Good SSL Insight at Beatroute

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We got a pretty sweet write up at Beatroute. Jess Parker wrote a small but actually quite on-point post about Science, Sex and the Ladies. It said things like,

"(the movie) makes a great case for the need for a societal shift in the importance of understanding female sexuality so that, quite frankly we, as ladies, can get off! And regularly!"

I say quite on-point because sometimes I see things like this Beatroute review about SSL that seemed like the writer watched the movie and really thought about the argument the movie makes, and sometimes I see things that seem like the writer watched the movie but really only focused or cared about one or two particular aspects, and didn't seem to quite take in the full argument. And I'm not talking about the difference between positive and negative reviews or anything like that. It's just that sometimes I feel like the larger argument about an all-encompassing cultural misunderstanding of female orgasm and sexuality that needs to be remedies by a big ol' shift in perspective, is either not gotten through to a particular reviewer or they found it not worthwhile to talk about, so I like it when I see that point getting through.

She also wrote some pretty good quotes too that made me feel like our point of view was getting through the way we wanted it to.

"...while it’s not one to shy away from nudity, it’s done so as a means to reveal what’s really going on in the world of women and sex. That is, it’s done so tastefully and is not something you’re going to want to necessarily wank to."

So, to be fair the only nudity in the movie is some shots staring directly and close-up into spread-eagle vulvas (3 to be exact). Oh - there is pink, plenty of pink, so technically this kind of nudity does not make it into Playboy or R-rated movies, only hard-core porn and dirtier magazines like Hustler and Cheri. So, that's really it, but it's a big wallop of nudity. Anyway, It was actually incredibly important to us, when making the movie, that we didn't make it unnecessarily sexy like all the sex-umentaries we were seeing on HBO and the like where it's basically just people being interviewed about a particular aspect of sex and a lot of b-roll of women doing and moaning sexy things - like really soft-core porn. So, I was glad to see that she didn't feel like anyone would want to wank to it. It was kind of a goal of ours.

Then she's going over the route the movie takes in it's argument and during that says,

"It moves on to pornography, but manages to do so in a way that doesn’t make it sound too for or against it."

 I liked this too, because we really tried to be careful about how we spoke about and depicted porn and porn stars in this movie. Porn is such a contentious subject that the wrong vibe about it can turn of a large group of people from anything that is said from that time forward. Plus, the point we are making is not for or against porn, it's just about porn, and we really wanted to make it feel that way - that porn is a valid, fine thing, but there is an aspect of it that needs to get better. We also wanted to make sure we didn't seem like we were calling porn star ladies out for like ruining the sexual culture or being dumb or being too complacent/non-feminist - because we weren't, but that's a feeling, either intentional or not, that is given off from a lot of porn criticism. For porn, as with many of the other cultural institutions we critiqued, we see the problem as much larger and deeper than the current players in those institutions. We felt it important to lay the blame on no-one but make everyone feel responsible for change. So, my point is, it really felt good to me that she felt that sort of nonchalantness we were hoping to convey when speaking about porn...because it is actually something I worried a lot about during pre-production.

Okay, so I want to thank Ms. Jess Parker over there at Beatroute. It looks like she is often writing good shit over there, so check it out, and read the full SSL review HERE.

An Educational Video Meets A Midnight Movie - Finally, We've Given You a Box for Science, Sex and the Ladies!

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We have another Review - at Rogue Cinema. Check it out HERE. Thanks to Misty Layne for taking the time to watch and write about it. It's a good review, but I'll be honest. It says something we hear about this movie more than I'd like - "I'm not sure who the audience for this documentary is." I've heard it before, and it always feels like an unnecessary questions to me. I always want to say something like - Did you like it? Then you are the audience. However, I have learned since making this movie, that it does matter to people. Categorizing a movie, and thus categorizing the audience who might watch the movie, makes a big difference, and we probably should have done a better job filling in the details for what box people should fit SSL into with our marketing. We should be telling them, so they don't have to spend any precious time worrying about it. So, I'll address that a little - in my own way, here.

 I always knew the movie was hard to categorize. It's a non-fiction movie, but documentary doesn't quite describe it. It's really off-beat with lots of cheese, but not quite the kind of cheese people are used to seeing in their documentaries - the wink and nod to the innocence of the 50's with some cheesy b-roll of a black and white educational film reel featuring shiny happy housewives doing something that seems quaint and silly or with men in suits talking directly to the camera.

those silly ol' 50's housewives! What were those 50's people thinking?! 

Crazy ol' educational video narrators! So ridiculous, huh?!

You know what i mean, right? - the kind of b-roll featured in all kinds of docs, but especially Micheal Moore docs and all the other docs styled like Micheal Moore docs. Anyway, it's not that SSL doesn't have some 50's Housewives and dudes in suits talking directly to the camera. We definitely do. It's just that ours is not random B-roll, thrown in here and there. It's our actual movie. We are not just laughing at such silly stylings. We use those styles...but kinda different. And we're definitely not laughing at the idea of how things used to be...in fact, we're pointing out that thinking things have changed much is the real thing we should be laughing about.

That silly ol' dichotomy between "wife-types" and "whore-types" - too bad that dichotomy didn't actually stay in the 50's! 

That crazy ol' SSL narrator talking about the 60's/70's sexual revolution not actually being much of a sexual revolution for the female orgasm!

So, I think the cheese in SSL is an unexpected type of cheese. It's not familiar in the documentary genre. It's also just less like the familiar cheese of say, the Simpsons, and tends more towards something much stranger like Tim and Eric Awesome Show  - Great Job!

Who doesn't enjoy the cheese of Troy McClure?

Tim and Eric, on the other hand, can get a little weird for some tastes

This is during a musical number called "Petite Feet" which involves..well just google it.

It's not exactly Tim and Eric styling either though. Yes, we have some rainbow unicorns and other weird, cheesy shit, but we certainly don't take anything as far as they do, and the the big difference is the movie itself is not played as a joke in the way cheesy, weird stuff like Tim and Eric or midnight movies are. Science, Sex and the Ladies is a serious movie. The actual information that is being presented is an accurate, cited, well thought-out, and often densely packed argument. It's just there's this very not-serious element in the visual presentation. So, there's a particular mix of the serious and the silly that clearly doesn't fit a mold.

Science, Sex and the Ladies making a point about sprirtual/emotional/non-orgasmic physical pleasure being great and maybe even climactic, but yet still different than an orgasm

The Funbunch! in SSL talking about "Why Ladies Don't Masturbate as Much?"

The other thing that I think worries people with the categorization is that it's kinda sex-ed like, so people immediately start thinking it's for young people. I get that sex ed is something we think of as a teen sort of thing, and I get that adults always tend to think they are already educated, so it wouldn't occur to them that something sex edish is meant for them too. However, the main point in SSL is that we all need to be re-educated. Our whole sexual culture is misinformed about the basics of female sexual release. That means, with all likelihood and to some degree, you are miseducated, I am miseducated, and the expert we read about sexual matters from is too. We all are. So the movie is aimed at sexual researchers, sexual education experts, and grown-ass married people who've had lots of sex and relationships as much, if not more than, it's aimed at teens. So, it includes some sex ed, but it really isn't aimed at kids...this is also very, very confusing to people.

So, let me now lay out how this movie should be categorized. Science, Sex, and the Ladies is an educational video mixed with a midnight movie. I fully realize that these two genres maybe aren't supposed to be mixed, and the description might not create a satisfactory enough box, but it is at least satisfactory to me...for the moment at least.

Because one cannot decide on an audience for a movie until the movie is appropriately categorized, we can now get back to that question. "Who is the audience for this movie?"  At first glance this genre mix doesn't help us answer that question in an easily understandable way. Who watches educational videos? Kids. Who watches midnight movies? Cynical adults who tend toward blue comedy. They simply don't mix! 

I see it differently though. An education video is for anyone who wants to learn something....so that's hopefully most people. Plus, as I described above, SSL is meant to re-educate everyone who has been immersed in our current sexual culture - which is, again, most people. I take a lighter view of the midnight movie crowd too. Yes, there is lots of sex and violence and really weird shit and ironic watching, but I think all those things come together because they make a fun experience. The way I see it, midnight movies are for anyone who likes going to the movies and simply having a fun, somewhat raucous, communal experience. To me that's exactly the mix that is SSL - it's a movie that is fun as shit to watch - the more people you watch with, the more fun it is. It creates a communal feeling in the audience - like everyone just went on a weird-ass journey together, but it's more than just fun midnight movie fluff. It is informative and thoughtful, and leaves the viewer with more knowledge and understanding of the world than when they came in. 

So there you go. If I must give you a particular "type" of audience for Science, Sex and the Ladies, it is people who would go to a screening of The Room, or Rocky Horror, or Grindhouse, but would also rent informative docs like The Corporation or Bigger, Faster, Stronger  (Although, honestly, my real answer is a completely and utterly unacceptable one - I think this movie is for everyone).

Our Latest Review at IndyRed.com

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Well, we finally did it. We missed out on a perfect score because we're just too damn gross. Science, Sex, and the Ladies got ourselves another review over at Indy Red. It's a really cool indie movie review site from out of Ontario. The review made us blush a little bit, but it seems our movie made the reviewer blush a bit too. Here's how the reviewer summed it up.

As I wrote above, from a technical view this should score a five! However, I don't feel right about scoring Science Sex and the Ladies a perfect score when I know in my heart that a large number of viewers wouldn't make it through the first 15 minutes. But let me add that for any unsure people who may want to watch... do yourself a favor and push through the uncomfortable parts. A real Gem awaits if you do.

We thought it was a pretty nice review. The truth is we, and in particular Charlie, spent a shit-ton of time making sure that the technical quality of the movie was up to par. The parts like final sound and score that we couldn't assure quality with, we raised money for (Thanks again you fabuloso Kickstarter Backers!). So, having someone say they were impressed with it meant a lot to us. We also love to hear that people thought it was funny and entertaining and thought-provoking. But man, Charlie spent a shit-ton of hours in front of a monitor rotoscoping and creating backgrounds and all that tedious crap. Our thought was that if the quality of the picture and sound wasn't great, then no matter what the content, it would be disregarded. The strange part is that when the technical qualities of a movie are up to par, they become unnoticeable. They don't distract. They simply become the invisible medium for the creative part. People already expect that level of quality because it's what they are used to in Hollywood movies (well most). Things like bad sound just aren't tolerated, but for a movie as small as ours - getting to that point was no easy task, and a lot of indie movies this size, and even larger, don't reach it. So I guess I'm just saying that it's cool to have someone point out that our hard work paid off. We like praise.

Back to my point. Our movie just has too damn much vulva up front...or maybe it was our example porn? I'm not sure, but it does take people out of their comfort zone a bit - and that's intentional. Everything is in there for a reason. If something needed to be shown to  make a point, we showed that shit. The fake vulva and penis on a platter in the first scene is weird as hell, but we like to think it adds a bit of humor and anatomical correctness to the dinner table demonstration. That's just how this movie rolls, and actually the reviewer seemed to get that,

The only real complaint I have are the overly graphic areas of this film. What's funny is that the graphic parts also help make the film what it is! I also know that my feelings regarding these sections were more out of personal embarrassment... than anything really shown on screen. I am, after all an adult. Could it be that my personal feelings regarding the subject matter were half of what this movie was about? Maybe.

What's actually pretty funny is that I have really never gotten feedback - face to face or anonymous -that the graphic parts were bad or inappropriate within the movie. I do get a lot of feedback where someone say they don't mind it and they get it, but they worry that other people (maybe even most people) will have a problem with it. It's like everyone underestimates the ability for other people to handle this movie. I used to worry that we might have made a movie that is just too much for people, but the more people who see it and talk to me about it, the more I know that people are largely fine with the graphic parts. They might be a little uncomfortable, but they can reason away their own feelings. Now I just need to prove to people that other people will be okay with it too.

Anyway, we were over the moon about our 4 star rating at Indy Red, and a big thanks to the person over there that took the time to watch it and give it a thoughtful review! They get a 4 vulva rating from me (!)(!)(!)(!)

Here's the Full Review. Check it out. http://www.indyred.com/science-sex-and-the-ladies-review.html

An SSL Review at the Independent Critic!

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Science, Sex and the Ladies got another review! This one is over at The Independent Critic. Check it out HERE. The site is actually run by someone who lives in Indiana, but I didn't know that when I was sending out press kits. I'm always surprised at stuff we ol' Hoosiers are doing. There really is more than corn in Indiana (Hoosiers actually might be the only ones to get that. It's not just a random line made up because people often talk about corn and Indiana as one. It's a line from a long running commercial for Indiana Beach - an amusement park with a lake my sister once described as having "carp on carp")

Anyway, Richard, the critic over there at The Independent Critic, wrote some really nice stuff about this movie, and we thank him for taking the time to review it!

While this isn't the first doc I've seen to avoid the dreaded "talking head" approach to documentary filmmaking, one has to be impressed with the way this intimate yet important subject is approached and presented. 

While Science, Sex and the Ladies has its humor, you should know going into it that it doesn't make fun of sex, light of sex, or serve up sex in any sort of titillating way. This is a documentary, a well-informed documentary, and it takes its mission seriously and completes it incredibly well. - The Independent Critic