Because no one asked for it: A breakdown of my favorite erotic films, literature and even television.
CINEMA
My rewatch of Little Children last week, while I was recovering from butt surgery, essentially inspired this list. Most people walk away from it scarred by the Jackie Earle Haley plot, forgetting the smoking hot affair between Kate Winslet and Patrick Wilson. Though Kate Winslet would only win her first Oscar two years later for The Reader (fucking spare me), this was obviously a Colin Firth A Single Man/The King’s Speech scenario: we know why she really scored the trophy. It’s obvious that Patrick Wilson’s performance as the sad suburban prom king led to his mesmerizing episode of Girls. Jennifer Connelly is and always will be perfect. Regardless, it’s a movie about obsession, summer awakening and fevers which must be left to rage. Deserves a yearly rewatch.
What’s Up, Doc? is the hottest movie ever made, and more or less the codex to my entire romantic history. This is a screwball comedy about an unhinged Jewish woman (Barbra Streisand) sexually terrorizing a repressed patrician WASP (Ryan O’Neal). It’s everything I like about everything. In real life, O’Neal was an abusive piece of shit, but as Anjelica Huston told Vulture, at his peak he was a “bronzed, burnished god” and probably the finest man alive. The movie is truly a joy to watch, and even has, in a delightful reversal, the living Botticelli Madeline Kahn playing a frumpy shrew, while the randy Streisand seduces her stacked husband.
If you know literally anything about me, then you saw this one coming from a mile away. But it’s my newsletter and my prerogative to belabor a point: Michelle Pfeiffer stole the apple from Aphrodite, launched the Trojan War, and inspired teenage boys to pick up a camera and capture a beauty they couldn’t hope to understand. She is the only sex symbol. Now, onto the greatest hits.
When Emily Olcott and I saw the new Batman with Pattinson and Kravitz, the first thing she asked when we left the theater: where’s the fucking? Agreed. It’s been 30 years since Michelle Pfeiffer licked Michael Keaton’s sexy lips and grabbed his erection through fetish rubber in my favorite movie, Batman Returns. It’s all been downhill since then.
For period pieces with flushed necks and breasts heaving through corsets, consult The Age of Innocence, a Taurean showdown which renders Daniel Day-Lewis a puppydog at Pfeiffer’s feet; and Dangerous Liaisons, in which Pfeiffer believably perishes from desire for John Malkovich (and, of course, to keep it going, you might as well watch Cruel Intentions for the immortal tush of Ryan Phillippe).
You want more? Consult the perfect Frankie & Johnny, another two-bull face-off featuring Pfeiffer and Pacino; The Fabulous Baker Boys features her in a red dress, singing on top of a baby grand, awakening the souls of gay children everywhere. If you have strong magical protection, the truly evil Witches of Eastwick features Pfeiffer, Cher and Susan Sarandon fucking Satan in the form of…Jack Nicholson?
Let’s get this moving. Watch Roman Polanski’s Venus in Furs to witness a direct, sublime, devastating channeling of Venus by Emmanuelle Seigner. When Jennifer Connelly first lays eyes on David Bowie in Labyrinth’s ballroom fantasy montage, you can see the first beautiful twinkling of innocent desire. Y Tu Mamá También requires no introduction, nor does Bram Stoker’s Dracula or Dirty Dancing. I must mention Scary Movie, which was so violently horny that my stepmom tore us out of the theater in a huff — I didn’t understand anything that was going on at the time, but the sight of Shawn Wayans still ignites something primal and voracious in me. The same goes for The Sweetest Thing; my poor mother was traumatized by the cunnilingus fantasy with Thomas Jane between Cameron Diaz’s legs. I didn’t get it at age 11, but I certainly celebrate it now.
LITERATURE
Last year, in the dead of winter, I read Jane Eyre for the first time, and caught myself gasping, alone, in the dark, in an empty apartment, as if I were being actively scandalized on a packed train in Czarist Russia. The tête-à-têtes between the mousy, strong-willed Jane and her “sardonic” employer Mr. Rochester left me breathless. I don’t have time to get into the myriad film adaptations, but suffice it to say, Michael Fassbender was born to play Rochester, and he was seriously mismatched by Mia Wasikowska.
Gengoroh Tagame’s Endless Game (pictured above) is a classic, a joyful foray into Dracula’s Castle, as a clueless young stud is groomed into becoming a private dancer for hot gay gangsters. For other sexy comics, consult Tom King’s Batman run (Clay Mann really knows his way around a Batman/Catwoman flirtation — pictured below); Alex Maleev’s steamy, lurid art on Daredevil; and the incredibly sexy Storm-Forge love story X-Men: Lifedeath.
You know that Call Me By Your Name is my favorite book, annual reading, a life-changer, and that I adore the adaptation (and most Guadagnino movies). We don’t need to get into it here.
TELEVISION
We’ll keep it short: Hannibal is the greatest love story ever told, an ongoing flirtation between “murder husbands” Mads Mikkelsen and Hugh Dancy, his perky twink fixation. The first season starts out as a semi-procedural, but by season two, it all melds into a hallucinatory spice orgy featuring Gillian Anderson and buckets of blood. Count on showrunner Bryan Fuller for some of the medium’s hottest unions, including the forever unconsummated chemistry between Anna Friel and Lee Pace on Pushing Daisies, and the legendary gay sex scene from season one of American Gods.
Buffy’s sixth season will someday get its own book-length treatise from me. Consult my NYLON pieces on Angelus and the show’s greatest romances for more. Suffice it to say, what the Slayer and Spike get down to in an abandoned tenant will wreck you. And speaking of controversial sixth seasons, we must celebrate the absolutely fantastic roadside fucking between Mary Louise Parker and Mark-Paul Gosselaar on Weeds and the homoerotic shaving scene on True Blood!
Did this do anything for you? What is this list missing? Let me know, I’m clearly hungry for more.
Happy Valentines Day,
David Odyssey