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, after a career spent dodging nudity, Neve Campbell goes shockingly nude in the opening credits of 2004's When Will I Be Loved!
After working steadily as a teenager in her native Canada, Neve Campbell exploded onto the scene inthe mid-90swith leading roles in boththe hit film The Craftand the hit TV series Party of Five. Then came her role as virginal final girl Sidney Prescott in Scream, putting her in the company of such final girls turned Hollywood luminaries as Jamie Lee Curtis and Dee Wallace. Of course, this also meant that her ever expanding fan base was also hoping—and to some extent expecting—that she would eventually go nude on film.
1998 brought what seemed like two incredible opportunities for Neve to finally doff her duds on screen, first in Wild Things and then in 54, but when neither film brought even a hint of skin from Neve, it seemed like she might be one of those dreaded Never Nudes. Of course, it didn't help that she was sharing the screen on Party of Five with notorious Never Nudes Jennifer Love Hewitt and Lacey Chabert, but Neve's fans definitely held out hope she'ddrop that reputation eventually.
As her star continued to rise, however, the roles being offered to her seemed to have fewer and fewer opportunities for her to go nude. It seemed as though, frankly, if she hadn't gone nude in those many films where she seemingly had the opportunity to go nude, she likely wouldn't ever bare her naked body on screen.Then came 2004's When Will I Be Loved, which opens—seemingly intentionally—with Campbell's nude debut as she showers...
Campbell's character in the film, Vera, is a sexually aggressive woman who has no problem picking up men off the street and sleeping with them immediately.It's the sort of character who would be condemned in a different kind of film, despite exhibiting behaviors normally reserved for male characters. Instead, Vera is a sexual tempest who doesn't bend to the wills of men, be they rich or powerful, and unlike so many other promiscuous female characters on film, doesn't view sex as a means to an end, but rather the end point itself.
The film was written and directed by James Toback, who spent his entire career trafficking in sexually explicit stories about the lengths that men and women will go to in order to achieve their sexual goals. He seemed an unlikely figure to coax an actress like Campbell into one of his films, but their pairing obviously proved itself quite fruitful. Roger Ebert interviewed Campbell at the 2004 Toronto International Film Festival and Campbell was quite effusive in her praise for the filmmaker,while Ebert continues by alluding to Toback's reputation in the way he cast himself in the film...
"It must have been amazing when you read the script," I said.
"Well, there were only 35 pages of the script originally," Campbell said. "A lot of it was improvised. And Jim was writing in the evenings and bringing it to us in the morning. When he originally called me there was the scene with Dominic and there was the scene with Fred Weller when he was trying to manipulate me. But I was really impressed by those pages. It's a rare thing to find someone in Hollywood who is able to have that knowledge of human nature and put it on paper without unnecessary words. I think he's incredibly daring, and explores things to an extreme that most directors aren't willing to go to. That first day we were supposed to meet for an hour; we met for 12 hours."
I believed that, because Toback says he wrote the film for Campbell because he was obsessed with her. Well, of course he was. He's obsessed as a way of life, and the movie opens with a scene where he plays a professor interviewing Vera for a job as his assistant. As they walk near the campus, she talks to a couple of guys and he suggests that she is thinking of picking them up. In response, she suggests that the whole interview was a device to get her to sleep with him. This not only establishes her character's negotiating abilities before she meets the count, but also, I suspect, gives us an insight into their 12-hour meeting.
Toback gained a lot of notoriety in 2017 when many of his predatory habits came to light during the MeToo movement. A profile of the writer/director in Spy Magazine in the late 80s had helped cement his reputation for using his position of power to coax women into sleeping with him, but the old Hollywood system just sort of took that as part of playing the game back then. Since 2017, nearly 40 women have come forward with stories about him and his career is more or lessover at this point, but he very much represents that time and place in the entertainment industry when men exhibiting predatory behaviors were just thought of as eccentric.
Back to Neve's first brush with nudity, what makes it so surprising is not just that she's nude, but that she is so casually nude in the opening minutes of the film.In his aforementionedinterview with Campbell, Roger Ebert brought up the fact that she hadn't appeared nude on screen before and wondered what made her change her mind for this particular film...
"Yeah," she said, "I've had issues with nudity when I feel that the scenes have nothing to do with the film itself -- when it's solely for box office draw or for the titillation of the audience. But in this film, the power of this woman's sexuality is what the story's about, in a way. So it wouldn't make sense to not see her in that way."
So the lesson here, which is the same lesson we've learned time and again throughout the history of this column, is that writers need to make sex and nudity an essential part of their otherwise excellent script. Pretty much any actress that hasn't been nude will do it if the role is good enough, so, you know, memo to the writers out there reading this... make that nudity an essential part of the character.
Catch up withour most recent editions ofAnatomy of a Nude Scene
—Amy Locane Gets Carried Away from Melrose Place to Bang Dennis Hopper
—The Shape of WaterOpens with Sally Hawkins Masturbating in the Tub
—Jennifer Jason Leigh Gets the Drop on Bridget Fonda inSingle White Female
—Monique Gabrielle EnsuresBachelor Partyis an Affair to Remember
—An Entire Generation of Men Saw Bare Breasts for the First Time inCaddyshack
—Maggie Gyllenhaal Holds Nothing Back inSecretary
—Demi Moore Took a Record Paycheck to HeadlineStriptease
—That Time We All Fell in Love with Kelly Preston inMischief
—What Happened with Marisa Tomei's Nude Scene fromUntamed Heart
—Cybill Shepherd is Uncomfortably Relatable inThe Last Picture Show
—Penelope Cruz Does Very Different Nude Scenes Playing the Same Role inOpen Your EyesandVanilla Sky
—Joyce Hyser Becomes an 80s Icon inJust One of the Guys
—Charlize Theron Lands on the Map with2 Days in the Valley
—SirensMay be Plural, But All Eyes Were on Elle MacPherson
—Eva Green's Star is Born in Bertolucci'sThe Dreamers
**Click Here to Read All Past Editions of Anatomy of a Nude Scene/Anatomy of a Scene's Anatomy**
