Susan Sarandon has been very vocal at Cannes this year, first condemning actors for supporting Woody Allen’s work, and most recently outlining her concerns about the porn industry. At an event for women in film, she declared that women had a better eye than men in general for depicting the meaning of sex on the screen.
This isn’t the first time Sarandon has spoken up about the lack of female directors in the porn industry, as she has even gone so far as to suggest that she intends to become a director of porn when she retires from acting. She opened up about the issue to British newspaper The Times:
“I haven’t watched enough to know what the problems are. Most pornography is brutal and doesn’t look pleasurable from a female point of view. So I’ve been saying when I no longer want to act, I want to do that.”
While some prominent female directors like Erika Lust are making successful erotic films in the industry that cater to female desires, there is still a skewed amount of porn aimed at fulfilling male desires as opposed to targeting female pleasure. Sarandon is passionate about changing this, and reflected to The Times on her involvement with the sex scenes in The Hunger (1983). She spoke to the director, Tony Scott, about the initial idea for her sex scene with a female vampire, in which her character was supposed to be inebriated when approaching the scene. Instead, she suggested introducing a blood-stained t-shirt that she ripped off before having sex with the vampire.
“First of all it was written that I was drunk and I said, ‘Seriously? You have to be drunk to get into bed with Catherine Deneuve? I don’t think so. Isn’t it more interesting if it is voluntary?” said Sarandon. “What makes a sex act really interesting is how that first touch happens, how that first kiss comes, so in The Hunger Tony allowed me to come up with an idea about the T-shirt and then the kiss. Those moments need to be looked at.”
She has no plans to give up acting any time soon, but she did say this:
“I have threatened in my eighties to direct porn.”
Talk about a retirement plan!
