The Masters Pick The Sexiest Sex Scene Of All Time, Do You Agree?

[jwplayer id="7195987"]

What is it that makes a sex scene in a movie or TV show sexy? That's precisely what the creators of the Showtime series Masters of Sex set out to define before getting to work on their show. Their research consisted of watching sex scenes. A LOT of sex scenes.

In the name of perfecting their art, Michelle Ashford, Amy Lippman, and Sarah Timberman discussed their process and findings with TIME Magazine (link below).

“We literally had 50 movies,” says Ashford, the show’s creator and showrunner. “We wanted to find out what actually makes something, honest to God, sexy.”

What they found, naturally, was that it had little to do with the physical act – and everything to do with narrative. And so as the trio – creator and executive producers, respectively – prepared to film the pilot of Masters of Sex, Ashford made a rule: sex on this show couldn’t just be about sex. “We decided that sex had to be completely connected to story,” she tells TIME, in a profile in this week’s magazine. “So it was either funny or humiliating or curious or revelatory or… something.”

Alright, but how about their findings?

Ashford: We all agreed that Don’t Look Now, the Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie movie, from 1973, was memorably sexy. Michael Sheen (who plays Masters) loved it. We loved it. And our director, John Madden, said, ‘Every love scene I’ve ever directed was influenced by that movie.’ So when we went and watched the film again, we tried to figure out what were we all responding to. We just assumed it must not be trying to be sexy. But that’s actually not true — the sex is very sexy. But what they did was they shot that sex scene and then they intercut it with all these shots of that couple after sex, getting ready to go out for the evening. And so the aftermath of being together is on their faces, what this intimacy has meant to them. And so all of a sudden you get a whole story, because you’re seeing the sex but you’re also seeing the effect of the sex.

No arguments here. Some of the trio's other favorites included Basic Instinct, Out of Sight, and The Remains of the Day. I'm not making that last one up. 

[jwplayer id="7195996"]

[jwplayer id="7195990"]

Via TIME