I think we went too far with too much penis.” But he refused to be deterred. “The original shot was way longer, where the penis is in close-up, and then one night we showed it to a test audience and 22 people walked out. It was a juxtaposition of gnarly knobs for which many were not prepared, Apatow conceded. Reilly’s head in the country-music mockumentary Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. In 2007, Apatow watched test audiences vote with their feet when a penis drooped behind John C. Which would explain why it is Hollywood’s reigning comedy auteur, the writer-director-producer Judd Apatow, who has been the great emancipator of the suppressed penis, unzipping the fly so that man can dangle free. In comedy (think of the grotesque nude tussle in Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat between Borat and his producer, that rippling clash of hair and blubber), that queasiness can be converted into farce, slapstick, the groaning punch line to a prank. No matter how bull-strong the late Oliver Reed was, no matter how topographically muscular Mortensen is, the male viewer is always apprehensively aware of how vulnerable the little guy is in a fight, the testicles even more at mercy, clenched or swaying like tiny twin punching bags-one hard tap and Hercules himself would fold in two, unless he were wearing a bronze cup. Lawrence’s Women in Love, with Alan Bates and Oliver Reed going Greco-Roman by the fireplace, or the bathhouse bashing in David Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises, where an ultimate-fighter death match breaks out between Viggo Mortensen and a pair of heavy-duty enforcers, the pugilist’s penis always elicits concern-it looks so defenseless, an innocent bystander finding itself in a hostage showdown. Whether it’s the wrestling scene in Ken Russell’s adaptation of D. Except in hard-core porn, it can’t fully join in. It is the one part of an actor’s equipment that doesn’t answer to commands, instructions, suggestions, cajoling, or subtle fine-tuning its range of expression is rather limited, its freedom of motion restricted. Nature doesn’t deal out the same pickle size to every man, and no exercise routine will enlarge or tone it if the owner feels he’s been shortchanged. It is where the unequal distribution of assets is most pronounced for certain types of comparison shoppers. In his book Only Entertainment, professor of film studies Richard Dyer observed, “The limp penis can never match up to the mystique that has kept it hidden from view for the last couple of centuries,” and an actor’s mystique is part of his capital. In American film, the penis, finally poking out from its pup tent, remains mostly a comic prop, the little brother that insists on tagging along.Īlthough European and British stars seem more natural about cinematic nudity (Fassbender is Irish-German France’s Gérard Depardieu trucked his earthy carcass through The Last Woman and 1900, among others), actors of any nationality and fame status are understandably wary of going completely commando. Although shot in New York, Shame has a British director, which may spell the difference. As the movie proceeds, his prick seems to be in the driver’s seat on the prowl, it’s imbued with agency, latent power, pathological drive. At the very outset of the film Fassbender is presented full-frontal, his penis passing us as he crosses from one room to another and back again as a plain, plump fact of life. It doesn’t hurt that he unambiguously possesses the power tool for the job. Fassbender emerges from the film with his mystique intact, enhanced. That’s what makes Michael Fassbender so exceptional in Steve McQueen’s Shame, where he portrays an orgasm addict (to quote the title of a Buzzcocks song) whose libido drills like a woodpecker on a staccato rampage. Bedsheets are draped with the care of Saks window displays to shelter the little fella from view even as the actress in the scene goes total nudie. Steam discreetly clouds it in the gym shower and sauna. Directors play peekaboo with it, dodging an R rating or worse by deploying a variety of cute fig leaves, such as a hurriedly grabbed teddy bear as an emergency groin protector. Until recently the organic penis has led a shy, shadowy life on-screen, seldom brought out and formally introduced to the guests. Note: We’re talking about the real, warm-blooded item, not some prosthetic impostor, such as Mark Wahlberg’s porn-stud stocking stuffer in Boogie Nights, or, allegedly, Vincent Gallo’s ram horn in The Brown Bunny, which he fanatically grips as if it might come unglued. Despite Kevin Bacon’s flaunting-it shower exit in Wild Things, Harvey Keitel’s self-crucifying baring of body and soul in Bad Lieutenant (he would go full-frontal again in The Piano), and Bruce Willis’s erotic skinny-dip in the pool with Jane March in Color of Night, the American penis (long may it wag) has stayed a relative stranger on the movie screen.
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