contact. Because the amount of sex that happens in a house is so minimal. That's all the more reason for examining the codes of heterosexual behavior within our culture, without moralization about men or women. Because men are victimized too by this culture. They're told, 'You have to have a relationship with one woman; you have to have a family; you have to have a solid, steady job; you have to be heterosexual.' And, on the other hand, there's this propoganda around about men having hot, various, wild sexual experience in their lives.
What is it about our culture, about the nuclear family and the way that male-female relationships are structured, and about the way in which sex is fetishized, that creates this situation where men can go into a place like this and be satisfied by what they get? That's what amazes me. A man wants 'Around the World,' or he wants to play out his little doctor fantasy, or he likes to pose in front of a mirror, or he likes straight sex for exactly five minutes and likes to do something exactly this way or push this, touch this, no, do it this way. The idea that things become so defined is what I find fascinating.
You know, a big problem for me in making
was how to shoot the sex. How could I shoot the bedroom scenes without making women sexual objects for the male gaze?
It's really tricky here, because you're working with conventionally attractive people, in a traditionally erotic setup. And yet it really is
erotic.
Yeah, I'm so happy about that.
Or am I kidding myself?
No. You're not kidding yourself. You're . . .
I'm sure somebody could say, 'Well, you just want to have your eroticism and get spanked a little bit for it . . . '
No, no, no. It was meant
to be erotic, and I feel it's very successful in that.
So what did you do, to have that effect?
Well, let's see. I totally designed the bedroom shots. We [Borden and Director of Photography Judy Irola] collaborated a lot on the downstairs shooting, where there were a lot of dollies. Most of the angles in the bedroom scenes are not subjective camera, but they're from a woman's point of view. There's no shot in the film where you see Molly's body the way a man would frame her body to look at it, except when she's looking at herself that way, in the scene where she poses with the guy in front of the mirror, for example. But, even there, I set up the shot so that if we are looking at her body in that scene, we're also looking at her eyes looking at her body. The first time you see her without any clothes on, she's alone with herself, and our gaze is involved with her watching herself.
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Molly (Louise Smith) and a trick (Ricky Leacock) in
(1986).
So our gaze is part of her gaze?
Exactly. You don't necessarily see exactly what she would see, but you see what you see, the way
would feel it.
Another thing that works against conventional eroticism is that by the end of the film, you see Molly take her clothes off fifty times. Her body becomes so familiar, it's like your own body after a while. That's what I hope happens. Her body is deromanticized.
Yes, it's true that the women are conventionally attractive, but they're not drop-dead gorgeous. And they don't have the kinds of bodies we see without clothes on in most movies. I wanted my main character to have a pretty face and a nice body, but not, 'Wow! Look at that body!'
I understand
is the first film in which you've worked with professional actors. I would think that, given the subject matter, you had your work cut out for you.
Finding Louise to play Molly was very lucky. I had spoken to a couple of actresses. But nobody would do the role. There was too much nudity. It was hard to get women to even consider it. And then I met Louise. She was a nice Catholic girl who saw it as a challenge. She had never taken her clothes off before for a movie, but as it turned out, she was just great. And it was new for me. I knew I had to feel very
