Dating Advice From . . . Engineers by Steph Auteri Q. For optimal functionality, what should go into a first-date emergency kit? A. Fine wine, road flares, a snake-bite kit and Ghirardelli chocolates.
When Israeli parliament member Naomi Blumenthal was sentenced to eight months in prison on March 14 for bribery and obstruction of justice, the images that flashed across the country's news programs showed a thin-lipped, aging woman with a sagging chin. For thirty-one-year-old filmmakers Nir and Tommer, however, Blumenthal provided the perfect muse. Three weeks before the Israeli elections and forty miles from the Jerusalem hospital where Ariel Sharon lies comatose, Tommer and Nir film their Blumenthal-inspired adult film in a room at the Tel Aviv Sheraton City Tower, the same hotel where Blumenthal tried to buy the votes of several fellow party members in late 2002.
From top, Faith and Uriah film their opening scene for The Wet Party; Nir instructs his cast; spot-editing the script; Tali on a break with Tel Aviv behind her.
"I want Israelis to write 'Ratuv' on their ballots instead of choosing from the list of the current parties," says Nir, referring to the name of their production company. "There is no more trust in our current politicians."
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"And sex is no less dirty than politics," adds Tommer, a computer engineer of Yemenite descent with thick locks of black hair, who, when he's not directing porn, works for a large corporation. Both men are frustrated with their country's increasingly corrupt central government and want to make a statement. So today, in this nondescript room at the Sheraton, the peach taffeta curtains are tightly drawn. Turkish coffees and oily boxes of burekas, a popular Middle Eastern pastry, are scattered among containers of wet wipes and lube. Lights and camera equipment, smuggled past the concierge in the lobby, are standing on tripods about the room. Nir yells "action!" and on the sofa, the four actors begin to buy and sell the support of a fellow political party with sexual favors. The cameraman moves in close as the two filmmakers hover just outside the frame, whispering instructions into his ear.
Their film is called The Wet Party. The plot takes Blumenthal's crime and lends it a twist: to gain entry into the Knesset, Israel's parliament, the fictional Wet party bribes fellow politicians with sex instead of cash. Their platform includes a pledge: if elected to power, they'll allow women to divert a portion of their paycheck toward breast-enhancement surgery, sort of like a 401k.
Tommer and Nir find their actors by placing classified ads in newspapers and soliciting online. Faith, a half-American, half-Israeli veteran porn actress with ashen skin and a ballerina's body, plays the main candidate. Uriah and Shlomi, the two floppy-haired male leads, are lean and boyish. Following her sex scene with Uriah, who plays her campaign manager, Faith reclines on the bed with a pack of Parliament Lights, her black hair stuck to shoulders still slick with perspiration. "It's wonderful irony. Absolutely precious," she says of filming in the same hotel Blumenthal committed her crime in. "It has some sort of poetic justice. I'm not really into politics, but in this case, having politics as a part of the film makes it seem less dirty." But for Nir and Tommer, politics
The plot of the film takes legislator Naomi Blumenthal's crime and lends it a twist: bribing fellow politicians with sex instead of cash.
are the reason they're here today. The Wet Party, they insist, is about expressing their democratic right to criticize the government.
"These films are only the beginning for us," says Nir, his round face beaded with sweat under the powerful lights. "We have something to say to the public, and we think they'll agree with it." "Which is that sex is a good thing," adds Tommer. "Our films are holding a mirror up to society and saying, 'Hey, look at your political parties. Look at your government. We think [sex] is the very thing that can change the world — instead of money.'"
In the Middle East, where freedom sometimes feels like it hangs by a thread, the production of porn is a political statement unto itself, and young people are making that statement consciously and deliberately. The name of Nir and Tommer's Tel Aviv-based pornography outfit, Ratuv, means "wet" in Hebrew; their website is also in Hebrew, suggesting that they wish to brand themselves as unmistakably Israeli. Surrounded by countries where sex is regulated, policed and discouraged by religious beliefs and, in some cases, theocratic governments, the streets of many Israeli cities seem to be thick with lust. Pickup bars abound, hookers provide services both through escort agencies and alleyway quickies, and young urbanites treat anonymous hookups as casually as their American peers.
The Israeli pornography industry is nascent, but burgeoning, according to a woman who calls herself Adi, and is the head of Israel's first and largest adult-film production company, SexStyle. "The industry is expanding in recent years because of more open-minded Israelis," she says, sitting among boxes of dildos and vibrators awaiting her approval for sale in one of her eighteen stores around the country. "It is a new generation." Another reason for the increasing popularity is female consumers, she says. "Before, women didn't buy porn and they didn't come to the store. Now, there is not as much shame."
Yet Israel remains a country of contradition, in some ways a liberal blip in a socially conservative region, but one where about fifteen percent of the population practices Orthodox or ultra-Orthodox Judaism, an extremely traditional interpretation of Jewish law. Tommer himself was raised an Orthodox Jew and says that many others working in porn were as well. "The whole Israeli porn industry is run by people who were once religious," he insists. "Because porn was forbidden, it just explodes out of you." As he waits for his military-themed film, Restricted to Base Camp, to upload onto his computer, he talks about transitioning from strict Judaism to the adult-film world. "Becoming secular didn't happen overnight. It was a three-year process." His parents, still fervently religious, are aware of his work. "They think it will fade away," he says, "but this is what I've chosen to do."
Indeed, Ratuv seems to be a choice Tommer and Nir have fully dedicated themselves to. Ratuv.co.il hosts about 10,000 visitors per day, and the industry emerging around them keeps the mood competitive. They charge about ten shekels, or roughly $2.10, per download. They also hope to take their films abroad. "Most people in America think Israelis live in a desert and wear veils," says Nir. "We want to change all of that." Their goal is to stream through a U.S.-based webmaster into American homes within three months.
, featuring curious yet marvelous infusions of cucumber and rose petal.
