Today's director for Female Filmmakers is a sex scene trailblazer. You can count on this woman to deliver films that sizzle with sex. We are talking about the one and only Lizzie Borden!
First thing's first: we are not talking about THAT Lizzie Borden. You know, the '40 wacks' Lizzie Borden that many hot movies have been made about. This is a different Lizzie. This Lizzie was born Linda Elizabeth Borden in Detroit. That being said, Linda Elizabeth decided to go by Lizzie when she was eleven after she heard about Lizzie Borden. She made the move as a quiet act of childhood rebellion!
The rebellious teen ended up majoring in art at Wellesley College before the young feminist moved to New York City. She began her career writing art criticism, but after watching several Jean-Luc Godard films she became inspired to experiment with filmmaking. We are so glad that she did!
Her first film was made in 1983 and was called Born in Flames. She made it for only $30,000 which proved that she had an artistic eye on a budget. Her next film was much bigger and much more popular: the 1986 classic Working Girls.
The plot of working girls was pretty monumental for the time: a lesbian works in a classy brothel in Manhattan and we get to see her day-to-day. Louise Smith plays our leading lady who shows us how easy her job is for her. Funnily enough, the censors did not mind the sex scenes as much as they minded a scene where Louise puts in her diaphragm. Come on, censors! Don't you care about safe sex?
Borden said she wanted to show how prostitution is really a business, that the sex is transactional. Working Girls was novel in the way that it showed prostitution as an "economic choice". She did not shame the working girls nor did she exploit them. I think her intentions really come through in the movie. There is a lot of nudity and it IS sexy because these women are so beautiful, but the film really does portray prostitutes as, well, working girls!
Miramax then gave Borden a real Hollywood budget: $6 million. This thriller was Borden's first Hollywood feature and she was given a script that she did not like, so she had a female screenwriter rewrite it. This was the first film that she also did not write, so it started off on a weird foot. There were problems with the script throughout and ultimately Borden did not like the final product, but I'm jumping ahead of myself. Let's talk about it.
Love Crimes came out in 1991 and was an early BDSM erotic thriller that starred Sean Young as a district attorney who goes undercover to expose a creepy dude and winds up in a cat-and-mouse, BDSM situation with the guy she is trying to investigate. We get the opportunity to investigate Sean Young's full frontal body!
Borden was unhappy with the film, claiming that there were scenes in the movie that she didn't even shoot. She wanted the film to show more of Sean's character's feelings and emotional struggle, but Miramax turned it more into an erotic thriller.
Years later, during the #MeToo movement, Sean Young spoke out about some of the issues she faced with this movie since it was produced by Harvey Weinstein. While Lizzie had a lot of issues with Miramax during the making of the film - so much so that she took her name off the film which was essentially a death knell for her career - Lizzie was so upset by Sean's experience and by the fact that she had no idea at the time. She said, "I ended up in 'movie jail', but that is nothing compared to what Sean must have endured."
As a result, Borden says that Born in Flames and Working Girls are the only films that she actually considers her own.
The movie jail was real, unfortunately. After she asked to take her name off of Love Crimes, she was never given another film to direct. She was able to direct an episode of Red Shoe Diaries and of the teen drama The Secret World of Alex Mack. In 2021, she became a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences...in 2021. That took far too long!
It does not look like Borden is trying to direct any new features any time soon, but now that she is officially a member of the Academy and respect is finally getting put on her name, I really hope that this changes for her. She might become inspired to direct again. We need her feminist-forward sex scenes and naked actresses now more than ever!
