Groundbreaking Nudity in Film on a Bed

Considered by many to be the Father of West Coast experimental film, that wasn’t all James Broughton was known for.  He was the first to bring full frontal nudity to the screen.

His 1968 film, The Bed, was filled with it actually. So much so that at the time he couldn’t get it printed.  Broughton wrote in his memoir, Coming Unbuttoned:

“When it was finally edited I could not persuade any commercial laboratory to print it.  From Eastman to Rochester to Consolidated in Los Angeles I received curt refusals: it was against official policy to print ‘frontal nudity.’ finally I located an illegal pornographic outfit, which printed much frontal nudity between midnight and dawn in the rear of a building on a back street in Ease Palo Alto.”

James was known for the ways he brought nudity and sensuality to the screen without making it pornographic.  He managed to make a whole 20 minute film of naked people which is frolicking and fun.  It’s not hot and heavy.  It’s whimsical, thought provoking, and giggle inducing. (As many of his other subsequent and naked films are.)

As George Kuchar said of The Bed, “James had beds going down hills and naked people on the beds, and stuff. And any kind of humping was sort of… antiseptic. It was nice. It was California in the sunshine.”

Although his film, The Bed, has no words.  Broughton wrote a poem afterward with the same title that sort of explains his film and perhaps the idea behind the making of it.  Here is his poem set to music and image by Galen Garwood.

In his memoir James also said, “To my astonishment The Bed won many prizes at world festivals.  Furthermore it broke a taboo: frontal nudity soon populated all avant-garde screens.  Only two years later my subsequent project, totally nude Golden Positions, encountered no difficulty with any printer.”

Both The Bed and Golden Positions can be found in the James Broughton Short Film Collection, available for purchase in our Big Joy Store.  This same collection is also available on Netflix, both films are on Disc 2 (of 3).