Real Life & the Movies

One of my secret ambitions is to be a screenwriter and a director. An Academy Award winning screenwriter and director. And of course, I want all the perks that go with being an Academy Award winning screenwriter and director: a house in Pacific Palisades, a Cadillac Escalade, Nissan NSX or a convertible Mustang GT, maybe all three; I suppose it depends on the size of the garage. And, of course, I want a capable yet nubile personal assistant.

I've got the ideas to pitch for three book adaptations, seven original movies and two plays. All in all, I've pretty much got the secret career planned out. Well, except for where the 10 million I need to do the first movie is going to come from. But those are just details, right?

Once I achieve fame and fortune I want to make a movie that reflects sexuality in real life terms.

Seeing Sharon Stone in

Basic Instinct

got the wood up. Carrie Otis in

Wild Orchid

, Kim Basinger in

Nine and a Half Weeks

and with ex- husband Alec Baldwin in the remake of

The Getaway

, Alyssa Milano in

Embrace of the Vampire

, Kathleen Turner in

Body Heat

: these are some great moments of sexuality on screen.

But.

Can you name a movie where either the man or woman in bed, after sex, attempted to avoid the wet spot or hit the wet spot and went "Ewwwwww!"?

A movie where the woman gets her clothes ripped off, wild passionate sex ensues, she spends the night in bed and wakes up looking like a raccoon from her smeared eye makeup?

A movie where the male lead, following sex in bed, rolls over and falls asleep? Or snores? Or drools on the pillow? Or does all of the above? Women, by the way, I am told, are not immune to rapid post-coital somnolence, snoring or drooling.

I've been married 23 years and in all those years I have neither smoked nor, as Alan Alda and Meryl Streep did in

The Seduction of Joe Tynan

, eaten vegetables (AKA crudites), apres sex.

I suspect I am not the only man in the world who has bad breath that, were it bottled in sufficient quantities, could be classified as a biological weapon of mass destruction. Do couples

actually

wake up and, with neither gargling with mouthwash nor brushing their teeth, have wild, passionate sex that involves deep French kissing? And then smoke - or eat crudites?

Name a movie where either the man or the woman had to hold up a hand in the morning to stop the impeding wild, passionate sex and say, "Wait a second, I gotta pee."

Aside from a comedy - and I can't think of one off the top of my head - can you name a movie where the wild, passionate sex is slowed down by the inability of the man and/or couple-in-concert to get the condom package open and/or "deployed?"

And what of women who use diaphragms for birth control. "Oh, damn it! Wait, I need to put my diaphragm in!"

Aside from Pinto in

Animal House

, name a movie where the man had difficulty getting the woman's bra unhooked. There was that scene in

In the Line of Fire

between Clint Eastwood and Rene Russo where there was some difficulty getting to skin but I think it involved getting

her

gun belt off.

Just an aside on the bra: Satan invented bra clasps; of this I am certain. This may seem counter-intuitive. But think about it for a second. By the time the poor guy gets it open and gets at the treasures beneath he is so stoked that he's crossed the point of no return.

And sweat? Well, there was Kathleen Turner and William Hurt in

Body Heat

but can you name two other movies where the sex is accompanied by sweat. Sweat from a sauna does not count. (You probably can but at the moment I can't.)

Aside from Jane Fonda and Jon Voight in

Coming Home

name a movie where one or both bedmate is disabled.

Granted, John Candy, that I can recall, never had a hot sex scene in a movie, but large men, like the late comedian, do have sex. One of the things about being a big guy is a condition known as Chronic Obstructive Sleep Apnea.

I, as a large man, am required to sleep with a mask, resembling a fighter pilot's oxygen mask, over my nose. The mask is hooked, via a hose, to a machine that resembles a smallish coffee maker. The smallish coffee maker supplies room air under pressure to the mask to keep my airway open while I sleep. The first time one of my kids saw me in the headgear it scared the hell out of them. My cats used to run in terror. Now, when I lay down to take a nap they (the cats) look at me with a withering disdain. "Oh, he's going to start the smallish coffee maker."

So take a moment and imagine this scene: Mara Tierney and a large man like her co-star in

ER

, Abraham Benrubi (Jerry the Clerk), are in bed the morning after. There's a hum in the background, a cross between a cappuccino maker and a leaf blower - and only slightly quieter.

The camera pans up Mara's leg erotically sticking out from under the sheet up to her face - where her eyes are ringed in black from her eye makeup that she did not take time to remove prior to the wild, passionate sex the night before. Her nose twitches a little. Her mouth is open and a small amount of drool is running onto her pillow.

There's a fade to an over bed view and the camera moves from Mara's body to the body of her partner. He's laying on his back, rather like a beached whale, with a mask strapped to his face, a hose connecting the mask to the smallish coffee maker that adds the visual in the mind's eye of a beached whale with an elephant's trunk.

Yeah baby!

Mmmmmm. Maybe not.

In a review of the Anglo-French movie

Intimacy

, posted online at arts.telegraph.co.uk on 2/27/01, the reviewer says this:

"To my mind, it is one of the disgraces of modern life that we can watch movies with people's heads being blown off but we can't bear the most basic standard of realism in our depictions of everyday sex."

The reviewer here was commenting on the shock of a good many British moviegoers when the beautiful lead actress in the movie, Kerry Fox, "fellated" (God love the British) the lead actor half way through the movie. But his comment could easily be applied to other depictions of sex that we never see in movies: the wet spot, raccoon eyes, contrary female underwear, sweat, disabled people and fat people with sleep apnea.

Then again, one of my biggest pet peeves with professional movie critics is when they moan and bitch about a movie being "unrealistic." Conversely, Robert Ebert, for one, will give a "thumbs up" to a movie for being "realistic." Generally I find

those

movies deeply depressing. I don't know about you but I go to movies to escape the harsh realities of life for a few hours.

So, maybe we don't want to see a depiction of how it is in some of our beds and bedrooms.

Maybe we want to see those beautiful actors and actresses having sex in a manner that would put a normal person's back out and then awake in the morning, fresh faced, clean mouthed and do it all over again. Maybe we want to escape what has become all too mundane for us.

Maybe it would be, well, unnerving to see Tom Cruise or Viggo Mortensen take "the little blue pill" before they bedded their paramours. ("Is it working yet, darling?") Though, it might have been an interesting scene to have former Senator and

Viagra

pitchman Bob Dole appear to Tom Cruise as Tom ran through the large hall in

Vanilla Sky

yelling, "Tech support!"

Maybe sweat is such an offensive turnoff that moviegoers would run screaming from the theater. I mean, I've always wondered how it is that people in the movies can wear leather motorcycle jackets in L.A. and seem "cool, dry and collected" even though you know the temperature's gotta be in the low 90's and other characters are dressed for tennis. How's that work exactly?

Of course, I don't notice a lot of erotica being written "realistically" either. And to this I'll cop a guilty plea myself.

But I'll have plenty of time to ponder the movie aspects of sexual reality while I wait to win my first Academy Award. And until then, maybe I'll be brave enough to work some real life into my own stories.

Maybe.

Then again, maybe not.

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