Sliver Movie

In the 1980 hit "American Gigolo," Richard Gere caused a sensation by shedding his Armani boy-toy clothes and lounging fully nude in front of a window. The moment was notable because such male flashes of expression are so rare in Hollywood movies. In films produced by the studios, male screen nudity is, for the most part, taboo. Although some stars, like Mel Gibson, are happy to bear their bums, the majority refuse to play scenes of full frontal nudity.

The amount of male frontal nudity in "Sliver" is shrinking, apparently. Sex scenes with Sharon Stone and William Baldwin were to have gone where no Hollywood film had gone before. The scuttlebutt was that one scene in which the actors writhe in front of a picture window would be more graphic than anything in "Basic Instinct." Exploration of a man's--not a woman's--sexuality was to get more screen treatment.

The amount of male frontal nudity in "Sliver" is shrinking, apparently. Sex scenes with Sharon Stone and William Baldwin were to have gone where no Hollywood film had gone before. The scuttlebutt was that one scene in which the actors writhe in front of a picture window would be more graphic than anything in "Basic Instinct." Exploration of a man's--not a woman's--sexuality was to get more screen treatment.

In the 1980 hit "American Gigolo," Richard Gere caused a sensation by shedding his Armani boy-toy clothes and lounging fully nude in front of a window. The moment was notable because such male flashes of expression are so rare in Hollywood movies. In films produced by the studios, male screen nudity is, for the most part, taboo. Although some stars, like Mel Gibson, are happy to bear their bums, the majority refuse to play scenes of full frontal nudity.

"Sliver," a movie billing Sharon Stone and hyped for its voyeuristic sexuality, landed in first place for the weekend, confirming earlier estimates. The comedy sequel "Hot Shots! Part Deux" came in deuxieme . But the grosses for the two debuting films were not sufficient to avert skepticism that they can hold up against the heavily promoted films opening this Memorial Day weekend. The political comedy "Dave," which was first a weekend earlier, fell to No.

For a perverse moment in history, I was fascinated by the real estate shows on cable television, the ones where you get to glide through a house that's for sale while a soothing voice describes the details. There was something about the tortured syntax that amazed me: The sentences weren't just backward, they were fractured in the middle and reset, wrong ends out. It was English from outer space. Perhaps Robert Evans wrote their scripts on the side.