On-screen sex an art-house thing

Oct. 29--These days, it seems sex sells everywhere -- except the movies.

Sexed-up shows such as "Grey's Anatomy" and "Desperate Housewives" rule the Nielsen ratings. Justin Timberlake can riff on bringing "SexyBack" or Nelly Furtado can sing about being "Promis-cuous" and zoom to the top of the Billboard charts. And it's likely magazines and newspapers received a hike in readership when they started reporting about the scandalous behavior of U.S. Rep. Mark Foley.

But the movies have been, shall we say, undersexed. Years of the MPAA ratings board putting a kibosh on films that exhibited a hint of raw, honest sexuality have made many films, both mainstream and on-the-fringe, delete sex altogether. (This was recently brought into the light in the documentary "This Film Is Not Yet Rated.")

It's gotten to the point where a movie could have the studly duo of Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale locked in a torrid love triangle with Scarlett Johansson, whom Esquire recently dubbed the "Sexiest Woman Alive," and it still generates all the sexual tension of a tax seminar.

Amid this celluloid repression comes "Shortbus," a new independent film playing at art-house theaters across the nation, including the Triangle. An ensemble piece about lost-and-lonely New Yorkers who usually convene at an underground sex club, the unrated film goes all out in the sex department.

Director John Cameron Mitchell ("Hedwig and the Angry Inch") hired actors and actresses who wouldn't mind actually doing all sorts of dirty deeds on film. The opening moments are virtually a quick-cutting, introductory montage of the characters immersing themselves in the most compromising (and, for one lone character, the most amazingly limber) of positions. One already-notorious scene involves three naked men and a rather unorthodox rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner."

"Shortbus" is the latest art-house film to let it all hang out when it comes to graphic sexual content. In recent years, actual explicit acts have been displayed in such films as Vincent Gallo's "The Brown Bunny," Michael Winterbottom's "9 Songs," Carlos Reygadas' "Battle in Heaven" or practically anything by that French provocateur Catherine Breillat.

Lessons of 'Erotique'

Sean Keeley, director of publicity for indie-film distributor Tartan Films, which has delivered "Songs," "Heaven" and Breillat's "Anatomy of Hell" to nationwide screens, says it has been his company's intention to release carnal, controversial cinema in theaters.

"Tartan looks for films that are 'cultural hand grenades,' films you have to talk about," Keeley says. "Films that are not gonna disappear in the background long after they've left the theater. Films that challenge people to step outside their comfort zones. A lot of the films are stretching those boundaries."

"Shortbus," which is at least more upbeat than those aforementioned bummers, is now playing at the Chelsea in Chapel Hill and is slated for Galaxy Cinema in Cary at the end of the week. But don't look for it to play Raleigh or Durham anytime soon. The folks who run the Rialto and Colony art-house theaters have already been down this road.

Twelve years ago, when those guys also ran the Studio II Drafthouse Theater on Hillsborough Street in Raleigh, two Alcohol Law Enforcement agents halted and seized "Erotique," a sexually suggestive, NC-17-rated film that was playing. They cited a state law that prevents establishments that sell alcohol from showing sexual acts. The agents later returned the film in exchange for the owners agreeing not to sell beer or wine to anyone seeing it.

John Munson, the film's booker, recalls how the "nothing of a movie" became a local cause celebre.

"It was a movie that was not a draw by any means," said Munson, who now runs the Rialto and Colony theaters. "If my memory is correct, it actually did a little bit better business after it got its name in the paper."

The "Erotique" situation prompted Munson and the theater owners to be leery of screening any more questionable films in their establishments. "You can show the [body] parts," he says. "You can let people know what's being done. But I can't show 'tab A' slipping into 'slot B.' "

And just because a film is willing to do so doesn't mean audiences will check it out. Since debuting a couple of weekends ago, the $2 million "Shortbus" has grossed $720,654 domestically, far from making it a hot-button hit. (The movie's marginal hype is what made The Carolina Theatre in Durham decide to pass on it.)

Different from porn?

Chelsea proprietor Bruce Stone is well aware that most moviegoers, especially in the Triangle, wouldn't be tuned in to the flick's hardcore harmony. When "Bunny" played for a week at the Chelsea two years ago, it made, in his words, "nothing." "It's hard to gauge," says Stone, "but there's a kind of core audience I have that kind of turns off to that, if you know what I mean."

However, he does think there is an audience in the Triangle for films like "Shortbus" -- people he calls a "hip, late-night, heavily pierced kind of crowd" who work at coffee houses and go to concerts at night. But he says they may not be aware of such movies.

"The people who should be at the audience for those films don't pay enough attention to those films here," says Stone.

Alan Palmer hadn't heard about "Shortbus," and the 27-year-old Raleigh resident goes to the art houses twice a month.

"I think there should be an audience for it," he says. "It's artwork, and if people don't agree with the content, well, that's their personal preference. If it's like NC-17 or whatever the age restriction is, ... children won't be able to see it."

Stone, of the Chelsea, says what makes films like "Shortbus" a cut above run-of-the-mill, hardcore pornography is that they attempt something that porn films gave up on a long time ago: an engaging story.

"There's gonna be more in the film than the sex -- characters, story, something," he says.

Keeley, the distributor, admits that these films may not make a lot of money at the box office but they often find an audience on DVD.

" '9 Songs' is one of our best-sellers," he says. " 'Anatomy of Hell' is one of our most consistent sellers, especially online. Theatrical for us has become a promotional tool, but DVD is kind of the lifeblood of most of these films.

"I don't know if it's an awakening, but there has been an awareness that sex does not equal porn. It's a part of everyone's life and not something to be swept under the rug. The great thing about 'Shortbus' and '9 Songs' is that there's more and more sex in the films, but it's not about being sexy. If anything, it's about making the sex seem more normal."

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Copyright (c) 2006, The News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C.

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