90s Lolitas Volume 3: Wild Things, Cruel Intentions and Britney Spears (Erotic 90’s, Part 19)
If Adrian Lyne’s Lolita became a case study of what Hollywood and America didn’t want to acknowledge about its sexualization of young girls, as the 90s came to a close the culture was full of “accepta...
10 Okt 20231h 9min
90’s Lolitas Volume 2: Adrian Lyne’s Lolita (Erotic 90’s, Part 18)
In the previous decade, Adrian Lyne had made two movies (Fatal Attraction and Indecent Proposal) that had grossed over $100 million in the US alone. With carte blanche to do whatever he wanted, he mad...
3 Okt 20231h 11min
The Lynch Family: Boxing Helena & Lost Highway (Erotic 90’s, Part 17)
One of the most notorious – and least seen – erotic narrative films of the 90s, Boxing Helena was the misbegotten passion project of Jennifer Lynch, daughter of David Lynch. Four years after Boxing He...
26 Sep 20231h 17min
Crash and David Cronenberg (Erotic 90’s, Part 16)
One of the only high-profile NC-17 releases post-Showgirls, David Cronenberg’s Crash was the kind of dark adult art film that the rating was supposedly created to support. We’ll talk about how Crash f...
19 Sep 20231h 23min
“Lesbian Chic”: Bound and Anne Heche in Wild Side (Erotic 90’s, Part 15)
At the beginning of the 90s, lesbians were a punchline for a male-gaze-oriented media, an easy target for expressing the anxiety that women might not need men after all. By the middle of the decade, w...
12 Sep 20231h 10min
Introducing: Glitter & Might
In Glitter & Might, a new series exploring the intersection of show business and politics, bestselling author Shawn Levy unpacks the story of Lew Wasserman, the shadowy legend who lorded over Hollywoo...
25 Aug 20233min
Showgirls, Jade, and the fall of Joe Eszterhas. (Erotic 90’s, Part 14)
Joe Eszterhas’s tenure as the hottest screenwriter in town ended with two notorious 1995 flops: the NC-17 rated Showgirls (directed, like Basic Instinct, by Paul Verhoeven) and Jade (produced, like Sl...
27 Juni 20231h 32min
The Last Seduction, Disclosure, & Fear of the Female Boss (Erotic 90’s, Part 13)
The 90s were obsessed with what magazine writer Tad Friend would describe as “do me feminism” – and the attendant fear that men could be victims of female sexual aggression. Two films from 1994 marrie...
20 Juni 20231h 11min
