By Aaron Freeman
Jack Hafferkamp and Marianna Beck are legends in Chicago erotica. Their company, Libido Films has produced erotica with themes ranging from domination to masturbation to their latest, Trial Run, a romantic comedy about a woman seeking a lover over the internet. The pair achieved significant press in the 1980s when Jack (involuntarily) sacrificed his career as a professor at Northwestern University to the porn gods. In the 1980s they published a sexy little magazine called Libido, a compendium of "intellectual" erotica that combined kinky photography with literate prose. As the twenty-first century dawned the pair traded their dark rooms and word processors for video cameras and editing software. Mr. Skin got the low down on these high clericals of "woman-oriented erotica."
*
Jack, when you began your Libido magazine you were a lecturer at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Your were on a tenure track, but you were terminated by the school because of publishing erotica.
JACK:You can just say I'm the guy too hot for Northwestern.
Libido Films' current release, Trial Run, has lots of sex in many varieties but I have to ask: Did you folks get funding from the vibrator industry? It looks like you went through a lot of D batteries.
MARIANNA: No funding from the vibrator industry, but that's a good idea for the next one. We do think, however, that vibrators do go directly to the seat of female physical pleasure, the clitoris, and that they are useful tools for achieving female orgasm. And mostly we're talking AA's here.
Your heroine, Natalia Rose, (Picture:1) is a real cutie. How did you find her? Was Trial Run her first erotic film?
MARIANNA: We found Natalia Rose through other people we have worked with, which is how we usually find talent. This is her first erotic film.
The film includes a six-person orgy, inter-cut with a couple tango dancing. Was this Natalia's first orgy?
JACK: We doubt that.
The women in your movies look like the women we see and lust after in our daily lives. We relate to and root for them. Yet a lot of us choose to whack off to unreal-looking plastic women. Have we merely been programmed?
MARIANNA: We don't know if it's merely programmed, but there is something to the notion that the first images one achieves orgasm to are the images that help to define one's sexual field of vision. For lots of baby-boom men that fantasy ideal looks a lot like a Playmate. For video-generation men, she looks like a Playmate on steroids. Or silicone.
JACK: One of the issues women often bring up today is the notion of not being able to compete with the perfectly blonde, siliconized babes of porn valley. Not to put too fine a point on this, but can you tell one Vivid girl from the next? And that is the point; they are supposed to be interchangeable parts. Our use of people who look like people is, in part, a reaction to the ubiquity of that porn look. It is also a reminder that there is erotic life beyond those images of women. And that that life can be rewardingly explored.
How do you get feminists to take off their clothes and have sex for a camera?
MARIANNA: People, whether they are feminists or not, take their clothes off for three basic reasons: 1) they need the money, 2) they're exhibitionists, 3) they think it's politically important. The best bet is to find a feminist exhibitionist who needs the money. But failing that, personal politics are the key.
Is it harder to get men or women to relax and get hot with cameras rolling?
MARIANNA: It depends completely on the person and the circumstances. We try to have as few people in the room as possible when we're shooting a sex scene . . . because if you expect to capture intimacy there can't be many distractions. We make a point of capturing real orgasms and that requires an almost reverential atmosphere.
Which Hollywood director is closest to you in style?
JACK: Well, probably Robert Altman because of his sense of almost-controlled chaos. But the Hollywood idea of sex is so bizarre to us.
Anytime a mainstream movie comes along in which sex is the predominant theme, the main antagonist character is either sophomoric--hello, Owen Wilson--or twisted, or somehow has notions of sex on steroids. Two examples that come to mind are Fatal Attraction (Picture: 1 - 2) and Basic Instinct (Picture: 1 - 2). The subliminal message in a sexy Hollywood drama is: If you're gonna play, you're gonna pay. It's based on such a punishing, patriarchal, and puritanical set of standards.
MARIANNA: The only interesting sex dramas seem to come from elsewhere. We're thinking of 9 Songs (Picture: 1 - 2) from the UK. Sometimes they even come from unexpected places, such as Y tu mam?ambi?/em> (Picture: 1 - 2) from Mexico. Haven't yet seen The Oh in Ohio, but we're hoping that it breaks the American mold. Mostly though, as has long been the case, if you want intelligent sex drama or comedy, you don't look to Hollywood or the valley porn moguls.
Are your movies designed to help guys get feminist nookie?
MARIANNA: We think they're designed to help guys realize what women's sexual pleasure is really about. And here's what it really is about . . . clitoral stimulation! So we almost always try to integrate a vibrator in scenes involving partner sex. Vibrators make some guys nervous. But as our friend Betty Dodson puts it, "a smart guy soon figures out that the vibrator is really his best friend."
What's the way to a feminist's heart?
MARIANNA: Showing signs of intelligent life . . . and remembering that clitoral stimulation. If you mean by feminist a woman who is interested in sex and wants to see an erotic story with a storyline, dialogue, and real sex, that's a good start.
Does "woman-oriented erotica" mean no cum shots?
MARIANNA: Not necessarily. For us, it just means that the piece has other elements than wall-to-wall sex. We think a plausible story is good; so are believable characters, actors that don't look as if they've arrived straight from the plastic surgeon's office.
What's the difference between "woman-oriented erotica" and porn?
MARIANNA: What's the difference between champagne and beer? They both have alcohol and bubbles. Some people prefer beer some of the time. That's fine. Probably it's all in the pudenda of the consumers.
Of course the traditional, class-based notion is that intelligent, competent, professionals like erotica; you, the beer-burping lout, like porn.
Mr. Skin loves his one handed salute. Is "woman-oriented erotica" still whacking material?
MARIANNA: Depends on the guy watching it. If his idea of hot stuff is seeing an automaton with fake breasts faking an orgasm, probably not. If the idea of seeing real orgasms is a turn on--especially to men who don't get to see them very often or wouldn't know one if they saw one--then our movies are what they'll want to watch.
What are the differences between what men and women masturbate to?
JACK: This is a gross generalization but overall men masturbate to images and women masturbate to internalized fantasies. But that's not an either-or proposition. It's more like the Kinsey scale; some people are all into image, some people are all about internalizing, and most everyone else fits somewhere along the spectrum in different places and in different ways.
Your latest movie, Trial Run, is about a woman looking for love online. Is it inspired by real-life events?
MARIANNA: Who doesn't know someone who's gone online and been disappointed by who's turned up? In fact, there have been plenty of media headlines of late on this very subject. Clearly there are a lot of people out there hoping to find a partner who describes themself in ways that have nothing to do with reality. With Trial Run we were just tapping into the sexual zeitgeist and having fun.
Trial Run looks like your biggest budget, most elaborate film yet. Was it more stressful to make?
JACK: Certainly it's been more expensive, but in a lot of ways it's been less stressful because we've become much better at scripting and planning a movie.
You two are lovers in real life. Does a day of filming hot sex mean an evening of having some yourselves?
JACK: Shooting a sex scene well takes a tremendous amount of choreography, coordination, and planning. We're generally so busy trying to capture the energy that the eroticism often passes right though us.
But then, when there is down time--and when we've put away the cattle prods, whips, and chains--we harness that energy. That's when we have come up with some of our best script ideas.
Trial Run has gotten rave reviews and is getting lots of orders at libidofilms.com. Does that spell sequel?
MARIANNA: You bet. One thing about what we've always done in our movies is deal with contemporary issues by putting our fingers up the sexual zeitgeist. When you hit the sweet spot, that's when the movies write themselves.
Jack Hafferkamp and Marianna Beck are legends in Chicago erotica. Their company, Libido Films has produced erotica with themes ranging from domination to masturbation to their latest, Trial Run, a romantic comedy about a woman seeking a lover over the internet. The pair achieved significant press in the 1980s when Jack (involuntarily) sacrificed his career as a professor at Northwestern University to the porn gods. In the 1980s they published a sexy little magazine called Libido, a compendium of "intellectual" erotica that combined kinky photography with literate prose. As the twenty-first century dawned the pair traded their dark rooms and word processors for video cameras and editing software. Mr. Skin got the low down on these high clericals of "woman-oriented erotica."
*
Jack, when you began your Libido magazine you were a lecturer at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Your were on a tenure track, but you were terminated by the school because of publishing erotica.
JACK:You can just say I'm the guy too hot for Northwestern.
Libido Films' current release, Trial Run, has lots of sex in many varieties but I have to ask: Did you folks get funding from the vibrator industry? It looks like you went through a lot of D batteries.
MARIANNA: No funding from the vibrator industry, but that's a good idea for the next one. We do think, however, that vibrators do go directly to the seat of female physical pleasure, the clitoris, and that they are useful tools for achieving female orgasm. And mostly we're talking AA's here.
Your heroine, Natalia Rose, (Picture:1) is a real cutie. How did you find her? Was Trial Run her first erotic film?
MARIANNA: We found Natalia Rose through other people we have worked with, which is how we usually find talent. This is her first erotic film.
The film includes a six-person orgy, inter-cut with a couple tango dancing. Was this Natalia's first orgy?
JACK: We doubt that.
The women in your movies look like the women we see and lust after in our daily lives. We relate to and root for them. Yet a lot of us choose to whack off to unreal-looking plastic women. Have we merely been programmed?
MARIANNA: We don't know if it's merely programmed, but there is something to the notion that the first images one achieves orgasm to are the images that help to define one's sexual field of vision. For lots of baby-boom men that fantasy ideal looks a lot like a Playmate. For video-generation men, she looks like a Playmate on steroids. Or silicone.
JACK: One of the issues women often bring up today is the notion of not being able to compete with the perfectly blonde, siliconized babes of porn valley. Not to put too fine a point on this, but can you tell one Vivid girl from the next? And that is the point; they are supposed to be interchangeable parts. Our use of people who look like people is, in part, a reaction to the ubiquity of that porn look. It is also a reminder that there is erotic life beyond those images of women. And that that life can be rewardingly explored.
How do you get feminists to take off their clothes and have sex for a camera?
MARIANNA: People, whether they are feminists or not, take their clothes off for three basic reasons: 1) they need the money, 2) they're exhibitionists, 3) they think it's politically important. The best bet is to find a feminist exhibitionist who needs the money. But failing that, personal politics are the key.
Is it harder to get men or women to relax and get hot with cameras rolling?
MARIANNA: It depends completely on the person and the circumstances. We try to have as few people in the room as possible when we're shooting a sex scene . . . because if you expect to capture intimacy there can't be many distractions. We make a point of capturing real orgasms and that requires an almost reverential atmosphere.
Which Hollywood director is closest to you in style?
JACK: Well, probably Robert Altman because of his sense of almost-controlled chaos. But the Hollywood idea of sex is so bizarre to us.
Anytime a mainstream movie comes along in which sex is the predominant theme, the main antagonist character is either sophomoric--hello, Owen Wilson--or twisted, or somehow has notions of sex on steroids. Two examples that come to mind are Fatal Attraction (Picture: 1 - 2) and Basic Instinct (Picture: 1 - 2). The subliminal message in a sexy Hollywood drama is: If you're gonna play, you're gonna pay. It's based on such a punishing, patriarchal, and puritanical set of standards.
MARIANNA: The only interesting sex dramas seem to come from elsewhere. We're thinking of 9 Songs (Picture: 1 - 2) from the UK. Sometimes they even come from unexpected places, such as Y tu mam?ambi?/em> (Picture: 1 - 2) from Mexico. Haven't yet seen The Oh in Ohio, but we're hoping that it breaks the American mold. Mostly though, as has long been the case, if you want intelligent sex drama or comedy, you don't look to Hollywood or the valley porn moguls.
Are your movies designed to help guys get feminist nookie?
MARIANNA: We think they're designed to help guys realize what women's sexual pleasure is really about. And here's what it really is about . . . clitoral stimulation! So we almost always try to integrate a vibrator in scenes involving partner sex. Vibrators make some guys nervous. But as our friend Betty Dodson puts it, "a smart guy soon figures out that the vibrator is really his best friend."
What's the way to a feminist's heart?
MARIANNA: Showing signs of intelligent life . . . and remembering that clitoral stimulation. If you mean by feminist a woman who is interested in sex and wants to see an erotic story with a storyline, dialogue, and real sex, that's a good start.
Does "woman-oriented erotica" mean no cum shots?
MARIANNA: Not necessarily. For us, it just means that the piece has other elements than wall-to-wall sex. We think a plausible story is good; so are believable characters, actors that don't look as if they've arrived straight from the plastic surgeon's office.
What's the difference between "woman-oriented erotica" and porn?
MARIANNA: What's the difference between champagne and beer? They both have alcohol and bubbles. Some people prefer beer some of the time. That's fine. Probably it's all in the pudenda of the consumers.
Of course the traditional, class-based notion is that intelligent, competent, professionals like erotica; you, the beer-burping lout, like porn.
Mr. Skin loves his one handed salute. Is "woman-oriented erotica" still whacking material?
MARIANNA: Depends on the guy watching it. If his idea of hot stuff is seeing an automaton with fake breasts faking an orgasm, probably not. If the idea of seeing real orgasms is a turn on--especially to men who don't get to see them very often or wouldn't know one if they saw one--then our movies are what they'll want to watch.
What are the differences between what men and women masturbate to?
JACK: This is a gross generalization but overall men masturbate to images and women masturbate to internalized fantasies. But that's not an either-or proposition. It's more like the Kinsey scale; some people are all into image, some people are all about internalizing, and most everyone else fits somewhere along the spectrum in different places and in different ways.
Your latest movie, Trial Run, is about a woman looking for love online. Is it inspired by real-life events?
MARIANNA: Who doesn't know someone who's gone online and been disappointed by who's turned up? In fact, there have been plenty of media headlines of late on this very subject. Clearly there are a lot of people out there hoping to find a partner who describes themself in ways that have nothing to do with reality. With Trial Run we were just tapping into the sexual zeitgeist and having fun.
Trial Run looks like your biggest budget, most elaborate film yet. Was it more stressful to make?
JACK: Certainly it's been more expensive, but in a lot of ways it's been less stressful because we've become much better at scripting and planning a movie.
You two are lovers in real life. Does a day of filming hot sex mean an evening of having some yourselves?
JACK: Shooting a sex scene well takes a tremendous amount of choreography, coordination, and planning. We're generally so busy trying to capture the energy that the eroticism often passes right though us.
But then, when there is down time--and when we've put away the cattle prods, whips, and chains--we harness that energy. That's when we have come up with some of our best script ideas.
Trial Run has gotten rave reviews and is getting lots of orders at libidofilms.com. Does that spell sequel?
MARIANNA: You bet. One thing about what we've always done in our movies is deal with contemporary issues by putting our fingers up the sexual zeitgeist. When you hit the sweet spot, that's when the movies write themselves.
