Hollywood intimacy co-ordinator reveals all movies with unsimulated sex scenes are breaking strict law

As film fans, we all love hearing the shocking details behind films.

More than that, the scenes in films we normally want to know the shocking details about? Sex scenes.

It’s simply natural that with steamy scenes, we want to know all the details, how it’s done, whether or not the actors actually doing the scenes, and whether it’s awkward to spend several hours naked with - essentially - your co-worker.

If all scenes are filmed like this, awkward is an understatement:

Above this, one thing that piques film fans interest above is all is ‘unsimulated’ sex scenes.

For a number of reasons, finding out the actors actually engaged in what you see on screen for many makes it feel more real - even if just to satisfy some morbid curiosity.

To find out more about this, UNILAD spoke exclusively to Hollywood intimacy co-ordinator Brooke Haney, and asked in particular about unsimulated scenes.

We asked about how an intimacy co-ordinator would approach a scene the director wanted to be shot that way, and the response was a shock.

Brown Bunny saw unsimulated sexual acts between actors take place. (Sony)

They said: “So in the States, you can't, under SAG-AFTRA rules. That's literally the difference in a film that's under SAG-AFTRA or porn.

“That's just the delineation. Legally everything that is film or TV under SAG-AFTRA has to be simulated.”

Brooke went on to tell us that rules on this are so strict that, not only does this apply to full on sex, but to anything that could be considered a sexual act.

They said: “I worked on a project where there was peeing. Because the project was so sexual in nature, even for that, the actor was like, ‘I think I could just pee’, and I was like, ‘Nope, we're gonna use a pee rig’.

“No matter what, we're not taking any chances.”

Films such as Stranger By the Lake were allowed because they were not filmed in the US. (Les Films du Losange)

When asked what that means about films where they claim the sex scenes were unsimulated – Brooke stated either it was filmed or another country, or something dodgy was happening.

They said: “It was filmed outside the US, or assault was happening. Or rules were being broken. I know that it’s happened.”

So, whilst there may be a bunch of films that can brag about having a shocking ‘unsimulated scene’ every single one of them filmed in the United States are breaking that rule.

Films such as Nymphomaniac tried different ways to get around this.

The Lars Von Trier film wanted to have hardcore depictions of sex without the actors performing unsimulated acts.

To get around this, the actors pretended to have sex, before two body doubles actually did the deed, with the top half taken from the actors’ scene, and the bottom half from the body doubles.

Comparing this to more shocking depictions, like in The Brown Bunny by Vincent Gallo where the director got an unsimulated blowjob from the other lead actor in the film, and you can see which filmmakers stick to this strict rule, and which don’t.

Brooke Haney's 'The Intimacy Coordinator's Guidebook' is available now.

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