Wow, two David Duchovny items in one day. I’m surprised to have two in the same year, frankly.
Weekly Variety has a short item on HBO deciding to seek viewers through the highly innovative and fresh tactic of “pushing the envelope”, content-wise. Whatever, dudes. How much more envelope is there to push, these days?
Anyway, this means more sex–a lot more sex–in a couple of upcoming shows. This is supposedly in reaction to how even basic cable channels are showing racier and more mature fare, such as F/X’s The Shield or Sci-Fi’s Battlestar Galactica. What strikes me about those shows is not so much that they ‘push the envelope’ in terms of content, but that they are incredibly excellent television. Even so, with audiences fragmenting, you need an increasingly smaller set of eyes to constitute a ‘hit.’ So maybe this strategy will work. Still, with all the porn out there now it’s amazing to think that people will be drawn to a TV show by the stuff.
Anyway, Duchovny will star in Californication–clever, huh?–wherein he’s a washed-up writer (not a washed-up actor, no sir!) who has a lot of sex with different disposable partners. Lest you forget, Duchovny is a vet of this sort of thing, having starred in the proto-cable soft-core porn show Red Shoes Diaries. Admittedly, here he’ll be, er, the center of attention a little more often, rather than just reading and visually other people’s Letters to Penthouse.
The example of the show’s Envelope-Pushing content revolves around his “pre-adolescent daughter” who sees that night’s bed partner and remarks, “She doesn’t have any hair on her vagina. Do you think she’s OK?” Ah, Kids. They say the darndest things, don’t they?
The other show is Tell You Me You Love Me (former the presumably more honest and accurate Sexlife), which we are told will feature lots and lots of male and female genitalia and, if reports are accurate, real, un-simulated sex. Whee! Maybe this will prove to be only hype, but really, it is the next logical (and pretty boring) step. And we’ve seen it in recent ‘art’ movies like Nine Songs and Shortbus, so I guess it’s only a matter of time
I think the most amusing aspect of this will be the way both the makers of the shows and their viewers will pat themselves on the back for their ‘fearlessness.’ I love this line from an IMDB Shortbus reader review: ” Is “Shortbus” provocative? Yes. Is it explicit? Yes! And these are good things in these politically authoritarian times.”
Way to speak Truth to Power, Grrrl!! You go, Felisfamiliaris!! Keep Givin’ It to the Man!!
