The HBO documentary series Real Sex, which premiered in 1990, took an unusually candid approach to depicting sexuality on TV. Molly Langmuir presents a tribute and a behind-the-scenes oral history:
By turns bawdy, sexy, hilarious, and simply weird (though never not sincere), [Real Sex] filled in the gaps high school sex ed classes left, which turned out to be vast. Real Sex covered not only sex toys and polyamory, but the vaginal molds of porn stars, squirting demonstrations at swingers’ conventions, and workshops in which participants were prompted to dip their testicles in sprinkles.
Through it all, the mostly female team that produced the show experienced firsthand the almost absurdly vast array of desires that comprise human sexuality. “One of the main things I remember was how much we laughed,” said Katie Smalheer, who worked on the show for nine years. “We weren’t laughing at people; we were just laughing at how silly we can all be when it comes to sex — role-playing, dress-up, sex toys, dirty talk, strap-ons, corsets, striptease, mud play, latex. That was the essence of Real Sex, real people doing what turned them on, and having fun.”
Deb Wasser [street interviewer, segment producer, director]: The lawyers were very careful about what we could show.
They would examine it frame by frame. What a job. Then they’d come back to us and say, remove these three frames. Of course when we were out there filming people really having sex, they weren’t stopping and starting for the camera.
Lynn Sadofsky [line producer, co-producer]: It could feel a bit absurd sometimes. I remember one sex workshop where the participants were in the throes of whatever practice they were doing and I literally had to call lunch because the crew had to stop filming — we weren’t a union set, but we did basically follow union rules. Finally I just called, “lunch time.” I guess [the workshop participants] stopped. I guess they lined up for lunch.
Katie Smalheer [associate producer, coordinating producer, supervising producer]: There were a couple of segments toward the end that I remember clearly. Someone pitched us a story about these sex orgies and at first we didn’t do it because who wants to go to sex party and let you film them?
Turns out a lot of people. We ended up shooting this orgy, which was basically a costume party, or a masquerade, like in Eyes Wide Shut. There was even a woman who looked like Marie Antoinette with one of those skirts with the structure underneath. And they were good-looking people. By the end of the night, everyone had their clothes off and were fucking. At a certain point when you’re shooting vérité, there’s nothing for the producer to do. You just have to let the cameraman shoot. Patti and I ended up hiding behind this bookcase looking at each other, like, “What life are we living that we’re in the middle of someone else’s sex party?” People were getting fucked by other people’s husbands. A woman was in a dentist’s chair with three guys.
And it wasn’t horrible, either. There was something sexy about this.
The Dish 