THIS IS A PENIS SUBSTITUTE? REALLY? EVEN WHEN IT'S ANGLED AWAY FROM YOU AND YELLOW AND CHROME? IS THAT STILL PHALLIC? HOW ABOUT WHEN THE "ANGLED TOWARD YOU" LOOK IS A GREEN, BOXY FALCON STATION WAGON AND THE SEXIEST THING IN THE PHOTO IS DAD ASKING A COWBOY FOR DIRECTIONS?

The era of sex sells is over. It's been over for a very long time. Its been commoditized. Gone are the days when a sexy and sexually available woman is worth your time and money and effort to pursue her. Now even common looking guys look down their nose at Paris Hilton and Lindsey Lohan types as being too messed up in the head to bother about. In short: skanks. There was a time when our fathers, like men dying of thirst in the desert, would spend whole paychecks to chase down any errant piece of tail (hopefully as single men). A very small handful of such guys still exist, chasing down the ugliest pigs on earth for the desperate chance of a lay. We see and mock them on shows like Jerry Springer. Most guys I know wonder why their "brothers" would put themselves through so much shit for a lowbrow, hulking, unformed, expanding mass of foul-mouthed protoplasm, like the one sitting next to them, screaming her fool head off at the booing audience.

Even mediocre guys think they can do better than that and they are usually right.

An unfortunate side effect of this is that even the plainest guys are becoming ever more finicky about bed mates. So women are becoming ever more competitive and even teens and (gag!) pre-teens are no longer playing with make-up, but putting serious thought into being sexy and copying the latest music video dance moves of Beyonce and Brittany.

Of course, some people can read sex into anything. AAAHH! PHALLIC SHARK! AAAHH! PHALLIC DOG! AAAHH!

We are now in an age where sex sells sex and little else.

Most of all and more than anything else, sex does not sell movie tickets. And by movie tickets I mean movie videos as well.

SURE YOU'LL LOOK, BUT WILL YOU PAY?

The latest disaster in the long running joke of why Sex Doesn't Sell A Movie is the movie Miss March. This R rated nudie comedy about a Playboy centerfold has and used a huge advertising budget. It debuted on 1,742 screens with $2.3 million, putting it at #10. For all of you tired old out of touch farts in the movie industry, listen up: Sex Doesn't Sell Tickets!

After the initial big weekend opener, WATCHMEN is dropping like a stone. The R rating isn't helping. On message boards across the web, comic book geek fanboys are calling the sex scene silly. They're not offended, they're just not impressed. The nudity and sex is ludicrous and it ends with Nite Owl II's Archimedes craft spewing a stream of orgasmic fire to the tune of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah. Criminy!

This mimics the 2008 release box office performance disasters of nudie movies* like The Baby-sitters, Boarding Gate ($49,333 total box office. Then again, maybe nobody cares to see Asia Argento naked), CHEMICAL WEDDING, Choke, College, THE EYE (Maybe no one wants to see Jessica Alba nearly naked?), Finding Amanda, FRONTIER(S), A Girl Cut In Two, A Good Day To Be Black & Sexy, Good Dick, The Guitar, Hamlet 2, The Last Mistress (Asia Argento - even with a boob job - curse again), Lie To Me, My Best Friend's Girl (big stars), Playing With Fire, The Reader (Big stars, publicized nudity and even freaking Golden Globe and Oscar wins! It still tanks!), REPO: The Genetic Opera (The Paris Hilton curse again?), Sex and Death 101, Sex Drive, Virgin Territory, Zack and Miri Make a Porno (big stars), and Zombie Strippers.

*I didn't mention The House Bunny, which brought in less than its mean budget (cost of movie before advertising and the millions to ship the thousands of reels out to theaters), I Can't Think Straight (sexy Lez Lurv in the land of Mo'), The Love Guru (just sad, even with Jessica Alba again), My Blueberry Nights (Big stars like Jude Law, Norah Jones, Rachel Weisz, Natalie Portman and it still couldn't get good distribution or make at least $1m in the U.S.), The Other Boleyn Girl (big stars), and The Hottie And The Nottie (less than $30 thousand domestic with Paris Hilton as the star. Ouch!). Even though they used sex to sell their movies, they were rated PG-13, so they were just begging for a box office beat down.

MOST HORROR THRILLER FANS LOVE JOHN CARPENTER'S THE THING. BUT NOT FOR THE SEX.

Out of all of these, many had huge stars, various awards, and despite the nudity, they not only couldn't sell tickets, some are still trying to find a distributor. Even among decent paying distributors, sex will not sell your movie (and if you can't find one distributor among the nearly 100 who will pay for distribution rights to your movie, that says something about the quality of your flick). And I'm not cherry picking here, I covered EVERY 2008 American movie and even threw in a few foreign ones that got at least film festival attention in the U.S. And I can show you similar results from 2007 (Jessica Alba gets naked in Good Luck Chuck and in Awake - they both tank), 2006, 2005, and so on.

Sex sells, but not movie tickets or distribution. Sex will not ever sell your movie.

I left out the movies, Role Models and Forgetting Sarah Marshall, because both of these movies were strictly sold as Paul Rudd comedies with nothing in the ads to suggest a sex flick. Paul Rudd, with 64 movies and TV shows to his credit and years of being in huge comedy hits is going to bring in the bucks. The fact that his movies had nudity is nice. I don't mind watching a movie that also has naked gals in it. Seeing nudity enhances my movie going experience! But that only works if it's nudity in a GOOD MOVIE. Nudity in a mediocre or bad movie isn't worth my money or obviously anyone else's. Unless you're hoping for a KIA return on your Pantera investment. I also left out the hit, Sex and the City, which had lots of graphic nudity. But hey, if your movie is based on a wildly popular TV show, with a huge built in audience, then you can throw Pauly Shore, Tom Green and Carrot Top in there and it will still be a hit! Hell! You can even have Zsa Zsa in a wheelchair without major damage. This logic is what makes sequels profitable, and that's all Sex and the City was: a sequel to a very popular TV show that ended on a cliffhanger to garner their huge audience for a movie.

The Wrestler had steamy sex scenes, but it didn't sell itself on that. It didn't even need that to make $26 mil any more than Rocky needed sex (I appreciated the thought though. Good movie = Winner! Good movie with nudity = winner!).

Nudity and sex will never keep me away from a good movie (I love THE TOXIC AVENGER and POULTRYGIEST!), but nudity and sex in a mediocre movie won't draw me in either. I'll pay for a good movie with no nudity or sex in it (John Carpenter's THE THING, TREMORS, RESERVOIR DOGS, MONSTERS, INC., THE INCREDIBLES, IRON MAN, THE DARK KNIGHT). But if your movie is bland or worse then neither I or anyone else will pay jack shit to see your stupid flick. First and foremost, You Have To Make A Good Movie. And if its good and you have no room for sex, then pasting it in there will only drop your good movie to mediocre at best and no one will watch it and nobody in the movie business will pay you to distribute it. And anyone who tells you different is a liar, a loser, or both. And either way? For all of their talk? They won't pay you a dime to distribute your movie.

But why? People still say "Sex sells" so why?

One reason is that they're staggering dinosaurs out of touch.

In an age of free Internet porn when even legitimate porn companies are folding up; when people are making their own amateur sex videos on cheap video cameras with superior High Definition picture quality over the cameras they used to make 28 DAYS LATER; when people can make a fast and furtive sex video using even their damn cell phones for crying out loud and they are all willing to post them on the 'Net for free just for bragging rights; why in the hell would you base your expensive business model on a flash of tit or ass? Are you really, desperately, that shitty a film maker?

It's 2009! So wake the hell up!

All of you directors and writers out there making your indie Horror Thriller movie? The next time you have some big mouthed self-described "expert" tell you to inject gratuitous nudity into your movie so you can sell it? Make them put it in writing. Make them pay you for it. If you're going to be a whore get paid to be a whore and make "Expert" pay for it up front. Otherwise, pay attention to the real world: If it didn't work for Paris Hilton, Asia Argento, Jude Law, Michael Madsen, and Jessica Alba, it sure as shit ain't gonna work for you! So get a freaking clue and write a GOOD story! Then make a GOOD movie! If it's a good script it doesn't matter if it has stars or nudity. Neither sells a Horror Thriller movie anymore - if it ever did.

Read the companion piece: Big Stars Won't Sell Your Genre Movie.