Pretentious Pictures Presents:

Politically correct sex

a musical comedy about love 
in the age of, how shall 
i say, ambivalence

for stage, screen and video

music by barry grace
comedy by robert maclean

Her fear of men, his fear of women—
then they switch.

click on the songs you want to hear:

In COREY'S fantasy she is being raped by Attila the Hun, and sings about why she prefers this to being with A Real Man:

Her feckless boyfriend CONOR avoids involvement, doesn’t pay his debts and sings a hymn to Money:

His friends want him to take more responsibility but, “No no no, you’re trying to give me a character! If I had a character I’d be a screaming claustrophobic!” He sings The Heart Is a Kite—

—and in his nightmare he and his friends CAL and CORNELIUS are attacked by giant feminists,  stomped by a huge foot, recognize it as someone's who gave them an STD, and sing You Mugged Me, My Love: 

Drunk, they creep into the camp where the giantesses lie sleeping and make love to huge yonis, but are discovered and pounded like ants at a picnic. He is strapped to a table by Corey, CASSIE, a butch roller-derby girl, and CAREN, a dumb-blonde model. Cassie removes his thing, “You’ll feel better now,” and displays it in a jar.  

“She’s right!” he says,  I feel great!” and sings Never Complain, Never Explain:

He wakes from this nightmare, spots Caren at an art opening and dances with her seductively singing While Standing at the Vernissage:

Corey sees them and confronts him: Is she less beautiful than Caren? “No no no no no!” She challenges him to feel like a woman. Actually he'd  like to, and Cal, a medical student, says his professor of surgery can bring it off. She sings a love song—as yet unrecorded.

The SURGEON says, “I have developed a post-Freudian science of the mind.” “Why are you so down on Freud?” “He swallowed Darwin whole!”  “So what’s wrong with Darwin?” “Pure mythology. Doesn’t hold a drop of water.” “Then what are we? Who are we?” “Well, the scientific answer is—we don’t know.” They dance to The Accidental Monkey:

Conor persuades Caren to trade bodies with him, and they sing What a Strange Thing Am I (coming soon). But when they operate on her they don’t find a brain—a few synaptic gaps, that's it. “Is she a model? You should have told me!” 

Coming to she says, “So who am I?”

Conor's brain is now in a jar hooked up to a speaker and a videocam, and women volunteering to trade bodies parade before him. One of them, Cornelius, who’s been hinting all along that he’s queer, cavorts in drag, and looks so good that Conor mistakes him for a woman, chooses “her”—and wakes up still a man! Cornelius is happy to have become a handsome man with bigger equipment, and sings Song of Sodomy:  

But Conor is miserable in Cornelius's body. On a subway platform he sees Corey about to jump—her love for him has broken her heart—and stops her just in time, though she doesn’t recognize him right away. Together they sing Human Joy Takes Many Forms:

 

Rather than throw her life away, why doesn’t she trade bodies with him?—if he can get his own back. The surgeon is indignant, but she's willing, and sings Do You Have to Be a Woman?:

And Cornelius wants his body back.  “You’re just too tight, honey! I’m getting a hemorrhoid!” “What have you been doing with my body?” Well, Cornelius has made certain improvements, and sings Unfellatable to the approximate tune of Unforgettable:

When the operation is over Cornelius is so happy to be himself again that he sings Me:

Corey and Conor, now in each other’s bodies, explore the differences in sexual feeling, and sing Suggest, in Fact, Request:

They decide to get married—but first they want their own bodies back. The surgeon agrees reluctantly, but a plug gets kicked out in the operating room, and Conor—dies. But they bring him back. The surgeon wants to know what it’s like on the other side, and Conor, still half-dead, sings Enticing Dreams:

But that's not enough for the surgeon—he wants to know, and Conor, a weak and vacant zombie, sings: 

Oh, I got to the light,
Arrived at the height,
And a loverly sight
It was too.
But I had to come back,
Yes I had to come back,
I just had to come back
(to Corey)
To you.
(getting stronger)
I crossed the wide chasm,
Became ectoplasm
And found the orgasm
Was long overdue—
But I had to come back,
I had to come back,
I had to come back
To you.
(Pinches her behind. She squeals.)

Corey:
He spurned the effulgence,
Preferred the indulgence
Of sticking his bulgence
In one tried and true—

All:
(to Corey)
So he had to come back,
He had to come back,
He had to come back
To you.

Surgeon:
He found, after jumping,
He still missed the humping,
And felt there was sumping
He had left to do—

All:
So he had to come back,
He had to come back,
He had to come back
To you.

Cal:
There was ice cream forever,
Remarks ultra-clever
And sex with whoever
You wanted to do—

All:
But he had to come back,
He had to come back,
He had to come back
To you.

Conor:
(now totally alive, to Caren)
Oh, I love to love you
(to Cassie)
And I love to love you
(to the various audience members)
And I love to love you,
And you and you,
(to Corey)
But I had to come back,
I had to come back,
I had to come back
To you!

All:
Yes, he had to come back,
He had to come back,
He had to come back
To you.

Corey and Conor kiss. Cornelius and Cal kiss. Cassie and Caren kiss. Caren and the surgeon kiss.

Cassie and Conor kiss. Corey and Cal kiss. Cornelius and the surgeon kiss. Caren and Cornelius kiss.

Corey and Conor kiss.

Robert MacLean is an independent filmmaker. His The Light Touch is on Amazon Prime, Tubi and Scanbox, and his 7-minute comedy is an out-loud laugh. He is also a novelist, a playwright, a blogger, a YouTuber, a film reviewer, a literary critic, and a stand-up comic poet. Born Toronto, PhD McGill, taught at Canadian universities, too cold, live Greece, Irish citizen. Committed to making movies that don't matter. No brains, but an intellectual snob.

“The worst vice of the fanatic is his sincerity.”—Oscar Wilde

Film reviews

The Light Touch on Amazon Prime

The Natural Wish to Be Robert MacLean