack and Miri,"
if you're my mom,
not knowing that it's
about what it's about.
And then all of a sudden
you're make a porno?
- It's such a shame,
because I think
it's one of his better films,
that people were so
afraid of the title.
But people are afraid of sex.
And maybe they're a little
bit afraid of nudity too.
- [Mike] There's
a billboard for,
"Zach and Miri Make a
Porno," with Seth Rogen
and Elizabeth Banks, and
they were just stick figures.
- Katie Morgan
gets kind of naked,
and then Jason Mewes
gets really naked.
Jason Mewes goes full dick
out in that movie, man.
He shaved his
pubes into a heart.
I remember when I showed
the movie to Affleck.
Nobody had ever said
this, entire time I'd
shown people the movie and
stuff, nobody ever noticed.
Soon as the movie's
done Affleck goes,
did Mewes shave a
heart into his pubes?
I was like you were looking.
You were looking awfully
close, weren't you?
- Anybody that read the,
"Fifty Shades of Grey," books,
all the suburban
housewives, they were going
to the theater and
weren't expecting nudity?
Come on.
I know if I'm onto you
you must be onto me
- It's kind of funny because
the movie is so vanilla.
- You're a sadist?
- I'm a dominant.
- What does that mean?
- It means I want you to
willingly surrender yourself.
- I think filmmakers
keep the ratings in mind
all the time now because
they sign a contract
at the beginning
promising to deliver
a film rated R, or 13 or less.
- I will 100% stick up for,
"Fifty Shades of Grey."
There's a huge difference
between the way
Sam Taylor-johnson
shoots a sex scene,
and a lot of the '80s directors
would shoot a sex scene.
'80s directors are like,
here is the body,
isn't it beautiful?
And Sam Taylor-johnson says
here is a bit of fabric.
Do you want to imagine
what that would feel like?
She's asking you to
use your imagination
to bring yourself to the scene.
- They worked very
hard to suggest,
rather than show
a lot of graphics.
You'll see how they
did it very skillfully
without getting an NC-17 rating.
- It seems, in life and
in the film industry,
there's this correlation between
nudity and attractiveness.
You want to see the
attractive people naked.
But that pairing then leads to
bad consequences, such
that people are like well,
to be naked you have
to be attractive.
- Nudity isn't just
limited to the young,
or the perfectly proportioned.
You don't have to
be a perfect 10.
- It's really nice being
in your 50s as an actress,
because nobody actually asks
you to get naked anymore.
Or very rarely.
Usually an actress
in their 50s doesn't
really want to do a nude scene.
- When we see older actors
or actresses get naked
in an everyday setting, so
Kathy Bates in, "About Schmidt."
- And she did a movie
with Jack Nicholson,
who seems to bring the
sensuality out in older women.
And they get in the
hot tub together.
And Kathy Bates
strips off completely,
and climbs in a hot tub
with Jack Nicholson.
And you see her both
entering the hot tub,
and then sitting in
the hot tub with him,
which was kind of
surprising at the time.
- Oh, that's better.
Oh, what a night.
- The look on Jack
Nicholson's face, it's like,
the easiest read on that
is like, it's an ugly body.
But I think it was that feminine
power, and that confidence,
that women are supposed
to be somehow ashamed
of not having that perfect body.
And Kathy Bates like
look, this is me baby.
I'm in the tub with you.
I mean it was brilliant.
[calm music]
- Right now we're in a
very interesting time,
where people are very
aware of power dynamics.
- The destruction of the
accepted paradigm in Hollywood
in the last 18 months
has happened faster
than probably in the last 100
years of the movie business.
- Since Harvey Weinstein,
and the Me Too movement
got underway we've definitely
seen a lot more talk
about what can be done
to make actresses,
and occasionally actors, feel
more comfortable on a set.
- I am finding that I am
being hired more by studios.
And other intimacy
directors are being
hired more since
the Me Too movement.
- A filmmaker knows now if
I have nudity in my film
it will be absolutely cross
examined by the internet.
- None of us are
excited about why
we have come to the forefront.
We are all thrilled to
be part of the solution.
- So I need to make sure
I have a reason for it.
I need to justify it.
I can't just have cheap nudity
in this film for no reason.
- Everything's been
upended because
all of this
institutionalized sexism,
and harassment has
been coming to light.
- No, and I don't think
we ever want to get
in a situation where people
say we can't have nudity
in films or television
because it's too problematic.
That's a problem.
- And now there's more of a
system of checks and balances.
- You want people
to just sort of feel
like whatever they're
doing they signed up to do.
- I think that's
good, just in terms of
every artist should
be cross-examining
everything they do.
I think there were
a lot of boobs
that were not cross-examined.
- And I think things are
changing very quickly because,
again, there's just such a light
shone on Hollywood right
now, post Weinstein.
I don't think that executives
have a choice anymore.
[all talking at once]
[calm music]
- I was going towards the set
down a corridor in the studio.
And I see at the end
of the corridor Gielgud
came around running
down going [grunting]
Malcolm, oh Malcolm,
have you been on the set?
I said John, I'm just
going to the set.
He goes, I'd never seen so
much cock in all my life.
[laughing]
- I went back through
my resume on IMDB,
and I'm like starting at the
bottom, which was the '80s.
Okay nude, nude, nude, nude,
nude, nude, not nude, nude.
I actually counted.
I did 35 nude scenes in films.
But I've done 185 movies.
- One of the strange things
about the rating board was,
what they never did, was
that after you came back
and showed them your new
version of the movie,
they never went to
see it in a theater.
So at Corman's we had a
practice of making the cuts
that they asked for,
showing them the print,
and then immediately
reinstating all the cuts
and sending the picture
out the drive-ins.
And almost all the movies
that came from New World
at that period that are rated R,
are pictures that
actually are X rated cuts.
- Barry Diller was
the head of ABC.
And he came over and talked
to me about "Picture Show",
said they wanted to
run it on the network.
And they had cut 11
minutes out of it.
The scene with Cloris Leachman,
when Tim Bottoms and she
make love the first time.
I said as he starts to get
on her, go to a commercial.
And when you come out of
the commercial, he gets off.
And they did that, and
it was very funny to me.
Go to a commercial
while they're fucking.
- Larry Charles said go
through those black doors,
and the stage is in front of
you.
That's the direction we got.
When I ran I slipped and fell.
And therefore he
fell on top of me.
Because the one
thing we didn't do
is prepare for afterwards.
Two detectives from
the actual hotel,
came and took me out,
and he said to me,
when we get to the end of the
steps get into the blue van.
I mean this guy's
taking me to jail.
Yeah, I don't know what
they did with Sacha.
But nobody thought about me
I was sitting there freezing.
There's nothing in the van
to cover yourself with.
There was no contingencies
made previously
to any concerns
about being arrested.
They were all made
[hands clap] on the spot.
- Did you see a film called,
"Blue is the Warmest Color?"
I saw that movie and I
was like, I was shocked
because I was watching
these two women go at it,
spacking each other, and
they scissoring each other,
and all this kind of stuff,
and I was like holy cow.
Now there's a movie
I could never do.
- I did a movie called,
"The Naked Monster."
And they decided to
add in a gratuitous
shower scene, but
it was satirical.
So my character Nicky, the
narrator says, suddenly Nicky
felt compelled to shower
for no reason at all.
And I'm like looking at
the camera going what?
And I'm like you,
get out of here.
- So shooting in
the actual house
that Dorothy was murdered in,
and where Eric Robert
committed suicide in,
meant it gave it
more of a texture.
- And the day before we
shot the murder scene
in the actual place
where it took place
Bob Fosse and I spent the
night there at his request.
And I'm asking him while
we're lying there.
I'm in the bedroom,
he's in the living room,
and I said why
are we doing this?
He said because I
want to, shut up.
- Filming in that
house was horrible.
Nobody made me spend
the night there.
I would've, I
couldn't have done it.
- It was freaking me out, I
got maybe three hours sleep.
But I think that's
what he wanted.
He wanted me on, he
wanted me uncomfortable.
He did a good job.
He wanted me uncomfortable.
[calm music]
[loud stomping]
[elephant trumpets]