Trying to Be Steamy and Serious

It has been nearly 30 years since Pauline Kael famously proclaimed, “The movie breakthrough has finally come. Bertolucci and Brando have altered the face of an art form,” and the 1972 premiere of “Last Tango in Paris” would become “a landmark in history comparable to May 29, 1913, the night ‘Le Sacre du Printemps’ was first performed.” Back in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s--the Days Before Video, for you younger readers--serious filmgoers were known to stand in the long lines to see naughty movies.

They were there to study the social significance of such liberating cinematic fare as “I Am Curious (Yellow),” “Deep Throat,” “The Story of O” and “Emmanuelle.”

The cold war on human sexuality, it seemed, was finally at an end. Funny how times change.

“We’ve come a long way since the days when sexuality in movies could be discussed seriously,” observes Wayne Wang, whose steamy and provocative “The Center of the World” is likely to set more than a few tongues wagging when it opens today in selected theaters. “After ‘Showgirls,’ none of the studios wanted to have anything to do with explicit sexuality. All of the sex scenes in today’s movies are homogenized . . . lit in a pretty way. It’s unrealistic. Nobody sweats.”

In “The Center of the World,” an exotic dancer (Molly Parker) and a newly minted cyber-millionaire (Peter Sarsgaard) not only perspire, they openly secrete bodily fluids and do much more during a lost weekend in a Las Vegas hotel suite. The unabashedly erotic picture is being released unrated, and, as was the case with “Requiem for a Dream,” exhibitors are being asked to prohibit anyone younger than 17 from buying a ticket. Even though “Last Tango in Paris” was rated X (which NC-17 replaced), it was widely seen. Certainly, its notoriety was responsible for its success at the box office, but it’s also true that most exhibitors at the time were willing to take a chance, especially if it meant filling seats.

“We didn’t submit it [to be rated], because I knew I wasn’t even close to an R, and there’s really no difference between letting it go out NC-17 and going out unrated,” Wang says over lunch at the Four Seasons. “Despite what the MPAA says, if you accept the NC-17, you’re opening yourself up to a lot of censorship. A lot of newspapers won’t accept your ads, and multiplexes can’t put it in their theaters.

“Plus, there’s a stigma to NC-17. Many people think the rating means a film is pornographic.” Wang admits he has been fascinated with the idea of making a movie about sex ever since the days of “Last Tango” and “I Am Curious.” In the early ‘70s, when he was first breaking into the industry back in Hong Kong, his contacts at Golden Harvest studios encouraged him to start out making blue movies for the Japanese and Korean markets. In the ‘90s, though, his curiosity was piqued by America’s seeming obsession with strippers and soft-core pornography, as evidenced in shows such as HBO’s “G-String Divas” and “Real Sex,” VH1’s “Porn to Rock,” MTV’s “Undressed,” sexually suggestive glossy ads in fashion magazines and the endless parade of X-rated Web sites. Wang found it ironic that sexuality, however ubiquitous it may be in the media and on Madison Avenue, still terrifies a whole lot of people in this country.

“Films like ‘Leaving Las Vegas,’ ‘Pretty Woman’ and ‘Indecent Proposal’ were all in my subconscious, I suppose,” Wang says. “But I wanted to do something about these two characters--who were trapped in a hotel room--in a direct, realistic and truthful way. That was the impetus.” Artisan Entertainment, Wang continues, “knew what they were getting and weren’t afraid of it. If a movie has [certain expletives], the rating board automatically gives it an R, and sexuality is NC-17. But you can have 300 bodies on a beach, bleeding all over the place, and it’s PG-13.

“I told a French distributor about the lollipop scene [in which a coy stripper uses a Tootsie Pop as a prop] . . . and he said, ‘Leave it in. Let the Americans go crazy over it.’ ” Today’s political climate has also put distributors and exhibitors on the defensive when it comes to trailers and other promotional material. “I thought our trailer, which had Molly getting ready for her act by [reciting some spicy dialogue], was interesting, but even in San Francisco, the theaters removed it from the trailers that came with ‘Requiem for a Dream,’ ” says Wang, whose indie credentials are well-established with such titles as “Smoke,” “Blue in the Face,” “Chan Is Missing” and “Chinese Box.” “I don’t know if the trailer played in any theaters outside of one or two in L.A. That’s self-censorship.”

Newspapers including the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune (both of which are owned by the Tribune Co.) also turned down the first ads that were submitted, which included images of a nude Parker and suggestive language with that lollipop. Subsequent ads have been toned down by creative cropping of photographs and elimination or rewording of the language.

“Our Web site also was a challenge. It’s like one of the sites you have to pay to access.” What “The Center of the World” mostly is about, Wang stresses, is rules and power.

Although a bit more handsome and fashion-conscious than most cybergeeks, Sarsgaard’s Richard has spent most of his life glued to a video monitor, inventing software, playing games and making virtual women take off their virtual clothes. Parker’s Florence, on her way to a career as a drummer, strips because the money is too good to pass up, and, frankly, she doesn’t mind exercising the power she has over horny men. Richard and Florence meet cute in a diner, and after a visit to her place of business, he offers her $10,000 to spend the weekend with him in Vegas. Something of a control freak, red-haired Florence says OK, but only if Richard agrees to certain stipulations. Naturally, things get complicated. Flo begins to fall for Richard’s goofy charm, and he starts believing that his personality is a more powerful aphrodisiac than his money.

‘Computers Objectify Women’

“The Europeans I’ve shown this movie to consider it to be very American, because it’s about morality and not crossing the line,” Wang says. “We sell sex very upfront at the strip clubs, but then, all of these rules kick in . . . there’s a pseudo-morality. There’s a lot of sex in Hollywood movies, but nobody deals with the real issues, like trust, communication and love. I think there’s a lot left to explore, especially for young men today, who have been conditioned to think of women as sex objects. Computers objectify women.”

Parker had spent quite a bit of time in a local “gentlemen’s club,” researching her character. But she really only had to drive down the Sunset Strip to see how eroticism is exploited in the marketplace. “We live in this porno-obsessed world, where sexuality and consumerism are inexorably linked,” says the tall Vancouver native. “It’s intense, and insidious, how pornography is used to create an insatiable desire for consumer goods. I’m not just talking about using a model to sell a car, but actually turning the car into a sexual object.”

The dancers she met made an incredible amount of money and were “intelligent and well-educated . . . feminists and lesbians. There’s the addiction to money and an addiction for the power they have over men. They’re strong and a lot more savvy than some of the women I know who try out for TV shows.”

Plus, notes the former ballet dancer, “they have to be so strong to do what they do onstage. You can’t imagine how difficult it is to dance in those shoes.”

Before agreeing to the project, Parker wanted to know how her sex scenes were to be shot, specifically, “what is the point of view of the camera, and what does it say about the filmmakers. I wasn’t interested in appearing in a movie that was intended to turn people on, as much as being able to explain what was going on with these characters.”

Carla Gugino, who plays a very American-style mom in “Spy Kids,” originally was up for the part of Flo. Instead, she plays a blackjack dealer who shares a murky past with the stripper and is a beneficiary of Richard’s almost terminal niceness.

“We spent a lot of time deciding who should play Flo, and Carla was a leading contender, but she’s almost too sexy,” Wang says. “Molly really had something . . . she was real. With makeup, she looked like she could be a stripper, but without it, she could be anyone you’d meet on the street or in a restaurant.”

Wang’s research took him into two of San Francisco’s leading sex emporiums, the O’Farrell Theater and Boys Toys, where pre-collapse dot-comers would celebrate the success of their IPOs with lap dances and expensive bottles of wine. “These guys considered themselves to be masters of the universe,” says Wang. “They felt as if they could get around their problems with women by owning or manipulating them, just like in a video game. It’s scary, but it was a way to deal with their insecurities.”

In the time it took Artisan to release “The Center of the World” (it was finished in 2000), much of the dot-comers’ plush universe came crashing down, much to the delight of everyone who lived east of San Jose. “At first, I was upset that it took Artisan so long to release the movie, but now, with the crash, it almost feels like a period picture,” Wang concludes. “All of a sudden, the whole movie is a fantasy about a fantasy. But I think a lot of the guys who got involved in the Internet IPOs will continue to hang onto their fantasies, and, in another year, they’ll create new ones . . . on the Nasdaq.”

Don’t say you weren’t warned.