{"id":16581,"date":"2017-08-29T13:05:34","date_gmt":"2017-08-29T17:05:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=16581"},"modified":"2017-08-29T13:31:51","modified_gmt":"2017-08-29T17:31:51","slug":"hollywood-goes-porn-serious-hardcore-1979-inserts-1975","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=16581","title":{"rendered":"Hollywood Goes Porn Serious: Hardcore (1979) + Inserts (1975)"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s a point in Paul Schrader\u2019s commentary on Twilight Time\u2019s Hardcore<\/strong> Blu-ray in which he raises and answers a question that\u2019s been popular with writers, directors & producers for decades.<\/p>\n

Will there ever be a studio produced adult-drama hybrid?<\/em><\/p>\n

His answer is an affirmative No<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Terry Southern wrote a novel called Blue Movie <\/strong>(1970), in which a director and major stars make a hardcore film and screen it in one country in one cinema with a hefty admission price \u2013 a device that may well have been technically possible in a pre-home video era, but impossible during the camcorder late 1980s, and certainly today with cellphones which could render such an exclusive engagement useless.<\/p>\n

According to Southern, Stanley Kubrick was very interested in adapting the novel, but like many projects in his Maybe pile, it never came to fruition, perhaps because the nudity, any softcore imagery, or the insertion of hardcore bits would\u2019ve branded the film X and created headaches with print ads and distribution (although home video would\u2019ve been a peach).<\/p>\n

The name Blue Movie <\/strong>has been used to brand other films, and outside of the porn realm, there\u2019s Andy Warhol\u2019s 1969 film, the Dutch 1971 production by Wim Verstappen (Obsessions<\/strong>), Alberto Cavallone\u2019s shit-slimed 1978 assault<\/a>, and to a slight degree Zalman King\u2019s Wild Orchid 2: Two Shades of Blue<\/strong> (1991) which was originally titled Blue Movie Blue <\/strong>before the distributor felt a rebrand would boost its profile among connoisseurs of King\u2019s 1989 cult hit.<\/p>\n

In subsequent years filmmakers have inserted hardcore bits or filmed actual adult content \u2013 the finale of Vincent Gallo\u2019s The Brown Bunny<\/strong> (2003), John Cameron Mitchell\u2019s multi-character drama Shortbus<\/strong> (2006), Michael Winterbottom\u2019s 9 Songs <\/strong>(2004), inserted hardcore in the finale of Olivier Assayas\u2019 Demonlover<\/strong> (2002), penetration shots in Baise-Moi<\/strong> (2000), and more recently CGI trickery in Lars von Trier\u2019s 2013 Nymphomaniac<\/strong> diptych and Gaspar No\u00e9\u2019s Love<\/strong> (2015).<\/p>\n

The common thread within the aforementioned is none were produced by a major Hollywood studio, and Kubrick\u2019s Eyes Wide Shut<\/strong> (1999) was originally released in North America with obfuscations for visible naughty bits because Warner Bros. didn\u2019t want a poisonous NC-17 rating and wanted to make sure the film\u2019s ancillary sales wouldn\u2019t run afoul of local outlets and broadcasters.<\/p>\n

Schrader\u2019s No stems from the theory that graphic imagery halts the brain from processing a film\u2019s ongoing drama and characters; it\u2019s a kill switch that turns the viewer from a cineaste to a voyeur in search of relief. It\u2019s a theory that might be a little biased in terms of what a conservative filmgoer with a Calvinist upbringing similar to Schrader\u2019s might suffer when scenes of unsimulated sex appear, recede, and recur a few times before the drama\u2019s resolution.<\/p>\n

One could argue Europe\u2019s shown softcore can work in drama, romance, horror, comedy, and blatant sexploitation, especially in the 1970s, and America needed some time to catch up, but I think it\u2019s the historians on the second Hardcore<\/strong> commentary track that observe the film being among the last gasps of provocative independent productions made within the studio structure that were already being phased out.<\/p>\n

The boy and girl wonders signed to single and multi-picture deals were no longer worth the risk, and with the arrivals of Jaws<\/strong> (1975) and Star Wars<\/strong> (1977), small scale meandering, play-like, frank, character based tales with unresolved, sometimes nihilistic endings were pass\u00e9. It is ironic that the Star Wars<\/strong> references in Hardcore<\/strong> \u2013 a massive billboard to trumpet its theatrical release, and Schrader\u2019s cheeky riff on the light saber duel in a porn club with a disco styled, soundalike main theme \u2013 act as signals of what would dominate modern studio film production, but both Hardcore<\/a><\/strong> (1979) and John Byrum\u2019s Inserts<\/a><\/strong> (1975) represent two stages of Hollywood\u2019s tolerance for and waning interest in adult-themed dramas.<\/p>\n

Inserts<\/strong> represents the period when studio gambling on an unknown writer-director with a sexy script seemed right, but when completed, was sold badly to audiences with an inept campaign and edits that may have harmed its potential. Byrum\u2019s premise is unique and seemed to appeal to UA: Richard Dreyfuss, fresh from Jaws<\/strong>,\u00a0plays a former silent film boy wonder director, making porn loops in his fading mansion for an investor (Bob Hoskins).<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a series of ad campaigns that show how poorly this unsellable work baffled the studio\u2019s publicity department:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"

The pull-quote option: the studio hope reviews will motivate what the publicity department couldn’t wrangle on their own.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"

The catchy visual metaphor option, tying the black comedy to notorious literary and erotic dramas in the hope the latter crowd will see and like Inserts.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"

The Italian poster, a painted and full colour version of UA’s almost monochrome alternate pastiche that still says nothing, infers who knows what, and fulfills the minimum contractual requirements to deliver a poster.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Schrader\u2019s Hardcore<\/strong> has a devoutly religious father (George C. Scott) traveling to California in search of his daughter who\u2019s surfaced in a hardcore porn loop and whose life expectancy seems brief. Unlike UA, Columbia knew how to sell the film by fudging things a little using classic misrepresentation. The famous tagline \u201cOh my God, that\u2019s my daughter\u201d is bullshit; Scott never utters the phrase.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Moreover, the girl on the DVD cover isn\u2019t the missing daughter sought by daddy. That\u2019s a bit player seen for a moment in front of a porn theatre with a pimp just before the film\u2019s villain is dispatched in the finale. Sony may have felt Ilah Davis (middle poster as said “figlia,” in a pose also not in the film) wasn\u2019t pretty enough, so the marketing department opted for more curves. It\u2019s also an ugly video cover, but that\u2019s another bone to pick in a later column \u2013 bad studio-crafted video art, which continues into the present.<\/p>\n

In addition to reviews of the two films, I\u2019ve also contrasted the extras for Twilight Time\u2019s 2016 and Indicator\u2019s 2017 Blu-rays, each sporting significantly different extras. This is also the first of several Twilight Time-Indicator and Twilight Time-Eureka \/ aka Masters of Cinema A-B comparisons. Some of these British editions are region free, and are becoming more widely available in North America via select importers and vendors.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Mark R. Hasan<\/strong>, Editor
\nKQEK.com<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviews of two 1970s indie-minded dramas on porn: Paul Schrader’s Hardcore (1976) in separate Blu-ray editions from Twilight Time & Indicator, and John Byrum’s Inserts (1975) + an Editor’s Blog on Hollywood’s inability to fuse drama + porn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16583,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[2562,2563,5289,5285,5284,5181,275,189,5290],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/Hardcore_featured.jpeg","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-4jr","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16581"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16581"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16581\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16607,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16581\/revisions\/16607"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}