Despite certain American powers-that-be, movies are getting raunchier. There’s the so-called ratings creep, where-in today’s PG-13 movies are approaching 1992-era R-rated movies’ levels of sex and violence. Then there’s the recent phenomenon of successful unrated independent films such as Y tu mamá también. Finally, there’s mainstream films with actual, explicit sex such as Brown Bunny and (apparently–I haven’t seen it) Hedwig and the Angry Inch.
Now the director of Hedwig is seeking funding (registration required, decaying link) for a new project called Shortbus:
…from the name of a salon where the characters meet to give readings and performances, and sometimes to have public sex. It is modeled on real-life salons in Downtown Manhattan. The movie takes place after 9/11, in a city haunted by terrorism and too expensive for artists anymore. “Escorting is the new temp job,” Mr. Mitchell said. The story features a dominatrix who lives in a ministorage unit because she can’t afford an apartment, a sex therapist who can’t have an orgasm and a gay man who feels trapped in his relationship. They attend the salon “to find redemption,” he said.
Apparently the only cast members who have done the dirty in rehearsal are the men. As Mitchell puts it, “these gay men will have sex at the drop of a hat.” For Canadian MuchMusic fans, the cast includes Sook-Yin Lee, former VJ and current CBC reporter. The Times claims that she works for something called the ‘Canadian Broadcasting System’.
People have been talking about the convergence of pornography and mainstream movies for a while now. We’re not going to see Michael Douglas and Sigourney Weaver shagging onscreen any time soon (thank Heavens for small blessings), but it’s becoming increasingly normal to do more than just, er, simulate.
DarrenBarefoot.com 
For explicit sex in movies, there’s also Pola X. I saw it on Showcase one late Friday night. It’s not porn, it’s European.
Zach Braff comments on how his movie Garden State has an “R” rating merely because of “fuck” occurring twice in the dialogue. So, what is the industry saying? Explicit sex good, foul language bad?
As a snooty art film guy, I’ve seen more than my fair share of arthouse films featuring explicit sex.
I’m here to tell you that I don’t think they’ll ever come up with a film that successfully marries plot and hardcore sex. Invariable it’s either too arty to be porn or too porny to be art. In most cases it’s too boring to watchable 😉
Closest film I can think of is Barbara Broadcast. The video store where I worked (as an impressionable teen) had an old copy sitting around. I was surprised to find a hardcore porn film that was actually funny, too. Still, it’s not quite art.
Back in 1973, Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie had actual sex on camera in Nicholas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now. I think the acceptability of sexuality on screen in North America comes and goes in cycles, with a general tendency to more explicitness.
Personally, it’s inexplicable and arbitrary judgements like the rating given to “Garden State” that makes the idea of rating systems pointless. Look up the struggle “Two Girls and a Guy” had to shed a kiss-of-box-office-death NC17 rating for an R rating.
Guess the puppets are going to go at it in Team America…early reports have it at a PG-17.
Ratings seem to have no meaning compared to other movies in other times. Planet of the Apes (1968) was rated G despite showing Moses’s naked ass, a few utterances of the word damn, gun violence, and a few weak sexual inuendos. These days that sort of stuff would get at least PG if not PG-13.
Geez, Hedwig is a great movie. You should see it. I don’t remember any graphic sex in it, though.