Robert Pattinson Would 'Never Say Never' To Doing Arthouse Porn, Even With The Batman's Box Office Success
Robert Pattinson is one of the more fascinating actors of his generation. He broke out playing heartthrobs in films like "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" and the five "Twilight" movies, but who would go on to work with powerhouse directors like David Cronenberg, Anton Corbijn, and Claire Denis. I would say that playing Batman would finally be the aberration in his career (his last film, prior to "The Batman" was "The Devil All the Time," wherein he played a lascivious preacher), but one can now expect Pattinson to turn up in just about anything. Including, as he once revealed in a November 2019 interview with The Guardian, arthouse porn.
In said interview, Pattinson called himself a catastrophist, and admitted that he really didn't know how to act. He refuses a "totemic" view of his celebrity, choosing instead to focus on his ordinariness ("I think the stuff about fame is boring"). Pattinson comes across as a true professional, devoting himself to whatever role he takes, be it a photographer, a preacher, a Batman, or Salvador Dalí. He also said that should "The Batman" fail financially, he would turn to making "arthouse porn" to pay the bills. While it was a pretty sure bet that a Batman film would be financially successful — they have all been hits to date, even the poorly reviewed ones — Pattinson's willingness to get his kit off post-Batman appeared sincere.
The world's Pattinson fans, then, were disappointed that "The Batman" was a massive success, making over $400 million in its first two weeks. While the film did bomb in China, it seems it was still successful enough to prevent the intense arthouse sex film from making its way onto Pattinson's résumé.
Or was it? In an interview unearthed on Twitter, Pattinson awkwardly grinned when asked about the subject and said, "Never say never."
Celebratory porn
Since the Guardian interview was conducted so long before "The Batman," Pattinson's attitude appears to have changed on the topic. In the Twitter exchange, Pattinson's co-star, Zoë Kravitz, seemed taken aback by his promise. She also seemed to urge him into the direction of admitting he would still make a sex film, eventually admitting that art porn should be a reason to celebrate, not a lamentation of failure. Pattinson said he would do it as "celebratory porn."
One may argue that Pattinson has already made good on his promise, as Robert Eggers' film "The Lighthouse" features a sex scene between Pattinson and a mermaid. Pattinson has also appeared nude in other films besides, and can't seem to stop masturbating in his recent roles.
The idea of a big movie star having un-simulated sex on camera is a concept that cycles through Hollywood every other decade or so. The crossover success of Gerard Damiano's "Deep Throat" in 1972, paired with the critical lauding of his "The Devil in Miss Jones" the next year, caused a stir in Hollywood, and there were rumors that Stanley Kubrick may make a sex film, or that any number of big stars at the time would begin enacting coitus on camera. Filmmakers like Radley Metzger were putting thought, money, and careful, classy aesthetics into sex films, and imports from Italy, Japan, and elsewhere were attracting attention in the arthouse circuit. More recently, several filmmakers have included actual sex on camera, including Lars Von Trier ("Nymphomaniac"), Gaspar Noé ("Love"), Abel Ferrara ("Pasolini"), Vincent Gallo ("The Brown Bunny"), and Abdellatif Kechiche ("Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo").
The idea of an actor like Robert Pattinson performing with any of the above directors and being sexual on camera is not so farfetched, and for all the fun tittering we like to do about the possibility of seeing a hot movie star strip, there is a larger conversation to be had about the function of sex on film, a healthy upfront depiction of human sexuality, and the daring — or lack thereof — it takes to appear in a film of this sort.
Pattinson was likely joking. But maybe he wasn't.