Throughout cinema history, there have been some iconic nude scenes that have transcended the bounds of the films in which they appeared. Our weekly columnAnatomy of a Scene's Manatomytakes an in-depth look at these scenes, their history, their deeper meanings, and their legacy. This week, Jason Segel irrevocably changes the state of the modern comedy when he whips it out in Forgetting Sarah Marshall!
Prior to 2008, most of your big box Hollywood comedies had their focus firmly on female nudity. The late 90s and early 2000s were chock full of films with female nudity, and most male nudity was relegated to an ass shot, usually played for a laugh.Even the premiere comedy franchise of the time period, American Pie, didn't show male frontal nudity until 2012's American Reunion.The trend began to subtly shift with 2006's Boratand it's prolonged fully nude fight scene, though they censored star Sacha Baron Cohen's member. Then 2007's Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story had a fairly funny frontal scene, but it wasn't star John C. Reilly, but rather a featured extra.
Around this same time, Judd Apatow was changing the face of comedy with his loose, improvisational style, and stable of actors blessed with the ability to work in that mode. Jason Segel got his first big professional break on Apatow's short-lived series Freaks Geeks, and just after landing a leading role on the soon-to-be-long-running series How I Met Your Mother, he got welcomed back into the Apatow family with a supporting part in Knocked Up. This gave him the ability to get his own passion project into development, a script he wrote as a star vehicle for himself titled Forgetting Sarah Marshall about a comically bad break-up.
Writer Nicholas Stoller had gotten his first big writing break on Apatow's series Undeclared (also starring Segel), and was ready to make the leap into directing. The timing was fortuitous, as Apatow's newfound clout was helping lots of films get madeby giving lots of his friends their big breaks. Forgetting Sarah Marshall was going to be Stoller's first feature directing gig, and with Apatow on board as a producer, and lots of his stable of comedic actors on hand in supporting roles—Paul Rudd, Jonah Hill, Bill Hader—the film was greenlit with a budget of $30 million, an absolutely insane budget for a comedy like this.
Segel's lead character, Peter Bretter, is a strugglingcomposer who is dating Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell), one of the biggest television stars in the country. The film opens with their relationship on the rocks and once Sarah's popular television show is cancelled, she decides it's time to break up with Peter. She goes to their shared domicile to break the news to him and finds him just coming out of the shower...
According to the script, after that initial flash of cock when Peter realizes he's being broken up with, he then gets dressed and the scene proceeds as it does in the film. Apatow thought it would be funnier if Segel stayed naked for the full two minutes that they hash out their relationship, and he's right. Seeing a man in that vulnerable a position is a funny subversion of your typical rom-com set-up, and Segel clearly has nothing to be ashamed of, so why not let it hang out for the entire scene?
In an interview with The New York Times at the time of the film's release, Segel said that the entire incident was partially drawn from a real experience...
As an actor, Mr. Segel could have asked that his nudity be obscured, “Austin Powers” style; as a writer, concocting scenes for himself, he could have omitted the moment altogether. But he insisted that the scene of him in the altogether appear in “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” in all its cringe-inducing glory, because it actually happened to him.
A few years ago he received a call from his girlfriend to tell him she was headed to his apartment from the airport. Mr. Segel prepared himself for what he thought would be an amorous reunion; instead he was soon suffering a naked breakup of his own.
“I was trying to experience this viscerally, as a person,” Mr. Segel said during a recent interview at his home in West Hollywood. “But all I could think was: ‘This is hilarious. I cannot wait for her to leave so I can write this down.’”
The film went on to gross over $100 million worldwide and opened the floodgates for male frontal nudity as a punchline in big box Hollywood comedies for the next decade-plus—Hall Pass, Unfinished Business,Dirty Grandpa, Game Over Man, even last year's Hustlers played a scene mostly for chuckles involving a naked man. Itseems the only lesson Hollywood took from this was that showing a penis often leads to hilarity. I don't know about you, dear readers, but we really need to put those days behind us and look forward to a time when a penis isn't just shown to get some yuks from the audience.
Join us again next week as we take a look at a full frontal scene from another recent movie that wasn't played for laughs, Jack Reynor in last year's Midsommar!
Catch up with our other editions of Anatomy of a Scene's Manatomy...
—Two of History's Manliest Men Wrestle Naked inWomen in Love
—Ewan McGregor Has Got It, Flaunts It inVelvet Goldmine
—A Pair of Stars are Born in Y Tu Mamá También
—Harvey Keitel Goes Hog Wild in Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant
—Viggo Mortensen is Naked From Every Imaginable Angle in Eastern Promises
—There's No Shame is Michael Fassbender's Dick Game
—Kevin Bacon Steals the Show Going Full Frontal in Wild Things
