AILSA CHANG, HOST:
I'm watching an R-rated scene unfold. Two people are writhing on a mattress, having fake sex.
YEHUDA DUENYAS: Take one.
(SOUNDBITE OF CLAPPERBOARD CLACKING)
JACLYN CHANTEL: Action.
CHANG: All right, we've got two actors on the bed. One's on all fours. The other is coming up from behind.
Now, these actors are fully clothed. They're wearing face masks that cover their mouths when they kiss. And then after a few moments, they use their go-to word in this training session to pretend that they're climaxing.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: Vocal. Vocal. Vocal.
CHANTEL: Cut.
CHANG: Obviously, this is not a real film set. It's a simulated film set taping simulated sex. We're at a training workshop for intimacy coordinators. These are people who choreograph sex scenes.
JOEL HARRISON: We're going to take your pants off seductively, and then you're going to take off your shirt seductively.
CHANG: Intimacy coordinators make on-screen sex look more authentic. And they also help actors feel safer during filming. Like, right here in this scene, there's actually a small, deflated Pilates ball between the two actors' pelvises to provide a barrier between them. Part of the art here is to make sure that you don't see the artifice.
HARRISON: Is this good?
CHANTEL: It was. We could see through his legs and see the ball, but if you get up just a little bit - yeah, that's great.
CHANG: After the #MeToo movement took off in 2017, intimacy coordinators became prominent on sets as one answer to Hollywood's problem with sexual harassment and abuse, a problem that trainee Marta Gotz (ph) saw firsthand.
MARTA GOTZ: And of course, as a female, if I see another female who's 22 starting out in an industry that's very rough on women, I step in.
CHANG: Seven years ago, she was first assistant director on a film, and she says she saw a crew member plying a young actress with tequila shots to loosen her up for her first ever sex scene.
GOTZ: She felt very pressured to be topless. She didn't feel comfortable. She's like, I don't want to. She was kind of on the fence. There's a million ways to shoot a scene. So we found a compromise when we just saw just, you know, the top of the mound, no nipples. But she was willing to work with that.
CHANG: Now, almost a decade after the height of the #MeToo movement, you will find intimacy coordinators on lots of sets. And as of February, the job is now covered by SAG-AFTRA, the labor union that represents actors. It's also offering new opportunities for trainees like Joel Harrison (ph). He told me that before learning how to choreograph fake sex on screen, he was having real sex on screen.
HARRISON: I pivoted to OnlyFans and porn and did pretty well for about five years of that. So I'm kind of transitioning out of that now, but I started hearing about intimacy coordination, like, last year. And I was like, wow, this really seems like something that my life experiences have actually equipped me really well for.
CHANG: Still, even if you have had plenty of real sex on screen, how do you make fake sex look real? I asked Jaclyn Chantel that, one of the intimacy coordinators who cofounded CINTIMA, this training organization.
CHANTEL: People know when something looks real on camera.
CHANG: Right there on set, you know.
CHANTEL: You can see it on camera. And then you can shift a chin angle. You can shift a leg, and then it all changes, and you're like, ooh, that's it.
CHANG: How much does cultural competency play in your role? - because I imagine when we're talking about seduction, like, the dance of it or intimacy, sex, a lot of that depends on culturally specific things - right? - whether we're talking about race, sexual orientation, age.
CHANTEL: Yeah. I mean, like for me as a Black woman, it's very simple that I might wake up with a bonnet and, like, be having an intimate moment. And so if there is a white person who hasn't had that experience, then that is going to impact whether that story is told to the extent that it could be told.
DUENYAS: One of the reasons why we built our training program is we wanted to really bring more diversity into the field of intimacy coordination. And so when we train, we really teach the spectrum of sexuality.
CHANG: This is Yehuda Duenyas, the lead instructor and another cofounder of CINTIMA. He's been doing this work for decades. And so he has seen the role of intimacy coordinator fall in and out of favor with some of the most powerful people in Hollywood.
I'm very curious what happens when actors you're working with don't want to cooperate because over the years, there has been some backlash. Like Gwyneth Paltrow said she would feel stifled by intimacy coordinators. Jennifer Lawrence mentioned that she didn't use one with Robert Pattinson because she said - these are her words - he's not pervy. And these actors sometimes worry that an intimacy coordinator can interfere with the spontaneity, the organicness (ph) of a sex scene. What do you think of that concern?
DUENYAS: I think we're here to make these scenes more professional. You know, those concerns are valid, especially with a new department and a new field that people haven't worked with. It's, like, a touchy subject, intimacy and sex. And people don't want to be told how to do that necessarily. And so I think at best, what we do is we come in, we can actually get in there and help choreograph. But if an actor feels like they got it and they know what they're doing, there's still a lot of scaffolding and structure that we bring to the process, and there's a lot of legal stuff that we do.
CHANG: Well, not only that, there's a power dynamic. Like, I just mentioned two A-listers who probably have a fair amount of clout on set.
DUENYAS: Absolutely.
CHANG: And intimacy coordination involves people who don't necessarily have that power on a set.
DUENYAS: Absolutely. And so, you know, when you're working with two A-listers, they might be perfectly comfortable, but when the A-lister is working with a day player that's coming in, there's a much different power dynamic there.
CHANG: And you're there to make that person feel safe.
DUENYAS: We're there to make that person also feel safe or looked out for. Acting does not necessarily need to feel safe, but they need to know that there's a structure around it and that a producer is not going to come in and say, you know what? This isn't hot enough. Take your shirt off.
CHANG: Do you feel, though, this pushback, this backlash that I'm describing has been building in recent years?
DUENYAS: I feel like it's been getting easier, actually. I feel like people are starting to learn how to work with intimacy coordinators, what we do. A good intimacy coordinator is not going to be in the way.
CHANG: I want to talk about the amount of sex that we are seeing on screens these days 'cause I saw this report in The Economist by a film analyst who found that the amount of sexual content in top Hollywood movies has declined by nearly 40% since 2000. Do you have any idea why that might be the case?
DUENYAS: I'm seeing more lately. I mean, just "Heated Rivalry" alone has...
CHANG: Oh, yeah.
DUENYAS: ...Really, like, turned up the heat. There are 10 films at Sundance were all erotically charged. So I'm really seeing an intimacy boom right now.
CHANG: A sex comeback.
DUENYAS: Yeah, and I think it's wonderful.
CHANG: Why do you think there is this boom? What's happening?
DUENYAS: You know, I'm actually hoping that it's because of what we do. I feel like people can now not be so afraid to tell these stories. And, like, there's all of these new examples of projects that have come out recently that are really about how humans are navigating their own desire, their own need for connection, their own need to express their humanity and their own intimacies. And I think that people really want to see that. I think there's so much disconnection...
CHANG: Yeah.
DUENYAS: ...In our culture and society that I think people are dying to connect.
CHANG: Craving that now.
DUENYAS: Craving connection. And I think that if we can get that through our media and through the stories that we tell each other, I think that's a huge win.
CHANG: Thank you so much, Yehuda.
DUENYAS: It's so nice to speak with you. Thank you.
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