Porn is like Ramen Noodles

All right, read on if you want to find out why porn is like Ramen Noodles. But first, I have decided to bare all, and reveal to you, my top ten favorite films. Actually, they are just the first ten that occur to me off the top of my head. There are probably a lot of arty movies I could put in...but my brain isn't too active right now. So these will have to do. Most of the characters in these films are degenerates who actually lead degenerate lives. Whereas I am more a closet degenerate, who cannot cope with the sex, drugs, alcohol and general lack of inhibition you have to have to be a true degenerate (I had a whirl at it in my youth and came up lacking). Ah, maybe one day my ambition of becoming a degenerate will come true, but I doubt it!!

Do you agree with any of my choices?



1. Withnail and I. I've seen this so many times, I've lost count. It's your basic tale of two resting actors in sixties London who have been off their skulls on acid for a week and decide to take a refreshing break in the country at Withnail's totally bonkers uncle's country cottage. They drive up there drunk, in a Jag with its lights smashed out, and don't get pulled over (ah, those were the days), and then proceed to have a really awful stay in the country.

Pissed off and starving, they are woken at night by Withnail's fat uncle, who wants to seduce the shivering and uninterested 'I' character. Basically, it's just the sweetest story of a male friendship I ever saw. Of course, Withnail is in love with 'I' and 'I' doesn't feel the same way, but that just makes it bittersweet.

Maybe this description doesn't do it justice, but this is Genius with a capital G. I can relate to it as a city person. Whenever I used to leave London to go to the country, I'd feel light headed because of the lack of pollution.

2. Sea of Love. I mention this thriller partly because it is a good film, but also because it contains one of the hottest sex scenes I ever saw. I don't really understand how people get turned on by porn. No, let me rephrase that, I can get turned on by porn, but the experience is very much lacking, a bit like eating Ramen Noodles. You can pretend Ramen Noodles is a meal, but really it only satisfies one tiny part of you, it is just sustenance. The orgasm you get from having sex/masturbating after watching porn is kind of like eating Ramen Noodles for me (although maybe for some it is like eating a three course a la carte meal, I have no idea).

But anyway, as in porn, most sex scenes in movies are pretty unrealistic and corny, with people moaning and groaning and doing acrobatic sex etc. But this scene in Sea of Love is so hot it goes off the Richter Scale. There's nothing to it really, other than Ellen Barkin kind of grinds Al Pacino against a wall and kind of rapes him, well not really rapes him, he loves it, but oh my God, that scene is so hot. Does anyone know what I am talking about? Watching that scene is like being in the scene and consequently more satisfying than any amount of porn/Ramen Noodles...well maybe not totally satisfying. You keep wishing you were Ellen Barkin grinding Al Pacino up against that wall. Still, it's pretty satisfying.

3. Chasing Amy. I don't know why I like this indie film so much. It has poor production values, for one thing. But the story about a lesbian (Joey Lauren Adams) who suddenly falls for a guy (Ben Affleck) is extremely well done, has some brilliant lines, is very moving and really gets you in the heart. I am embarrassed to say that Ben Affleck is very sexy in this, although I don't really fancy him since he has gone Hollywood.



4. Kingpin. It is embarrassing to admit, but I crack up every time I see this bowling movie. The Bill Murray character with the massive comb-over is one of the great comic characters of all time.



5. Les Valseuses. They simply don't make films like this any more. This 1974 French film, starring Gerard Depardieu, his best friend, and a beautiful frigid blonde (Miou-Miou) is really funny, as well as being a buddy movie with a heart. The film follows two ageing delinquents on a crazed spree across France. From the opening shot, where Jean-Claude (Gerard Depardieu) is being wheeled along in a shopping trolley by his companion, it is clear this is a slightly demented picture. They chase a frightened middle-aged lady, molest her and steal her handbag. This sets the tone of the film.

From this point on we witness a morass of petty crime, verbal abuse, sexual antics, and violence that the two friends indulge in. Jean-Claude even sexually abuses his friend along the way. And there are also some really funny scenes where both of them try and give the frigid blonde an orgasm. They are both in the bedroom at the same time talking about her like she was a car. "You have a go, I'm getting nothing out of her." "Oh all right then, I'll give it a shot." (She lies there like a sack of potatoes but at some point in the film does have an orgasm).

While it is a disturbing film, it also has a very sensitive portrayal of the central characters. The film doesn't judge their criminality, rather, we gradually develop an understanding of how hard it is for them to cope with their lives. The film then ends as it begins, with no particular start or finish.



6. Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. Russ Meyer is sheer genius, but this film takes the cake. I haven't seen this for a while, but I seem to remember it is about a pure and innocent girl pop group who get sucked into a really degenerate world of transvestite orgies, drugs and rock 'n roll in LA. It is just so over the top and theatrical and features all sorts of people who are so desperate to be famous they would sell their own soul. It's just so kitschy and so gloriously camp I could just watch it over and over. I reckon I should have lived in the sixties, although I don't think women, or dolly birds as some men called them, had it so great back then.



7. Blow-Up. This is one of those films that's so brilliant you can't describe it, but I will try. There's this photographer in sixties London who is a very realistic character. At first you envy him. He is so sophisticated and stylish and goes to so many great parties and sleeps with so many women, and sits on top of beautiful models while he's photographing them etc. etc, yet gradually it is revealed that this photographer is totally cut off from life, and does not feel any pleasure in anything. Then one day, he is photographing in a park and when he gets home he blows up the images and finds that there was a dead body under one of the trees. The previously blasé photographer gets incredibly excited about this, and interested in art again, and although this sounds macabre, it is actually a brilliant insight into the mind of an artist. How inspiration can be totally gone, and suddenly an odd juxtaposition of some new object or person can get the creative juices flowing again.

8. Cabaret. What is it about this incredibly odd movie that I adore? It features Liza Minelli in a ménage-a-trois with an English academic and a sexy German count and, apart from the odd bit of Nazi ultraviolence in the street, makes it look like living in thirties Berlin was a picnic in the park. I really hate musicals, except for this.



9. Starsky and Hutch. Okay, this is a funny movie. But I basically like it because Owen Wilson is so sexy in it. Why did men stop wearing black turtlenecks and leather jackets and wearing their hair long? Why? It's a question that should be addressed.

10. Zoolander. Okay, this is a very funny movie about a male model with shit for brains. But I basically also like it because although Owen Wilson plays Hansel, a dimwitted model, and wears some very odd clothes, he also manages to look sexy. Lest anyone think I am obsessed with Owen Wilson, I'm not. I don't fancy him when he is all clean cut in The Wedding Crashers, which is an appalling film.