In our weekly seriesAnatomy of a Nude Scene, we're going to be taking a look at (in)famous sexscenes and nude scenes throughout cinema history and examining their construction, their relationship to the film around it, and their legacy. This week, a litany of notable actors try to distance themselves from the debacle that was 1979's Caligula.
In terms of a film's pedigree dictating whether or not it's good, sight unseen, one could seem to do a lot worse than 1979's Caligula. Malcolm McDowell leads a cast that includes such Oscar winners as Helen Mirren, John Gielgud, and Peter O'Toole. The script is by the wonderfully subversive Gore Vidal and it's directed by Tinto Brass, who, while not exactly anyone's idea of a "prestige" director, has certainly made enough films to know what he's doing. It seems like a pretty solid proposition, but if there's one credit at all that gives one pause, it's probably the one that reads "Produced by Bob Guccione."
For the uninitiated, Bob Guccione is not some slick Hollywood producer, but rather the man who founded Penthouse Magazine. Ever eager to be one step ahead of his dreaded rival Hugh Hefner, Guccione followed Hef into the world of producing films. Now while Hef produced Roman Polanski's Macbeth and Peter Bogdanovich's Saint Jack, Guccione's only "credited" producing credit on a major motion picture is 1979's Caligula—though he allegedly had a hand in Fellini's most grotesque work, 1980'sCity of Women. All of this is to say that the man has no producing or filmmaking credentials whatsoever, yet he saw fit to tell legitimately talented people where to get off.
Guccione did, however, have an instinct for what a lot of men wanted. The Gooch(above, in his natural habitat)knew that there was a certain segment of the audience that wanted to see basically a porno but with classy acting and production values and shit. The fatal flaw in his plan is that no respectable actor will be seen in a pornographic film, severely limiting his options to the point where he'd just have to settle for adult film stars. So how did he convince four world class British thespians to headline his film? The short answer is that he didn't tell them about any of that stuff. Guccionewas a man ahead of his time and could have certainly milked a "Whoops! I Made a Porno!" reality program out of it had he been born 20 years later.
Guccione recruited Vidal to write the screenplay but was disappointed in the writer's focus on Caligula's homosexual exploits. Upon offering the gig toTinto Brass, he agreed to direct on condition he could rewrite the script himself. Vidal remains the only credited writer on the film, however, per his original contract the film is credited as Based on a Screenplay by Gore Vidal. In addition to the other four major cast members, Last Tango in Paris star Maria Schneider was cast as Caligula's ill-fated sister Drusilla. Likely due to recent traumatic events shooting Bertolucci's film, Schneider quickly backed out of the project when she discovered the amount of sex and nudity required.
Brass then turned to his Salon Kitty star Teresa Ann Savoy to fill the now vacant role, and she does an admiral job of being naked and getting groped a dry humped by Malcolm McDowell a lot...
This is the sort of thing these actors all assumed they were signing on for, but when Guccione wasn't satisfied with the levels of erotic adult scenes in Brass' edit. After months of endless shooting and a first cut that was running north of three hours, Brass was fired when Guccione had finally had enough of his notoriously erratic behavior. While Brass was melting down in the editing room, Guccione had put together a clandestine production to spice up the flick. In an interview with his own publication in 1980, Guccino detailed what he and cameraman Giancarlo Lui did to pull it off without Brass catching wind...
Giancarlo and I slipped back to Rome a few weeks later, bringing 11 or 12 girls (Penthouse Pets) with us. We hired a skeleton crew, snuck back into the studios at night, raided the prop room, and created out of the remaining odds and ends a few little sets... We filmed the famous lesbian scene between Anneka and Lori for two nights running. We worked for hours nonstop, and the crew never complained once... The girls were marvelous. They worked under difficult conditions, and there, in the huge, semidarkened stages of Dear Studios, Anneka di Lorenzo and Lori Wagner contributed something beautiful and lasting to the history of motion pictures.
Yeah, that's one way of putting it...
Everyone but Guccione disowned the film. Vidal's aforementioned credit came as a workaround since he claimed that none of his dialogue ended up on screen. The cast tried to distance themselves from it, understandably, as it wasn't necessarily what they had signed up for. Brass, of course, claimed that they tore his edit to shreds and reconstructed how they saw fit. Guccione, not wanting to get the film slapped with an X-rating, released it Unrated, instructing theater owners not to admit anyone under the age of 18. According to Guccione himself, the film was very successful and made nearly all of its profit in the video aftermarket.
The cast, of course, has come to embrace their experience and connection to the film, though it was allegedly something of a slog to shoot. Malcolm McDowell, world-class raconteur that he is, has told many stories about the shooting of the film, many of them surrounding O'Toole's recent sobrietymaking him ornery to Gielgud's absolute delight in the sheer number of exposedcocks in the room while he was shooting a scene. Helen Mirren, however, gets the gold star for responses to appearing in the film. When asked her opinion ofthe finished product after the premiere screening in 1979, she proclaimed it "an irresistible mix of art and genitals."
That's why people keep coming back to Caligula. It's a rite of passage for any cult film fanatics out there, the rubicon you must cross to join the conversation. The good news is that the conversation around this film will never end. It's one of a kind.
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**Click Here to Read All Past Editions of Anatomy of a Nude Scene/Anatomy of a Scene's Anatomy**
*Bob Guccione pic via Facebook
