I normally refrain from using the term "dumb whore", but it just seems so appropriate here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,1220540,00.htmlWhy I made that film
Michael Winterbottom's sexually explicit new film was always going to make headlines. But when its female star said she would rather remain anonymous, Nine Songs had all the ingredients for a media frenzy. Margo Stilley speaks for the first time to Charlotte Higgins
Thursday May 20, 2004
The Guardian
You could, perhaps, have seen it all coming. Or maybe not, if you were a 21-year-old with no significant acting roles to your name. What is clear is that Margo Stilley, the female lead in Michael Winterbottom's film Nine Songs - already famous as the most sexually explicit film in the history of mainstream British cinema - is at the centre of an almighty media ruckus.
On Tuesday, tabloid headlines gleefully announced the arrival of the "Muckiest Film Ever" and the "Rudest Film Ever to Hit Our Cinemas". By yesterday Fleet Street's finest had caught up with friends and family in Stilley's native North Carolina. "Mother of Beauty in 'Real Sex' Film Shocker Prays For Her ... Oh God! Oh God!" trumpeted the Daily Express, on startlingly baroque form. "My Prayers For 'Porn' Daughter" and "Bible Belt Mum's Fear For Her Sex Movie Daughter", were the contributions from the Daily Mirror.
Stilley is plainly shocked by her first encounter with Her Majesty's press. "My mother has even had to call up the school where my little brothers go to ask them not to let people into the school to talk to them. There are guerrilla photographers following my family around. I have managed to get myself into a mess."
Some might say that one would have to be either very brave or very stupid to do what Stilley has done. She has exposed herself in all possible senses of the word. Her genitalia quite literally fill the screen. She gives a blowjob. She is penetrated. She lies on a bed, blindfolded, while her on-screen boyfriend, played by the much more seasoned actor Kieran O'Brien, performs cunnilingus on her. But what she is keen to make clear - and she is absolutely right - is that Nine Songs is not some kind of kinky porno flick.
Winterbottom's idea (whatever its merits and demerits as a concept) was to tell a love story from a single angle: that of the physical encounters between the couple. The sex is a metonym for the rest of the relationship: from it, the audience is led to infer the trajectory of their affair. First comes loved-up infatuation; later, there is a moving sequence when the pair, deeply in love, spend the weekend together at the seaside. Finally, we see a poignant endgame when Lisa, Stilley's character, finds more interest in her vibrator than her boyfriend. "She was 21: beautiful, egotistical, careless and crazy," says O'Brien's character Matt, through whose perspective the love affair is recalled from the desolation of Antarctica, scenes of which frame the narrative. That barren, strangely geometric landscape also serves a metaphorical purpose: "It's claustrophobia and agoraphobia in the same place - like two people in a bed," says Matt at one point. The love story is punctuated by footage of bands performing live, mostly at the Brixton Academy. The visits to gigs, like the sex, serve as remembered punctuation points in the relationship.
"The film shows sex in a good light," says Stilley. "It is a monogamous relationship between two people who are in love. Michael was a perfect candidate for making this film - he makes it beautiful, lovely, sweet, kind, sensitive. I think he's done a very good job of it."
In fact the jolt of the film is seeing sex so forthrightly portrayed, not that it shows anything that one imagines most couples don't do behind closed doors. "It isn't shocking," says Stilley. "If you know you are going to watch a film like this, it's not abrasive. It's normal sex that everyone has, not crazy stuff." She also points out that only two episodes go beyond "normal" cinematic sex scenes (though the film is extremely explicit, by any standards). These are the fellatio scene and the final sequence, in which the couple have full penetrative sex. "I dealt with them as best I could," says Stilley. "I expect Kieran did the same."
The process of filming, according to Stilley, was "very easy to cope with", though it's hard to imagine that many women would willingly put themselves in her shoes (or, as in one scene, spike-heel thigh-length boots). After the casting, there was an initial rehearsal. "We rented a hotel room as a studio and did some speaking scenes. There was no sex. It was just a screen test. It was very professional." Winterbottom is also keen to point out that there was every chance at this stage for either of the actors to pull out. "Both Kieran and Margo made a very difficult choice," he says.
Winterbottom had conceived of a shape for the story but much of the script was worked out collaboratively. "We had a strong sense of our characters and we all wrote the scenes together," says Stilley. The process was film for eight days, and have 10 days off, after which the team would come together for discussions. It was a closed set, involving just the two cast members, Winterbottom, a cameraman and a sound man. Despite being the solitary woman in this setup, Stilley says, "Our crew was incredibly respectful and professional. I never felt uncomfortable because they were there."
So were the - literally - bare facts of Winterbottom's film enough to trigger a media storm or was there another ingredient that helped set fourth estate pulses racing. Winterbottom suggests that the Guardian - actually, I personally - was partly responsible because we reported (without naming her) Stilley's request that her name be removed from coverage of the film. By drawing attention to her decision, and thus implying that there was a bit of a mystery, we encouraged salivation from other quarters, he suggests. Perhaps he's right. Stilley, in turn, thinks it's her fault. Of the media coverage, she says: "I'm surprised, and even more by the fact that I've brought most of it on myself."
Should Winterbottom, an established director with numerous credits to his name and a high public profile, have foreseen the fuss the film would inevitably generate and done more to protect the relatively inexperienced Stilley? Or is she - as Winterbottom implies - a grown-up who can make her own decisions? "I am having a really hard time reading what's going on," she says. "I'm not sure people are taking an interest because I chose to remove my name, or because I haven't done any roles before. At the moment I can't really see the wood from the trees."
Regardless of the critical reception of the movie, it will certainly - if and when it gets a certificate - push back the boundaries of what is deemed acceptable in the cinema. Time will also tell whether the quality of the movie justifies its uncomfortable fallout for its female lead. It will certainly take its place in film history.
Stilley will also take hers: but as what? As just "the girl who was in the sex film"? Where does this leave her: will the notoriety of the role dog her career endlessly? Plucked out of obscurity to make the movie, and now the unwilling quarry of a media on the hunt, she is none the less determined. "I am an actress. I was an actress in this movie. And I have every intention of carrying on." She delivers a brave and professional performance in Nine Songs, and Winterbottom said yesterday that he will be casting her in his next film. He also asked me, "Is Marlon Brando just the man who was in Last Tango In Paris?" The answer, of course, is no. But then Marlon Brando wasn't a 21-year-old without a history of famous roles to his name. Nor is he a woman.
Previous Topic
Index
