(Image: Warner Bros. Pictures)
"Man of Steel" director Zack Snyder's new film, "The Last Photograph," just held its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival and was immediately flooded with negative reviews. But Snyder is no stranger to this, recalling in a new interview with Variety that his film "300" received similar treatment years ago.
Snyder recalled: "The exact same thing happened with '300' when we screened it at the Berlin Film Festival. After the movie ended, it immediately sparked intense debate, with widespread booing and walkouts. That was the first time we had ever shown the film, and we were all stunned. They called it 'a disaster,' 'the worst movie ever made,' and a 'fascist film.'"
(Image: Warner Bros. Pictures)
Snyder continued, "Later, we held a press conference and were hit with a lot of questions, like, 'Are you a fascist filmmaker?' That Berlin experience was truly unforgettable. Maybe they were more sensitive. The most memorable question I got was from someone who asked: 'Are you pro-gay or pro-NRA? Which side are you on?' And I said, 'Frankly, I'm on both sides.' But obviously, I'm pro-gay. This is the gayest movie I've ever made."
Snyder genuinely believes the film has the power to change orientations: "'300' is truly one of the gayest movies of all time. I always say, 'It's rare for a straight audience member to walk into a movie and come out gay. '300' is one of those movies.'"
(Image: Warner Bros. Pictures)
Snyder's work often features a strong erotic atmosphere or nudity, and "The Last Photograph" is no exception. In his view, this is an element lacking in Hollywood today, and he hopes to increase the prevalence of such scenes and themes: "It's one of the things I'm most concerned about: sex in movies has somehow just disappeared. I don't understand why. It's still on TV! TV shows can have sex scenes, but movies, for some reason, can't. What's going on? I grew up in the '80s, watching 'Body Heat' and '9½ Weeks.'"
Snyder lamented: "The eroticism in movies has been inexplicably stifled, and I don't get why. The other day, we screened 'Excalibur' [at Warner Bros. Studios], and that's a very sexy, erotic film. Please, let's make Hollywood movies sexy again! I completely agree, and I really don't understand why TV gets to be the exception."
(Image: Orion Pictures)
Snyder continued his analysis: "You know what the market needs now? It needs a revival like the R-rated movie had. In this day and age, R-rated films have been destigmatized—'Odyssey,' 'Obsession,' and so on. Now, what we need is a blockbuster NC-17 movie. If there were an NC-17 erotic thriller in IMAX theaters that everyone had to go see, maybe that could destigmatize sex."
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Snyder even shared his future ambition to create a TV series focused on eroticism: "I've proposed to Deborah (Snyder, his wife and longtime producer) that I want to create an erotic anthology series for a streaming platform. This is something the market is genuinely lacking. It would be like a live-action 'Love, Death & Robots,' but all erotic stories. One of the great contributions of pornography—and I do think it's a contribution—is that it strips away all the mystery from sex and just presents sex itself, with no mystery or drama. But sex itself is inherently full of mystery and drama. It's one of the driving forces of our existence, yet somehow we devalue it, we don't think about it, and instead, we just beat around the bush with it. Shows like 'Euphoria' and 'Game of Thrones' demonstrate that television understands this well. If you use sex to enhance drama, the effect is like finding the Holy Grail because the audience becomes completely engrossed. But because a movie is a one-time experience, I feel like everyone in the industry is terrified of losing the audience's attention for even a second. Television doesn't have that fear; even if the audience is momentarily uncomfortable, it's okay because they're already deeply invested."
via： Variety