Director's Choice

Thank God for Playboy! Here I am, doing a series on Showtime, a series that features some of the most sublime beauties on the planet, and the first publication to take notice is Playboy. Figures. Having pioneered and legitimized erotic fantasy, Playboy definitely blazed the trail--and I followed. Red Shoe Diaries, which I created with my wife, Patricia Louisianna Knop, is a series of travelogs from the wilder shores of romance--each week an excerpt from a different woman's erotic diary. Red for passion, red for danger, red for courage, and now, in Playboy, read by millions--I'm in, dude! But let's talk about Joan Severance, the heroine of the Red Shoe episode called "Safe Sex" and the star of this pictorial. Joan has talent, beauty, courage, elegance and those extraordinary blue eyes, but what's really intriguing is the air of mystery about her. This is no corn-fed girl next door: This is an authentic screen siren. She puts you in mind of those screen goddesses of the golden age of Hollywood, a woman with the intelligence and strength of Bette Davis and Katharine Hepburn, plus the radiant sexuality of Ava Gardner and Rita Hayworth--women who couldn't be pushed around. I spend much of my time surrounded by beautiful actresses. A lot of them are willing to do nudity on screen, so mere beauty is not enough. The roles in Red Shoe Diaries, like those in the movies 9 1/2 Weeks (which I co-wrote with my wife and produced), Siesta (which she wrote and I produced), Two Moon Junction and Wild Orchid I and II (which we co-wrote and I directed), are demanding. They require honesty, talent and courage. I've always been a risk-taker, which is perhaps why I've chosen such actresses as Kim Basinger, Sherilyn Fenn, Ellen Barkin, Carré Otis and Nina Siemaszko, to name a few. Like Joan, they are women without fear. Women willing to commit themselves totally to their chosen roles. Women who have the courage to experiment, the courage to walk away from a bad relationship, the courage to be vulnerable, the courage to be alone. Joan is single, has been for a while, and that's by choice. Of course, she does get asked out. But "Do I go? No," she once told me. "Because usually I find out within one conversation that it's not going to work. I'd love it if the fairy tale came true, but it's hard for a man to see that an independent woman does need a man. 'Why?' he asks. 'You've got your house, you've got your car, you've got your dogs, a salary bigger than mine, your friends, you handle every situation impeccably--why on earth would you need me? Just for an occasional jump in the hay?' They don't understand that we need the emotional balance, the passion in our lives." What would she hope to find in such a man? "He should bring to a relationship good conversation, intelligence, his own security and a good sense of humor, and he should limit his baggage to what's already neatly packed, preferably not in ripped suitcases. Is that so much to ask?" For now, at least, Joan finds passion in her work. "Actually," she said, "I'd always wondered if my trauma-free childhood would hold me back from playing complex roles. I'm not bulimic, I'm not anorexic, my father didn't molest me or my mother or my brothers. It was a great relief to realize that, when called upon, I did have that fire inside." That's what I'm interested in, that fire. My wife likes to describe our films as "emotional thrillers." We create characters that are complex and flawed, because that's the way people are. There's a good deal of sexual turbulence in our movies, but Joan rightly understands our motivation: "Sometimes people need to be pushed to the edge in order to see the truth about themselves." Now making her second appearance in Playboy--the first was in January 1990--Joan says she'd rather see "nudity with purpose than violence without purpose" (obviously a dig at Hollywood's love affair with bullets and body counts). Still, she knows that being the icon of the month is a fleeting glory, and she jokes about it. "From now on, I'm going to walk on my hands: Gravity's the only thing that's forever." I was so impressed with Joan's work that I cast her in the next feature film I'm producing, Lake Consequence, due out in February. In one scene, Joan, co-star Billy Zane and newcomer May Karasun stage a nude threesome in a spa pool. Afterward, I asked her what she'd thought. "I'd never done a scene like that before, but in the right circumstances, I think I could--anyone could--get aroused." Joan keeps her fantasies private. "If I told people, I'm sure they'd lock me away," she says. "Whatever works, right? Start with a rose and who knows where you'll end up?"