Sex, lies, and videotape
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| sex, lies and videotape | |
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| Directed by | Steven Soderbergh |
| Produced by | John Hardy, Robert Newmyer |
| Written by | Steven Soderbergh |
| Starring | James Spader Andie MacDowell Peter Gallagher Laura San Giacomo |
| Distributed by | Miramax Films |
| Release date(s) |  August 18, 1989 September 8, 1989 8 September 1989 |
| Running time | 100 min. |
| Language | English |
| Budget | US$1,200,000 (est.) |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
- The correct title of this article is sex, lies, and videotape. The initial letter is shown capitalized due to technical restrictions.
sex, lies, and videotape (the title is always given in lower case letters) is a 1989 independent film that brought director Steven Soderbergh to prominence. It tells the story of a man who films women discussing their sexuality, and his impact on the relationship of a troubled married couple.
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[edit] Synopsis
The film stars Andie MacDowell and Peter Gallagher as Anne and John Mullany, a troubled married couple in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. James Spader plays Graham Walton, an old college friend of John's and a seeming drifter who arrives as a guest of the Mullanys. The sexually repressed Ann, who is unaware that John is having an affair with her sister, Cynthia (Laura San Giacomo), becomes attached to the introverted and shy Graham, who admits to her that he is impotent. Graham's only form of gratification comes from videotaping and watching women discuss their sexual experiences and fantasies on camera; it becomes apparent that he had been deeply hurt in an earlier relationship with a college girlfriend and has returned to Baton Rouge years later in the forlorn hope of seeing her again. Anne and Cynthia, enthralled by the mysterious visitor, gradually come to reassess their own lives, even as they unravel them before the camera.
[edit] Production
The film was written by Soderbergh in eight days on a yellow legal pad during a cross country trip (although, as Soderbergh points out in his DVD commentary track, he had been thinking about the film for a year).
Soderbergh's commentary also reveals that he had written Andie MacDowell's role with Elizabeth McGovern in mind, but McGovern's agent disliked the script so much that McGovern never even got to read it. Laura San Giacomo who was represented by the same agency had to threaten to leave that agency in order to be able to play Cynthia. Soderbergh was reluctant to audition MacDowell but she surprised him, getting the role after two extremely successful auditions. The role of John would have been played by Timothy Daly, but delays in completing the financing for the film led to Peter Gallagher getting the role instead.
Principal photography took thirty days in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
[edit] Awards
The film won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, with Spader getting the Best Actor Award for that same festival. It also won an Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival. Soderbergh was nominated for an Academy Award for his screenplay.
[edit] Significance
sex, lies, and videotape, is important in film history; in his book Down and Dirty Pictures, Peter Biskind explains that the unprecedented international success of this low-budget film was instrumental in the beginning of the 1990s independent film boom. The film is also important for launching the career of Steven Soderbergh, who became an important director of both mainstream and arthouse film, and for launching or boosting the careers of its principal actors. Prior to this picture leading lady Andie MacDowell was principally known as a fashion model whose entire performance in Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes had been dubbed over by Glenn Close.
[edit] DVD
The DVD edition of the film includes a "director's dialogue" between Soderbergh and playwright/director Neil LaBute, recorded in 1998. LaBute's presence leads to conversational tangents unrelated to the film, although most of the tangents are related to the question of what it means to be a director, and are intended, as Soderbergh summarizes at the end, to "demystify" the process of making a film. LaBute's presence prompts Soderbergh to talk about reverse zooms, dolly shots, how actors have varying expectations of their director, the difference between stealing from a film you admire and paying tribute to it, shooting out of sequence, how the role of a director changes as their success (and their budgets) grow, and other filmmaking topics.
[edit] Popular culture references
Hundreds of newspaper headlines, TV trailers and episode titles, etc. have played on the film's title, usually in the form sex, lies and something else or something, something and videotape. This phenomenon has taken on a life of its own – far beyond the impact of the film itself.
- X-Men TAS had an episode entitled Weapon X, Lies & Videotape.
- Roswell had an episode entitled Tess, Lies, and Videotape.
- Northern Exposure has an episode entitled Sex, Lies and Ed's Tape.
- Murray Torkildsen released an album called Sex, Lies and Videogames.
- Perhaps closest to the original is the new BBC programme Sex, Lice and Videotape.
Other references include:
- Kanye West's song "Jesus Walks" and Coolio's song "Too Hot" mention sex, lies, and videotape.
- The Primal Scream track "Come Together" from the Screamadelica album features a sample of MacDowell saying "That's beautiful... That's really beautiful."
| Films by Steven Soderbergh |
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sex, lies, and videotape (1989) | Kafka (1991) | King of the Hill (1993) | Underneath (1995) | Gray's Anatomy (1996) | Schizopolis (1996) | Out of Sight (1998) | The Limey (1999) | Erin Brockovich (2000) | Traffic (2000) | Ocean's Eleven (2001) | Full Frontal (2002) | Solaris (2002) | Eros (Equilibrium) (2004) | Ocean's Twelve (2004) | Bubble (2006) | The Good German (2006) | Guerrilla (2007) | Ocean's Thirteen (2007) |
| Preceded by Pelle the Conqueror |
Palme d'Or 1989 |
Succeeded by Wild at Heart |
