Intimacy coordinators embrace their next chapter in Hollywood

It's a recent Sunday in Los Angeles and I'm watching an R-rated scene unfold in

front of me. Two people are writhing on a mattress. Having fake sex. Take one. Action?

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. Vocal. Vocal. Vocal. Vocal. 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. We're gonna

take your pants off deductively. And then you're gonna take off your shirts

deductively. 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'

palvices to provide a barrier between them. Part of the art here is to make

sure that you don't see the artifice. It was we could see through his legs and

through the ball. But if you get up just a little bit yeah that's great. After

the Me Too 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 Gottz saw firsthand. And of course as a female if I

see another female who's 22 starting out in the industry that's very

rough on women I step in. Seven years ago she was first assistant director on a

film and she said she saw a crew member applying a young actress with

tequila shots to loosen her up for her first ever sex scene. 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 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 you know

nipples but she was willing to work with that. Consider this intimacy coordinators

where many hats fake sex choreographer advocate for actors boundaries. There are

a fixture in Hollywood but they haven't always been welcomed with open arms.

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ActiveCampaign.com It's considered this from NPR. Almost a decade after the

height of the MeToo movement you'll find intimacy coordinators on lots of sets

and as a 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. He told me that before learning how to choreograph fake sex on

screen. He was having real sex on screen. I pivoted to only fans in porn that

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. Still, even if you have had plenty of real

sex on screen, how do you make fake sex look real? I asked Jacqueline Shantelvatt,

one of the intimacy coordinators who co-founded Sintima, this training

organization. People know when something looks real on camera. Right there on set.

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, oh that's that's it. How much does cultural

competency play in your role? Because I imagine who 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. 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.

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. This is Yehuda Dwenyess, the lead instructor and another co-founder of

Sintima. 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

of a sex scene. What do you think of that concern? I think we're here to make these scenes more

professional. You know, those concerns are valid especially with the new departments 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. Well, not only that, there's a power

dynamic. Like I just mentioned two A-listers who probably have a fair amount cloud on set.

Absolutely. And intimacy coordination involves people who don't necessarily have that power on

a set. 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. And you're there to make that person feel safe. We're there

to make that person also feel safe or looked out for it. 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. Do you feel though this

pushback, this backlash that I'm describing has been building in recent years? 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.

I want to talk about the amount of sex that we are seeing on screens these days, because I saw

this report in the Economist by Film Analyst who found that the amount of sexual content in Top Hollywood

movies has declined by nearly 40 percent since 2000. Do you have any idea why that might be the case?

I'm seeing more lately. I mean, just heated rivalry alone. Oh, yeah. So we like turned up the heat,

their 10 films at Sundance were all erotically charged. So I'm really seeing an intimacy boom right

now. A sex comeback. Yeah, and I think it's wonderful. Why do you think there is this boom? What's

happening? 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

in our culture and society that I think people are dying to connect, craving that now,

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. Thank you so much, Huda. It's so nice to speak

with you. Thank you. This episode was produced by Catherine Fink and Karen Zamora. It was edited by

Christopher and Taliata. Our executive producer is Sammy Yennegan.

It's consider this from NPR. I'm Elsa Chang.

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