From a Sex Manual to the Big Screen: How Joy of Sex Tried to Rewrite the '80s Teen Comedy By Kristen Lopez (Joy of Sex, 1984, Cinématographe)
- Jul 5
- 8 min read
Being a teenager never looked as fun as it did in the 1980s... at least, in the movies. The decade that gave us Ronald Reagan conservatism and marked the arrival of the AIDS epidemic is seen most often through the lens of its pop culture. But when high schooler Leslie Hindenburg (Michelle Meyrink) is asked by her little sister, "I thought high school was supposed to be the greatest time in your life?" in Martha Coolidge's Joy of Sex she responds with, "Who gave you that idea?" An acknowledgement that the movies can be big fat liars.
That's probably because most movies aimed at teens were just that. By the time Coolidge's feature debuted in theaters, director Bob Clark had shown audiences the horny frat boys of Porky's and Amy Heckerling had introduced them to Sean Penn's effortlessly cool Jeff Spicoli and the equally sexually charged teens of Fast Times at Ridgemont High. And just three months before Joy of Sex premiered, screenwriter and director John Hughes showed us another teen girl suffering the angst of adolescence: Molly Ringwald's Samantha in Sixteen Candles.
It's not strange that Hollywood was on a mad tear to adapt Alex Comfort's 1972 sex manual, The Joy of Sex. The book topped the New York Times Best Seller list for 11 weeks and stayed in the top five for more than 70 weeks. Paramount Pictures snapped up the rights to the book soon after publication, if only to utilize its title. Screenwriters Charles Grodin and John Hughes presented drafts of a script, both aimed more at adults and presented as a series of vignettes rather than an overall narrative (akin to Woody Allen's 1972 Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask). Penny Marshall was originally planning to make her directorial debut with the feature, and it was one of many films John Belushi didn't make during his lifetime.
Production had to start quickly. As Producer Frank Konigsberg explained in an interview, "Paramount was running out on their option on Alex Comfort's book. They had four months to start principal photography. They came to me and asked me to do it." With time being of the essence Konigsberg said the production "threw together a script. They wanted me to use director Martha Coolidge, who'd just made Valley Girl. It was a job. We just had to get it done. I didn't think it was a successful movie at all. It was awful. Martha hated it, I hated it."
What's odd is the film ultimately ended up being a movie marketed towards teenagers. The 1980s were the peak of teen and mall culture. Coolidge herself showcased this best in her 1983 directorial debut Valley Girl. But when sex is referenced in the films of the era it's most often presented in the negative. Horror movies of the period show young teens in an isolated location where, with the pleasures of sex, comes a painful death. The virginal final girl made it out alive. Even outside of the horror genre, sex for teenage girls was something worth saving for after marriage, lest they suffer the consequences. Jennifer Jason Leigh's beautiful yet naive Stacy Hamilton in Fast Times tries to assert her own sexuality only to be left with a series of unsatisfying hookups, an unplanned pregnancy, and a lonely abortion. It's hard being a girl at any time, but according to movies of the 1980s it was next to impossible to come out unscathed.
Joy of Sex's Leslie Hindenburg is not a Molly Ringwald or a Stacy Hamilton. Like Ringwald, Michelle Meyrink is gawky and awkward. Her character believes she's so lacking in sex appeal that she thinks she turned a former boyfriend gay. Everyone who attends the film's fictional Richard Nixon High School—ironic considering Nixon was overall apathetic to education—are on the hunt for sex, sure, but that isn't it for Leslie. She's looking for good sex. Her best friend Melanie (Lisa Langlois) tells her that the first time usually isn't that great, but the second or third time is better. Both girls go in with their eyes open and understand that the more ya do it, the better it gets. Unfortunately, Leslie doesn't have that kind of time. Mistakenly believing she's been diagnosed with skin cancer, she embarks on a quest to lose her virginity as quickly as possible. So while Leslie thinks "It'd be nice to get swept off my feet," she's instead content to settle for "get[ting] a diaphragm and settl[ing] for no-frills sex."
But while movies of the era presented teens having fun only to find punishment later, the script for Joy of Sex—credited to Kathleen Rowell and J.J. Salter—says sex and death are constant and coexist simultaneously. The entire plot kicks off because Leslie believes she's dying (and it's doubtful her last name being "Hindenburg" is a coincidence). Every time the kids go to biology class, they're learning about the reproductive organs of some creature they're about to dissect. Even when Leslie attempts to lose her virginity, the couple decide to park next to a cemetery. This scene draws particular parallels to Fast Times. But wherein Leigh's Stacy ends up having sex with a guy in a baseball dugout, Leslie starts to have sex with her paramour in a car while narrating the entire experience. At one point she says, "Brace yourself for rapture," only to be disappointed when the car starts rolling down a hill. The term "brace" juxtaposes perfectly with Leslie's belief that she's meant to feel something heavenly any minute now.
The loss of virginity is the final loss (or "death") of childhood, according to the movie. The audience knows Leslie isn't dying, but it's clear that she perceives losing her virginity to be a major milestone she must accomplish before shuffling off this mortal coil. She's no saint, baby, and she isn't going out a virgin.
But this quest ends up taking a back seat in the third act once Leslie discovers her friend Sharon (Cristen Kauffman) is pregnant and is being kicked out of school. "This isn't fair. This is high school," she says. Sharon is presented as representative of a contagion, in another mixing of sex and death. Leslie and her friends are far more concerned with getting an STD—this in spite of a national downtrend in STDs in America. It's possible more of a reference to the increased prevalence of AIDS in the US, where it had already claimed more than 3,500 lives. There's a weird yet charming disconnect in everyone's fear of getting herpes—Christopher Lloyd's Coach Hindenburg, Leslie's dad, says, "Herpes comes with a lifetime guarantee"—yet Sharon's own lifetime guarantee of raising a child is met with overall acceptance.
It initially feels ridiculous to hear Sharon talk about how accepting she is of her newfound teen pregnancy and that she feels she'll be fine going through life. But it's pretty amazing to see teen pregnancy rendered in such a positive way in 1984. Leslie and Melanie become hellbent on making sure Sharon can stay in school and graduate with her peers. The duo embark on seducing a local news anchor in a sequence that hasn't aged well and eventually succeed in getting Sharon a diploma.
In an interview with "Rediscover the '80s", Coolidge said, "The whole Joy of Sex experience was pretty miserable. We were under constant pressure and scrutiny to do the impossible." Part of that was with regards to the clash between the point-of-view of the story and the use of nudity. "Paramount insisted on topless girls running down the hall because they thought the formula demanded it and it was totally gratuitous," she said. "I hated putting them in for no reason and argued against it. But when the film was previewed [with an] audience, particularly young women and girls, [they] hated the nudity, so Paramount then asked me to cut as much of it out as I could! They had thought they were going to get a Porky's but the script was more from a girl's point of view."
That female POV is what makes Joy of Sex stand out. Despite Coolidge distancing herself from the movie, it does feel like it's from the director of Valley Girl. There are side plots with male characters, like the equally virginal Alan (Cameron Dye) on whom Leslie has a crush, but Leslie's story is always paramount. Leslie's eventual revelation is that the only one putting a premium on sex is herself: "I want to leave my mark on this world, and it's got to be more than just a wet spot on someone's backseat." The audience knows where Alan's story is gonna go. We aren't, however, so sure about Leslie's. Even Leslie's friends seem unpredictable and thereby more interesting. New girl Liz Sampson (played by Colleen Camp as if PJ Soles was channeling Mae West) is presented as the "fast" girl. She makes overt comments about male genitalia and has clearly had a lot of sex in her short life. It feels, at times, like a send-up of Camp's own sexbomb image in 1974's The Swinging Cheerleaders. Only later does the audience discover she's an undercover cop—three years before the premiere of the TV show 21 Jump Street. Is a 30-year-old woman making out with a 17-year-old boy now cringe-inducing? Sure, but it's a fun take on the "undercover teen cop" genre that remains male-dominated or often forced women to play on men's lecherous desire for underage girls.
By the time Leslie ends up in a room alone with Alan, the movie positions it as a private moment and puts the closing credits over the pair kissing. It is the moment of fantasy and romance that Leslie wanted all along coming to fruition. Gone are the fears of death and in their place is a perfect freeze-frame. Does Leslie actually do the deed with Alan after the credits roll? Who knows. I'd like to think she does, considering that both she and Alan are virgins and thus are presented on an equal sexual playing field. They certainly aren't presented as a couple whose love is eternal hell—there's no reason to believe the pair will stay together past graduation—but it's a moment without pressure between the two. They've finally found their person, for the moment, and feel comfortable taking the next step with each other.
The Hindenburg might have been a massive disaster but the audience is left thinking Leslie will be just fine. She might actually be more mature about life and love than her own mother was at her age. Leslie's fate remains uncertain, but her wish did come true: she is certainly more than just a wet spot on someone's backseat. If she has sex, it won't define who she is or where she goes in life.
Joy of Sex didn't fit the mold of the teen movies being made at the time, which only added to its critical and commercial failure. But the film feels more like a response to the teen movie landscape of the time. Gone are the fairy tale/fantasy elements and in its place are some of the more uncomfortable realities (teen pregnancy, herpes) that all too often parents are uncomfortable discussing with their kids and which movies choose to ignore. It presents high school not as the "greatest time of your life" but more as a time when it felt like everything mattered: whether a friend graduated, whether you lost your virginity, whether you could light a Bunsen burner without blowing everything up. Everything is a matter of life and death.
Kristen Lopez is an author, critic and pop culture essayist. Her articles have been published at Variety, MTV, and The Hollywood Reporter.
Works Cited
Bennington-Castro, Joseph. "How AIDS Remained an Unspoken—But Deadly Epidemic for Years." History Channel. 22 August 2023.
Boonstra, Heather D. "Teen Pregnancy: Trends And Lessons Learned." Guttmacher Policy Review, vol. 5, issue 1, 2002.
Ford, Luke. "Frank Konigsberg." LukeFord.net. 2 April 2002.
Old School Tim. "Interview with Martha Coolidge, Director of 'Real Genius', 'Valley Girl', and More." Rediscover the 80s. 26 July 2019.
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