Interview
WAMG Interview: Danny Wolf – Director of SKIN: A HISTORY OF NUDITY IN THE MOVIES
” The body is meant to be seen. Not all covered up ” – Marilyn Monroe
SKIN: A HISTORY OF NUDITY IN THE MOVIES , available On Demand August 18th, explores the history of nudity in film, beginning with the silent movie era through present day. The documentary delves into the gender bias concerning nudity in motion pictures and will follow the revolution that has pushed for gender equality in feature films today. A deep discussion of pre-code Hollywood and its amoral roots, the censorship that “cleaned up” Hollywood and how the MPAA was formed leads into a discussion of how nudity changed cinematic culture through the decades. It culminates in a discussion of “what are nude scenes like in the age of the #METOO movement?”
Danny Wolf, director of SKIN: A HISTORY OF NUDITY IN THE MOVIES , took the time to talk to We Are Movie Geeks about the film.
Interview conducted by Tom Stockman August 11th, 2020
Tom Stockman: I watched your movie SKIN: A HISTORY OF NUDITY IN THE MOVIES. I watched it twice actually. I had some friends who are interested in the subject over to watch it the other night. How did you get this idea to do a documentary about the history of nudity in film?
Danny Wolf: It was actually the idea of our Executive Producer Paul Fishbein and our other Executive Producer Jim McBride from Chicago, who is “Mr. Skin”. McBride told me that I wouldn’t believe it, but there had never been a documentary made all about the history of nudity in movies. It was hard to believe at first since there have been documentaries on just about everything. I did some research and discovered that no one had done the definitive full-length documentary on the subject, one that went from the nuts and bolts of when film began all the way through today, a real history of nudity in movies. I jumped on the idea as fast as I could because I didn’t want someone else doing it before me. We went straight from our previous documentary TIME WARP: THE GREATEST CULT FILMS OF ALL TIME to this. It was about a two year project because of all of the interviews and editing.
TS: It’s a huge subject; you cover 100 years of history. I thought the story of silent-era model and actress Audrey Munson was fascinating. I was unfamiliar with her.
DW: Yes Audrey Munson was kind of a tragic story. People really don’t know about her, but what makes this documentary cool is all that a lot of film from the teens and 20s and 30s are films that film students may not have learned about in their film classes. She appeared nude in movies like PURITY (1916) and she was the inspiration for many statues in New York City.
TS: Are most of Audrey Munson’s films lost?
DW: Yes they are. So many of the older movies are lost, but you can still find stills and photos. So many films in the 20s were just wild. Clara Bow, I major actress, appeared nude in WINGS (1927), which won the Oscar for best picture. In the late 20s, every major star was doing nudity, then here comes 1928, and that’s when the Hayes Code started. I think we did a pretty good job in our film with the clips with scenes from things like Hedy Lamarr in ECSTACY (1933) and Cecil B. DeMille’s SIGN OF THE CROSS (1932) and of course some of those crazy nudist camp films.
TS: I thought you did a great job with the clips. You get into the Hayes Code and how it was not enforced at first. One of your great examples is Tarzan. In the first two Tarzan films (TARZAN THE APE MAN 1932 and TARZAN AND HIS MATE 1934) you have Maureen O’Sullivan, or her body double at least, skinny dipping but then by the time you get to TARZAN ESCAPES (1935), you’ve got those same scene but she is no longer swimming nude. Do you think the enforcement of the Hayes Code made those later Tarzan movies less successful at the box office?
DW: I think all of the Tarzan movies were fairly successful, but those early ones were the first instance of male nudity on film. That’s one thing we were conscious of when we started this documentary, that films didn’t featured just female nudity but male nudity as well.
TS: Do you remember the first time you saw nudity in a movie?
Danny Wolf: I actually don’t. I do remember in high school we used to go to the World Movie Theater on Hollywood Boulevard where they would have three movie for $1.50. I remember seeing ALICE IN WONDERLAND (1976) starring Kristine DeBell.
TS: They did make a hard-core version of that film.
DW: Yes during our interview we talked about that. There’s a lot about ALICE IN WONDERLAND and its producer Bill Oscoe in the film. But the version I sought in the theater must’ve been a soft-core version.
TS: Yes I saw that same version at the Fine Arts Theater here in St. Louis. My first exposure to nudity in movies was when I was 12 and my dad took me to the theater to see MACON COUNTY LINE (1974). It wasn’t a famous starlet, just an actress playing a topless hooker in the opening scene, but I think for our generation, your first experience with that is memorable.
DW: I hear so many strange stories about people’s first experience watching nudity. I just talked to someone recently who said their first was LOGAN’S RUN (1976).
TS: Oh yes, Jenny Agutter had to change into that fur coat. Do you feel that any of the women that you interviewed have regrets about doing nudity? They all seem to have a pretty good attitude about it.
DW: One question we asked everyone we interviewed was how doing nudity had impacted their career and also their personal life. For the most part, they knew what they were signing up for when they did it. When Pam Grier signed up to do a women’s prison film, she knew there would be nudity because that goes with the women’s prison genre. Erica Gavin was sort of a sad case. She did VIXEN (1968) and it was only her second movie. That almost killed her because she went to the premiere of her film and she picked her body apart seeing it on the big screen, then developed anorexia and almost died. Linda Blair regretted doing CHAINED HEAT (1983) because she claimed that it was not the movie that she had signed on to do. Not only did her costar John Vernon rough her up, but there were scenes thrown in that were not in the script that required her to do nudity. When an actress is entrenched in the making of the movie and it’s near the end of production, and they’re asked to do nudity, they’re somewhat ambushed. If they say no, they’re being told they’re too difficult and will never work again and are costing people jobs. So a lot of times they were somewhat coerced into it back in those days. I think Kristine DeBell had some regrets as well concerning that version of ALICE IN WONDERLAND that came out that she was unaware had been put together and that Bill Osco had made something that she was not aware was being made at the same time.
TS: Were there any actresses that you tried to track down but were unable to find? I know Chesty Morgan is still living, but I’ve never seen any contemporary interview or images of her.
DW: I don’t know about Chesty. Edy Williams we tried to track down but we could not find her. We found Dyanne Thorne, who starred in ILSA SHE-WOLF OF THE SS (1976), but she ended up not wanting to be involved in a documentary about nudity. Teresa Russell was on board, but then backed down. Kathleen Turner was supposed to be involved, but the timing did not work out. We cast a really wide net of people we wanted to interview. We talked to many agents and managers and just hoped things didn’t fall through. We were on a schedule and a budget so we just started booking and booking and getting who we could, but when I think makes the doc cool is who you see pop up that you do not expect to see pop up.
TS: Yes, like Sylvia Miles. I always liked her. Where did you interview her?
DW: That was tough. She lived in New York in an apartment near Central Park by herself. We had to get her from her apartment to a little studio a few blocks away, which took a couple of hours because she was quite frail. She was also quite cantankerous
TS: She comes off that way in every movie she’s in.
DW: Exactly. Our executive producer had to carry her into the car and she insisted on wearing that visor and fanny pack, And then she took her teeth out a few times during the interview to give her teeth a rest.
TS: You should’ve kept that in the film.
DW: Yeah, she was tough but she passed away soon after we filmed her. She was a two time Academy Award-nominee and deserved to be in the documentary. We also had Camille Keaton from I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE (1979) and Ken Davitian from BORAT (2006), and Mariel Hemingway popping up to talk about STAR-80 (1983), so you never know who you were going to see next.
TS: Talk about Mamie Van Doren. What was she like?
DW: She was pretty amazing. Her first demand was that she be shot with a soft filter lens to soften her up. I’m not talking about a gel. I’m talking about a lens. So we get this lens and went to Newport Beach, because that is where she lives with her husband. He is much younger than her and had originally run her fan club. So we put the lens on, and it looked like she was sitting in fog like she was in the San Francisco Bay or something. Once we started filming, the DP said we had to take the lens off because you just could not see her. But of course her husband stood behind the DP just to check the shot out and had to inspect and make sure that we had the lens on. The whole time we were filming we thought it was going to be unusable. She was really cool and really nice, she is a legend. But then our editor was able to perform magic and sharpen her image up. If you see it, you can still see it’s soft, but nothing compared to the first cut.
TS: Are there any contemporary actresses that have never done nude scenes?
DW: Not a lot. That was something that we were looking into. Now you’re seeing actresses like Anne Hathaway and Reese Witherspoon doing nude scenes.
TS: Yes, and Emma Stone in THE FAVORITE and Jennifer Lawrence in RED SPARROW.
DW: Yes and now there is CGI, so if an actress has trouble with nudity they can use CGI.
TS: Cate Blanchett comes to mind as someone I don’t believe has done nudity.
DW: No, I think you’re right there. Most actresses don’t have a problem doing nudity if the role calls for it. Like when Rena Riffel signed up to polestar in SHOWGIRLS (1995), she knew she was going to play a stripper and wouldn’t be wearing clothes, and Mariel Hemingway knew she would be nude when she signed up for STAR-80.
TS: Yes, those movies are about nudity.
DW: Yes, so there are certain roles in films that if they think it’s important to the character and the story then they don’t have any problem with nudity. The problem they have is if it’s just gratuitous nudity or exploitation. For a lot of young actresses, it’s their first role, they want to work, they want to get established, they want to have the credit, and perhaps reluctantly, most of the time they will do nudity. Of course now with the Internet, it’s there forever. It’s not going away.
TS: Cerena Vincent talked in your film about the Nudity Rider that is in an actresses’ contract. Talk about that.
DW: When Cerena talked about the Nudity Rider in her contract for CABIN FEVER (2002), she said did not want to show more than 1 inch of her butt crack. When they got to filming that scene, director Eli Roth actually took a measuring tape and measured 1 inch of her butt crack and then pulled her panties down to that. Cerena is also interesting because here was a child actress from the Power Rangers show and then costarred in NOT ANOTHER TEEN MOVIE (2001) where she is topless throughout the entire movie. She talked about the backlash from fans and from kids that were fans of Power Rangers. They picked her body apart and put her down, and she got hate mail for doing NOT ANOTHER TEEN MOVIE. She was certainly never expecting an onslaught of bad press. But that was one of the very few examples of something like that happening.
TS: How do you think the #metoo and Harvey Weinstein stories have affected nudity in the movies?
DW: I think with the Me Too movement, women are far more empowered now. They can say no. There were many decades where an actress could not say no and now they can. They don’t have to worry about becoming blacklisted or have a problem because they are going to say that. The Me Too movement has lead to a new role that they called the Intimacy Coordinator. We interview one and a lot of people don’t know this role exists. Now a woman is hired to be on the set if an actress or actor is doing scenes with sex or nudity, That make sure that is what the script called for and be that is done tastefully and authentically and that nothing is sprung on them and they are treated the way they are supposed to be treated. This is sort of like an insurance policy for the studio. With an Intimacy Coordinator there, a director is not going to try to pull a fast one or disrespect or be cruel to an actress or actor. That’s one of the main recent changes and we wanted to get that in there and get that interview with the Intimacy Coordinator. You’re seeing a lot more female directors today, and that’s good. There are some great female directors and I think female actresses will always be more comfortable doing nudity with a female director. But there were times back in the 70s and 80s, when a lot of these exploitation film were being made, and aside from maybe someone like Amy Heckerling or Martha Coolidge, there were very few female directors.
TS: Right. What’s next for you?
DW: We have a couple of other projects we are looking at, We’ve found a couple of cinema themes they haven’t been done before. I’ve got two projects in mind. One I can’t talk about, but one I think we want to do is a history of screenwriters. We’d like to interview some of the greatest screenwriters that are still alive and talk about their process and how they write. There are so many great living screenwriters and no one has made any definitive film history of them.
TS: Good luck with that. Again I really enjoyed your documentary SKIN: A HISTORY OF NUDITY IN THE MOVIES and I think I’m going to watch it again soon.
DW: Great. Thank you so much.
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