I also learned sex from the movies. Everyone has. But one particular movie sent my (then uber-closeted) father into cardiac arrest when he heard I had seen it.
Picture it: 1972, Brockvegas.* A rather mature looking 13 year old kid somehow wrangles his way into a 2pm matinee of a restricted showing of this movie in a small Eastern Ontario town (actually I think it was Adult Accompaniment, but it was Restricted to someone my age, at least!). I went because I knew all the grownups were talking about it in hushed tones. Shocking. Scandalous! Sexy…
I was nervous going in. I left confused but yet knew that I had seen a masterpiece. When I got home I was honest with my father when he asked where I was that afternoon. I told him the title of the movie and he totally lost his shit.
“How did you get in to see that movie? Why did you go see THAT movie? What do you think was happening in the movie?”
And the last question that left me head scratching (at the time): “Did you like the music?”
What was the movie?
*I know… Sharkboy just finished watching Season One of The Golden Girls.
6 thoughts on “Sex Ed from the Cinema”
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I was 13 when I saw Cabaret with my family in Edmonton in 1972. I don’t remember it being a “scandolous movie” but I’ll never forget some of the scenes from the tough-looking, half-dressed German girls posing on stage, the slimy Joel Grey groping Liza Minelli, and the increasing dread as Nazism becomes more and more prevalent. The whole bit about “I slept with him too” totally went over my head until I saw the movie again several years later on tv. Great movie!!
And then did he ask, “Didn’t you think Liza was simply fabulous??”
@Don… I totally know what scene your dad got nauseated at… When I first saw that movie…at the orgy scene… the guy comes all over some womans face and in her mouth… It is weird how you can go from being grossed out by a sex act to being totally into it. Guess boys really do turn into dirty old men.
My father secretly took me to see Caligula (he told my mother that we were going to see a “war movie”). My father became quite nauseous during one of the oral sex scenes and insisted that we leave the theatre immediately. Which was,um, erh, a problem for his very embarrassed son.
Oh man. The Golden Girls are awesome.