After 5 years of experimentation, MARIE & JACK was the first commercial film in our "Real People, Real LIfe, Real Sex" series. — Shot in the Summer of 2001, Marie Silva and Jack Bravo were a married couple working in the ad... more »ult industry, looking for a change from the all too predictable and formulaic approach to on-screen sexuality they experienced in their "day job". I was an idealistic young documentary filmmaker exploring what love and sex might look like outside the confines of the downbeat Art House approach.
I wanted to show what love and sex looked like on screen when the people making love to each other were actually in love with each other, and I wanted to do it in a way that both honored the language of cinema and respected my audience as compassionate human beings. I hoped the result would be a film that would excite the mind, open the heart and arouse the body; and Marie and Jack were generous enough to lay their relationship open both physically and emotionally to my cameras, and through that, to the world.
The result was MARIE AND JACK: A HARDCORE LOVE STORY, a documentary film that is both gentle and unflinching in its depiction of sexuality and eroticism inside of marriage. In their interview Marie and Jack are utterly candid, discussing their love for each other, both emotional and physical. When the interview gives way to lovemaking, it is no less honest; no coy angles or fade-to-black. This is what real love looks like, in all its glistening glory, and it's beautiful!
The DVD includes the award-winning film, plus 32 minutes of lovemaking footage that I couldn't find a place for in the film; presented as a viewer-controlled multi-angle bonus feature. I made this film because I wanted prove that the human experience of sexuality was every bit as worthy of being witnessed as the violence and misery that is so readily accepted in entertainment, and that being 'serious' about sexuality didn't have to mean draining all the passion and eroticism out of sex. I think that what we captured in MARIE & JACK is every bit as joyful, lusty, and loving as what happens in our own bedrooms, and I hope that when you see this film you'll agree. I hope you'll say to yourself, "Yes! That's what real love looks like. And it's good!"« less
