Movies about sex are usually box office flops. says CNN.
Last year, five of the top-10-grossing movies were PG. Of the top 25, only four were rated R. “Increasingly, if a movie is rated R,” says producer John Goldwyn, “audiences won’t go.”
Outside of the sophisticated urban art-house milieu, most American moviegoers just don’t want much sex in their movies. According to studio marketers, it tends to make them (especially men) uncomfortable. “If you spell sex in marketing materials, it doesn’t sell,” producer Peter Guber says. “If you spell fun, it sells. Sex inside a comedy candy-coats sex and allows the audience to feel comfortable. Laughter covers up insecurity. Sex sells, but not serious sex.
Films can be sexy, but they can’t portray the sexual intimacy most people crave. In the movies, you have to have safe sex palatable to a younger audience. The portrayal has to be violent or funny.”
Which is why vulgar, dumb, funny sex plays in such movies as “There’s Something About Mary,” “American Pie” and “Road Trip.” “When they’re flinging around in a wet T-shirt contest in ‘Old School,’ it’s fine,” DreamWorks marketing chief Terry Press says, “because no emotion is attached to it.”
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