Evolution of Filming, Part 3 - Sex in the Scripty

Every now and then I’ll be writing a post about certain things that evolved while filming over the past twenty years.  The vast majority of people in the cast and crew were in high school – including me - when everything started and many of those people still participate from time to time.  Being young and (in my case at least) somewhat sheltered I was not really (or at all) into drinking, smoking, sex, swearing, etc. But as I, and the others, matured (or in my case just got older), went to college, and included new and older company members, many of these things were slowly introduced into the productions over the years.   This is the third in a randomly published series about how and when those changes occurred and what level they’re at today.

Evolution of Filming

Part 3

From Fake Kisses and Cuddles 

to R-Rated Snuggles

Any kind of romance plotline will likely involve at least one kiss at some point, and maybe some cuddles.  Although there aren’t any actual R-rated scenes, there are definitely some serious PG-13 things going on in some of the productions. 

As with all the evolution posts like smoking and swearing, the physical part of the romance stuff started off very innocent. The sappy dialogue part of romantic subplots I pretty much nailed right away, of course, and a little sexual humor wasn't too far behind, but the physical stuff took a longer time to get more intimate on camera.

The very first movie – Destiny – was originally a romance with some action stuff (instead of the vice versa it came to be, thankfully).  There were a couple of almost kisses and fake kisses where one merged into the other to show a lapse of time (does that make sense?).  Anyway, it was obviously faked but looked okay. 

In Destiny II the romance between the married King and Queen was very much in the background, but was sweet.  There is only one real love scene between them, and the only physical expression of love in the traditional sense was holding hands and a hug.  However the issues of a sexual affair and infidelity were actually a major plot point, so sex was beginning to be mentioned in a round about way.  The word was never said out right, but I think the word seduced was used for the first time and more than once.

Destiny III had a lot of couples pairing up, so there were more love scenes with snuggles, hugs, and almost kisses. By this point I had perfected the two main fake-kiss forms.  The first is what I call the “dip-n-kiss”, where the guy dips the girl with his back to the camera so that we can’t see their faces, but a passionate kiss is implied. The second is the “interrupted” kiss where two people have their lips a few inches apart when something stops them from kissing – either another character, a loud noise, or one of them putting up their hand/pushing the other away.

The main lovers – Ketlan and Melantha – had the first very subtle “racy” moments introduced in an SFF production. There is some suggestive dialogue in one of their first scenes together and it ends with them sharing a look with each other and breaking away from the main group behind some bushes. Well, the characters have been married for twelve years and have two kids together, so sex is very definitely implied already. By the way, I’m pretty sure the “sneaking off behind the bushes” bit was the actors idea.

Frumpy Gets It – remembered mostly as the world’s worst movie – had several subplots with ex-lovers, multiple affairs, and some risqué elements, but since no one could hear what anyone was saying it got lost in the noise.  

The Dragon & The Unicorn had a romance central to the plot, but there were no kisses, only one interrupted kiss, some hand holding and some hugging. For the next few years there were no major steps forward in the area of romance at all.  In these years, not only did I master the art of sappy dialogue (King of Elflin’s Daughter takes the cake on that one), but various actors mastered the “dip and kiss” maneuver. 

Strangely, the one movie that is officially a romantic comedy (The Perfect Combination) where the romance is center stage, was far more comedy than romance and didn’t even include one scene where the lovers kissed, cuddled, or even held hands.  It was all done in dialogue. That is something I wish I could change, in all honesty.  I really think that movie needed an actually love scene, cheesy dialogue or not.

Mind Games was a trailblazer in many ways – including the first swearing and smoking on screen – but there wasn’t much romance since that wasn’t at all the point of the movie. It was a psychological thriller, after all.  There is suggested romance between Tilia and Talin (which includes a very suggestive line about a banana), and Tilia even mentions at one point that she loved Talin, but obviously given the situation (horror, insanity, and murder), nothing was ever going to happen and kisses were the farthest thing from being an option.

Then came Pandora’s Box, where a real kiss was actually seen onscreen for the first time in an SFF production (yay!).  Everyone had matured enough that kissing a fellow actor was no longer a big deal.  Margaret and Chris – as Cat and De Carlo – were the first onscreen couple that had a real kiss, and since it went so well I kept adding them in whenever I could (because Cat and De Carlo are my favorite romantic couple ever!).  The two characters even get married so kisses and cuddles happened a LOT, and Margaret and Chris were very good sports about it. 

Other actors were willing to follow suit, and although there were still the occasional fake kisses for various reasons (including comedic factor), overall the transition from fake kiss to real kiss was complete.

Considering most of the characters in Pandora’s Box were criminals, soldiers, or ex-soldiers, there were a lot of sexual innuendos (some subtle, some not so subtle). However, it wasn’t until Episode 12 of Pandora’s Box, filmed in the summer of 2000, that the word “sex” was actually said on screen.

 That’s right folks, it took five years for any character to say the word SEX.  

I’m not sure if it was because I was sheltered or just a prude, but it a while.

After that the floodgates were open, although it wasn’t until Dream Chasers and Eidolon that the raunchiness started getting out of control in the scripts.  Mind you, it had been pretty bad behind the scenes on the Curse, and gotten out of control on the sets by Gift Bearer.  What can you do? It was college.

The Curse had really only had one kissing scene, although at least two more were scripted but never filmed as part of the collateral damage from my breakdown.  However, Mordecai’s character – as the antagonist trickster archetype – had lot to say about sex, even if more than half of it was innuendo.

The character had been asleep for a thousand years, but his libido had apparently woken up before the rest of him.  He made a lot of sexual to Zandra in his first two episodes, especially in the tent scene. Since from the Middle Ages and existing only in the Dream World in spirit form, he obviously had no idea that sexual harassing a pretty girl is not sexy, it’s creepy.  He’d gotten a little better by his later appearances in the show, but still had a raunchy side.

The Gift Bearer introduced a new level of sexual creepiness with the main villain, Victor Drake. Although Mordecai enjoyed verbal sexual harassment, Drake leaned towards the physical route.  He also like to engage in sexually harassing comments, particularly towards Atlanta.  I decided while writing it that I wanted Atlanta and Drake to end up together, but the way the interact through most the show does not suggest a romantic ending.  Drake harasses her verbally and Atlanta keeps trying to beat the crap out of him.  It’s a very unrealistic pairing, and I’m changing it in the book.

The big creepadole factor with Drake is when he seduces 17 year old Peri, gets her drunk, and then appears to sleep with her and then drug her to forget about it. Of course, once he headed towards the not-so-villainous side I had to explain that he didn’t actually do that, and he had reasons for making her forget. Still creepy, Drake, still creepy.

I suddenly realized that at least two of my romantically involved villains/antagonists are big on sexual harassment and at least one of them ends up with the woman he’s harassing.  That’s not a good thing, and I’m a little disturbed with myself…

The Gift Bearer also has some other seduction scenes, and lots of on screen kissing.  There are quite a few sexual jokes – some of which were even in the script!  As I said, the majority of raunchiness was actually off camera for show though.

Although Eidolon has a lot of sexual humor and content, I still think Dream Chasers take the sexual cake.  It’s the first production where we see two people apparently naked in bed after clearly having sex.  The previous scene featured a slightly twisted make-out session (she slaps him, then she kisses him. That’s more confusing them twisted, I guess). 

Zoey Zurrell in Dream Chasers is the quintessential sexy-sassy vamp, so shacking up with the villain is pretty much a given according to narrative and melodramatic tropes.  She’s actually one of my favorite characters, and one of the things I like most about her is that she’s not afraid to be sexy.  She wears whatever she wants, sleeps with who ever she wants, and totally owns her sexual appeal.  She’s a kick ass woman who never tries to be anyone but herself.

Namtaru, the villain, by passes the verbal sexual harassment and goes straight to feeling up pretty much all the ladies in the show (well, he doesn’t feel up Atropos, since she’s the Goddess of Death and would kick his ass in a heartbeat.)  He tries to seduce all three female main characters, only one of which actually gets him anywhere. It’s also hinted that he and the other male main character may have had a sexual relationship centuries before the show.  Namtaru is truly horny, and is way creepy. There’s even a scene where he tries to rape one of the two leads, but is stopped before he can and gets seriously punished for it.  Even if I had wanted to turn him a good guy, which I didn’t, there was no way it would be possible at that point. 

Eidolon, of course, features both kissing scenes and a pre-sex make out scene with a post sex “hey we’re naked in bed so clearly we just did it” scene.  Maria, one of the main characters, even gets pregnant, so if there were any doubts about it before, there’s no question they had sex now. 

 Also there’s the wonderful character of Terri Madison, who hits on almost all the guys in the show at one time or another.  She has a huge crush on her favorite TV star, and she pretty much sexually harasses Mordecai when she meets him.  She stops once she gets to know him though.  The general idea of her being flirty was in the script, but Jen Weber played it up to humorous perfection.

So there’s a lot of sexual humor in most of the SFF TV shows, which has just continued to grow in my scripts since Destiny III.  I got the chance to make fun of my sappy dialogue, fake dip-and-kiss, and villain-turns-good-after-falling-in-love-with-the-heroine trope in The Cursed Destiny of Pandora’s Gift Box, so that was nice.

After Eidolon and Cursed Destiny, I only did short films .  One of the more raunchy short film is the two-part film of 2B and 4B in Quatrain.  It involves a half naked couple in the back of a pickup truck and dialogue of a mysterious sexual mishap. I did not write it, but serious props to Edward Stasheff who wrote Scene 4.  The scene had to be vague enough to be about anything, but use the same dialogue and in the scene he directed it’s hilariously suggestive. It’s hard to believe that a such a funny, sexy scene uses the same dialogue as a zombie film, a 1950s style science lab mishap, and a pair of ghost hunters with over active imaginations. Kudos, Ed. Kudos.

A lot of other short films - such as Twisted Tales: Charming, The Medea School of Melodrama, Fortunate Ones: Forever, and C2, have sexual jokes, innuendos, or sexy characters - sometimes all three.  However, there are two more short films that really stand out but for different reasons.

Little Red is one of the short films for the Twisted Tales collection.  The overall idea is to take a fairytale and put a different spin on it like switching genders, reformatting it, or setting it in a different time. Little Red is, obviously, a twisted version of Little Red Riding Hood, set in the modern era with a lot of changes to the story, and boy is it ever twisted.

It’s probably the darkest, creepiest film I’ve ever made and involves a sweet innocent young woman being seduced by a handsome, yet sinister and evil man.  He drugs her, rapes her, steals all her money, and forces her into a co-dependant life with him where he pimps her out and she ends up a hardened hooker with a deadly thirst for revenge.  Yeah, that’s dark. It’s also filmed in a somewhat artsy way.  It’s my dark, twisted Art House film, and an ode to the Noir genre.

I don’t want to end on a down note, so I have one more film to talk about.  This one belongs in the Fortunate Ones franchise (okay, short film collection, obviously it’s not a franchise).  Only You is – without a doubt – the raunchiest, sauciest, most lewd and bawdy production I have written, much less produced.  I think I used up all my sexy life points on this one because I haven’t written anything even remotely sexy since I filmed it. 

The basic concept for Fortunate Ones is that getting what you wish for doesn’t always work out well.  Only You is slightly different because the two main characters get the last thing they would ever want. They end up being the last two people on earth.  Imagine the only other person in the world is the ex-girlfriend/boyfriend you hated most.  Sex – for fun and for the future of humanity – is the central focus of the film, and it’s pretty hilarious if I do say so myself.  Although only half the humor comes from the script, the rest comes from the brilliant performances of Bryan Kieft and Brittany Ann Whalen.

So there you go!  We’ve gone from the dip-and-kiss to the post-sex, half-naked cuddle scene - from hints of secret sexy rendezvous, to bashing the audience over the head with my sexy subtle club. And now I’m sexy-scenarioed out, apparently, so that may be it for the bawdy hijinks.

Thanks for reading and go enjoy some sexy time (assuming you’re old enough – god I hope you are, you shouldn’t be reading this if you’re not).