What It's Really Like to Be an Intimacy Coordinator on a Campy Erotic Thriller

Cult-loved filmmaker Gregg Araki makes his long-awaited return to theaters this summer with I Want Your Sex, a comedy that tackles one of today’s hottest debates: Is Gen Z having sex? Inevitably, the New Queer Cinema pioneer's first feature in 12 years is like an instruction manual from the chief provocateur himself.

The film stars Cooper Hoffman as Elliot, a lost 20-something who lands a gig as an assistant to renowned artist Erika Tracy (Olivia Wilde). When she proposes they enter a sexual relationship in which she dominates him in the bedroom, he gains experiences he didn’t even know he was seeking…and then some as the film warps into a thriller.

Like many of Araki’s other films (Nowhere, The Doom Generation), I Want Your Sex is a campy, erotic romp, but as a departure from his many '90s indies, this is his first feature to employ intimacy coordinators. For it, he tapped Yehuda Duenyas, whom he met on the set of Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story and first worked with on American Gigolo.

Duenyas tells Marie Claire over Zoom that the screenplay (co-written by Araki and Karley Sciortino) read like “a firehose of sex scenes one after the other.” He worked to facilitate trust within the cast and crew, so those moments of kink and comedy could best come alive off the page. “[Araki] has a very exacting vision, but how that comes to life, he really relies on the people around him to be the artists that they are to make it all come together under his direction.”

Duenyas worked with Jaclyn Chantel on the project. The two, along with trauma and sexuality educator Jimanekia Eborn, are the founders of CINTIMA, the leading intimacy coordinator training program. Founded in 2023, the L.A.-based organization works with the Screen Actors Guild to develop guidelines, teaches best practices to trainees and filmmakers, aims to create more diversity in the field, and even launched its own film festival, FLICKER. “I started working in this practice in 2007,” Duenyas says. “The word consent was in the dictionary, but it wasn't something that we talked about all the time. It's an amazing cultural shift that we've been through.”

As I Want Your Sex arrives in theaters, Duenyas reflects on collaborating with Araki, filming the pivotal threesome-gone-wrong scene, and what audiences may still not realize about his job.

Marie Claire: Gregg Araki is known for exploring sex in his work. You worked together briefly before I Want Your Sex, but can you remember initial conversations you had with him and how he adjusted to using an intimacy coordinator?

Yehuda Duenyas: He was curious about what it is to work with an intimacy coordinator, and, from my end, deference to what he’s already been able to make so beautifully and the type of stories that he’s been able to tell. He seemed really thankful, like, “This makes it so much less awkward and easier.” We live in a different world than we did when he was making films in the '90s, and he’s really aware of that.

MC: Araki’s been very vocal about how this movie is his love letter to Gen Z and his way of weighing in on the ‘Gen Z isn’t having sex’ discourse. What conversations did you have with him about those themes as you were trying to understand his vision?

YD: He has a really particular take. The world is different than it was when he was coming up, and there is a different relationship to intimacy and sexuality. I personally don't believe that Gen Z doesn't want to have sex. We're still human beings. It's not that they don't want to have sex. I think that culturally we've been divided from one another in certain ways, and I think that social media has a big role in that. I feel more of a loneliness epidemic, where people want to connect with one another and want to know how. If anything, this is an instructional movie. We chatted about that with Greg a lot.

MC: Cooper Hoffman said that there were a few days on set that he described as “Oh, Fuck Days” because of the more bonkers scenes he had to film. How do you put an actor at ease in those scenarios?

YD: We had a bunch of those. Number one, just acknowledging that anyone's consent is revocable at any time—that puts people at ease. Cooper is one of those people who's like, “If there's a waterfall to jump off of…” and there's an acting challenge, he's going to take that challenge. I know that he really approached this with such a sense of openness and very candidly [admitted], “I've never done anything like this before.” So we were both like, “We got you,” and, “You don't have to do anything you don't want to do. If you're not feeling it in the moment, there's a million ways that we can shoot something, so let us know what could make this more comfortable for you.”

We have a lot of tips and tricks to put the heat on the screen and take the heat off of the personal moment, so that's kind of the art of what we do. The field of intimacy coordination has a lot of, What does it look like on screen, but also the interpersonal value of, How do we make this an agreeable thing for everyone to be participating in and make it fun?

MC: Do you work with the costuming and props department? Especially in a film like this, where BDSM elements and lingerie are so integral to the storytelling, what does that look like?

YD: We work with costumes because we need to put modesty garments and padding in between actors. There is a lot of coordination with sets. Like, Is the bed hard enough, or does it sink down? All these things are going to affect performance.

There are a lot of BDSM props and restraints and a St. Andrew's cross in this film. Anything that could interact with an actor in an intimate scene, we have some conversation around, or at least make sure that everything is in place for it to work well. Choreography is the tip of the iceberg. There are 100,000 other things behind the scenes that we take care of.

MC: From your perspective, how do you find the right balance of being mindful on set but crafting a scene that’s risque and sexy and also has a sense of humor? So many moments straddle that in I Want Your Sex.

YD: Sex is awkward sometimes, and it is funny sometimes. All of those things make these moments so much more human. And that's what was so delightfully exciting about it.

Also, working with a cast that is already so funny—Olivia, Cooper, and Mason [Gooding], hysterical people. Some of the things that you see in that threesome-gone-wrong scene—like Chase [Sui Wonders] wearing the strap-on—were just Chase being fucking funny. We're there to uplift and help support this stuff. Performers bring so much to the dynamic on set. That was what was so beautiful about that production: Greg brought together all of these collaborators who created such a great environment.

MC: Did you have a favorite day on set?

YD: We did all the intimacy in the first five days. It was really right off the bat. We were able to get together the day before and have an in-person check-in. It was really helpful. We created a good vibe together, so that it could become playful.

I loved the pool scenes—Erika Tracy drunk, dressing Elliot up. The threesome scene was incredible. Those playful montages of Erika and Elliot together in the house with Elliot trying these new things were all so fun to do.

MC: You’ve spoken before about how intimacy coordinators help facilitate talent and the filmmaker to take bigger risks. What do you mean by that, and can you think of an instance where you really saw that in action?

YD: It's like if there's a bar fight, and people don't exactly know how to be in a bar fight, you have a fight choreographer or stunt coordinator. There are a lot of safety protocols in place in order to make that safe, so the actors can just go full tilt. A similar thing happens with intimate scenes when the actors know that we're handling the barriers. When all those boundaries are in place, it really allows people to play to the edges of what they can do and forget about all of those functional things.

There was some rough stuff in [I Want Your Sex], so we were able to do simple exercises around, How hard can you press on my arm? We found that both Chase and Olivia could press on Cooper's arm as hard as they could, and it didn't hurt him at all, so they know in these rough scenes they can go hard on him. Once we have that feeling of comfort and trust among everyone, that trust allows the opportunity to really go far in performance.

MC: It sounds like you’re almost there to facilitate trust or even empowerment.

YD: We're not the safety police. We're not here because of some woke fragility. We're really there to empower people to be able to do their best performances around a sensitive topic, which is intimacy. And intimacy is so important to humans, yet culturally, around the world, there's always some friction, tension, strange feelings about intimacy. So, when we can bring a level of boundaries, safety, comfort, consent to the conversation, it really empowers people to go to play to their edges.

MC: You’ve been doing this since 2007, but your field has become more common in the past decade. What changes have you seen, or what feedback have you gotten on sets?

YD: I hear a lot, "I don't know how we did this without you,” or, “Where were you when I was 19?" from some actors. Before, it was dispersed among five different departments. I hear a lot from costumers or [the beauty department] that, in hair and makeup, an actor would say, "I don't want to do this thing that's coming up." So, the hair and makeup person would have to figure out a very polite way to make an excuse for the person or to stand up for them, or costumes would have to do it. There's a better cultural understanding and cultural conversations around this. And in turn, I feel like we've seen much deeper and better portrayals of intimacy.

MC: In that time, you also launched CINTIMA. How has interest in it evolved?

YD: We are really excited about the people whom we have trained who are working in the field. Not everyone off the street wants to be an intimacy coordinator, but the people who do come to it for really specific reasons. We have trainees from psychotherapy practices to somatic practices to people already in the film industry who feel a calling to this, to sex workers and adult film stars. There are a lot of different places that people feel like, "Oh, this field is like the Venn diagram of my life." And it's very meaningful to them.

It's a very rigorous program because it's a rigorous job. There’s a lot to know and a lot to have to hold. There are dream jobs like I Want Your Sex, and there are jobs where it’s a bit more difficult. We handle stories of sexual assault; those aren’t easy days on set. Storytelling is sacred. It's challenging and fun, but it's not always easy, so if we can help alleviate some of those nerves or even just handle the technical stuff, actors and filmmakers can tell the stories they want to tell.

What we're trying to do is expand what intimacy is on screen, how it can expand our definition of humanity, how we can see ourselves as people on this earth in a different light. We're living in a really challenging moment right now. I think our take, here, in our studio is more intimacy is more good for the world.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.