#803) sex, lies, and videotape (1989)

The Plot: Graham Dalton (James Spader) returns to Baton Rouge to visit his college friend John Mullany (Peter Gallagher). While Graham realizes he now has little in common with John, he hits it off with John’s wife Ann (Andie MacDowell), who is unaware that John is having an affair with her sister Cynthia (Laura San Giacomo). As their friendship grows, Ann learns that Graham is impotent, and can only achieve an erection while videotaping women talking about their sexual experiences. Sex is frankly discussed, lies are exposed, and videotape is…taped in the directorial debut of Steven Soderbergh.

Why It Matters: The NFR write-up on the movie is two brief sentences; one celebrating the film’s “low-key style”, the other declaring that it “launched an independent film renaissance.”

But Does It Really?: I feel like every decade has a movie that reignited the American independent film scene (“A Woman Under the Influence”, “Pulp Fiction”, etc.), and if “sex, lies, and videotape” happens to be that movie for the ‘80s, so be it. As a film, “sex, lies, and videotape” still works as an erotically charged character study with a well-cast ensemble. As an NFR entry, the film represents its era of independent film, as well as the filmography of Steven Soderbergh, who somehow still only has one film on the Registry. And if nothing else, this movie fully delivers on its title. While it’s not the most excited I’ve ever been about a film’s NFR status, I understand and support the induction of “sex, lies, and videotape” into the Registry.

Shout Outs: We meet the annoying barfly character while he’s doing an impression of Marlon Brando in “Apocalypse Now”.

Everybody Gets One: Born in Atlanta and raised in Charlottesville and Baton Rouge, Steven Soderbergh became interested in filmmaking in his teen years, and shortly thereafter moved to Los Angeles and became a freelance editor. Soderbergh had been thinking about “sex, lies, and videotape” for a full year before he started penning the screenplay on a road trip from Baton Rouge to Los Angeles (hopefully he wasn’t driving). “sex, lies, and videotape” was Soderbergh’s feature directorial debut, and was filmed in the summer of 1988 in Baton Rouge on a budget of $1.2 million. Oh, and Soderbergh was 25 while he was making the film. Let that sink in.

Wow, That’s Dated: Well obviously a third of the title. Speaking of…

Title Track: “sex, lies, and videotape” was one of several titles Steven Soderbergh considered for his film, though he favored “46:02” (supposedly the length of Ann’s videotape). And yes, the title is all lowercase. 

Seriously, Oscars?: Despite sweeping the Independent Spirit Awards and winning the Palme d’Or at Cannes, “sex, lies, and videotape” only received a single Oscar nomination for Soderbergh’s Original Screenplay. In a stacked category that included “Do the Right Thing” and “When Harry Met Sally…”, they all lost to “Dead Poets Society”, which is a fine film (and somehow not on the NFR), but come on.

• Speaking of San Giacomo’s performance: With her wry line delivery and sex positive attitude, Cynthia is very close to being Roz from “Frasier”.

• As someone with thick eyebrows, I appreciate Peter Gallagher’s lifelong effort to make thick eyebrows sexy (because otherwise all we’ve got is Eugene Levy). Side note about Gallagher’s character: Yes, his name is John Mullany, pronounced the same as but spelled differently from the similarly named comedian. 
• I noticed in the early scenes that the camera is almost always moving. This was deliberate on Soderbergh’s part in an effort to keep the dialogue scenes from being too static. In fact, Soderbergh and cinematographer Walt Lloyd do an overall good job of keeping the film from being a filmed play of four characters talking. Soderbergh also spices things up with the editing, which he did himself before his longtime collaboration with the elusive yet artistically similar Mary Ann Bernard.
• Spader pays $400 rent for a duplex in Baton Rouge, which is a little over $1000 in today’s money. I’ve been saying it for the better part of a decade: We truly suck at inflation. 
• Perhaps the most impressive thing about this film for me: Despite all the talk about sex in this film, we see very little of it. We get a few shots of John and Cyn pre and post “the act”, but there’s no nudity. The film’s surprisingly erotic dialogue more than makes up for this, letting the viewers’ imaginations fill in the blanks.
• Graham’s impotent? Buddy, just give it a few years and Viagra will change your life.
• Either Andie is trying to drop her Southern accent, or Laura is trying to pick it up. The results are in that muddy Leslie Howard gray area.
• I’m guessing the real life version of Graham’s hobby would not nearly be as sexy or appealing to anyone else. Spader crawled so the pervy teen from “American Beauty” could walk.
• One scene I would have liked to see is John, upon confronting Graham about his videotape hobby, asking how to operate the VCR. “Is there an ‘Input’?”, “No, it has to be on Channel 3…”

• Yeah, I had a feeling that rain in the final shot wasn’t planned. According to cinematographer Walt Lloyd, the shoot was occasionally interrupted by “biblical rains”. Having gone through my first summer in the South, I get how those summer storms sneak up on you. Speaking of that final shot: Wait, that’s it?
• The film is dedicated to Ann Dollard, Soderbergh’s agent who died during production.

• Our quartet of actors have all maintained successful careers nearly 40 years after this film’s release. Andie MacDowell parlayed this film’s success into a movie career (though nowadays she considers herself best known as Margaret Qualley’s mother), while Spader, Gallagher, and San Giacomo all found continued stardom on TV. I recall enjoying San Giacomo on the sitcom “Just Shoot Me!”, and Spader’s Emmy-magnet turn on “Boston Legal”. My wife remembers Peter Gallagher as “the hot dad from ‘The O.C.’”

• “sex, lies, and videotape” is one of those movies that still gets referenced every so often, but only for its title. Every TV show has done an episode with a pun-based version of this title. Even an episode of “Goof Troop” got in on the act with “Wrecks, Lies, & Videotape”!

• Soderbergh made “an unofficial sequel of sorts” to this film with 2001’s “Full Frontal”, even though no one can explain to me what exactly the connection between the two films is. Soderbergh has stated in recent years that he wrote a more direct sequel during the COVID pandemic that focuses on Ann and Cynthia 30 years later. MacDowell and San Giacomo have expressed interest, but nothing further than that has happened with the project.