The Passion of Chris

Let's discuss experiences in failure in my screenwriting quest, with a project I accidentally created in 2004.

But first let's rewind to 2004.

This was the year Janet Jackson's warm, round, Hershey Kisses shaped breast was exposed to all the world to see, which resulted in a right wing firestorm.

We'd already had two years of loyal Bushies and angry Neo-Cons mucking up the society (much the same way Fox News feels the Obama-ites are doing now), and the undercurrent of electric outrage was alive.

Frankly, I didn't see the fuss.

In fact I went out and found myself as many still images I could of the event.

But that was how the year opened, which led to all those Neo-Cons calling for harder censorship laws, people in Bush's administration trying to criminalize the adult film industry (I know the dude's name, just can't think of him right now), and it seemed the moral majority witch hunt was on.

MTV and VH1 were also suffering from these pitchfork carrying psychos, and I plainly remember a Maroon Five music video becoming censored because it was felt the lead singer and the not entirely clothed female in the video rolling around in bed wasn't pure enough.

Or something to that affect.

They probably just didn't want to risk raising the already inflated ire that burned brightly at the entertainment atmosphere.

Fast forward a few months, and this madness is really kicking in from what I remember. Then, hallelujah, a savior has been filmed and was to be projected upon big screens.

It was called "The Passion of the Christ," an arguably not too well executed movie that brought the Christians in by the pound. The MPAA gave that movie an R-Rating, but Christians kept taking their kids to see something they'd normally rail against if it was any other movie.

My considered rationalization for this was simple: "it's different! This is holy violence!"

Regular violence is evil, holy violence is great: Inquisitions, witch hunts, and nailing a guy to a piece of wood for saying "let's all get along, it'll be great."
Love those crazy Christians.

Now while this is going on, I've started an ongoing joke in my head which went something like: "The Passion of Chris! Feel His Passion!"

And I'd concocted this whole movie poster of this good looking guy tied to a bed, with a seductive smile looking out at the viewer, with a tagline that would describe this particular offering as "Witness The Final 12 Hours Of Chris' Virginity!"

So we've got a charged atmosphere, we've got censorship running crazy, there was great approval of widescreen closeups of nailing some poor dude to a plank of wood, and it all combined with one rather unlikely piece of information: a possible Writer's Guild strike.

I don't know what finally pushed me into writing the script, but one day the right neurons sparked in the perfect arrangement and a whole new story was born.

Now, during all of this, I'd stumbled upon the adult film studio Digital Playground, which had brought the adult genre into the 21'st Century. No longer would adult films be, well, terrible - badly shot, horribly lit, no story, bad acting, terrible use of video instead of film, and so on.

The production quality of one trailer I'd viewed, namely for a features called "Three Timing," said to me "The Valley has caught up with Hollywood. Everything now is possible."

It was clever, it had higher production qualities than the local CBS Affiliate channel, it was in anamorphic widescreen for Chrissakes!

Yeah, the acting was still iffy, but everything else had greatly improved!

So take all these elements, mix them up, and after a bit of research and four days of furious writing, I'd completed a first draft script that was around 100 pages long.

And the story was this: young up and coming writer\director is just about to sign on the dotted line when the WGA does go on strike, and he's out in the cold. Meanwhile, his agent finds him work to pay the bills working on an adult film called, appropriately enough, "The Passion of Chris."

He very reluctantly accepts the gig, finds a very talented actress who, he feels, is wasting her talent in this particular industry, and learns that he has achieved a dream when he originally feels like he's been kicked to the curb.

It's obvious where the jokes come from, but where the heart of the story comes from is a much different place.

In my research, I read both the horror stories and the life affirming stories of adult performers. There was an article how one female performer was asked to visit a fan of hers who was, at that time, in the hospital.

She paid him a visit, gave him an autograph I believe, and was very friendly to this guy who enjoyed her work.

There's an actress who does adult films, yet has a Bachelor's Degree in microbiology, of all things.

It was amazing - it was stunning to me, to be perfectly honest.

Another concept that inspired the ending of my script came from real life as well - a young man once dreamed of becoming a doctor. He watched medical professionals on television, he was interested in the profession, yet he became an actor.

Only later in his life did he become a doctor: Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy.

Yes, Deforest Kelly was that little boy who dreamed of becoming a doctor, and in some surprising twist of fate, he became exactly that as that's what we all remember his as: a doctor.

And that's the question posed to my fictional writer\director: can you be happy where you are, having achieved what you have even if it isn't originally what you conceived of.

The answer was, of course, yes. My fictional character had achieved his dreams, and realized he'd have much more freedom outside of Hollywood, and the adult studio was only too glad to bring him in full time.

There were jokes I didn't get to use in "Passion of Chris," but I saved them for the sequel I never got around to writing: "The Next Temptation of Chris," which was to be about censorship run amuck, and so on.

It also had the jokes of bringing in Norah Jones and Britney Spears, questioning them constantly about their lyrics in a hearing not unlike the ones during the 50's House on Un- American Activities.

The questions were to say "Don't Know Why" was actually about impotence (read the lyrics, you'll get it) and "Baby, One More Time..." was about spousal abuse.

Too bad there was no "If You Seek Amy..." back then.

I wrote "Chris" in four days, as stated above.

I promoted it vigorously.

No one would touch it.

Hell, no one would even return my letters...at all. Not even to say "not interested."

Looking back that's possibly due to the fact the WGA and AMPTP discussions were flaky at best, but even after they were resolved the same cold reception greeted "Chris" on both coasts.

So I let "The Passion of Chris" rest.

I've made no attempts to resurrect it. I will make no further attempts.

It's a funny as hell story, but it has a very serious center to it. It is my biggest failure to date, which is sad because it had so much going for it. It also had something even bigger going against it: time.

2004 and its madness won't come back again...for which I'm deeply thankful, even if I have to scrap an entire screenplay.

And no one will ever know...

And promotions continue for "Sweet Dreams: A Sandman's Story" and "Summertime Blues."

Sex In Cinema

Disclaimer: My intentions for this entry are purely for exploration of this phenomenon. I will likely use naughty humor, but hopefully I won't get too naughty.

I simply don't want to be Flagged as having Inappropriate Material(s) on my blog so that the warning page comes up.

Okay, so we're all adults.

Time we had The Talk, don't you think?

Sex in cinema is a multi-faceted thing. It can be naughty (Monty Python's The Meaning of Life), it can be really naughty (Zack and Miri Make A Porno) or it can be passionate (Cruel Intentions) or meaningful (Anything Else).

With sex comes nudity...or at least implied nudity. And here we find a double standard, as pointed out to me several years ago by a female cousin of mine while we and a few friends were at my place watching "Interview With A Vampire."

"Oh sure, the woman's always naked, but never the guy!" she declared.

And she was right, for the most part. Hollywood is, ahem, "gun shy."

For the most part, at least...

"Porky's" comes to mind. That delightful, rough around the edges naughty high school comedy that showed a room full of teenaged boys stripped down to nothing as they awaited their turn with Cherry Forever.

As a side note, that's one of the funniest scenes in the movie. A further side note, which should be added, herein states that the "Have You Seen This Penis?" conversation is, arguably, the funniest scene in the whole damned series.

I can think of very, very few instances where the lower half of a guy has been displayed.

Of course there's Jason Mewes' two full frontal scenes in "Zack and Miri," but that's also in the name of fun. Plus I secretly suspect Mewes' had been wanting to show off his goods since "Clerks II."

An implied display of such things was recently seen in "Beowulf." What Zemeckis did was meant to be convey a sense of seriousness, but it was kind of silly to me.

Beowulf is going to fight Grendel naked. Sure, I believe that.

Show me one warrior who'll actually strip down and risk having his beloved weapon severed by some grisly means and I'll be the first volunteer to reattach it with super glue and a staple gun.

As Bob Z's camera would swing around to follow the action (at a safe CGI distance not to reveal anything), it would always place itself to where a hand, a sword, or a vessel containing some kind of ale would be conveniently in the way.

Beowulf was reduced to "Austin Powers."

But those opening sequences in "Powers" were hilarious. Beowulf was laughable and wasn't meant to be.

I figure they'd gone to all that trouble to undress Beowulf, they might as well just show it all, at least in the Unrated Editions.

There are so few visual displays of various male's southern regions that I can really only think of what I've mentioned above. But should one ask me about a naked female, and it's not so matter of listing movies I've seen, it's a matter of knowing where to begin.

"American Pie" is most obvious to me, of course, but there's an infinite number of girls who've shed their clothes in various movies, be they serious dramas or about horny teenagers.

While male centered movies show sex as a series of headboard shaking wham-wham-wham up against the bedroom wall, the ladies try something decidedly different. Enter "Twilight."

This is where attempts at overt sex fail, especially if you've read the book.

The book is a sensual collection of lightly placed kisses and states of longing. The movie is the same, but midway through there's a moment where hormones seem to take control while Bella strips her pants halfway off and Edward is on top of Bella....and then nothing happens.

I sat in that theater going "well, that was a waste."

It was anti-climactic, and didn't belong in the movie. In terms of dramatic tension, you cannot go halfway, only to pull back and then have a montage of Edward and Bella laughing and talking after completely failing to have sex.

Yeah, it's a PG-13 movie, and thirteen year old girls really don't need to see Robert Pattinson rolling around naked (or half naked) with the one girl they identify most with. But, outside of that, the dramatic tension is, essentially, a supreme letdown.

Bella and Edward could've still been intimate, and it should've been in the same sensual manner of the book.

But if that happened, the Mormons would've shouted and screamed at how we Hollywood degenerates have nothing but sex on the mind, no matter how sensual it was.

There's another double standard that is very slowly breaking down, and it stems from the previous statements about how Hollywood is "gun shy."

You know, I know it, and Heath Ledger would refer to it as "Brokeback Mountain."

Another side note, because I like it, says that Mel Gibson didn't want Heath to do it because of it's controversial nature, and Heath did it for it. Of course, Mel is...well...an alleged anti-Semite with possible strains of conservative Christianity in him.

I'm convinced Jesus is giving Heath a hug for what he did in that movie.

If Hollywood is gun shy about one guy, then two rolling about in bed is even more forbidden, though I can't really figure out why. You could place two air headed bimbos in bed and entire rolls of film will be dedicated to the scene.

I'm not in the least opposed to air headed bimbos rolling in the hay, I just expect fair play.

Certain sectors that are post products of the Sexual Revolution and the era of Free Love are awfully repressed. And by certain sectors, I mean exclusively and exceptionally arrogant heterosexual males that are scared of one thing: that they might like it.

For me, there are few taboos left, especially after witnessing one particular scene in "Last Tango In Paris" where Marlon Brando requests his female friend...uh...well, she unlocks his back door, and that's all I'll say.

Then there's the film called "The Dreamers," which makes use of cinematic fandom and sexual liberation in certain particular scenes: a pair of siblings (if I remember correctly) like to re-enact old movies and the other has to name that film, or suffer a punishment.

One scene has her enacting an old scene, he cannot recall, so she has her brother kneel down in front of an old picture and masturbate to it.

Did I mention all this is unfolding while another male is watching? Yeah, I left that out intentionally. This third young man keeps a picture of the female in next to his "heart," (penis) which is discovered when she undresses him in the kitchen while her brother watches.

She and the third young man proceed to have sex while he goes about his business.

In independent and foreign films, sex is more overtly displayed.

I once watched a series of short films from France that dealt with the subject matter in very, very unique terms.

There's also the much whispered about movie that was called "The Brown Bunny," which featured a scene between the lead actress actively performing oral sex on the male lead who served as director as well. Some would call this porn, but that is debatable.

I say that because I'm quite familiar with adult films as well. Digital Playground has long since held my attention, but their series "Pirates" and "Pirates II" have captured mainstream attention for being the biggest adult production in history.

I still haven't seen them...yet.

But the fact something like this can be accomplished in the adult realm says something, not about the company or the genre, but about the power of its production: it is being taken seriously, and I even hear that "Pirates II" was screened at an upscale college in Los Angeles one evening.

People may have...uh...came for the sex (no pun intended) and stayed for the movie.

And I'm no stranger to displaying the intimate moments of a character in my own works. No sense shying away from it, although I admit sometimes it's gotten away from me.

In the spring of 2007, after having seen a documentary on the History Channel called "Vampire Secrets Revealed," I determined that there was a great story there as part of it dealt with the part of culture who refers to themselves as vampires, and they participate in the exchange of energy, not blood.

I devised an incredibly seductive young man who had the power to not only topple those with three times his strength, he could break their barriers down with a simple touch of flesh upon flesh and then, if he so chose to do, he'd initiate an intimate relationship with them, and feed upon their sexual and spiritual energies (i.e. the kundalini) during lovemaking.

This character was meant to be bisexual, as having no real preference, but when I introduced the character of a male escort, my lead decided he liked the handsome young man more than anyone else, including the two girls he'd had sex with simultaneously in a previous scene.

The escort was just there for this young man to feed upon, which is what my original intention for the relationship was going to be. Then, damn it, my vampire fell in love with someone that preferred girls, yet shared his body with this young man repeatedly.

Even though it wasn't what I'd expected, it did provide a key dramatic point needed which I hadn't counted on that changed the story considerably and made it better than I'd originally envisioned.

"Twilight" fans will hate it, I'm sure.

And so will Hanso, who also despises "Twilight," but that's okay as well. I write only for myself, not for the world. And I've always managed to gather a following, so I'm not worrying about popularity issues.

Whew.

Damn this has been a long entry. My word processors tells me I'm at Page 5 of 5. That's my clue to wrap it up.

The point here is, basically, we're awfully repressed these days, yet our past was somewhat much more explicit.

You can have nudity, you can have overt sexual behavior, and you can cross into realms that haven't been explored. You can and you should, cinematically speaking, as long as it's necessary for dramatic reasons, or even if it's just for a laugh.

But the key term is "necessary." Throwing in a scene just for the hell of it (outside of comedy) is pointless, and will likely end up on the cutting room floor, or under the heels of the MPAA.

As for me, I see challenges set up in the form of barriers being rebuilt.

Let's break 'em down again because, for me, it's a lot of fun to make people think.