What is this movie?

It’s a unique style of documentary that lays out an intensely researched argument (complete with on-screen citations) asserting that our cultural understanding about how the female orgasm physically works, even in the most basic way, is so deeply flawed that it negatively affects all elements of our sexuality. The movie makes this argument through a series of off-beat vignettes that tell the story of lady-gasms in science and culture from the early 20th Century on. We call it a visual essay because it’s like a thesis paper came to life in a quirky, colorful film.

How would we categorize it, and who is the intended audience?

Great questions (I mean I actually hate these questions, but I know they’re necessary). I want to say it’s a Visual Essay and that it’s for everyone because it’s super entertaining in its own right, and it’s full of information we ALL need to hear. However we know from trying to market this 10 years ago, that people kinda don’t know what to do if it’s not boxed in a pre-understood category, which ‘quirky visual essay’ is not. So, for a slightly more categorized description…

Science, Sex, and the Ladies is a serious documentary meets a midnight movie; for adults that love both learning and a raucous movie experience.
It’s got all the content of a rich doc full of detailed information put together into novel concepts (minus talking heads). It’s also a wild, hilarious romp of a movie. It’s got memorable quotes people take with them (“Rub One Out!” and “Darling, did you know you should be having an Orgasm"?) and scenes that, well, stick in the brain (cavewomen masturbating against a pterodactyl or a magical guy in a top hat narrating the problematic elements of a ‘first time’ situation…for instance). It’s just plain fun - even if you don’t like the message.

To me that's exactly the mix that is SSL - it's a movie that is FUN to watch, and the more people you watch with, the more fun and raucous it is. It creates a communal feeling in the audience - like everyone just went on a weird-ass journey together, but it's more than just silly midnight movie fluff. It is informative and thoughtful, and leaves the viewer with more knowledge and understanding of the world than when they came in. 

So there you go. If I must give you a particular "type" of audience for Science, Sex and the Ladies, it is people who would go to a screening of “The Room,” or “Rocky Horror,” or “Grindhouse,” but would also rent informative docs like “The Corporation” or “Blackfish.”

(Although, honestly, my real answer is the completely and utterly unacceptable one - I think this movie is for everyone). Also, I wrote on these very questions in more detail back in 2015 HERE.

Who made this?

AnC Movies (Me - aka Trisha Borowicz, Charlie Borowicz, and Barnaby Aaron). We had done lots of shorts and other video work before this, and it just happened that my script was the first to become a full-length. You can check out our website that hasn’t been touched in a while if you want. We’ve all been working, but haven’t created a full length movie since Science, Sex, and the Ladies. We have plans to start in on a (not documentary) movie soon, though. I think we all feel pretty certain it will be way easier than this movie was.

Why did you make this?

I had taken an Intro to Feminism and also a Philosophy of Biology course my senior year of college in 2002. I was also starting to notice that porn was pretty male-centric in its depictions and fantasies. It all came together to spark the idea that is…all this. So I started reading everything I could and taking lots of notes.

At first I was looking more generally into gender, science, and sexuality. So, early on I read a lot about things like science related to gender differences, the history of hormone research, gender in medicine, and general sexual research. This resulted in a short we made as AnC Movies in 2004 called, “Ladies and Gentlemen, We Assume.” It was a first pass at the ‘visual essay’ styling we were thinking about for a full length on the topic, and it premiered at an event we called Movie Prom. From that point on we had a good sense of the ‘visual essay’ style we were going for.

As I was looking into things, though, I started really focusing in on the female orgasm. I remember seeing Shere Hite on Stephen Colbert in 2006. I had never heard of her before and she blew my mind (looking at the clip just now, I realize she wasn’t even able to say much, but it was still so refreshing and exciting to hear). I immediately bought The Hite Report on Female Sexuality, and devoured it. I had been edging toward the idea that maybe this vaginal orgasm thing was a bunch of BS, and this book confirmed so much of what I was thinking…and realizing that this stuff was being said on a world-wide scale, so clearly, years before I was even born, and then sort of forgotten, gave me a real sense of urgency to continue telling the story of lady-gasms.

After that, I really focused onto this grave misunderstanding our culture has about how women physically orgasm, and my reading and eventual script reflected that.

How did you make this movie?

The three of us in AnC started talking seriously about a full length movie for this sometime around 2005. Once I created a treatment, we all dug in and worked to create an actual script and then a visualization plan from that, which took years.

We finally started shooting in 2009. It was just the 3 of us as crew with a few siblings and friends helping out from time to time. We did it all, from shooting to sound recording to food to props to costumes to building the set to all levels of pre-production. The only people we hired were make-up and hair. Charlie was the DP and did all the effects (we shot almost entirely on green screen). There was a cast of cool-ass Indy-area actors that each played multiple parts. We shot almost all of it in an old warehouse in Anderson, IN.

It was a monster project with a pretty unique styling that we sometimes had to really play with to get right. We had to do some re-shoots, reconfiguring, and made some painful cuts. Charlie went full-time on the post-production, and frankly, spent years on it and came out the other side with a completely new level of compositing skill that he gained through real life blood, sweat and tears.

Despite our otherwise DIY approach, we did a Kickstarter campaign to fund the score and final sound, and absolutely do not regret it. Nathaniel Blume did the score. We had met him when he was living in Indy, and he had since moved to LA to study score and was working in the industry. He is awesome. We also hired Keith Waggoner as the sound re-recorder - who is also awesome and blew our minds with how much his work improved the final product. After the picture was locked, we travelled out to work with them both and see the studio recording of the score - which was, for real, the highlight of this whole movie-making process.

We finally got it released in 2014.

Where has the movie shown?

We premiered it in The Irving Theater and White Rabbit Cabaret in Indianapolis, and it played at a variety of festivals around the world. We won awards at a few, including Best Pic at the Minneapolis Underground Festival. One festival got us the Russian translation, and the Portuguese translation was from Tatiana Leal - an amazing lady that offered the translation in exchange for using the movie in her practice. A couple years later it was invited to Doc Week at Gateway Film Center. It’s also been playing on Italian cable for a number of years. We haven’t actually got to see it in its Italian dubbed majesty, but we really want to. We also did a campaign where we’d send a free DVD to anyone that would show it for more than a couple people, so there’s DVDs that were watched all over the world for small and large groups (we’re still down for that kind of thing - just contact us). It’s available streaming now.

Any Reviews?

Yeah, we got some reviews. Here’s some that I can still find the website for (it’s been 10 years…):

Indy Red; Smart Bitches, Trashy Books; Nuvo Newsweekly; The Independent Critic; In Bed with Married Women; Entertainment Magazine

And here’s an interview I did in 2015 on Columbian Public Radio with an interpreter after the movie was featured in an editorial in a national newspaper (I write about that HERE). I was THE MOST nervous, and I may have bombed the first 2 questions, but I warmed up pretty good after that.

And from the lady-gasm legend, Betty Dobson:

“Science, Sex and the Ladies is saying the things about female orgasm that society needs to hear but continues to resist…[it] is a must see for people everywhere.” -Betty Dodson (2014)

Any Production Pics or Press Screeners?

You’ll find some pictures below that range from the writing to the showing stage. We have better quality pics and a press screener availble if you are interested. Just contact me.