Intimacy coordinators are a relatively new innovation on Hollywood sets, as more and more people down in the trenches of making TV and films begin to think seriously about how to make art about, and featuring, sex in ways that leave everyone involved feeling comfortable and safe. And while this is obviously not the point, they’ve also served a useful secondary purpose: Operating as a shockingly good litmus test for which actors—and specifically, male actors, because it’s pretty much always male actors saying this stuff—are a bit too far out of touch with modern attitudes.
Like, it’s not surprising, exactly, that Michael Caine, who turned 90 this year, is out here rolling his eyes at the idea that love scenes between two working professionals should not be wildly improvised affairs. But it is still a certain kind of irritating to hear Caine, who was talking to The Daily Mail about his new movie The Great Escaper, respond to the topic with some classic “Back in my day” rhetoric: “Really? Seriously? What are they? We never had that in my day. Thank God I’m 90 and don’t play lovers anymore is all I can say. In my day you just did the love scene and got on with it without anyone interfering. It’s all changed.”
Now, as Caine himself points out, his relationship to this stuff is largely academic these days—although it’s worth noting that Frank Langella was a strapping young lad of 84 when he disregarded the guidance of an intimacy coordinator on the set of Netflix’s The Fall Of The House Of Usher, leading to complaints from a co-star and him being recast on the show. (And then self-declared the kind of “cancelled” where you get to write op-eds about how silenced you’re being.) Caine does note that he tries to keep up with modern sensibilities, “But it’s dull. Not being able to speak your mind and not being able to call anyone ‘darling.’” Alas, for the glorious lost privileges of yesteryear.
