The British often shy away from any cinematic interpretation of real sex. They sometimes have what I call "subtle sex," which is really introspective and has soft music in the background. Either that or it's played for comedy. The British are kind of hung up about sex. They find it kind of titillating and they make jokes about it because they're nervous.
I have seen so few films in which the sex felt really respected by the filmmaker. Hollywood too often shies away from it or makes adolescent jokes about it... Sex is only connected to the negative because people are scared of it.
In your thirties, you're much more comfortable with sex. First of all, sex is something you've done more. You know you can have sex just to have sex; you can have sex with friends; you can have sex with people you love; you can have sex with people you don't like, but the sex is good. And you can joke about sex much more.
People are talking about sex. They're talking about sex with their husbands. They're talking about sex with their girlfriends. They're talking about sex with their partners. And because of all of this communication, women are having much more intimate relationships, which is fantastic.
Evolution has programmed our brains to find two things particularly interesting, and therefore memorable: jokes and sex - and especially, it seems, jokes about sex.
If you had a daily printout from the brain of an average twenty-four-year-old male, it would probably go like this: sex, need coffee, sex, traffic, sex, sex, what an asshole, sex, ham sandwich, sex, sex, etc
We're used to seeing fantasy explored from a male perspective, and the way men might see sex, have sex, want sex and even be addicted to sex. But I don't think women pursuing that sexuality within themselves is something that's talked about or experienced as often.
Now however, we have contraception and it's mostly reliable so you can have sex without that happening. So then you start vilifying the act of sex itself. I don't think Buddhism has ever done that necessarily, or at least I'm not aware of Buddhism taking the stance that Christianity often has which says that sex itself is a kind of evil act, which is a really weird idea.
War to me is very much like sex. You can develop a theory that says sex is primarily for the exchange of genetic material, or that it's a celebration of life, or you can make up 50,000 theories about why human beings have sex, all of which are in some sense true, all of which by themselves miss the point. Because the answer is extraordinarily complex. It may be for fun, it may be for reproduction, for financial reasons, any number of things.
Sex is hard to write about because you lose the universal and succumb to the particular. We all have our different favorites. Good sex is impossible to write about. Lawrence and Updike have given it their all, and the result is still uneasy and unsure. It may be that good sex is something fiction just can't do - like dreams. Most of the sex in my novels is absolutely disastrous. Sex can be funny, but not very sexy.
Every celebrity has become a celebrity because of sex and money. But few celebrities like talking about either sex or money; they would rather talk about ideas, or ideals, or solving the world's problems - all against a backdrop of sex and money.
The best unpaid sex, where you and the woman are really into each other, and there's a lot of really intense passion, and things are really hot between you...I've never had that kind of sex when I was paying for it. The best unpaid sex is going to be, I think, more passionate and more hot than the best paid sex.
I consider that sex is part of life as much as architecture, fashion, art or food. Sex is life, simple. And I refuse to consider that sex should be hidden. When you hide sex, problems start because sex becomes dangerous.
Once when I told sex workers about my own sex work, it ended up building inappropriate trust with some people. But there have been events now - like covering the protests against Backpage at the Village Voice - where I've talked to sex workers who don't necessarily know that I've done sex work.
I grew up in the Fifties and early Sixties, which were still quite conservative, and I wasn't given any information about sex or anything like that... I went out with girls at school because one had to. I didn't experiment with sex for quite a long time.
The British are absolutely hung up on class, and whenever they start to really - class for the English is like sex for Americans: They start to shake all over when the subject comes up.
There have been only two taboos in the world: sex and death. It is very strange why sex and death have been the two taboos not to be talked about, to be avoided. They are deeply connected. Sex represents life because all life arises out of sex, and death represents the end. And both have been taboo - don't talk about sex and don't talk about death.