Rehearsals for sex, lies and videotape began in Baton Rouge on July 25, 1988, and shooting wrapped September 3. The following May it was the most buzzed-about independent film on the planet.
“It’s strange that that much time has passed so quickly,” says director Steven Soderbergh. “I haven’t seen it in forever. When I think about it, you know, making it in Baton Rouge was great. I think it suited my temperament to work on a smaller, local scale.”
Earning the Palme d’Or at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival and an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay, sex, lies and videotape stars James Spader, Peter Gallagher, Andie MacDowell and Laura San Giacomo. It details the collapse of a yuppie marriage triggered by two events: a husband cheating on his wife with her younger sister, and the arrival of his college friend who has the unusual hobby of videotaping women discussing their sex lives.
Though not literally autobiographical, the film was an intensely personal project. Each character, Soderbergh told the New York Times in 1991, reflects a phase he lived through in the 1980s. He’d been Gallagher’s charismatic philanderer then Spader’s truth-telling minimalist. He’d been San Giacomo’s free spirit then MacDowell’s judgmental worrier.
Producer Morgan Mason—son of actor James Mason—loved the script, and in early 1988 he helped put together a team to shepherd Soderbergh’s baby into theaters.
Upon its release the following summer, the film proved edgy but relatable, mature but funny. Dialogue-driven like a play, but with a clever, non-linear plot that, like the film’s title, offers plenty of underlying mystery and subtext, sex, lies and videotape asks the question, “Is conversation more intimate than intercourse?” It got people talking, and audiences loved it.
“I’ll always remember this line: ‘I just want one key,’” actor Edward Norton told Peter Biskind for his book Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance, and the Rise of Independent Film. “People just plugged right into that statement. There’s a zeitgeist, generational energy being expressed in that movie.”
Actor David Jensen says Spader’s speech about wanting just one key is an ethos straight from Soderbergh’s brain. “He streamlines everything,” Jensen says.
Soderbergh originally wanted to shoot in black-and-white, but the young director later acquiesced to color. The screenplay also went through several working titles, including 46:02, Retinal Retention and Mode: Visual. But sex, lies and videotape was clearly the best title and has since entered the popular lexicon. “Every headline for a scandal now is ‘sex, lies and something,’” says producer John Hardy. “Sex, lies and roller coasters. Sex, lies and pancakes.” But the eye-catching title also presented problems. As producer, Hardy had the unenviable task of securing locations for a film that sounded pornographic. “We did try to hide the ‘sex’ from the title,” he says. “The crew shirts just said ‘lies and videotape.’ One time, I got caught. I had to tell this nice gentleman who owned Laura San Giacomo’s house on South Eugene, ‘I know it looks like I’m trying to pull one over on you, but this is a legitimate film.’”
Though not called Baton Rouge by name, sex, lies and videotape is clearly set in a southern, suburban college town. San Giacomo bartends at The Bayou on Chimes Street, and Gallagher refers to the Garden District. MacDowell never hides her warm Southern drawl, and Spader is an iced tea devotee.
“It really captures the essence of Baton Rouge: the various textures, the stoop at the end,” says Joe Chrest, an actor and friend of Soderbergh. “The Bayou was the big theatre hangout when I was at LSU. Even when Spader is looking for apartments, the way the light falls in that room is decidedly Baton Rouge, not L.A., New York or anywhere else. It feels like here, and I love that.”
Twenty years on, sex, lies and videotape continues to earn universal praise, with a 97% aggregate rating on RottenTomatoes.com. Empire magazine recently ranked it the seventh greatest independent film ever made. But the success of sex, lies and videotape was not just a win for Soderbergh. By proving that independents could be highly profitable, it affected the entire industry.
Sex, lies and videotape’s $100 million earnings worldwide spawned a 1990s flooded with independent movies by auteur writer-directors. By the end of the decade, indie films would almost dominate Oscar night, a feat laughable before sex, lies and videotape.
“I just remember sex, lies being a really great experience for two reasons,” Soderbergh says. “One is that it happened in Baton Rouge. The other was that the response was totally unexpected and caught us by surprise. That is a nice feeling when something happens unexpectedly and seems genuine. You feel really lucky.”
After MacDowell and Spader shot their final scenes on Bedford Street, the cast and crew celebrated with an all-male wet T-shirt contest. Soderbergh won, as he recalls in his annotated screenplay book sex, lies and videotape. “I like to think,” he writes, “it wasn’t because I was the director.”
Where are they now?
Peter Gallagher. Gallagher worked with Soderbergh again on 1995’s The Underneath and made memorable appearances in The Player, The Hudsucker Proxy, and American Beauty before becoming a television star on The O.C. in 2003. His next role is in the illegal-alien drama The War Boys.
Andie MacDowell. MacDowell’s career skyrocketed in the 1990s with a string of hits: Groundhog Day, Short Cuts and Four Weddings and a Funeral. At age 50, she remains a popular L’Oréal model, and her next feature film is the thriller As Good as Dead.
Laura San Giacomo. Her performance in sex, lies and videotape helped San Giacomo earn supporting roles in Pretty Woman and Quigley Down Under before starring for eight seasons in the hit NBC comedy Just Shoot Me! She currently plays opposite Holly Hunter in the TNT series Saving Grace.
James Spader. Since 1989 Spader has appeared in a wide range of films from White Palace and Bob Roberts to Stargate and David Cronenberg’s Crash, another Palme d’Or winner in 1996. For 2002’s Secretary, Spader again played a mysterious character with an unconventional sexual side and earned rave reviews. From 2004-2008 he received multiple Emmy awards for his role on ABC’s Boston Legal. The acclaimed series ended its run last December.
Click here to read Jeff Roedel’s profile on Steven Soderbergh.
