Young People Fucking

The first feature film from director/co-writer Martin Gero and actor/co-writer Aaron Abrams, Young People Fucking (bet this gets caught in a few web filters) is exactly as the title implies, with five completely unrelated storylines about people having sex. There is the ex-boyfriend and girlfriend, reuniting for an evening out just as friends; the best friends who see each other as a convenient way to relieve their pent up lust without having to turn to some random, poorly chosen pickup; the couple, whose love life in the bedroom has lost its spark; the first date, with a player trying to get lucky with a woman he just met; and the roommates, one of who tries to draw the other into a threesome with his girlfriend. The characters run the gamut of emotions; some are insecure, some are over-confident; some have baggage in their relationship, some want to be intimate, and others just want to screw. Intercut amongst one another, each story proceeds from a prelude through to foreplay, to the act itself, to an interlude, and finally down to the climax and its denouement. In the end, the stories are full of both beginnings and endings for all of the characters.

The film definitely lives up to its title, but in a humourous, warm, and personal way. While there's stuff there that might make your grandmother blush, don't go in thinking you're going to get some sort of hard-core film or some generic teen sex comedy. It was easy to warm up to the characters and get a sense of their history and who they are without a lot of obvious exposition. The actors were good across the board, although Josh Dean's character was a bit too nerdly earnest for my taste. While you may not leave with any great, deep universal truths answered, the film got a lot of laughs and was enjoyable throughout, and hopefully it won't suffer for its title once it gets released.

Robert Kennedy's short, I've Never Had Sex, preceded the screening. In it, Kennedy asks people to respond to various questions, like "I've never had sex in a plane" or "I've never had sex with a married person". The responses he elicits are pretty funny, and this served as a good companion piece to set up the feature that followed. The short was shot entirely on a cell phone, and despite that was actually an Australian/National Film Board of Canada co-production (that got a bit of a chuckle from the crowd).

Director Martin Gero, co-writer and actor Aaron Abrams, and actors Josh Dean, Ennis Esmer, and Kristin Booth did a Q&A after the movie:

• Kristin Booth's character in the film has a bit of a crush on Ian Ziering. No one realized when they cast her that she had actually been an extra on Beverly Hills, 90210 at one point.
• They didn't really leave anything on the editing room floor. This was an independent movie, so there were only a couple of deleted scenes, but that was because they wrote them wrong - the scenes didn't belong in the film.
• Asked about promoting the film with the title it has, Gero replied that is a question for the distributors. Gero and Abrams never thought they'd actually be able to call the movie that. They thought it would be a good opening shot for what the script was going to be like; frank, and funny, and honest.
• When they took the title to ThinkFilm (the US distributor), ThinkFilm was all enthusiastic about the title. Abrams was convinced they didn't know what they were talking about, and that they'd suddenly realize there was a swear in the title, and all the buzz and fun would go away.
• Gero did make mention of the fact that ThinkFilm distributed similarly titled films, including the Beastie Boys' "Awesome; I Fuckin' Shot That!" and the documentary "Fuck", plus they did Shortbus last year, so they are good at handling complicated films.
• Gero and Abrams thought that newspapers wouldn't print the title, but for the most part they did, with the exception of The Toronto Star. The Star's editor-in-chief, the ironically named Fred Kuntz, directed the paper to censor the film's title in opposition to a request by the entertainment section of the paper (http://www.thestar.com/columnists/article/252151).
• Abrams said that he and Gero have always been big fans of film, and in fact they both met at the Paramount (now the Scotiabank) theatres, where the screening was actually taking place. They are both fans of romantic comedies, but those usually end with that first kiss, and for them the real conflict and romance happens after that.
• They are also big sex comedy fans, but a lot of those are usually about a guy trying to see his first boob. They wanted to see a sex comedy for people who have sex, something for adults, a romantic comedy with sex in it. They wanted to write something in their own voice, not something like "this movie" meets "that movie".
• In order for the movie to be universal, it has to start from a personal place. They are both big Bill Cosby fans, and Cosby tells personal stories that come across as universal.
• While there will be things in the movie that will make people go "What?!?!!", they hope that for every one of those, there will hopefully be another moment where people will say "I've said that" or "I've done that".
• It was a difficult film to cast, in that they had to find three qualities in each actor; one, they had to be fantastic comic actors; two, they had to be attractive, because the distributors told them that didn't want the film to end up being 'ugly people fucking'; and three, the actors had to be comfortable with the material. The script reads harder than the film actually is, and since they don't read Harlequin romance novels, they couldn't write directions like "the bosom unfurled". Instead, they ended up with notes like "he's fucking her from behind", and then actors are all like WTF!? They had to calm people down in the audition and assure them that it was a real movie.
• They also had to find actors with great chemistry; this was a lot of guesswork, as many didn't meet until shooting started.
• The actors also had to not be "dicky", asking for a bigger trailer and such, because there are a lot of intimate things going on, so they needed people to have fun and have it translate to the screen.
• Gero and Abrams commented on how the weird thing about sex is that it is something everyone does, but it's not something that we widely talk about. It's hard to talk about sexual problems, which is what much of the conflict in the movie is about.
• Films, especially comedies, are a safe and cathartic way for a roomful of people to release. When everyone laughs at a particular scene, it's an admission that at one point everyone has thought or done that exact same thing.
• A fun and safe place/thing to do in the dark is to watch your problems be reflected back to you on the screen, especially in a comedy.
• Each story was mostly shot in chronological order, with the exception of the threesome, since they were all local actors. Each story was mostly shot in 3 to 5 day chunks all in a row. This is an actor's film, designed to be a love letter to actors.
• The cast only had about a day of rehearsal time before shooting, so keeping things in chronological order really helped.

Tags: 2007,films