Ahead of the European premiere of the superlative new rom-com The End of Sex, at Glasgow Film Festival, we chatted to writer and star Jonas Chernick, director Sean Garrity, and producer Justin Rebelo. We got interesting perspectives on all aspects of the process of making the film, some juicy insider knowledge on the benefits of intimacy coordinators, and got faintly gloomy about the prospects of cinema as a popular artform.
Can you tell us about The End of Sex?
JC: The End of Sex is a sexy romantic comedy about a married couple whose kids go off to camp for the first time leaving them alone. And they decide as, I guess, many couples do, to have sex, which they haven’t had in a long time. And of course, they realise it’s not as easy as that and they’re a little rusty. And so, they both sort of spin out as they worry about this, and are overwhelmed with anxiety and the film is about their individual journeys as they tried to reclaim their sort of sexual energy and their connection.
SG: Or do they? Or because ultimately the film is kind of about this moment in life where we as parents realise that that we have changed, and I think a lot of us that have kids now don’t [realise]. So, a lot of people have kids and you’re like, you’re like, “Oh, I’m still me. I just have a kid!” They think that’s the only thing that’s different, and there’s not a realisation – especially among males – that we change it all. For me, that’s kind of subtext. Truly what the film is sort of about is this couple that goes on this sort of journey of realisation.
JR: That’s how we work: they’ll tell you the ‘what’s all the what’ and I make little quips here and there. I’m like, ‘It’s kids. It’s the mortgage.’
What was the inspiration behind it?
JC: Well, we made this film ten years ago called My Awkward Sexual Adventure. Many of the same people involved with this film worked on that and it was about exploring sexual insecurity in your ‘30s. It was successful and a lot of people asked us I we were going to make another one. And we thought about it for a while, and ultimately, we just decided we had nothing left to say on the subject. We could only get on with other things. But now that we both have kids and teenagers, suddenly we realise we have something else to say about the topic. And so, it allowed us an entry point into this story and getting back into it. And then we originally wrote it as a film called Ménage à trois. Which was just the threesome portion of the film, but was originally kind of the whole film.
SG: And it kind of started there. But then we got more interested in the [wider topic]. Jonas was writing more, and we got more interested as we discussed the parent and kid aspect of a life change. It just seemed there was more there.
JC: Yeah, the original thing was the threesome, that’s right. And it was this guy [points to Justin], producer Justin Rebelo. We had a general meeting with him and he said to me, ‘Do you have anything that we can make?” and he gave me a list of criteria. And I thought, ‘let me get back to you.’
JR: I think we have the exact movie that he wants to make, which is kind of amazing. He just sent me the script and immediately had this very eye-catching title.
SG: As soon as I read it, I’m like, ‘Yeah, this is the exact thing I’m looking to make. Wait, can we make it tomorrow?’ Literally, within a couple of months, we were filming. Justin and his company got behind the film, supported it, and we were up and running very quickly.
How did you get Emily Hampshire involved?
JC: Emily is an old friend of ours. She’s been in two of our previous film, including My Awkward Sexual Adventure, which is by the way available right now here in the UK, on Amazon and Google Play. You can feel free to put that in. We basically just called her up. She had since though become quite famous. When we last worked with her, she was like most Canadian actor; just a working actor, who was quite wonderful and who we love very much, but then she was in a TV series called Schitt’s Creek that broke through.
SG: It’s hilarious to remember that when we made My Awkward Sexual Adventure, we talked to the money people and said that we would love to cast Emily Hampshire in this role. A lot of the money people were like, ‘Emily Hampshire? No, give us a list of other people. We’re not interested in Emily Hampshire!’ We were like, ‘But she’s really great. We would love to work with her and she thinks she’d be great in this role.’ We had to do the distributor dance.
JC: Because she was not a star at that time.
JR: I heard that story through the grapevine. That you had to push for Emily.
SG: Yeah. And we have to do the thing where we say, ‘We’ll go to this impossible famous person. We’ll go to that impossible famous person,’ until you run out the clock. Then you can say that now we’re going to camera in two weeks and Emily Hampshire is really our choice.
In The End of Sex, you can’t imagine anybody else in that role.
JC: That’s right. It was kind of a match made in heaven having Emily come in. We have a shorthand. We already have a language and a working relationship with her. Because there’s some delicacy to the kinds of sexual scenarios and content but the three of us had already done a very explicit, sexy comedy 10 years previously.
In the context of the wider conversation about intimacy on set, when writing and filming the threesome scene, how do you go about keeping it comfortable and respectful between actors, but retaining the tone of the scene, which is supposed to be awkward?
SG: Yeah, it’s supposed to be awkward. But now you have someone called the intimacy supervisor on set, or intimacy coordinator. Basically doing what a stunt coordinator does for for crazy stunts, but for sex scene. And so we had somebody there, who basically is kind of like a referee. So you can do what you do with the actors. But you know, in an ideal world, we all feel like we’re not going to go offside because we’ve got the ref standing right there.
JR: I mean, you guys had so much familiarity with each other. It was a conversation right? But for us – we made eight movies last year, we un a distribution company. We were like, ‘No, you’re absolutely havin an intimacy coordinator!’
JC: Emily and I having had done sex scenes previously without an intimacy coordinator. At first when we chatted we said that we don’t really want one; we’re good, like we trust each other and we’re really good friends. So we actually requested that we not have one. Then of course, as any good boss would do, Justin said, ‘No,no. The times have changed. You’re going to have one!’ We’re so glad that we did because ultimately, not only do they do the refereeing, but intimacy coordinators can help make the scene better. So we’ll be doing a simulated sex scene and then our intimacy coordinator McKenzie would go over to Shaun and say, ‘Do you know, if her arm was three inches to the left? It would look so much better,’ and Sean’s like, ‘Oh, my God, you’re right!’
SG: Yes, a good choreographer! And obviously because they they must be involved in sort of all instances of nudity and intimacy and intimacy, the sex scene in the sex club with all those naked people all over the place, could have been a real quagmire, right? Because she has to go and talk to every single one before every single take and it used to be that shed their stuff and then you start rolling. That is no longer the case. Now you start rolling and they go one by one and they shed their stuff. And that’s all fine, but McKenzie had been an [assistant director] before and it was just like having someone who just made you twice as fast. Most of my films have intimacy scenes somewhere, but even then, out of 135 scenes, two are intimate scenes. So I don’t do them as often as [intimacy coordinators] do. These guys come in, and that’s all they do is intimacy scenes. So they’ve got all sorts of little things, like a stack of magic tricks? ‘Oh, your groins are touching! Would you like this flesh-coloured pillow that you can put between you that will allow you to really grind without touching each other?’ They’ve got all this bizarre stuff!
Are you a fan of rom-coms. And do you think people are quite snobby about them?
JC: No, I’m not actually! I can’t say that is a genre that I gravitate towards. Although I think, and Sean and I have actually talked about this so many times over the years, most comedies are in fact rom-coms. You just don’t realise it. I mean, most comedies have at the at the centre of them a romantic relationship. So rom-coms like Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve Got Mail, what you think of as a rom-com, I’m not really a fan of them. I am snobby about them! But I am a fan of films like Annie Hall or films that that come at it from a different perspective or a different angle. I don’t set out to write a rom-com. If I’m writing and it becomes a rom com, that’s where it wants to go.
JR: We certainly market it as a rom-com. I mean they are a guilty pleasure, but I think they’re so much better when they’re really smart and challenging and exploring cool, interesting ideas about human nature. But usually they’re kind of blanketed in a love story that’s easily digestible and easy to watch.
I think they’re quite often more interesting when they come from a couple that’s already well established rather in the early stages of a romance.
SG: Yes, absolutely. Rather than the meet cute! But you know, there’s also a lot of vulnerability in a romantic relationship no matter where you are in it. There’s a lot of very raw and vulnerable moments that we all think as viewers, ‘Oh, yeah, I know that. I’ve been there!’. That makes it really easy to exploit for comedy.
What’s your opinion on the sort of state of cinema generally as it’s emerged from the lockdown period. And do you think streaming is where it’s going to be generally and especially for indie film? How hard is it going to be to get your films in the cinemas?
JC: Shaun and I continue to make movies for the screen, for the theatrical experience. I’m a purist. That’s where I want to watch movies and that’s where I want mine to play. And theatrical releases are becoming you know, I think less and less common for independent film. However, we’re in a rare situation here where, you know, Justin has managed to find a way to get this movie on screens, at least in North America and in a lot of other countries.
JR: We’ve been really lucky. When I first read the script and saw that it had at its core, a really unique idea that people don’t talk about a lot. I kind of assumed because I’ve been it’d be frustrating [to try and get a theatrical release], and we still are hearing that a lot. Ironically, though, it was announced a few weeks ago that we are in the act of releasing in the US in April. So we’re really excited about that. My company Vortex Media, we release films in Canada. So we are releasing it in Canada. So really excited and I really hope people come back to theatres overall. Thank you Top Gun: Maverick. Like these guys, I also really believe in that experience.
SG: It makes me sad because I love the cinema. I feel like this is a great film to watch in a big group of people. In the dark, where you don’t see how you’re all reacting to it. Laughter. The communal experience. The collective experience, which really is really getting down to sporting events. That’s the model we have left right as societies. So it’s sad to see that go the way the dodo. But, we’re all dads, and that new generation does not go to the cinema ever. Right? And so I really feel like it’s a matter of time. Cinema will will always be around, like opera, like Shakespearean theatre, like the symphony, that all used to be big, popular art forms. They didn’t disappear. They just became very sort of niche and I predict that that’s where cinema is sort of headed, which is very sad.
But that is the reality of where we’re going, and when we do post production and sound mixing on a lot of these movies, we toggle the sound in 5.1 Surround, and then we’ll also toggle it for a device. Because a big part of your audience, that’s how they’re gonna watch it. You want to make sure that it doesn’t just sound impressive in 5.1 Surround, right? And increasingly, after over 20 years of making movies, we’re seeing much more weight on that experience. I should have answered first because that was dark!
And finally, do you have any other projects in the pipeline?
JC: We actually shot a film in September that we’re [doing post-production on] right now that will be released later this year, called The Burning Season. And we both have various things in development to do something again. And [Justin] makes a movie every week.
JR: Yeah, we I mean, we do a lot at Vortex Media. We we have two features in post-[production] right now. A horror movie that we’re excited about called Pins and Needles. And we have an indie kind of comedy drama script. We really liked that. It’s also in post and will be out later this year. And then we do a lot of TV movies. I had two Christmas movies on the BBC this past season, which was great. And yeah, we’ve got four or five other movies in the market this year. All over the world.
The End of Sex premiered Thu 2 Mar 2023 and screens again at Glasgow Film Festival Fri 3 Mar 2023