Bird's Eye View

Favourite Erotic Moment in Cinema - Maggie Alderson and Jessica Adams

To build on our Screen Seductresses theme that is making this festival the sexiest yet, and taking spirit of our Sex on Screen debate happening this Wednesday, we are giving away copies of In Bed With - “a unique, sometimes humorous, often wicked and totally sizzling collection of unashamedly sexy bedtime stories by bestselling, award-winning and well-known novelists” (Fay Weldon, Joanne Harris, Ali Smith et al).

We invited the co-authors, Maggie Alderson and Jessica Adams, onto our blog. Maggie answered our questions, and Jessica wrote a few words about her sexiest moment in cinema and why they have created In Bed With.

To have a chance of winning a book, you need to tell us what YOUR favourite erotic moment in cinema is, by commenting on this blog, in which the team at BEV HQ revealed our choices…

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Maggie Alderson

Birds Eye View: What is your favourite erotic moment in film? Can you explain why?

Maggie Alderson: In Twilight, when Edward the vampire says: ‘There’s something I’d like to try…’ and he kisses the girl for the first time. Then the force of his desire sends him flying backwards across the room. Phewee.

Do you think that it’s important to have a female perspective when it comes to erotica – both in print and on screen?

The key thing is choice. You can’t expect to have one size fits all. Just as there is a massive market for the standard hard core porno thing, there is another for more subtle sexual kicks. Personally, I can’t get over the ‘does her poor mother know?’ angle with any kind of regular porn, even if it is portraying my own specific turn ons, and I think that’s a common reaction in women, so we find our kicks elsewhere. There are many genres which could fall within erotica and some of the sexiest books and films don’t even fit under that label. A lot of so-called ‘romance’ is actually very sexy. I know a lot of women who spent their teen years getting off to the Regency bucks in Georgette Heyer.

We are now (finally!) used to enjoying more female novelists, but only 12% films are written by women. Have you ever thought about writing a screenplay? (and if not, why not!)

I wanted to write it, but the producer recruited a male screenwriter who did such a terrible job, I have subsequently turned down requests to sell film rights. I write books for women – although men do read them – and I would love to write films for women too. I am told women like the sex in my books and I would love to see if I can translate that effect to the screen.

You wrote under pseudonyms for this – do you think that it’s particularly tricky for women to write honestly about sexual fantasies? Do we judge each other more than men do?

The pseudonym conceit of this book was not so much to hide the identities of the authors – they are all game girls, or they wouldn’t have agreed to be in it – as to intrigue the reader. It was also fun for the writers to wear a carnival mask. Without the usual expectations we were able to experiment and it was great fun. I believe that female masturbation - and the associated sexual fantasizing - are the last great sexual taboos, although Sex and the City and Nancy Friday have done a lot to free us up in both areas. But until there is a widely-used slang word specifically for female wanking (fanking?) it will remain weirdly unacknowledged, rather like Queen Victoria’s attitude to lesbianism.

Is it the story/scenario, or the graphic detail that turns you on? Do you think women are any different to men in this respect?

I think there a great difference between the sexes here. Women do like – almost need - the set up to justify the pay off. There is scientific evidence that we are just as physiologically turned on by graphic inny outy close up film porno as men, even if we can’t acknowledge it to ourselves.But I believe the female orgasm originates in the head, so enjoying the scenario and the characters is a crucial part of the release. We have to allow ourselves permission and we can do that by projecting onto the characters in the story.

About Maggie Alderson:

Maggie Alderson was born in London and educated at the University of St Andrews. She is the author of four novels Cents and Sensibility, Mad About the Boy, Pants on Fire and Handbags and Gladrags. Maggie worked on The Evening Standard for several years, editing various sections, was the award-winning editor of ES (Editor of the Year, Colour Supplements) and then went onto edit Elle. She has contributed to numerous magazines around the world including Tatler, Vogue, Allure, Conde Nast Traveller, and Gourmet.

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Jessica Adams

My favourite erotic scene in a film is the segment in Quadrophenia where Jimmy (Phil Daniels) and Steph (Leslie Ash) have sex standing up, in an alleyway in Brighton. The alleyway is still there, off East Street. I pass it a lot when I’m out shopping locally and I can never go past without thinking ‘Ooooh…’ The scene is erotic because it’s about that brilliant moment when Phil finally gets to shag Steph, after lots of tension - and of course the scene is also about fumbling under fantastically sexy clothes (nobody looks more desirable than a 1960s Mod.) The alleyway scene is also about the heat of the moment - when Phil and Steph have sex standing up, the police are in full chase along the Brighton seafront. It’s the most fantastic film.

It’s vital to have a female perspective on erotica! Without it we end up with white American teenage male fantasies, which are never much fun for women - but always seem to dominate the cinema and DVD shelves. Do you remember American Pie? I think that film alone made me want to pursue women’s erotica. It was so profoundly depressing I had to walk out. I think it’s also important for women to write erotica because they also broaden the genre so that it becomes less freakish.

Who said erotica paperbacks always had to be up the back of a bookshop, and uniformly about bondage? Or prostitutes?

It’s a shame that so few screenplays are written by women. I am writing a film at the moment, based on my new novel Should I Stay Or Should I Go which is about a woman in skint, credit crunch England escaping to a back-to-basics, boho-hippie lifestyle in the Australian outback. The novel and screenplay are both out in June.

The idea of pseudonyms for In Bed With wasn’t a big deal - it was really just a naughty joke, and a bit of fun. I remember having the idea in my shed in Australia and immediately thinking ‘Either nobody will get the joke, or absolutely everyone will.’ However, it did let our novelists off the hook, in terms of being able to write in any style, any genre, and with any sexual fantasy in mind. I think the results are brilliant, and am quietly amused by how many reviewers have completely failed to guess who wrote what! Only one woman came close, in The Sydney Morning Herald (the book came out in Australia first).

I think women are turned on by both the story and the detail in erotica. And also the emotion, of course. Quite a few of the stories in In Bed With were about women taking control or women finding their power. That seldom turns up in male sexual fantasy, be it on film or in book form. There’s quite a lot of table-turning in this book.

About Jessica Adams:

Jessica Adams is a team editor on the Girl’s Night In and Kid’s Night In series of anthologies which have raised in excess of one million pounds for the charities War Child and No Strings.

Jessica is also the astrologer for Vogue magazine in Australia and Asia, and a contributing editor at Cosmopolitan. She lives between England and Australia, and her novels include Single White E-Mail, Tom, Dick and Debbie Harry, I’m A Believer, Cool for Cats and The Summer Psychic. Her website is www.jessicaadams.com

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Whats your favourite sexy moment in cinema? Read what the BEV team think it is here, then leave your own confessional comment to have a chance of receiving a copy of In Bed With.