Ira Levin

[Brant Gaede]

Barbara didn't say hard core, pornographic, actual sex.

--Brant

Then, there will be no issue--but that is what I took Barbara to mean.

In "Saving Private Ryan" the carnage was extremely realistic for a movie. But it wasn't real carnage.

--Brant

[Barbara Branden]

Good heavens, Michael, I didn't mean that actors should actually engage in the sex act on the screen! And that wasn't the case in the example of "The Piano" that I gave.

Barbara

[Newberry]

Good heavens, Michael, I didn't mean that actors should actually engage in the sex act on the screen! And that wasn't the case in the example of "The Piano" that I gave.

Barbara

hahahahah, Oh good. After you referenced porno as being mechanical, I thought you were trying elevate it. ;)

Michael

Edit: btw, I don't recall The Piano, Holly Hunter drives me to unbearable boredom, but I do recall something nasty about clipping fingernails and inserting fingers somewhere inside Marlon Brando in Last Tango!!! "Oh stop, I can't watch this anymore!!!!"

Edited November 19, 2007 by Newberry

[Greybird]

Was Mel Gibson's "Passion of the Christ" a snuff film? I'd say so (and have often said so), even though no actor was killed.

And on topic: Levin's This Perfect Day was magnificent, an anti-authoritarian spark to thought that stays in the subconscious long after one has closed the book.

Even with the changes in computing having made some of its technical premises more dubious — it came before both the integrated circuit and the Internet — the essential truth of the book has become even more vivid: Societal liberation begins, and can only begin, with self-liberation.

[Guyau]

Levin's This Perfect Day was magnificent, an anti-authoritarian spark to thought that stays in the subconscious long after one has closed the book.

Yes.

So tense and exciting. Some humor too. I was so with the protagonist. Vivid visual images, and I always hoped for a good movie of this book.

[John Dailey]

~ Re the 'porn' subject I brought up and got a few raised eyebrows about (besides my own chronic one ), really, consider: nowadays such a concern about 'actual' hard-core performances occurring, even in the context that Barbara spelled out, is becoming moot. With what's known generally nowadays about how 'photo-realistic' computerized trick-photography can be ('CG'), what non-cognescenti viewer can know, cinema-wise, who is 'really' doing what how far in any scene?

M. NEWBERRY:

~ I have no prob with 'hard-core' being presented (though, re sex, difficult to 'perform' without actually 'performing', granted...for the male anyway...apart from CG), if, as BB explicates, in the right kind of scenes; am only aware of one I've seen, but, no point bringing that up for debate here.

~ I gather you see explicitness re sex as nothing to be 'artful' about. I'm a bit surprised. I think it's a territory YET to be dealt with...in a non-Freudian (or, mere-vicarious 'XXX') manner...in 'art.'

LLAP

J:D