Deep Dive "Minx" Series
Interviews with Ellen, Cast and Crew
Ellen Rapoport
‘Minx’ Creator Ellen Rapoport Inks Overall Deal With Lionsgate Televisionhttps://deadline.com/2022/07/minx-creator-ellen-rapoport-overall-deal-lionsgate-television-group-1235063019/
The Creative Process
https://www.creativeprocess.info/interviews-12/ellen-rapoport-mia-funk
“Porn And Feminism Clash” Ellen Rapoport On ‘Minx’
https://www.creativescreenwriting.com/porn-and-feminism-clash-ellen-rapoport-on-minx/
The Power of the Written Word - An Interview with 'Minx' Writer and Creator Ellen Rapoport
https://scriptmag.com/interviews-features/the-power-of-the-written-word-an-interview-with-minx-writer-and-creator-ellen-rapoport
‘Minx’ Creator Says Season 2 “Was Written In A 20 Week Room With Nine Writers And Zero Robots”
https://deadline.com/2023/05/minx-creator-season-2-starz-reacts-wga-strike-1235361020/
How Minx Creator Ellen Rapoport Went From Law To Screenwriting [Interview]
https://www.slashfilm.com/807103/how-minx-creator-ellen-rapoport-went-from-law-to-screenwriting-interview/
'Minx' Showrunner Ellen Rapoport on the Joyce and Shelly Dynamic and Avoiding Clichéshttps://collider.com/minx-showrunner-ellen-rapoport-interview/
Let's Shoot with Pete Chatmon
Writing and selling a screenplay about a lawyer while working at a law firm is how Ellen became a writer best known for ‘Desperados’, ‘Clifford the Big Red Dog’, and her hit series ’Minx’. In this episode, Ellen and Pete discuss her transition into storytelling, how she discovered and developed the story of “Minx”, the process of pitching a story to a studio and network, her experience directing for the first time, running the show, and more…
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-45-ellen-rapaport-on-the-creation-and/id1517766960?i=1000611565872
Carleigh Herbert - Make up Department Head
'Minx' makeup department head Carleigh Herbert on researching early 1970s, using prosthetic penis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIlDkGSoicE
Fem TV Podcast
In this episode, makeup department head Carleigh Herbert joins us to discuss her work on HBO Max comedy series, Minx, especially bringing those 1970s looks to life.
Carleigh also shares how she got into the industry, and touches on some of the other shows she's been a part of: Teen Wolf, The Sex Lives of College Girls, and American Horror Story: 1984.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fem-tv/id1166571090?i=1000567774767
Group Cast Interviews
Ophelia Lovibond and Jake Johnson
Sag-Aftra Foundation -Jake Johnson, Ophelia Lovibond, and Ellen Rapoport of HBO Max’s Workplace Comedy MINX
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFGC0MKI8tM&list=PLh4zYKaPKme52n2ukX-AcmRImbb09iBzk&index=13
Lennon Parham, Oscar Montoya, Jessica Lowe, Tylor Zakhar Perez
Lennon Parham Is Surrounded By Penises On 'Minx'
https://youtu.be/XOV2sJ_jrk8
'Minx' co-star Lennon Parham on Shelly's (sexual) awakening and her predictions for Season 2
https://youtu.be/6Q64qzSlzXU
Minx Stars Jessica Lowe & Lennon Parham On A New Era For Shelly & Bambi In Season 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJ40kwt72Hk
Minx Stars Oscar Montoya & Lennon Parham Talk Nudity, 70s Clothing, Paula Abdul & The Female Gaze
https://youtu.be/HbRKdww-n9g
Interview with Actors Oscar Montoya and Lennon Parham on "Minx"
https://youtu.be/DrbFIzDIdb0
The Cast of HBO Max's 'Minx' Rate These Fashion Trends as HOT or NOT.. | Drip or Drop | Cosmopolitan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XY6zBW8-Yxw
Tylor Zakhar Perez On His Stripped Down Role In 'MINX' | Entertainment Weekly
https://youtu.be/BAX8QXtapuw
Articles
How ‘Minx’ Was Saved From Becoming “Filmsturbation” in Wild West Era of Streaming
Paul Feig, along with cast members Jake Johnson, Ophelia Lovibond, Idara Victor, Oscar Montoya, Jessica Lowe and Lennon Parham, also talk about how the Starz prestige comedy has always been a "phoenix" on- and off-screen.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/minx-cast-starz-saved-season-2-1235531612/amp/
Season 1 References
The Magazines that influenced the fictional "Minx" magazine
Viva Magazine The Story of ‘Viva,’ the Radically Ambitious Erotic Women’s Magazine of the 70s
‘Viva’ combined serious reporting on women’s issues with full-frontal male nudity and frank sex advice, as a new podcast explains.
In the 1970s, as Penthouse grew increasingly famous (and controversial) for its sensational pornographic content, its creator Bob Guccione began publishing a magazine about something even more salacious than women’s breasts and pubic hair: women’s actual desires.
From 1973 to 1979, Viva paired feminist writing from women like Betty Friedan and Erica Jong and stories on anti-rape groups and female circumcision with full-frontal male nudity and frank sex advice. As the first erotic women’s magazine, it embodied the fight to push forth the conversation about women’s sexuality amid the patriarchal influences of the decade—including Guccione himself.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3wgp5/viva-magazine-stiffed-podcast
An Oral History of Viva, the '70s Porn Magazine for Women
It was male-led and women-run; it published long-form interviews with Maya Angelou and Eartha Kitt alongside Playgirl-like centerfolds. Oh, and Anna Wintour worked there.
BY MOLLY SAVARDPUBLISHED: APR 12, 2018
It was a playground of erotic imagery and expensive fur coats; it was a forum for thoughtful discussion about feminism, about open marriages, bisexuality, and the case for not having children. It featured fictional couples enjoying naked picnics and attending naked dinner parties alongside tight shots of flaccid penises, hairy chests, and lists of "favorite beat-off books from high school." Simone de Beauvoir wrote for it. So did Norman Mailer, Joyce Carol Oates, Anaïs Nin, and Joan Baez. Shelley Duvall was a cover model, as was Rene Russo. Oh, and Anna Wintour was its fashion editor. It was Viva, the feminist ‘70s porn magazine for women you’ve never heard about.
https://www.shondaland.com/inspire/books/a19601651/oral-history-viva-70s-porn-magazine-for-women/
42 Times Ms. Made History
8/11/2014 by MS MAGAZINE
Ms. has been reporting, rebelling and truth-telling for 42 years—and we have no plans to stop. Over the last four decades, we’ve been on the front lines of the women’s movement and we’ve never shied away from taboo topics.
Relive some of our history-making moments below, and tell us what Ms. means to you in the comments. Then, become a Ms. Partner by making a one-time or monthly sustaining donation. Help us keep our fierce, feminist reporting in print and online!
1972: Ms. Launches
The preview issue is sent to subscribers, including such classic articles as “The Housewife’s Moment of Truth,” “Welfare Is a Women’s Issue” and “We Have Had Abortions,” a “coming out” petition signed by 53 prominent American women who had abortions when they were illegal (or were in solidarity). In July, the first issue to hit newsstands sells out.
1972: “Stories for Free Children”
Ms. founding editor Letty Cottin Pogrebin creates “Stories for Free Children” and works with Marlo Thomas on Free to Be… You and Me.
https://msmagazine.com/2014/08/11/42-times-ms-made-history/
A Gallery of 1970s Cosmopolitan Magazine Covers
Posted on July 30, 2020
Burn those bras and plunge those necklines, ladies! Let’s take a stroll through the sexy ’70s, courtesy of the leading purveyor of sexy ’70s ladyhood, Cosmopolitan magazine. It’s fair to say almost all of these covers (if not the entirety of them) were shot by the legendary Francesco Scavullo, who was brought on by also-legendary Cosmo Editor-in-Chief Helen Gurley Brown in the mid-sixties. Together, they defined the Cosmo look and brand for decades. For most of the 1970s, that look meant a lot of boob, hair and eyeshadow – which is interesting in retrospect since no one today would characterize the fashions of the decade that way. Women’s fashion and beauty magazines have always pushed a more glamorous or aspirational style and aesthetic than the readership was likely to replicate or attain easily, but Scavullo really did go off into his own world for the seventies, preferring to shoot a far more lacquered version of female beauty than what was preferred by women at the time. We had to double-check half of these covers to make sure they weren’t a decade older. We don’t know if we should praise Scavullo for being prescient about where fashion was heading or characterize his seventies work as a refusal to pay attention to trends and stick to his own high-gloss aesthetic.
https://tomandlorenzo.com/2020/07/a-gallery-of-1970s-cosmopolitan-magazine-covers/
Helenism - The birth of the Cosmo Girl
“Sexual intercourse,” according to the British poet Philip Larkin, “began / In nineteen sixty-three / (Which was rather late for me)— / Between the end of the Chatterley ban / And the Beatles’ first LP.” This, it turns out, is complete nonsense. Sexual intercourse began for Larkin, at the very latest, in the early nineteen-forties, with his teen-aged girlfriend, and continued at an energetic pace with a variety of women, including his secretary and the wife of a colleague—at one point, he shared his favors among three lovers—until he died, in his early sixties.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/05/11/helenism-helen-gurley-brown-cosmo-girl
A Penis on Every Page: The Rise and Fall of Playgirl
It was supposed to be a raunchy, revolutionary magazine for women. It didn't exactly turn out that way.
By Matthew Rettenmund
Douglas Lambert wanted to give Playboy a run for its money. It was 1971, and Hugh Hefner's magazine had created a new mainstream market for soft-core porn. Lambert, a nightclub owner in Garden Grove, California, decided to get in on the action.
Lambert's wife Jenny saw a bigger opportunity: a magazine with nude male centerfolds. Lambert wasn't sold. What woman wanted to ogle photos of nude men, much less buy a magazine full of them? But he slowly realized Jenny might be on to something. The sexual revolution was well under way, and Lambert "sensed the woman of the '70s was eager to become part" of it, as he'd eventually write in promo copy for his new magazine. So in the summer of 1971, Lambert, along with William Miles Jr., an experienced adman who served as Playgirl's executive vice president, invested $20,000 in the project and opened a swanky, 23rd-floor office in Los Angeles's Century City.
https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/a55592/playgirl-magazine-history/
Lynne Tillman and other contributors to Suck magazine look back and analyze the legacy that the transgressive magazine left behind
*This was not directly referenced and was a British Magazine but it lives in the same worlds at the other magazines. There were “men’s magazines,” and then there was Suck, an experimental amalgam of sexual liberation, feminist ferment, alternative visual culture, and literary ambition, translated into eight crazy issues of newsprint. Founded in London in 1969 and published irregularly until 1974, Suck offered a radically different vision of avant-pornography—no small feat in an era that produced a plethora of explicit and transgressive printed matter. The self-styled “European sexpaper,” Suck decisively contested the formulaic conventions of straight porn mags.
With Germaine Greer as one of its star ambassadors, Suck blurred many boundaries in an attempt to forge, as Greer told the academic journal Women’s Studies International Forum, “a new kind of erotic art, away from the tits ’n’ ass and the peep-show syndrome.” Suck was premised on the notion that explicit erotica was more than just physically arousing—it could also be political and intellectual, and it didn’t have to be inherently exploitative. As writer Chris Kraus argued in a 2008 piece for Artforum about the cultural significance of Suck, the alt-porno demonstrated that “sexuality and daily life were seen as the locus of politics” and that “the public exposure of traditionally private behavior was a means of disrupting the social order.”
https://www.documentjournal.com/2018/11/revisiting-suck-magazines-experiment-in-radical-feminist-pornography/
Digitally Flip Through Every Issue of 1970s Feminist Counterculture Magazine Spare Rib
*Not directly referenced as an influence of Minx Magazine"
Bringing second-wave feminism into the 21st century. Alyssa Buffenstein June 17, 2015
Riot girls, rejoice: the 1970s feminist counterculture magazine Spare Rib has just been digitized. Bringing second-wave feminism into the 21st century, the UK-based Journal Archives and the British Library have made all 239 editions of the magazine flip-through-able online and for free.
Spare Rib was founded in 1973 by Rosie Boycott and Marsha Rowe as an alternative to the gender-biases that seeped into their media landscape and daily lives (which we have yet to completely overcome today), and was published monthly until 1993.
https://www.bl.uk/spare-rib/articles/introduction-spare-rib-the-first-nine-years
How Burt Reynolds felt about his iconic 1972 nude spread in Cosmopolitan magazine
Reynolds' acting career, which spanned decades and hits like "Boogie Nights" and "Deliverance," was so iconic even the list of roles he turned down is impressive, and includes Han Solo and James Bond.
But there's one image that comes to many people's minds when thinking about Reynolds, and it began to be passed around on Twitter immediately following news of his passing: his 1972 nude spread for Cosmopolitan magazine. "I wish I hadn't done it because I wasn't taken as a serious actor," Reynolds said. "I think 'Deliverance' suffered because of it and a lot of other things and I wasn't pleased that I did it, but at the time I wanted everyone to understand the humor of it."
https://www.businessinsider.com/how-burt-reynolds-felt-about-his-iconic-nude-spread-in-cosmo-2018-9?amp
1970's Feminism
What Gloria Steinem’s Non-Jewish Mother Taught Her About Being Jewish
By Curt Schleier
November 17, 2015
Gloria Steinem is traveling again. Actually, “again” might not be the right word. Gloria Steinem is traveling still. She’s been on the road for well over 40 years, speaking out about women’s and civil rights and about political causes.
Her recent trips, though, have been, at least in part, to promote her new memoir, “My Life on the Road,” a travelogue that is a testament to the author’s skills as a journalist and leader.
Steinem, 81, paused long enough on her journeys for an email interview with the Forward in which she answered questions about her unconventional childhood, the perils of beauty and her semi-Jewish roots.
https://forward.com/culture/324554/gloria-steinem-speaks-out-about-her-jewish-heritage/?amp=1
Inside Gloria Steinem’s Month as an Undercover Playboy Bunny
The feminist icon posed as a cocktail waitress at New York City’s famed Playboy Club in 1963 — bunny ears and all.
By Rachel Chang PUBLISHED: MAR 23, 2020
Gloria Steinem’s name is synonymous with feminism. On top of being a political activist, she helped create New York and Ms. magazines and is the co-founder of the National Women’s Political Caucus, Free to Be Foundation, Women’s Media Center and Women's Action Alliance. Steinem has long been an outspoken voice for women, with famous quotes like, “The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off,” which was also the title of her 2019 book.
https://www.biography.com/authors-writers/gloria-steinem-undercover-playboy-bunny
Who Was Flo Kennedy? Learn All About the Fiery Black Feminist and Civil Rights Activist
Bridging the worlds of Black Power and Women’s Liberation, the flamboyant and fierce Florynce “Flo” Kennedy became a catalyst for change through her tireless activism and legal finesse.
02.09.2021 by Hannah Militano
Merging the Civil Rights and Women’s Rights movements, the vivacious, cause-driven activist and lawyer Florynce “Flo” Kennedy brought new meaning to intersectional feminism, embodying genuine inclusion like no one before her. Known for her incendiary wit and eccentric style, she was typically seen in her signature cowboy hats, playful peace sign earrings, and statement sunglasses as she spoke out against the discrimination and mistreatment of marginalized communities with a backbone that defied convention. Ahead of the late activist’s birthday this week, L’OFFICIEL looks back on the unsung feminist hero’s significant contributions to social justice.
https://www.lofficielusa.com/politics-culture/who-was-florynce-flo-kennedy-black-feminist-activist
1970s Feminist Activities
By Linda Napikoski
Updated on September 11, 2019
By 1970, second-wave feminists had inspired women and men across the United States. Whether in politics, the media, academia or private households, women’s liberation was a hot topic of the day. Here are some feminist activities of the 1970s.
The most intense struggle for many femnists during the 1970s was the fight for the passage and ratification of the ERA. Although it was eventually defeated (in no large part due to conservative Phyllis Schlafly's adept activism), the idea of equal rights for women began to influence much legislation and many court decisions.
https://www.thoughtco.com/1970s-feminist-activities-3529001
Remembering The Meeting 50 Years Ago That Led To ‘Our Bodies, Ourselves
’“What’s in this pill?” I asked the doctor. He came over and patted the top of my head and said, “Dear, dear, you don't have to worry about it.”
It was 1966, and this was my last OB/GYN visit in Ann Arbor, Michigan, (with my newborn son) before moving to Boston. My doctor had just told me to take the pill, and I wanted to understand what he was recommending for my body and why. He thought that was silly. And I got angry.
Two years later my anger — our anger — had found more fuel. We were dealing with the Vietnam War; we were dealing with the civil rights movement; Martin Luther King was killed, Robert Kennedy was killed, and the Chicago police were televised beating demonstrators at the Democratic National Convention. The world was in chaos.
A lot of us women who were activists found ourselves in a separate awakening of our own. We were involved in other people’s movements, but even within these supposedly liberal movements, we started to look at how we were treated, as women, and didn’t like it. We didn’t feel equally respected; our leadership wasn’t honored. There’s some incredible footage of such scenes in the 2014 movie “She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry.”
https://www.wbur.org/news/2019/05/08/founding-our-bodies-ourselves-women-health
Digital PDF Version to Borrow from Archive.org (my sign up for free)
https://archive.org/details/ourbodiesourselv1979bost
Other people and events and such refereced
How the Sausage Gets Made: Inside Hollywood's Prosthetic Penis Craze
Hulu's 'Pam & Tommy' is one of several shows and movies to embrace full-frontal male nudity as of late.
By Emma Fraser
Published on 2/1/2022 at 11:55 AM
“I mean, the talking penis thing—never heard that before.”
After 40 years in the special-effects business, Oscar-winning makeup artist Matthew Mungle thought he’d seen it all. With more than 250 credits to his name, he has created prosthetics that resemble every body part (as well as supernatural creatures like Dracula), but there’s no talking penis on his résumé. “That’s a new one,” Mungle says.
https://www.thrillist.com/entertainment/nation/how-prosthetic-penises-are-made-tv-movies
Where does Men’s Liberation Come From?
In a previous episode of Modern Manhood we discussed the 1900s to set the scene for men’s involvement in the suffragette movement; now we’re moving on to the Men’s Liberation in the 1970s.
BY GERMAN VILLEGAS
https://www.nextgenmen.ca/blog/mens-liberation-history-feminism
Facial Hair Of The 70’s
By James WoodsOctober 14, 2022
Each decade there seems to be different choices in style and fashion. Facial hair is no different. Every decade seems to have different beard and mustache styles. The 1970’s brought in a cultural revolution due to music and war. Men in the hippie scene seemed to lean towards more thick and unruly looking facial hair styles
https://beardedblade.com/facial-hair-of-the-70s/
Lose Yourself in David Hockney’s Work From 1966 to 1978
David Hockney is perhaps Britain’s greatest living artist. The Bradford-born Royal Academician graduated from London’s Royal College of Art in 1962 with a gold medal for his year and his place already cemented in the British pop art scene. He secured his first gallery immediately upon graduation and his output has continued at full throttle ever since. To call Hockney prolific would be an understatement, but the influence and emotional power of his most important works are anything but ephemeral: they endure. A pluralist long before the term became as overused as it is today, Hockney has experimented with photo collage, video, multi-canvas landscapes, iPad drawings, hyperrealism, abstract expressionism and set design for opera.
https://www.anothermag.com/art-photography/13219/cool-and-clean-lose-yourself-in-david-hockneys-work-from-1966-to-1978
11 Vintage Vibrator Ads To Make You Glad You Live In 2015
Vibrators were invented to treat “hysteria,” a condition that could consist of emotional extremes, dizziness, paralysis, respiratory problems and “the commonly reported sensation of a ball in the throat,” according to Andrew Scull in Hysteria: The Disturbing History. Had a symptom no one could classify? Just sort of bitchy today? Hysteria! As Rachel Maines writes in The Technology of Orgasm, “This purported disease and its sister ailments displayed a symptomatology consistent with the normal functioning of female sexuality, for which relief, not surprisingly, was obtained through orgasm.” Maines argues that Western physicians from the first century up until the 1920s often included massaging female patients to orgasm in standard medical practice, as a result of a culture that damned female masturbation and centred sexuality around men. Vibrators were a great way for physicians to be more efficient.
https://www.autostraddle.com/vintage-vibrator-ads-to-make-you-glad-you-live-in-2015-311018/
Hilarious (and worrying) old-school contraceptive ads
BY ANNA BRECH
The approval of the pill in 1960 marked a revolutionary moment for women and sex, but before that contraception was an issue steeped in mystery and a string of dubious and exotically-named spermicides, "hygiene disinfectants" and "internal sheaths".
In 1885, for example, the first vaginal suppository was developed by an English pharmacist, using a combination of cocoa butter and quinine sulphate.
By the 1930s, diaphragms, also known as "womb veils" and "Capote Anglais" became a popular method of birth control - thanks in part to the work of Dutch doctor Aletta Jacobs and New York-based pioneer Margaret Sanger (who had previously been jailed on numerous occasions for her research on contraceptive methods).
Crepe rubber condoms were also used around this time, having graduated from animal intestine materials to the use of vulcanised rubber in 1843.
The marketing for these products was often hilarious and alarming, in equal measure.
https://www.stylist.co.uk/life/hilarious-and-worrying-old-school-contraceptive-ads-condoms-the-pill-lysol/56440
When Susan Brownmiller and Sally Kempton appeared as representatives of the women’s liberation movement alongside Hugh Hefner on The Dick Cavett Show in 1970, Cavett joked, “We really set you up tonight, didn’t we?”
Though Hefner’s Playboy was thriving, Cavett’s line really applied more to him. As seen in this exclusive clip from the upcoming episode of CNN’s The Seventies, airing on Thursday at 9:00 p.m., Hefner seemed to have no idea what was coming.
From the minute he referred to the activists as “girls,” he was put in his place. The women took full advantage of their public forum to express thoughts and feelings that had been bottled up for so long, and the nation took notice. When TIME’s Person of the Year honor for 1975 was given to 12 separate Women of the Year, Brownmiller was one of them.
The magazine dubbed her the “second-sex scholar” and explained why she deserved the recognition:
https://time.com/3963237/playboy-feminists-brownmiller-hefner/
Season 2 References
Deep Throat at 50: the controversial film that pushed porn into the mainstream
https://amp.theguardian.com/film/2022/jun/10/deep-throat-at-50-linda-lovelace-porn-mainstream
Robert Evans, a Maverick Producer of Hollywood Classics, Dies at 89https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/28/arts/robert-evans-dead.html
The Many Lives of Judee Sill
www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/judee-sill-songwriter-profile-1130869/
Carl Sagan and Pot
https://hightimes.com/news/carl-sagan-and-pot/
30 Gorgeous Photos of a Young Linda Ronstadt, the First Lady of Rock, in the 1970s
www.vintag.es/2023/02/linda-ronstadt-young-1970s.html
Leibovitz’ era-defining photos from the 70s and early 80s
https://www.hungertv.com/editorial/look-back-at-annie-leibovitz-era-defining-photos-from-the-70s-and-early-80s/
When did men start stripping professionally?
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/male-strippers-magic-mike_n_1647402/amp
‘All Man: The International Male Story’ Review: The Trailblazing Mail-Order Business Gets a Slick Oral History Doc
https://variety.com/2022/film/reviews/all-man-the-international-male-story-review-1235319460/
Video Playlist
Vintage Annals Archive Video Playlist - Videos, Interviews, and more.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLh4zYKaPKme52n2ukX-AcmRImbb09iBzk
Audio Playlist
Vintage Annals Archive Audio Playlist
Season 1 Soundtrack
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2suRLdoM0zWmPtxo0Ref2D?si=Zsb5VCTGTLye72bFdngrwA
Season 2 Soundtrack (will be updated every week as episodes come out)
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/59WGT8LqfY4KdvbqxSh2pV?si=82e8a2a5657a4d79