A new low, even for AMC

[Randy Stankey]

The act is no more special than taking a piss.

Wait till you get older! Taking a piss becomes more "special" as you age!

I grew up in a bar. I have seen people hooking up ever since I can remember. That's one of the main reasons people go to bars. Right?
Whether it was in the 70's and 80's or in current times, things haven't changed much and people still have the same expectations about sex. You're right. It's like a gymnastics routine where (imaginary) judges hold up score cards at the end.

People need to learn that it's about the journey, not the destination.

If you want to put it another way, "It's the thrill of the chase."

[Bobby Henderson]

I agree, too many people don't understand eroticism. They're not in touch with what makes something sensual. Getting a sensual vibe out of something doesn't need to involve physical sex either. It's in the mind. It's how someone observes another person and/or what they're doing as being seductive.

The way people "consume" hardcore porn is part of the problem. To be fair, some porn is crafted to appeal more to women (and be more tasteful, emotional and relational, but also present fantasies that women like). Too much of porn is like a gymnastics routine, all of it goal-oriented. The act is no more special than taking a piss. The only difference is a jolt to the central nervous system at the end of it. The performed "sex" in the scene may be real, but the situations are totally fake. So many parents don't bother to teach their kids about "the birds and bees" -such as the important parts, like emotionally connecting with another human being. So the kids learn from bullshit they hear from other kids and by watching porn online. They get a lot of bad information and then actually try out some of the stunts they watched in real life. Yeah, kid. Go ahead and try choking your girlfriend and spit on her while jack-hammering her pelvis. Let's see how that works out. It's no wonder why some young people are choosing to be "asexual."

Aside from how people are misusing porn, the Hollywood movie studios have to move on from the old tropes. One of the most common is the guy who just can't manage to get laid and sexual contact is just unattainable.

I felt like that when I was a teenager. I loved the movie Risky Business. I could relate with the "Joel" character played by Tom Cruise. The movie was about more than just him managing to get laid. Still, the movie spent a lot of time building up to that first scene between Joel and Lana.

As adults in real life we find out it actually isn't all that difficult to get laid. I've been in dating situations where the lady was getting impatient or even pissed off that I wasn't making a move already. Our culture is slowly allowing women to have the freedom to get what they want without being slut-shamed for it.

One thing that hasn't changed: anyone can still get their heart broken. That feeling is universal. The emotional connection between two people is what matters most. That's where any love story or coming of age story needs to be centered. That's what will speak to both male and female audience members across all age groups.

[Randy Stankey]

People just don't understand what eroticism is, anymore. They don't have any concept of what fantasy is. They don't understand anticipation. All they think about is taking off their clothes and bustin' a nut. Once that's done, it's "game over."

The whole point of sex (in movies) is about the things that lead up to the climactic moment, not the climax, itself. Anybody can hop into bed and have an orgasm. It's the feeling one gets, beforehand, that makes things erotic.

I think you're right. The internet has a lot to do with it. A moment a go, I googled "naked women" just to see what would happen. Three or four of the top ten images were porn. Only one or two of the whole first page of results were what I would call artistic nudes.

If people can't even look up erotic words without getting splattered by seedy porn images, how will they perceive eroticism in movies beyond the old bump-and-grind?

I agree with you. The story is key. The idea that I'm getting at is about the same thing. It's the story that makes plain sex erotic.

[Bobby Henderson]

Nowadays, it would, likely, be impossible to remake a movie like Logan's Run or Barbarella, not because sex is taboo but because people, these days, just don't know how to portray eroticism on screen, anymore.

For various reasons, sex isn't all that special or interesting anymore. People in the Gen-Z and Millennial generation groups are having less sex and fewer sexual partners than people in their parents or grandparents generations. The sex activity declines are spreading to people in Gen-X and older groups too.

One of the key problems is people are living more isolated lives. It's easy to disconnect and replace in-person human interactions with digital substitutes. But that's coming at a cost of slow atrophy in social skills and one's sense of reality or world-view. We have a growing number of young adults describing themselves as "asexual" -they don't have any partners and don't want any either. They've opted out.

A bunch of younger people (and, hell, even people my age) have grown up as children of divorce. I'm sure those life experiences have colored their perspectives on movies containing "love stories" or various cheaper, more transactional portrayals of sex. "Happily ever after" just doesn't sell very well to a lot of people anymore. And there is a whole lot of bad that can come with a booty call.

I think movies can still speak to these audiences with sexual subject matter. But it can't be done like it was in the past. The key thing is the story has to be relatable to modern audiences. Easier said than done though.

[Randy Stankey]

The whole plot of the movie "Logan's Run" was based on hedonism and sex but you hardly saw a naked body throughout the entire film.

Of course, I like sex (in movies) as much as anybody but it's the finer points, anticipation and titillation that make it interesting to watch. Today's movies don't have that same style and I don't find it as satisfying to watch. Nowadays, clothes come off, people do the deed then the show is over.

In Logan's Run, the whole movie was saturated with such a level of erotic anticipation that the "Love Shop" scene was almost anti-climactic. As legend has it, the scene was cut down from the original shooting in order to tone down the sexual imagery but it still ended up being one of the most iconic "sex scenes" in movie history.

Nowadays, it would, likely, be impossible to remake a movie like Logan's Run or Barbarella, not because sex is taboo but because people, these days, just don't know how to portray eroticism on screen, anymore.

[Bobby Henderson]

Decades ago conventional Hollywood movies used to have the most edgy sexual oriented content one could see on screen (without having to risk personal safety or embarrassment visiting a porno palace).

Hollywood movies no longer have "the edge" when it comes to sexual content and sexual related story lines. Theatrical releases are easily outdone by what can be shown on pay TV. The stuff I'm talking about isn't porn either. The sex scenes are simulated. But cable TV networks and streaming services can air shows with scenes that will get any Hollywood movie hammered with a NC-17 rating.

Then there's the matter of easily and freely accessible hardcore porn at various web sites. If someone wants to see a truly graphic sex scene they can pull up one of those web sites. Watching an acted sex scene in a movie is very tame by comparison. There is no shock value to seeing a sex scene in a conventional movie anymore. A lot of the movie-going public has been desensitized to it. Why even bother putting such a scene in a movie?

I think sex still has its place in movies, but more than ever it really needs to serve the story. The scene will be a total waste of time if it is just put in a movie gratuitously.

[Mike Blakesley]

Despite "religious people" who say that today's movies are full of sex and violence, there hasn't REALLY been a lot of sex in mainstream movies in many, many years. There's no problem with a love scene in which, right at the time they're starting to get naked, the scene fades to black or cuts to the next morning. There's not really a huge reason to show them actually bumping uglies, unless it's integral to the story. I think the biggest reason there aren't more nude or sex scenes is, these days people just don't want to show their naked selves on screen. Again, if it doesn't serve the story, there's no big need to see Jennifer Lawrence or whoever naked, however appealing that notion might be.

[Frank Cox]

https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainmen...m-tv-1.7059622

While speaking with reporters about his film Poor Things earlier this fall, director Yorgos Lanthimos took a moment to address the spicy elephant in the room.

"Why is there no sex in movies anymore?" the Greek filmmaker wondered. He was being somewhat facetious — his latest feature stars Emma Stone as a dead Victorian woman who, after being brought back to life by a mad scientist, sets forth on her journey toward sexual liberation.

The story is funny, the nudity is plentiful — and per Stone, who was also a producer on the film — the sex scenes serve the story "in such an important way."

Lanthimos' film — and his qualms — come just as a recent study from UCLA found that a good chunk of Gen Z just doesn't really want to see sex in TV and movies anymore.
Of young people surveyed between the ages of 13 to 24, 47.5 per cent think sex isn't needed for plot development in TV shows and movies. (Pause here for collective gasp.)

Meanwhile, movie critics and filmmakers are increasingly bemoaning that mainstream film has become sexless — or at the very least, prudish in its portrayal of sex.
A 2019 report in Playboy used IMDB data to conclude that the 2010s saw the fewest sex scenes on screen since the 1960s. It should be noted that the Hays Code era — a period of Hollywood censorship that forbade the depiction of sex in cinema, along with other taboos — lasted from 1934 until 1968.

Critics and filmmakers shared their theories as to why the younger generation might be rejecting sexy cinema and why depicting sex on screen is important.
'Gratuitous and grotesque' sex scenes


Gabrielle Drolet, a culture writer and cartoonist in Montreal who is in her mid-twenties, said it's "so common to see sex depicted in a way that feels really frivolous."

"I'm thinking of shows like Euphoria, or to name another Sam Levinson show, The Idol, where there were so many sex scenes [that] were so gratuitous and grotesque, almost, and unnecessary."

But she noted that dismissing all sex scenes would mean that "we're missing out on a pretty big part of the human experience and how people experience their relationships."
Drolet was surprised to see the strong reaction provoked by a sex scene in Christopher Nolan's blockbuster Oppenheimer this summer.

The scene set the internet aflame (or rather, gave it a cold shower), as some viewers mocked it for showing the nuclear physicist rather morbidly reciting to his lover the line from Hindu scripture's the Gita that he later became associated with: Now I am become Death, destroyer of worlds.

"It's really common to see violent scenes," said Drolet. "But as soon as sex comes up, that becomes a really big complicated issue, whereas we're so desensitized to everything else."
Several movies released this year that were sold to audiences based on their raunchiness or sensuality seemed to lack sex appeal in their execution.

Take the Jennifer Lawrence flick No Hard Feelings, a sex comedy that didn't feature much sex, or the recent TV adaptation of Fatal Attraction, which updated its gender politics for a modern audience but fell short of its steamy, sweaty forebearer in the sex scene department.
Canadian director Molly McGlynn's upcoming film Fitting In, about a teenage girl diagnosed with a reproductive disorder that turns her life — and sex life — upside down, said she wanted to explore the emotion of sex in her movie, not the mechanics.

"The intersection of what I'm seeing in culture about what being a woman is and how sexuality relates to that is really kind of interesting," she told CBC News, noting the range between a film like Poor Things, which celebrates a sexually liberated woman, in contrast to the Barbie movie, in which the protagonist doesn't have or desire sex at all.

McGlynn wondered whether young people are less interested in sex on screen overall, or if they're tired of seeing "gratuitous sex" and nudity, especially as societal expectations around marriage and children evolve.

"It does make sense to me that the focus has maybe shifted to relationships because [younger generations] have, I think thankfully, been able to question whether a romantic or sexual relationship is the be-all-end-all that we have been sold."
Youth crave more storylines about friendships


While Gen Z might be less interested in media portrayals of sex, the UCLA study found that among those surveyed, just over half wanted to see more storylines about friendships and platonic relationships in media.

"When you think about how often romantic relationships are layered into our narratives, sometimes that can feel maybe a little bit extraneous, when what you're searching for is connection [that] is platonic," said Stacy Lee Kong, the Toronto-based editor of pop culture newsletter Friday Things.
"We talk about it as like this puritan idea of 'The youth are so conservative. The youth don't like sex,' " said Kong, noting that the pandemic limited the number of "third spaces," a term used to describe locations outside of home, school or work where people can socialize freely.

"They don't have that, and so they're looking for that from their pop culture," she explained.

[Bobby Henderson]

Military towns (like Lawton, OK) have traditionally had more than their fair share of bars, night clubs and other establishments with more naughty forms of entertainment. My dad's first duty station in the Marines was Camp Lejeune. When we first moved to Jacksonville, NC we stayed in a crappy, rat-infested little motel for a few weeks waiting for our quarters in Midway Park to open. There was a drive-in theater next door and it showed porno movies in addition to other R-rated stuff. My dad and a some of his Marine buddies would drink beer and watch the screen from the back yard. My mother wouldn't let me or my brother play in that back yard after dark.

During that same period in the beginning of the 1970's Lawton was at its most dirty and dangerous level in history. The downtown area had lots of bars and even a good number of strip clubs. But to hear some older guys who grew up in this city describe it, Lawton's night life was at its best back then. There were people driving down from OKC to party here.

Various city leaders were determined to "clean up" Lawton. Their solution: this new thing at the time called a mall. The indoor mall down in Hurst, TX was one of the first of its kind. They even filmed parts of the movie Logan's Run there. The city razed 12 square blocks worth of properties to build Central Mall and drafted a number of other ordinances in the late 1970's. Lawton's downtown area has been dead after dark ever since.

The topless bars and other night clubs didn't disappear. They just spread out to other parts of town. Starting in the 1990's the strip clubs started dying off one by one. Today there is just one of them left West of town and I think it might be off limits to military personnel by orders of Fort Sill's CG. So many other bars and night clubs have shut down here in just the past 10 years.

We still have plenty of crime, including shootings. But those are usually from one of three scenarios: domestic dispute, escalated fights at a house party or drug/gang-related activity.

But there is a great deal of down-ward pressure against young adults socializing and "hooking up." The cost of living in relation to local wage levels is nuts. There is a bunch of young adults who can only afford to be single. They might be stuck living with parents or they may be sharing an apartment with other roommates. Neither situation is good for a serious romantic relationship, especially one headed for marriage. Single people are intensely scared of unplanned pregnancies (correction: even married couples are scared too as well). I believe blow-back from things like the "me too" movement have made people more cautious at making romantic overtures to someone. People are seeking refuge in social media and computerized things. But loneliness is spreading.

[Martin McCaffery]

I'm not going to say Montgomery, AL is a swinging hot spot, but the downtown has changed immensely for the better in the almost 40 years I have been here. There are lots of reasons for it. Back in 85 when I arrived, we had a crypto-fascist mayor for life who decreed that the downtown would close up around sunset, and should only be populated by the civil servants who worked in all of the various government jobs a state capitol provides. Let everyone else go to Birmingham or something. Eventually we got Mayors - of both parties - who actually invested in downtown and recruited and encouraged new and diverse businesses. All of the projects of Bryan Stevenson's Equal Justice Initiative bring thousands of tourist downtown annually. The deceased former mayor would have done everything in his power to have stopped EJI. I'm not going to say I've been 100% on board with all of the political choices, but at least Montgomery's downtown is not the abandoned wasteland it was back then.

[Mike Blakesley]

Same here. We still have a downtown but it's pretty much dead after 9pm. Used to be things weren't really getting STARTED until then. Now, you can go stand in the middle of our main drag on Saturday at 10pm and not see any moving vehicles in either direction. It's sad, partly because people don't seem to know how much fun it used to be to go downtown! If they did, they'd still be going.

There's a certain local bar here which has been a downtown mainstay for my whole life. The owners are a couple years older than me. The pandemic really took it out of them. They used to serve great food and were a gathering point in town -- you would go there before going wherever the dance band(s) were playing. Now, they took all the food out; they are only open four nights a week, and they usually close by 10:00 pm. They really need to sell the place to somebody younger who is more "hungry," but what else are they gonna do? The bar is most of their whole social life, it seems. (Probably the same reason I'm still in the movie business, if I'm really honest with myself.) Plus, I've heard they think that bar is worth a million bucks, but I think they're delusional about that.

[Frank Cox]

Our "downtown" seems to have pretty much moved out to be beside the highway.

Twenty years ago the downtown was the activity center of the town. Now a lot of the stuff that used to be downtown (including a grocery store and most of the restaurants) have relocated to be beside the highway so now there's little reason for anyone to go downtown any more unless you're going to the bank or the post office.

I can walk from here to the post office in the mid-afternoon (about four blocks) and not see a single soul on the sidewalk.

[James Wyrembelski]

Maybe it's different in smaller cities and towns.

All I'll say is that it's *vastly* different.

Even rural towns like mine had some semblance of a night life as little as 10 years ago. Now? The town is practically rolled up by 5pm.

[Bobby Henderson]

I went to see Maestro Tuesday night at the Netflix Paris theater (529 seats) and it was practically sold out for a film that everyone knows is going to be streaming on Netflix in a few weeks. And then yesterday, I went to a 2pm show of Poor Things and was surprised to see a great crowd for that time of day - theater was about half full. So anecdotally, maybe adults at least, are starting to return to theaters.

Manhattan is a pretty unique movie-going market in terms of demographics. It doesn't surprise me at all that a movie like Maestro would fill the Paris theater in Manhattan. Book the same movie at a cinema in Oklahoma City and it would be playing to smaller crowds. Booked into a theater here in Lawton the show would be lucky to sell more than a handful of tickets.

Gentrification has swept across much of NYC's five boroughs. The idea of "affordable" neighborhoods is all relative to who is living there and their income level. Still, Manhattan is quite a bit more expensive than Brooklyn or Queens overall. Young adults will show up to certain night spots or concert events just about anywhere if enough conditions are right.

Pretty much the only concerts I go to anymore are just gigs for underground bands at local bars here in Lawton or sometimes up in Oklahoma City. The cover charges (if any) are usually pretty reasonable.

One of the casinos here in Lawton, as well as a few other casinos in this region, like to book old "dinosaur" bands. WinStar is a big enough venue (fucking enormous really) that it can book some current era performers too. Dinosaur band or not, they're often wanting $80 or more for an ordinary seat. Tickets are hundreds of dollars (or even thousands) to see a band that is currently popular nationally or globally. There are certain rock and alternative bands I like a lot, but I'm not blowing the equivalent of a house payment to see any of them perform live. Apparently enough other people are willing to do that. Otherwise the prices wouldn't be so outrageous.

I've been arguing for a long time that the reason we have so many superhero movies is because older people were no longer showing up for intelligent, adult films.

One reason why this is happening is many people put movies into two categories: movies they want to see on a big screen in a commercial cinema and other movies that good enough to merely watch on TV. The movies lumped into the TV watching category are indeed those "grown up" dramas and comedies. They'll go the cinema to watch big action set pieces and sequences with lots of expensive visual effects. The cinema gets to function as a sort of amusement park. Those silly D-Box seats and concepts like Screen-X play into that. Who wants to buy D-Box tickets for "Maestro?"

My wife (who isn't a grumpy old man) also comments on the inappropriate wearing of pajamas in places like Walmart. We don't need to dress up for a baseball game like it's the 1920s but there is a happy medium of appropriate dress when out in public.

Exactly. I'm not asking for people to wear dress casual attire to Walmart. Most of the time I'm rocking the jeans and t-shirt look. But it's still actual clothing to wear outdoors in public. People wearing pajamas, bath robes, etc out in public just make me ask all sorts of questions. Did they not have any clean clothes to wear? Did they just get out of bed? Have they taken a shower? Did they even bother to wipe their ass after taking a dump? Just doing the basics looks like too much work for them.

[Lyle Romer]

Too many people like to spend money they just don't even have. Credit card debt in the US is hitting new all time highs. One of my relatives is drowning in credit card debt because he is a compulsive spender and apparently does not know how to math.

Many millions of Americans are living beyond their means, trying to project an image of being more wealthy and successful than they are in reality. Buying over-priced homes and over-priced vehicles is a big part of that.

I am deeply worried what the year 2024 may have in store for the economy. Consumers are getting maxed out and deeper in the red. Even some businesses are getting into trouble, namely ones heavily vested in real estate. A commercial real estate apocalypse could take place in big cities around the country. Office vacancies are way up in places like New York City -thanks in part to office rent prices being too damned high and much faster Internet technology making it no longer necessary to do big business in person in the big city. The interest rates on commercial real estate properties reset every few years. It's not like having a 30 year fixed rate mortgage. A bunch of these office tower owners may be drowning in red ink by this time next year. They have far less rental income coming in but the payments on their towers is going to skyrocket. Pretty simple math.

Us taxpayers will probably be asked to bail them out. Again. It seems like no one learned a Goddamned thing from the mid 2000's.



Because I don't like people showing up to the gym wearing crocs or wearing their pajamas to the grocery store?

There's one heavy-set jerk that comes to the Lawton Family YMCA always stinking like he hasn't had a shower in days. It's disgusting. I'm not an arch-conservative person with a giant stick up my ass. At the same time I don't think it's too much to ask for people to practice some basic hygiene. Anyone should have mastery of personal cleanliness while they're still in elementary school.

I fear that your 2024 economic prediction will come closer to happening than not happening. There is an epidemic that started probably in the 90s of a lot of people just spending whatever they feel like spending on credit cards and figuring they'll deal with it later. It's a big part of why Disney World keeps jacking up prices and people still go in droves. They don't really care what it is costing.

They just figure that worst case, they'll file bankruptcy, wait a few years for it to be off of their credit report and start again.

My wife (who isn't a grumpy old man) also comments on the inappropriate wearing of pajamas in places like Walmart. We don't need to dress up for a baseball game like it's the 1920s but there is a happy medium of appropriate dress when out in public.