Thursday, October 13, 2022

Q Toon: Wink, Wink, Nudge, Nudge, and ... Action!

It's common for some little kids to want to grow up to be movie or TV stars. Those with an artistic bent might dream of creating the set design, mattes or special effects, or perhaps the costumes. Budding musicians may look forward to composing film scores someday.

But if you've ever sat after the movie waiting for that Motion Picture Association of America logo to float up the screen, you know that there are a whole host of people working behind the scenes in jobs you've never heard of. Do kids fantasize about becoming a gaffer or key grip someday? Or is landing the job of best boy something adults strive for in a desperate effort to cling to their childhood?

Frankly, I have no idea what qualification one needs to become an intimacy coordinator.

They're the people responsible for making actors comfortable on set when called on to film a sex scene (or, I suppose, any nude scene whether it's a sex scene or not). All those gaffers, grips, best boys and girls, set dressing drivers, assistant location managers, assistant hair department heads, craft servicemen, and traffic captains are ushered off the set (presumably by the executive set usher and assistant), and the intimacy coordinator gets to work coordinating the intimacy.

The intimacy coordinator is responsible for making the actors comfortable getting naked in front of the director, camera man, and whatever the name of the job of the person with the clapboard is, then pretending to have sex with each other. That's even if the sex in the film wouldn't be comfortable in real life: perhaps it's not supposed to be consensual, or it takes place on a burning tugboat off the coast of North Korea.

Someday, the young man in this cartoon is going to run into someone who is interested in learning more about his career aspirations. Are there college courses to prepare you to be an intimacy coordinator? Or is that something you pick up on the street? What does a producer want to see on your résumé? Is there on-the-job training? Do you get your start off-Broadway?

And what do you say after long hours of coordinating a whole bunch of intimacy and you go home and over dinner your significant other asks, "So how was your day?"

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