Male nudity is becoming more prevalent in movies

By CHRIS LEE

Judd Apatow has pledged to shake Americans from their squeamishness.

HOLLYWOOD — Viewer discretion is strongly advised.

Here’s the naked truth: Male genitalia is getting unprecedented screen time at the multiplex these days — in mainstream popcorn fare and broad comedies — thanks in large part to comic mogul Judd Apatow (and his band of merry collaborators), who has pledged to shake Americans from their squeamishness about male anatomy in movies.

Exhibit A: the Apatow-produced R-rated heartbreak comedy “Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” which hits theaters Friday.

“Sarah Marshall’s” breakout performance isn’t delivered by protagonist Jason Segel (of “How I Met Your Mother” and “Freaks and Geeks” fame). The movie’s most captivating screen presence is what a Harlequin romance novel might refer to as Segel’s “manhood.”

The 28-year-old comedian is presented in his full-frontal glory over the course of a cringe-worthy breakup scene that involves Segel naked, dripping wet and sobbing like a 6-foot-4 baby. No clever “Austin Powers”-style genital obfuscation with props. No artful lighting to preserve any mystery. And for emphasis, the camera cuts away from close-ups of his teary visage (he’s being dumped by his girlfriend, Kristin Bell, as the titular Sarah at the time) to wider, phallus-inclusive shots three times.

Segel also wrote the film’s script, basing the scene on a real-life naked breakup of his own. Still, the actor-writer contemplated inequalities between male and female film nudity before putting himself on display.

“When a woman does nudity in a movie, men immediately switch into a sexual mode,” Segel said. “For women, from what I understand, it’s not like that. They see a naked, out-of-shape man crying and it’s funny — something weird, disturbing and disgusting we can all laugh at.”

To hear him tell it, Apatow — the comedy rainmaker behind “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” who has shown a Midas touch producing such jocular male-skewing comedies as “Knocked Up,” “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby” and “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy” — has made it a sort of personal mission to up the on-screen male nudity quotient.

Call it a crusade to break down one of moviedom’s last taboos. In the 2007 faux musical biopic he produced, “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story,” Apatow positioned a penis behind the film’s star John C. Reilly’s head during an orgy scene. The upshot: Some 20 audience members reportedly stormed out of a test screening in disgust. As well, the closing credits for another film Apatow produced, the teen comedy “Superbad,” feature a hilarious illustrated montage of male sexual organs.

“America fears the penis, and that’s something I’m going to help them get over,” Apatow is quoted as having said in a World Entertainment News Service story in December. “I’m gonna get a penis in every movie I do from now on. ... It really makes me laugh in this day and age, with how psychotic our world is, that anyone is troubled by seeing any part of the human body.”

Ironically, the spike in male movie nudity comes at a time when actresses are more and more reluctant to take it off on film for fear of being immortalized in the buff on Web sites dedicated to nudie film stills and screen grabs. Elisha Cuthbert and Eliza Dushku have publicly stated that they won’t do nude scenes, as did Lindsay Lohan in 2005; but this year, she posed in the buff for a New York magazine layout.

“It’s more of a concern for actresses now than it has been in times past,” said Mike McPadden, editorial director of mrskin.com, a site dedicated to “celebrating nudity in film TV.” “Nudity is instant and permanent. We get it right away, and it lives forever. So when it does happen, it’s a big deal.”