I know it should be fewer boobies but that makes it somehow sound like there are more movies with people with one boob these days.
The Porkys thread reminded me of a question that’s been on my mind recently. When I was a teenager in the 80s it really seemed like every comedy featured naked breasts and zany sexual situations in the style of Porkys. When I think about 70s and 80s movies there was always sex and nudity in just about everything. What ever happened to that?
There are some exceptions (American Pie is the only one I can think of right now) of 90s and 2000s movies with pointless nudity but really, I don’t see any good reason for it to have toned down so much.
(Normally I wouldn’t say boobie but I think in the 80s movies people called them that.)
Some years back, lawmakers put pressure on movie theater owners to actually enforce the R rating. That effectively killed the nudity-laden “teen comedy” as it was generally known because it deprived R-rated movies of the underage viewers that were actually their core audience.
Also, I think we’ve gotten a little more … not sure what the word is. Prudish? That’s judgmental. Decent? So is that. Anyway, there does seem to be a trend where young actresses aren’t willing to appear naked onscreen outside of a big, prestige, artsy setting. Eli Roth, the director of “Cabin Fever,” talked about how much difficulty he had finding actresses to appear nude, even actresses who had no trouble appearing *en slut[/i[ for Maxim. (Evidently, being near-naked in Maxim is “publicity,” and being naked onscreen is “exploitation.” Just so you can get it straight.)
Blame the Internet. I’ve read several times that actresses get so freaked about vidcaps appearing instantly - and forever - on the net that they are refusing gratuitous nudity. And let’s face it - most female nudity in films is gratuitous.
There’s also a huge psychological difference between appearing in a men’s magazine with the strategic bits covered and appearing with them exposed in any medium.
There’s that, and the fact that any horny 14 year old with half a brain can probably find all the naked (and more) chick pictures and videos on the web he can possibly want.
That would tend to put a damper on wanting to go see “Porky’s” or “Ski School” just to see tits.
Consider also that “family friendly” is what sells these days. In '04 there was only one “R” rated movie in the box office top ten, and that one was Passion of the Christ.
I’ve got a friend who does casting for low budget films (mostly horror stuff), and was talking about this the other day. He said they shoot the nude scenes first, because if they wait until later in the film the actresses will back out knowing that they cant be fired without the entire movie being re-shot.
I think, as a society, we are getting more prudish, Nonsuch—I don’t think that’s too judgmental a word at all. I once said, in a thread about the inconsistencies in the rating system, that were we able to somehow wipe out everyone’s memories of The Exorcist and release it as new today, there’s no way it’d get by with an R rating like it did in 1973. Hell, the 1998 remake of Psycho got an R rating and it’s the exact same movie as was released in 1960, except in color.
I think it’s also connected to the usage getting old. In the early days of cable there were a lot of bare breasts on the air. They used any excuse to put them there, pretty obviously simply because they could. I haven’t seen anything like the early 1980s breastage on cable since. Sex in the City, for instance, had it been on back then, would have featured bare breasts in every episode. If The Sopranos had ben on back then, there would’ve been a lot more scenes in the Bada Bing.
The Smoking Gun has some “nudity riders” that actresses of some stature are able to get included in their contracts (Diane Lane’s is one I remember seeing). They not only negotiate what body parts they’ll show (and how much extra they’ll get paid for showing them) but stipulate that the film can’t include nudity purported to be theirs (body doubles, CGI).
I also remember reading (can’t remember where) about the stuff actresses do to prevent directors from “accidentally” including nudity, like putting black electrical tape over their nipples so that any shots where the tape appears can’t be used.
So, breast fans, welcome to my world. Think it’s tough finding naked women on-screen? try finding naked men.
I read in Star magazine that Ashton Kutcher is naked in his new movie but someone told me it’s still not worth it. He might only be considered a viable man to a few people though (like me and Demi Moore.)
I think the type of nudity I am thinking of is more the exploitative, pointless jumping up and down type like in teen comedies. Or in serious movies with a weird scene stuck in for no artistic reason. There are two 1970s Raymond Chandler movies that both happen to have naked dancing girls scenes added in even though, to me, that makes absolutely no sense. It’s not sex scenes, it’s just contrived situations that really don’t happen in life, but at the time everyone seemed to agree that it could happen. Hippie chicks could move in next door and just happen to like to like getting topless and dancing to the radio out on the balcony. Or maybe your tough guy lifestyle could realistically take you to the whorehouse where the madam forces the girls to dance topless every afternoon because that’s just par for the course in a seedy person’s day.
I just had a horrible brainstorm. I was going to make the point that the females in these movies were often just hired to be topless extras, and so the idea of riders and actresses having clout doesn’t make sense because there will always be people willing to get naked. But maybe all the people who used to do stuff like that now have to go all the way on the internet. I think it does make sense as Exapno Mapcase says that you don’t have to drag yourself to the mall to see the boobies now so maybe now they want to make movies with CGI or big stars and so on to get people out of the house where they are already looking at naked people. On the other, other hand, American Pie was huge and everyone was excited about that woman’s breasts.
We were discussing, perhaps even lamenting, this very same subject when we were watching Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle (funny shit, by the way). Gone are the zany comedies with gratuitious boobies. I, for one, am saddened. I mean, if you can’t throw in a hot, bared rack or two to distract the viewers from the mind-numblingly bad dialogue and gossamer-thin plot lines, all you’re left with is, well, Ashton Kutcher flicks.
