Hollywood is so insulated, bottled, out-of-touch, and broken, it truly boggles the mind. Case in point, the sexless sex comedy One Night Only that just let off a humiliating stink bomb in 3,012 theaters.
Using the concept of The Purge franchise, One Night Only imagines a near-future where sex outside of marriage is allowed for only 12 hours a year. Within this fictional world live Allie (Monica Barbaro) and Owen (Callum Turner), two singles looking for more than a one-night stand whose paths cross on that particular night.
What is the primary job of a movie…?
What makes a movie successful…?
In a word, it must deliver.
And when I say deliver, I mean deliver on the expectations of the audience. Action movies need to deliver on the action. Love stories need to deliver the feelz. Comedies need to deliver the laughs. One of the reasons Road House (1989) is still so popular is because it delivers. No one thinks Road House deserved any Oscars, but if you’re looking for a movie featuring cool guys doing cool things complete with iconic catchphrases, where the bad guys get what they got coming, Road House delivers.
Movies that deliver are timeless.
Explain to me then what you, as a moviegoer, expect from an R-rated sex comedy that takes place on that one night a year when sex is legal? Sex, right? A little sensuality, right?
Ah, but what do you expect when the director is a retard?
Well, you should expect this…
I cut out so much. There was so much nudity in this movie that we shot on the streets. I felt we needed to show the world that way. As we started to show it to audiences, we felt it takes you out of the movie. You’re engaged in the characters and what’s going on, and then you pan over and there’s two naked people having sex, and you watch the audience … it’s a physical thing. They turn to who they’re with and … the benefits do not nearly outweigh the negatives of it. So we just kept editing it out until we got a balance, and those comments went away.
He claims he has “empirical data” (he actually used that term) proving people don’t want sex in movies…
I have long pages of empirical data about it. The only thing is I don’t think it’s just Gen Z and Gen Alpha. I believe it’s been a societal shift from taking nudity in adult situations and putting them on your phones at home for everybody. Now it’s more of a private, intimate thing that people don’t want to see when they’re in a shared experience. Whenever people now see nudity or very adult situations in a big theater, they get uncomfortable.
Dear Director: If the nudity you shot took people out of the movie, that’s a you problem, not “empirical data” that human nature suddenly rewired itself after thousands of years.
Allow me to drop some empirical data of my own:
The much-mocked “One Night Only” only grossed $5.7M. The RT audience gave it 72%; reviews are at 48%. No sex or nudity—the director claimed it was due to prudish audiences. That backfired.
No one is looking for porn or sleaze in a mainstream movie. No Normal person wants to feel dirty watching a mainstream movie. All we’re looking for is 1) delivering on your freaken promise of a premise and 2) for some brave soul to bring back the sexiness that Hollywood has delivered so well going back more than a hundred years. There are tried-and-true ways that have proven tasteful to film beautiful women, handsome men, romance, and sex that make the audience swoon.
That amazing, introductory close-up of Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca (1942), Henry Fonda fussing with Barbara Stanwyck’s shoe in The Lady Eve (1941), Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie proving married people still have the hots for one another in Don’t Look Now (1973), and Linda Hamilton and Michael Biehn making John Connor in The Terminator (1984).
But, today, Hollywood is run by a bunch of prigs, a load of prudes, who have no idea how to dress, pose, and photograph beautiful people in a way that delivers a little harmless erotic charge.
What do you do with an industry that took all the sexiness out of a Charlie’s Angels movie?
The other problem is that Hollywood will no longer make movies for guys. We get plenty of movies for women. We get plenty of movies produced for men and women. But guy movies — cool men, hot chicks, lots of action — are verboten. So verboten, in fact, they take our franchises and feminize them.
Then they flop.
Still, nothing changes.
It’s all so stupid.