Karina Longworth Charges Up Her ‘You Must Remember This’ Podcast Series By Exploring The “Erotic 80s”

Those unfortunate souls who follow the discourse on Film Twitter — I count myself as one of them, alas — know that sex in contemporary cinema, or a lack thereof, has been a major topic of conversation of late. Part of this was brought on by ignominious manner in which Adrian Lyne’s Deep Water, a steamy erotic thriller starring Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas, was treated in the wake of the recent(ish) Fox / Disney merger. (Originally scheduled for release in November 2020, the movie’s theatrical release date was shuffled twice before being more or less dumped on Hulu last month.) Another part of the discourse revolves around the monumental rise of the (sexless) superhero genre, which has come to dominate the lion’s share of the Hollywood studios’ multiplex output over the last decade and change.

The demise of the R-rated, adult-centric, mid-budget drama has been widely bemoaned, and with that, a certain cache has grown around the various subgenres of movies — your erotic thrillers, your sex comedies, your neo-noirs — that performed quite well at the box office and fueled many a late night Skinemax session in the ’80s and ’90s. Karina Longworth, the creator and host of the award-winning podcast series You Must Remember This, is launching not one but TWO new seasons of her show that revolve around the very fruitful topic of sex in cinema. “Erotic 80s” launches today, and “Erotic 90s” is coming this fall (“I think it’s gonna be October, but I’m extremely still writing,” Longworth told Decider). Decider hopped on the phone with Longworth late last week to discuss this season, which in typical YMRT fashion, is extremely well-researched, thought-provoking, and eye-opening in its exploration of the “secret and/or forgotten histories of Hollywood’s first century.”

DECIDER: One thing longtime fans of YMRT will immediately notice is the special theme music for this season [which you, dear reader, can listen to above]. I picked up some Melanie Griffith dialogue from Body Double, and of course the samples of Berlin’s “Sex (I’m A)” and Romeo Void’s “Never Say Never.” Who created this mood-setting intro music for you, and how much direction did you provide in terms of its overall feel as well as the specific dialogue inserts it includes?

KARINA LONGWORTH: We always do an intro montage like that for every season. I work with my editor Evan Viola on it. In this case, I gave him a list of all the clips of audio that I wanted included and he put it together in a montage. And then we kind of worked back and forth in terms of the order and exactly where stuff should fade in and fade out and all of that. I really wanted to set a tone for this season that was kinda the tone I had in my head when these movies were coming out. When I was a kid driving around Los Angeles with my mom listening to KROQ in the car, hearing lyrics like “I’m a man, I’m a goddess, I’m a one night stand” in my head at four years old. That vibe, that kind of music is reflective of the movies. In some cases very literally. There’s the whole scene in Body Double set to Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s “Relax.” So yeah, I felt like that was the sound of the season, and while we can’t afford to license those songs in full and put them in every episode, we can put these little tastes of it at the beginning.

After setting the mood with that awesome theme, which I hope goes viral, you begin this season of “Erotic 80s” by positing an interesting theory. Is Stanley Kubrick the father of the erotic thriller?

Well, I actually think Alfred Hitchcock is, but in the first episode, I tell this story about how Kubrick and Terry Southern were contemplating making a Hollywood movie with real sex in it. And it didn’t exactly come to fruition; instead. Terry Southern wrote the novel Blue Movie and Kubrick made A Clockwork Orange which certainly engages with sexuality. I wanted to tell that story at the beginning because in my mind in some ways this whole season is about knowing that a certain thing ends with Eyes Wide Shut in 1999, and working back 20 years before that.

In the first three episodes I got a chance to listen to, one of the recurring elements is that some of the movies of the ‘70s and ‘80s that revolve around sex — very specifically, American Gigolo — are really, at their core, movies about money. And that the act of sex, on a biological level, is about creating life, but Hollywood treats it more about creating wealth and power dynamics.

I think when you watch a lot of these movies back to back — you’re watching Body Heat, Body Double, American Gigolo — you see the ways in which the stratification of class is depicted. I think few films are as blatant as “this guy is a sex worker” and you can’t really separate (in Gigolo) whether he’s doing it for the Armani, or if the Armani is what makes him such a great sex worker. It’s definitely a piece of the sexual part of the movie: the way he dresses, the things he is able to acquire. And his apartment is just so — and spoiler alert for American Gigolo — when everything is falling apart he trashes his own apartment. It calls into question what the purpose is of acquiring wealth. And how does it change who we are and how does it relate to sexuality? And I think that theme is present in a lot of these movies.

You of course make reference to the oeuvre of Adrian Lyne early on in the series, when you reference that sly scene in Indecent Proposal where the secretary is reading Susan Faludi’s Backlash. The episodes I got a chance to preview didn’t touch on his filmography, but I expect future episodes will definitely reference 9 1/2 Weeks, Fatal Attraction, and more. Can you share some of your thoughts about Lyne, who is arguably the master of the erotic thriller?

He’s the greatest, at least for the ’80s and ’90s. I love his movies so much and certainly we’re gonna talk about those movies, plush Flashdance and Lolita. This season takes one episode per year, so the first time we’ll get into him is 1983 with Flashdance. I just think he has this inimitable style and what’s so great about it is the way in which he makes you feel like there’s so much more sex than you’re actually seeing on screen. He uses the tools of cinema to create a vibe which is kinda perfect for this era because we have this idea that these movies were so sexy. They’re still engaging with the rating system and, up until 1990 when the NC-17 was created, an X-rating in the 80s was the worst thing that could happen to a movie’s commercial prospects. If the MPAA gave a film an X-rating, most studios wouldn’t release it. They’d insist that the filmmaker went back, made cuts and resubmitted it until they got an R rating. So with Adrian Lyne’s movies, he’s so good at using the tools of cinema to make you feel like you’re seeing a lot more than what you’re seeing.

And while we’re on the topic, I have to ask: Have you seen Deep Water yet? I know it’s neither ’80s nor ’90s.

Of course I have. I really enjoyed it. It’s thrilling to me to see a movie about adults who have sex lives actually get a release in 2022. I think Ben Affleck and Ana De Armas are great in it. That said, it doesn’t feel like a classic Adrian Lyne film, as it doesn’t fit in with this aesthetic that I just described. It’s missing something like the gonzo-ish visuals. Sometimes his movies had a touch of surrealism in them and this didn’t really have that for me. I mean, you could argue maybe the snails are part of that but I actually think the snails seemed directly part of the plot to me. I really enjoyed it, I wish it had a theatrical release. It’s a real shame that you cannot really go to a movie theater and see a Hollywood movie with big movie stars playing characters who have sex lives. And I hope that the culture swings back to a point where we can see that.

That touches on something interesting, and I promise I’ll reel it back to the ’80s momentarily, but that’s obviously been a hot topic in Film Twitter circles. Specifically, the lack of huge Hollywood stars engaging in anything remotely sexual on screen. What do you think about the streaming revolution and its potential to sort of bring this genre of movie back. The theatrical prospects of these kinds of movies seem a little limited, but movies like 365 Days and shows like Sex/Life have been ginormous hits for Netflix.

Yeah I actually don’t know 365 Days and I did not watch Sex/Life. But I think a lot of people like to point to Euphoria. There was that recent New Yorker roundtable that was like “no sex in movies but Euphoria.” That’s fine, but I just think that Hollywood is in such a transitional moment and it’s a losing game to try to pretend you have a crystal ball and predict what’s gonna happen. The theatrical experience is so endangered. So all I can say is that what I hope happens is that there’s a revival of an adult drama that gets a theatrical release that has some conversation about adult sexuality.

I’m right there with you and keeping my fingers crossed for the same thing. Reeling it back to the ’80s, as promised: I was delighted to discover that you devoted an entire episode to the seismic impact that Bo Derek had on American culture during the late ’70s and early ‘80s. Earlier today, I googled “sex symbols of the ’70s” and “sex symbols of the ‘80s,” and she appeared on neither of those lists. Can you speak about her impact, and why you think that she’s been more or less forgotten by time?

Well whoever is working on that algorithm at Google did not do the research to see that Bo Derek appeared on not one but TWO different Playboy covers published in 1980. And it’s not just Playboy. People Magazine, as well as other mainstream magazines that weren’t about specifically about sex were ALL about this idea that sex is back in movies. And Bo Derek is the literal poster girl of that. She absolutely dominated the mainstream sexual imagination in 1979 and 1980. She was on the cover of Playboy twice in one year.

If she has been forgotten to time, I think it’s probably a couple of things. Her movie career after 10 was not good. The movies don’t hold up, I talk about the movie Bolero in that episode. I think it doesn’t hold up for a number of reasons, but I also think that she was so unfairly maligned by the media. A lot of people make a lot of bad movies and don’t become the butt of jokes the way that Bo Derek did.

I talk a lot in that episode about the Razzies, and how they continued to single her out for mocking even though she ceased to make movies. So I don’t know. I think there’s a point where she sort of became a joke, and now she became a joke of the past. But she’s still out there. She’s still on social media, she still does interviews. She’s married to John Corbett. She hasn’t gone anywhere, it might just be that her moment of being at the forefront of the sexual imagination that is something we just don’t talk about. And if anything I hope that episode inspires people to see the movie 10 because I think it’s really ripe for rediscovery and she’s great in it. [Ed. Note: 10, as well as Bolero, are both new on HBO Max this month.]

Diving so deeply into a subject of sex on screen means that you must have not only an appreciation of the topic, but genuine enthusiasm for it. As you were doing research and watching (or rewatching) these pictures, what is your favorite of all the movies you reference in this series?

I think American Gigolo is really a masterpiece. If I had to say a second one, I’d say 9 1/2 Weeks.

What is it about 9 1/2 Weeks that really stands out to you?

I just think it has been enshrined in our culture as sort of the ultimate Skinemax softcore film. It is actually so much more complicated than that. It is a thing where, again, the way Adrian Lyne uses things that are not showing you sex and creates this vibe of sexuality that is really unparalleled. That movie is the best example of it.

It’s basically a movie about a woman that’s in this S&M relationship and isn’t sure how she feels about it. The relationship and the movie are just dancing so close to the line of “Is this abuse? Is this consensual? What is happening here?” And I feel like it deals with it with so much complexity. It’s another example of something that just makes me sad that Hollywood movies can no longer deal with things that are that complicated with that level of nuance right now. People would just draw a firm line against depicting some of the stuff that’s in that movie. Especially against the way that he allows things to be ambiguous and he allows her to have complicated feelings about what’s going on.

Karina Longworth’s new season of You Must Remember This, “Erotic 80s,” is now available for your listening pleasure. You can download it on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.