Sex Consultant to the Stars— And Gary Graver

On November 16, legendary cinematographer Gary Graver, Orson Welles' cameraman and devoted "second," passed away at age 68, of cancer.

Graver was beloved in Hollywood. He learned filmmaking in Vietnam, in the Navy Combat Camera Crew. He worked for Roger Corman, shot countless horror classics, and photographed Ronnie Howard's first spin as a director in 1977's original Grand Theft Auto! 

Just a few years ago, he appeared at American Cinematheque with Peter Bogdanovich and Oya Kodar, Welles' executrix and last lover, to show fragments of Orson Welles late, unfinished movies. He didn't have much time left.

But the talented D.P. had a secret. It's one of those old-fashioned secrets that half of Hollywood takes it for granted, while the other half is so intent on keeping it under wraps that it appears nowhere in the man's obituary.

Graver was memorialized everywhere, acclaimed in every paper from New York to L.A. But nowhere is it mentioned that for twenty years, Gary Graver directed and shot more than 135 erotic, X-rated films— several of which are considered among the best "adult" movies ever made: 3 AM, Amanda By Night, and V:The Hot One. The man is an Adult Industry Hall-of-Famer. The idea that people involved in Gary's legacy are covering up his true accomplishments because they're so prejudiced against sex is both mysterious and pathetic.

In porn, Gary Graver was known as Robert McCallum. He worked in the sex biz for twenty years, and as porn critic Mark Kernes wrote in AVN:

Nearly all of McCallum's better hardcore movies have been available continuously on videotape and later DVD since they were completed – which is more than can be said for many of his mainstream productions. In that sense, it could be argued that Graver's legacy in the adult industry is on a par with the bulk of his Hollywood accomplishments.

I worshiped Robert McCallum's work; I studied his porn like it was D.H. Lawrence with a lens. His first explicit feature, 3 A.M., became my inspiration for my own first big-feature erotic screenplay— the scenes between lesbian lovers "Violet and Corky" in the Wachowski Brother's Bound.

If you look at Bound, and then go watch McCallum's 3AM shower scene between Georgina Spelvin and Judith Hamilton, you will see where I got all my thrills. Georgina was the best actress porn ever had (Devil in Miss Jones) and Judith was her real girlfriend at the time.  I sent a copy of that tape to Larry and Andy Wachowski, with the note: "watch the master at work."

As critic Jim Holliday wrote in Only The Best: "[3AM] succeeds not only as a sex film, but on a much higher level as well. In addition to the great acting and the solid story, there is a character development seldom seen in erotic films."

Graver's best porn work was from the era in the late 70s and early 80s when X-rated movies were still "allowed" to be heavy, to be dark. 3AM and V don't have sunny endings. The level of emotion, and in both these cases, loss, is something you'd never see in the perky popcorn of today's XXX. His cinematic style, the eroticism created by his camera and lighting, is unsurpassed. None of the contemporary young directors or actors in adult would even know how to pull it off. It's practically a lost art at this point, just like Orson's movie that is never going to be finished now.

Is Gary's surviving family ashamed of his erotic work?  Does the Times think his full resumé is beyond the pale? What gives?  It seems like a strange omission in today's film-geek atmosphere. What did Orson think of his blue work? Did Gary use the porn money to further Welles' unfinished work, or was it just the fun of sex, drugs, and rocknroll? Did Gary ever go on the record about his whole career; did he talk about his best erotic work?

Graver's horror movies were sometimes just as "silly," for better or worse, as anything he ever did with actors fucking on camera, and yet all his exploitation flicks are still on his official CV. I'd rather see 3 A.M. over Satan's Sadists any day of the week!

It's understood in Hollywood today that most of the legends have worked both sides of high and low culture. It's considered backward to think there's a definitive aesthetic difference! Can you imagine John Water's disowning Pink Flamingos?

Ten years ago when I choreographed and consulted on Bound, I wrote a story about how we put the erotic scenes and characters together.

I offer my essay here again, as my homage to Gary Graver's/Robert McCallum's legacy: how to show two beautiful, complicated women make love, and never let anyone forget it.

Susie

Sex Consultant to the Stars

I've given a lot of tips to people about their love life over the years— but I can't say I've ever had the chance to watch and see if they actually followed my instructions to the letter.

That's what I found so satisfying about getting a job as a cinematic sex consultant— for once I got to ensure that all those techniques I raved about, my emphasis on the perfect caress— were played out to my most exacting standards. Yeah, it was sweet all right; I don't think I'll ever be satisfied with handing out free—not to mention unverified)— bedroom advice ever again.

I was the "technical consultant" to a movie that soaked many a critic’s wet test: Bound, starring Gina Gershon and Jennifer Tilly. It was the first-time feature from Matrix writer/directors Larry and Andy Wachowski, a film noir thriller about a pair of lesbian lovers who try to double-cross the mob.

What was so “technical” about this film? There's quite a bit of suspense and graphic violence— and I'm the kind of girl who can't even handle the buildup of a surprise birthday cake.

No, my expertise was developing the characters of the butch/femme lovers: Corky (a James Dean look-alike, recently paroled) and luscious Violet (a curvy mobster mistress).

It all started two years  before the picture’s release with a modest little fan letter. I got a package from Larry and Andy, attached to a script, saying that they loved my writing. They held my early bible on dyke sex, Susie Sexpert's Lesbian Sex World, in high esteem. They said they would be honored if I would consider making a cameo appearance in their new film.

"That's nice," I thought— and not to sound spoiled, but this invitation didn't electrify me. It seems everybody is making their own movie today— including me. I've been part of  many an amateur production with untrained enthusiasm. I frequently get asked to pull my dress up over my head on camera, or write dialog for some experimental performance art. I once lent out my Spain-autographed thigh-high leather boots for a comrade's dominatrix documentary. While I applaud my friends' virtuosity, working on their movies was a grind, and I've become more discriminating.

Here's what was intriguing about Andy and Larry’s letter: the letterhead didn't sport their name. Instead, it was embossed: "Dino De Laurentis Studios." Quite a calling card. I decided to postpone loading the dishwasher and sat down with the script.

I didn't budge for the next hour except to scream between pages. It was one diabolical setup. The action was razor tight, the characters were whispering in my ears. This was fantastic writing. There was only one thing missing.

I wrote back to Mr. and Mr. Wachowski:

"Your script is outstanding. I'd be delighted to play your bar girl cameo. But if you don't think I'm too presumptuous, could I be your lesbian-sex consultant? I notice that whenever the two lovers fall into an embrace, it doesn't say exactly what happens next. On behalf of every movie-goer who can't live through another cornball lesbian love scene, could I please, please, give you my words of advice on what two women like this would do in bed together?"

They said yes. They may have even said, "Yahoo." I met Larry and his then-wife, Thea, at a Holiday Inn a few weeks later, and they were the opposite of every Hollywood celebrity I'd encountered in the past. They weren't kidding about knowing my stuff. They could quote my own prose right back to my face. I knew they saw the dykes in their movie as having the kind of sassy, let's-get-down-to-it sensibility that I've always written about.

I don't know how many of you have seen the catalog of lesbian films over the years. Most of them, like Personal Best, or Desert Hearts, concern a tender coming-out story— shyly romantic, erotically timid. I'm known to be shy and sentimental myself, but lesbian life does not begin and end with baby powder.

When you think about it, most people's best sexual experiences don't occur the first time between the sheets. As you gain more experience about who you are, and what you like, your sex life improves drastically. So why are Hollywood lesbians always portrayed in their diaper stage? I longed for characters who knew what they wanted and were hungry for more. I wanted to get beyond dewy girlishness and into some pussy power.

First, I sent Larry and Andy a portrait photo from the cover of the book I was working on, Nothing But the Girl, about lesbian erotic photography. When I first met Gina, I carried the same picture in my hand: a beautiful butch woman sitting a la Rodin's "Thinker, tattooed and muscled with a cowlick like Elvis, but with all the shadows and soft curves of a woman's figure. The model's name was Ronny, but when I sent the picture to the Wachowski’s, I wrote, "This is your Corky."

Corky's character is a revelation in Hollywood cinema, because it is the first time since the days of Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo that female masculinity has been eroticized. Traditionally, when we see a woman in the movies who’s a "dyke,” she’s a mannish woman, but more than that, a psychopath, the social misfit. She's the prison warden, the weird jock, the brutal nurse, the fucked-up punk. When have we ever seen a gorgeous woman of our generation on screen who moved like Jimmy Dean, sulked like a young Brando, and drew a bead on you like the Sundance Kid? Corky had to be the kind of woman that everyone in the theater would be dying to go to bed with, and she had to do it without acting the least bit like a girly-girl.

Violet, on the other hand, couldn't just be any straight girl on the drift. She had to be a femme diva, as calculating and sensual as a cat. She’s a woman who's lost a bit of her soul fucking men for money, but who knows exactly what kind of touch she needs to find redemption. Most of all— and this was the part that cracked the cliché about dangerous femme fatales— she had to be a femme you could count on, whether it was getting you off or getting you out of a jam.

The Wachowskis had the character and dialog ready to roll in their script; it was just a matter of how to keep that same feeling going in the sex scenes. Given the infantile nature of American censorship, how much could we show on screen before we got our hand slapped by the producers? It was a frightening prospect.

I sent the brothers a couple of X-rated film clips of lesbian sex I turned to for inspiration. One was a shower scene from Robert McCallum's 3 AM, a golden oldie of the porn world that makes every audience who's ever seen it dead silent with awe. The other piece I told them about was an art world video I'd acted in for a friend, called Kathy, by Cecilia Dougherty. I loved the sex scenes in these movies and I had some ideas about how to shoot the same sort of thing for an R-rating.

There were two main ideas on my mind. One, unlike most Hollywood lesbian scenarios, this movie shouldn't insinuate oral sex— that's not the kind of characters we were looking at. Bound’s premise is about getting inside someone very fast, trusting them with everything. These women had to be inside each other, fucking one other. Penetration was the act we wanted to imply. Obviously we weren't going to get away with gynecological or hardcore shots in a movie that was headed for America's shopping malls. But I knew all we had to show were the right clues.

There are thousands of Hollywood heterosexual movies where we easily imagine the male and female lovers having intercourse— everything from Here to Eternity to Basic Instinct. So how do you imply lesbians having "intercourse"?

My idea, inspired from the Kathy footage, was that we show a woman's legs, straining and squeezing, and that we also see that her lover's forearm between her thighs at the same time. We dwell on that arm for a moment, moving back and forth in a fucking rhythm, unrelenting. Then, instead of following her arm all the way up to her lover's pussy, we would cut to her stomach, fluttering like a little butterfly in that spasm we all recognize as orgasm. I loved the idea of eroticizing a woman's belly like that. A lot of traditional erotic movies try to show a woman's sexual pleasure by focusing the lens on her cleavage. Maybe that's what the director was looking at, but that’s not where she’s coming!

The other key idea I offered was to eroticize the women's hands whenever they were flirting or making love with each other. "A lesbian's hands are her cock,” I said. “They're the hard-on of the movie— that's what you want to follow.

When I saw Corky's hands on screen, I wanted to imagine how they would feel inside me. Her loving hands are the metaphorical substitute for the genital shots that we wouldn’t be showing.

I went through my whole little consulting session alternating between glee and dread. I had gasped my way through one big-budget film consulting experience before, and it burned me like a marshmallow on a stick. In the late 80s, I was approached by a dapper man from southern California who asked me if I thought that there was a film market for a woman's erotic point of view.

Uh, yeah, as I matter of fact I did. I wouldn't even have a career if it wasn't for all the incredible women who've come out of the woodwork to write their own erotic stories, make their own movies, sex toys, and social lives that incorporate their genuine desires. I don't know a single woman who isn't disappointed with the way female sexuality is portrayed in television, women's magazines, and studio movies. It's garbage and it's insulting.

So I ended up writing the dialog for a script with a woman director I admired, Lizzie Borden, and I loved working with the actors during that shoot. But once I was off the scene, the producer took the movie and got rid of every element that made him personally uncomfortable— and there went the movie's promise. I introduced the film during its premiere at a Seattle film fest, and had to face an angry audience who felt like I'd personally let them down. If this was women's erotica, then it was a major sellout. I wanted to wear one of those buttons that say, "I just work here." I agreed with everyone's criticism. Why no male nudity? Why all the coy lesbian pattycake, and avoidance of any man to man eroticism, when it was clearly in the script's intentions? Why all the gender clichés?

Up until that point I had the Good Coozie-Keeping Seal of integrity on all my writings and projects. The moment I had signed up with this conventional Hollywood studio, my reputation was trashed. What a nightmare.

I felt like Larry, Andy and I were on the same wavelength, but I wasn't going to be around when their producers, bean-counters and lawyers got their hands on it. This movie was going to seen by every lesbian and lesbian-lover I knew, and they would crucify me if it was anything less than authentic.

Most fans I meet ask me about the actresses in this story, rather than the directors. Before this experience, I think I'd have done the same. When you see someone on screen blowing your mind, thrilling you with their charisma, you feel like all your thanks and identification should rest at their feet.

Andy and Larry sure don't look like a couple of glamorous dykes, but believe me, the characters you saw up there come straight from their groovy imaginations and fertile libidos, with a little inspiration from me, their wives, and probably a lot of other artists and lovers they've admired over the years. Their actresses mirrored them, not the other way around.

I was apprehensive to meet Gina Gershon. Her role, “Corky,” was the one I was worried about. Every actress is trained to play a whore/mistress/siren, the physical outline of Violet’s femme character. But what women in Hollywood gets asked to play a sexy butch, a bulldagger you'd like to get to know inside and out?

Gina came up to meet me in San Francisco before the shoot started. It was a relief to see her in person from the moment she walked up and grabbed my hand. She was physically right for the part— dark and handsome and brooding, no problem.

I blurted out, "I hope you don't think this is some granola-chewing, Birkenstock-wearing womb-oon on the page here," —and she laughed out loud. Gina was already on the right track, thinking about the most erotically compelling male icons in movie history to draw her machisma from. She had been around the block. That's what I wanted. It wouldn't have done anybody a favor to have a genuine panty-tested lesbian if she had been a Pollyanna or a prude. Most importantly, Gina was an actress. I gave her some books, and directions to the sleaziest, sweatiest lesbian club night I could think of. She was set.

My last gift to cinematic realism was just before my trip down to L.A. to shoot my cameo scene. I was to play my cameo as a fetching babe in a dive that Corky tries to unsuccessfully pick up. My big line is "Hello," but I look like a fox.

I knew the bar scene would be stocked with extras to make it look like a happening place. If the studio was sending over extras from a typical Hollywood casting agency— I shuddered. Please don't let them send in the clowns. Los Angeles is such a closeted town. Women are so uptight about their femininity there— as a native, I can tell you it's the plastic surgery and dieting capital of the world. It would be hard to find extras who looked like liberated dykes.

I called Larry again and asked if they could find it within their budget to let me bring down a handful of authentic babes from San Francisco who would make our set really look a lesbian joint, instead of a juice bar. They said yes— thank you Daddy! We spent all day shooting that barroom scene, but it looked just right in the final cut.

The first time I saw Bound was in front of 1500 delirious women and a couple hundred very curious men. I arranged for the San Francisco Gay and Lesbian Film Festival to host the premiere of the movie in the Castro theater: a grandiose art deco movie house that still has an organist rising out of the pit pounding the keys with, "San Francisco, Open your Golden Gates." You feel like putting on your opera gloves and raising a glass of champagne before you enter the theater.

Larry, Andy, their wives Thea and Alise, assistant Phil, the film's editor, and our illustrious extras arrived to the entrance in a white limousine. I was squeezing Larry's and Andy's palms so tight they're lucky to still be able to hold a pen. Everyone in the house had heard that I was the "sex consultant.” I think they imagined that meant I stood over Gina and Jennifer with a riding crop, snapping, "Deeper, harder, a little to the left!"

The festival director introduced our small mob onto the stage, and I put on my most radiant smile. Some idiot from the festival's sponsoring advertisers got up to the mike to plug why "Everyone should buy an Isuzu SUV". He was filled with all that new gay marketing rhetoric, and told the packed house with utter seriousness that the new Isuzu was the top choice among today's lesbian automobile shoppers.

I thought I was going to lose my mind with such tackiness before our beautiful film's debut. As soon as he walked off the stage, I grabbed the mike, and said, "I don't know about you, but most lesbians I know are still taking the bus."

The crowd went crazy— (was that our first standing ovation?)— and after that, every single moment was like a dream come true.

The movie looked like butter. The actors were on fire, the audience picked up every erotic cue and innuendo, and they screamed just like I had a year ago in my kitchen, turning the pages. When the end came, they exploded in a orgy of gratitude. I thought we were going be carried out on the crowd's shoulders.

Larry and Andy said they made up their minds to never watch the movie again after that Castro premiere, and they've stuck to their decision. They said it couldn't get any better, so let it be the finest and last memory of the audience who completely and utterly "got it."

I'm more of a glutton, I'm afraid. When the movie finally opened in my home town, I took nine different field trips with my friends. I watched it with my dad, I watched it with my daughter's first grade teacher and her husband. I watched it with my ex-girlfriends, who I must say provided as much of my consulting wisdom as anything else you could mention.

I'm so filled with femme-fucking-pride, I'm ready to burst. But here's the thing, see, I'm bisexual— and I think those romantic scenes in Hollywood boy-girl epic are awfully tired. They don't know what they're doing, and they think "HBO" is as hot as anything can get. Snore. Give me a call, boys. I know there 's a thousand directors with a healthy budget in Hollywood right now, ready to shoot their much-anticipated sex scene and dreading every moment of it. I 'll make you feel a whole lot better, Mr. Director. This will be the part of your movie that folks will talk about forever. You don't even have to give me a cameo. Just let me get my hands on the words.

That's Gary with Orson, then Gina and Jennifer in a promo still from Bound, and finally below, a polaroid of me on the set before my big cameo with my one-word line: "Hello." Didn't Marilyn start that way too?