Trailer
Plot summary
In New York, Sofia works as a couples counselor, and her marriage to Rob is strained because she has never reached orgasm with him. Her clients Jamie and James have kept their relationship monogamous for five years, and James wants to bring other men in. They suggest Sofia visit Shortbus, a weekly gathering in Brooklyn that mixes art, music, politics and carnality. Sofia goes, and there she becomes friends with Severin, a dominatrix she meets at a spa. Jamie and James meet Ceth, a former model who wants to sing, and the three of them start having sex together. Caleb, their neighbor across the street, watches Jamie and James closely.
Cast
- Alan Mandellas Tobias, the Mayor
- Jeff Whittyas Jacuzzi Hunted
Show all 20 cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Shortbus (2006)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Sook-Yin Lee nearly lost her job hosting the CBC radio show Definitely Not the Opera over her unsimulated sex scenes in the film; the broadcaster backed down after public backlash and support from figures including Gus Van Sant, David Cronenberg, Francis Ford Coppola, Michael Stipe, Moby, Julianne Moore and Yoko Ono.
- The Korea Media Rating Board banned the film from public screenings in South Korea in 2007 for its sex scenes and gay content; its South Korean distributor Sponge ENT filed suit and in 2009 the Supreme Court of Korea ordered the ban lifted, declaring the national film censorship law unconstitutional for its ambiguity.
- Casting came before the story: the audition website elicited half a million hits and 500 audition tape submissions, forty people were called in for improv auditions, and nine actors were cast, all before there was any story in mind.
- For the film's 15th anniversary rerelease, Amazon Prime was the only VOD platform that refused to carry it, rejecting it five times over claims of out-of-sync captions and offensive content, even though Prime already rented other unsimulated-sex films like Nymphomaniac and The Brown Bunny.
- Actors Sook-Yin Lee and Shanti Carson each asked to have their orgasms filmed for real rather than simulated, specifically for Lee's closing scene and Carson's orgy sequence.
- In the opening sequence, Sook-Yin Lee and Raphael Barker are engaged in unsimulated vaginal intercourse, and Lee wore a female condom: “They wanted to make sure it was safe sex, and it would look weird if my husband was wearing a condom.”
