By Alexia Anastasio
In January, 2014, The Wrap’s Tim Molloy asked a panel including Lena Dunham, HBO’s Girls executive producers Jenni Konner and Judd Apatow why there was so much nudity on the show. Yes, 2014.
“It’s because it’s a realistic expression of what it’s like to be alive,” explained Dunham. For many indie filmmakers, especially females who also star in their projects, it can be a trap.
While it may seem bizarre to keep having this conversation of why nudity is used, we should really be talking about when nudity is used and how it can be an effective storytelling tool.
There’s a certain watercooler betting-pool mentality that accompanies the box office results of movies, as though their success were completely encapsulated in a single opening weekend’s results. This despite the fact that everybody knows Hollywood accounting is particularly slippery, that budgets never reveal the accompanying marketing costs of films, that foreign market revenue is increasingly important to the success of many films, and that ancillarly sales can be a primary rather than secondary revenue stream. Nonetheless, we seem to equate box office numbers with whether a film worked, whether it’s worth anyone’s time, and whether it’s going to ruin somebody’s career or save it. 