Capturing connection: an interview with an intimacy coordinator

To explore the care, thought, and intricacies that go into the practice, Feeld partnered with Filmmaker magazine to host an interview with Yehuda Duenyas, a leading intimacy coordinator and IC trainer. For the summer issue of Filmmaker, Duenyas assembled a roundtable of intimacy coordinators with wide-ranging experience in film, television, theater, stunts, and sex education.

Duenyas’s most recent project was Gregg Araki’s electric erotic comedy-thriller I Want Your Sex. Exploring generationally disparate attitudes towards sex, the film follows Erika Tracy (Olivia Wilde), a renowned artist who initiates a Dom-sub relationship with her much younger Gen-Z employee, Elliot (Cooper Hoffman). The story offers commentary on carnality, connection, consent, and communication, with Duenyas helping to shape the intimacy captured on camera.

Here, he sits down with Filmmaker’s content director, Chloe Lizotte, to pull back the curtain on his work…

Many people may not be aware of the role of intimacy coordinators. Could you walk us back to the beginning of coming on board for this project [I Want Your Sex]—when you receive a script like this, or when you come into contact with a director like Gregg Araki, where do you start?

YD: Gregg and I had worked on some episodic television together. He texted me and said there's this script that he and Karley [Sciortino] wrote—it's got some intense things, nuanced things, and he said it just really needs some care. He asked, would I be interested? I've been a Gregg Araki fan since like ninth grade, so of course the answer was yeah obviously, please send more. 

[The process] starts with a script read and then a conversation with the director, [asking] “What do you want to see here?” And so it's really a long creative conversation. We sat down for a few hours at the studio and went scene by scene. I read the script. I broke down every scene that I thought needed some kind of care or attention, and then we just talked through each one.

Let’s dwell on this idea of care and attention. What jumps out at you about a scene that you feel needs extra care and attention?

YD: [In I Want Your Sex] Cooper [Hoffman]'s character, Elliot, is being dragged around, wearing a pig mask and being spanked and then getting a dildo put up his butt and all sorts of stuff like that. So, it's like, “Okay, great. What do you want to see? How much of that do you want to see? Is this stuff that's going to be happening off camera, or on camera? How much nudity do you want to see? Like, what is your vision?” 

[Once that’s decided] there's a lot of conversation with the actors: “This is what the creative vision is. How are you feeling about this?” And a conversation happens after that [to unpack and process it, and prepare for performance].

It's interesting hearing you return to this idea of conversation. Part of your role is making space for people to communicate openly with others. Could you talk more about how you set that tone? Some people might imagine that primarily happening on set, but it sounds like it's happening through pre-production as well…

YD: Yeah, we do a lot of pre-production work. We'll have conversations individually with the actors and go through the script, scene by scene, and talk with them: “What are you comfortable with/how much are you comfortable showing or doing? Do you have any concerns about the way that this is written?”

Some people have a lot of questions and others are like, “I'm good. Whatever the director wants.” There's a real range in those types of conversations. 

Getting to be on set and choreograph, that's really the fun part, but there's a ton of stuff we do beforehand from these conversations. [For example,] understanding and lining up modesty garments which protect actors, so that, number one, they're not exposed on set in a particular way they don't want to be; and number two, there's a barrier between them and the other actors. There's a lot of [preparing] what the camera angles will be, and what barriers and modesty garments we want to use.

Every actor will sign a rider for an act of nudity or simulated sex. That's an additional contract on top of their contract; it's a written document [that specifies] what they're agreeing to do, which protects an actor from, like, a producer walking on set and saying, “it's not hot enough, take your clothes off.” There's a big power dynamic in that, and it helps us to have this conversation beforehand so there aren't surprises on set. It also helps the actor be like, "Okay, good. This stuff, I don't have to think about. I can think about my role and my character."

It sounds like it's coming from a safety/set protocol perspective, but you also mentioned choreographing scenes for camera in a way that makes the actors comfortable, and helps the director achieve their vision. We've discussed how intimacy coordinating has grown from choreography, stunt performing, these other physical realms of acting. Tell us about that, and your own path to this field.

YD: Stunts are a really good parallel. If I had to act [in a scene involving] a bar fight, I’d want a really good fight choreographer to be there. If I'm going to get hit in the head with a bottle, I want to know that the bottle is fake. And if I'm then going to be thrown out the window, I want to know that, you know, there's going to be squibs on the glass that are going to explode the window right before I go through it—and then there's going to be a mat to catch me. 

[Intimacy coordinating means] putting that [same] kind of care, practice, and structure in place around [intimate/sexual] scenes, which can be really vulnerable. Creating that environment means it becomes playful and fun, and a very collaborative experience. Everyone feels like they have agency over what they're doing.

I came into this work [after] I’d lived in New York for a long time and was directing theater. I had been [acting] in shows in the past where the director was like, "Why don't you and your scene partner go out in the hallway and figure out the kissing and the sex stuff and come back and show it to me?" So, you and a scene partner out in the lobby are like, "Okay, let's, you know, fumble our way through this." For me, it wasn't a terrible experience and for my scene partner it wasn't either. But it was not comfortable. It was awkward. And I've heard many worse stories than that. 

In 2007, I was directing a play that had really intense, extreme content. Everyone was nervous about how we were going to do it. I was just very transparent. I said, “I don't know. I don't know how we're going to do it, but you're not going to be surprised.” I came up with a structure during rehearsals. I really thought about it as a performer, and felt that agency and consent [were important]—and this is like 2007, not to date myself but I literally had the iPhone 1 in my pocket. We weren't all talking about consent at that time. [On the project] we started talking, and it became a very collaborative process. That led to other people saying, "How did you do that?", and over the years led to me being in that position on a show, on a theater piece. Then, in 2015/16, a filmmaker friend of mine was like, "Hey, could you do that for my film?" 

Between 2016-18 is when this field really became established. The [phrase] “intimacy coordinator,” was [first] used on season 2 of The Deuce. Alicia Rodis [credited with pioneering the specialism in the U.S.] was the first intimacy coordinator, and it became [an official] field in film and television—though people were doing it since [at least] 2002/3. I’d been shocked that there wasn't a common language for how to approach these scenes, which can be really activating—and it's not because actors are fragile, and it's not some woke backlash. It’s creating a structure to [allow the scene to] go further, and empowering actors to have a language for this type of work.

It’s fascinating that you return to conversation or dialogue with the actors in order to set clear expectations, but not in a restrictive way. You're actually opening up space for people to explore with each other. [That’s more possible] when they know what the parameters are…

YD: That's totally right. And some actors want a lot of structure and direction, and others are like “I'm good,” and that's fine. Sometimes one actor wants one thing, and another actor wants another thing, and the director wants something else. And that's what it is to collaborate: to understand the needs of the different people [involved,] and to be there as a conduit in order to make the work speak a truth. 

That's what we're after—all art is after a sense of truth. And while the story, the narrative, is not real, what happens inside of an actor's body and nervous system is very real, and the emotions are real emotions. So this creates better conditions to have structure [and support] around that.

Back to the film [I Want Your Sex] itself: Feeld tends to think about consent as an ongoing conversation. It's based in dialogue. The consent aspect of this film stood out to me. Are there any specific scenes that [particularly speak to] these dynamics?

YD: Before every scene there’s a consent conversation, [including] a conversation one-on-one. We did all of the intimate scenes in the first five days of shooting. So, like the threesome scene, that was the first night of shooting. The whole film was made in 18 days, it was a very tight, very compressed shooting schedule. I requested we get together the day before for 90 minutes and just talk. It was fun, and we established safe words, and did a couple of little [physical] exercises. Just really simple things that created a way of communicating. Gregg was there as well.

That [created] this sense of permission for when we did get into [more demanding scenes]. There was already a language we’d established, and a way of working so that there's a [support system and a] context for the ideas everyone’s throwing out.

Totally. It sets the tone. And I'm reminded of your work with Cintima, if you'd like to speak to that…

YD: At Cintima, we run a training organization for intimacy coordinators; we're a SAG-AFTRA  accredited training organization. There’s lots [included]—from just the spectrum of human sexuality, to: How do you choreograph a scene like this? What are all the technical things that happen, and what are the protocols for working in film production? 

We train people, and it's really a remarkable journey. [By] becoming more attuned to human communication in the way that we train it, people come out different afterwards. It's a really beautiful transformation.

One last question before we're ushered out of here. We spoke about feeling like the world of intimacy on screen is expanding. There's more freedom to push boundaries. How do you feel about the direction that’s going in? Are there any projects that spring to mind (apart from this one) that have interested you?

YD: I feel like I've seen some great intimacy on screen just in the last couple of years. Movies [and shows] like Babygirl and Pillion and Heated Rivalry. The Invite is amazing. Another [film starring, and in this case also directed by] Olivia Wilde, which was a remarkable piece.

So, I see a lot of really nuanced content around intimacy. When I was growing up in the ’90s, it was like, “Oh there's naked bodies on.” If there's a zeitgeist or something people are interested in now, it’s, “What does the intimacy mean? Who are these people, and how does an intimate interaction actually reveal who they are, their desires and their fears?” 

Intimacy is becoming more of a character. And I find that beautiful.

I Want Your Sex is out now in the U.S. and is releasing in international locations throughout August. Chloe Lizotte is the content director of Filmmaker, a magazine about the art, craft, and future of cinema published by the Gotham Film & Media Institute. 

Curious about deepening your experience of intimacy and connection? We’re waiting for you on Feeld.