''Joy of Sex'' (sometimes referred to as ''National Lampoon's Joy of Sex'') is a 1984 American sex comedy film directed by Martha Coolidge. It was written by Kathleen Rowell, and Joyce & John Salter (billed on screen as J.J. Salter), based on the sex manual by Alex Comfort.

Plot

Leslie Hindenberg has just entered her senior year of

high school A secondary school, high school, or senior school, is an institution that provides secondary education. Some secondary schools provide both ''lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper secondary education'' (ages 14 to 18), i.e., ...

. She visits her doctor to have a mole examined, but she mistakenly comes to believe she only has six weeks to live and goes about trying to lose her virginity. However, it is difficult for her to accomplish her goal being that her father is the school's phys ed coach. The boys are afraid to date the coach’s daughter. Alan Holt is a teenager whose friends brag about their sexual encounters. He is rather frustrated as he cannot stop thinking about sex and attempts to lose his virginity in any way possible.

Cast

Production

Paramount Pictures paid a great amount of money to secure the rights to Alex Comfort’s sex manual just so they could use the title, which they found to be highly commercial. In 1978 they hired Charles Grodin to write a script, telling him the movie "could be about anything". Grodin decided to use this exact situation as the premise: a Hollywood writer struggles to write a script based on a sex manual after a big studio acquires the rights. When he finished his first draft, Paramount passed. Grodin finally managed to get his screenplay green lit by MGM in 1985 as '' Movers & Shakers''. In that movie, the sex manual is now called "Love in Sex". According to the book '' Wired'', John Belushi was supposed to appear in this movie, but he died before filming began. In her biography ''My Mother Was Nuts'', Penny Marshall states she was slated to direct (this would have been her first feature film) from a script by John Hughes (which would have been his first script to be adapted for film). This version of the screenplay consisted of several unrelated vignettes. The producers wanted to have Belushi wearing diapers on the poster, even though no such scene appeared in Hughes' screenplay. As the option on the book was running out, writer Kathleen Rowell, who had previously adapted '' The Outsiders'', was approached about adapting the book into a script. Feeling not quite at home with writing comedy material, she enlisted her sister, Joyce Salter, and her husband John Salter, to help her in creating the storyline. The studio had suggested the premise of a teenage girl wanting to lose her virginity against a deadline, and pulling from their own experiences and an unproduced screenplay Rowell had written, came up with the final storyline. Due to the budgetary restrictions, only two writers could be credited, so Joyce and John took the collective pseudonym "J.J. Salter" for their onscreen credit. Martha Coolidge was fired from the movie, for cutting many scenes of gratuitous nudity, but declined an opportunity to have her directing credit appear as Alan Smithee. National Lampoon producer Matty Simmons claims to have paid $250,000 to remove the National Lampoon name from the project:

Release and reception

The film was given a theatrical release in the

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Paramount Pictures Paramount Pictures Corporation, commonly known as Paramount Pictures or simply Paramount, is an American film production company, production and Distribution (marketing), distribution company and the flagship namesake subsidiary of Paramount ...

in August 1984. It grossed $4,463,841 at the box office. The film was given a release on VHS by Paramount Home Video in the 1980s. In 2025, the film, which never had a DVD, was released on Blu-ray by Vinegar Syndrome imprint Cinematographe. Eleanor Mannikka of All Movie Guide has nothing but disdain for the movie: Producer Frank Konigsberg: Director Martha Coolidge: Martha Coolidge was also quoted in a retrospective piece in the ''Los Angeles Times'':

Notes

* Scott, Vernon. “Telling Dad About Nude Scene Tough Role for Actress to Play. ''The Pittsburgh Press''. United Press International. August 24, 1983. * Thomas, Bob. “Lampoon to Spoof Hollywood on Film.” Associated Press. ''Star-News''. Mar 1, 1981. * Thomas, Bob. “Director Insists Joy of Sex not a raunchy skin comedy.” Associated Press. ''The Post and The Evening Times''. Associated Press. Aug 3, 1984 (reprinted from July 1983). * Uricchio, Marylynn. “Joy of Sex movie is unhappily terrible. ''Pittsburgh Post-Gazette''. August 4, 1984. * Wolf, William. “New York Calling.” ''Asbury Park Press''. May 8, 1983.

References

External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Joy Of Sex 1984 films 1980s sex comedy films 1980s teen comedy films American coming-of-age comedy films 1980s English-language films National Lampoon films Paramount Pictures films American sex comedy films Films about virginity American teen comedy films Films directed by Martha Coolidge Teen sex comedy films Teensploitation 1984 comedy films 1980s American films English-language sex comedy films