When they asked me if I'd be interested in doing a story on full-frontal male nudity in the movies, I said, “Interested? I've been researching it since I was 12!” What prompted the idea is of course the film Shame, which stars Michael Fassbender as a man addicted to sex. When the film debuted at the Venice Film Festival earlier this year it set off a shockwave because of its sexual explicitness, including a much-discussed full-frontal reveal by Fassbender. Add to that the recent flurry of attention that stills of Jonathan Groff's nude scene in Twelve Thirty hitting the Internet generated, and it seems like these days cinema penises are a trending topic.

Everyone from film critics to Freudian analysts to gender theorists has written about male nudity in film. And sorting through the pronouncements on the male gaze and Lacanian mirrors and power inequities between the sexes in Hollywood and the possible negative effect that dropping trou can have on an actor's career, one thing everybody can agree on is that straight guys don't care to see other guys' junk on-screen. They would prefer not seeing it at all, and especially not in an erotic setting, but if it is seen it should be in a comedic context.

There's nothing approaching parity between male and female nude scenes, although Judd Apatow and Sacha Baron Cohen are doing their level best to rectify that. But, having researched the subject until almost spraining my wrist, I give you this handful of peen scenes.

Watchmen

Fans of the landmark 1986 comic book mini-series Watchmen wondered whether the film adaptation would include the casual nudity of the comic. With the film's release in 2009 they learned that the answer was yes. The near-omnipotent character Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup) spends much of the film completely naked, with a series of flashbacks showing that his “superhero” outfit grew progressively smaller over the years. As in the source comic, Dr. Manhattan's gradual discarding of clothing symbolizes his growing detachment from humanity and its concerns.

In the comic, Manhattan's genitalia are drawn in a very rudimentary fashion, two simple curved outlines with no additional detailing or attempt to bring dimension to them. For the film the computer-generated naughty bits are larger and more detailed. Most reviewers felt the need to mention the nudity, and commentary ranged from thoughtful gender theorist critique to juvenile sniggering.

Shortbus

Out director John Cameron Mitchell's 2006 follow-up to his cult hit Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Shortbus uses extensive nudity and unsimulated sex to serve as, as Mitchell put it, “a metaphor for other parts of the character's lives.” Those appearing full-frontal include Paul Dawson, PJ DeBoy, Jay Brannan (who engaged in a memorable three-way), Raphael Barker, Adam Hardman and a room full of “sextras” at the Shortbus salon.

Brokeback Mountain

During one of their “fishing trips” to Brokeback, Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Fake Gyllenhaal; Jake used a body double) run naked in slow motion off a cliff and jump into the water below. Given the roughness and outright violence of their initial sex scene, the full-frontal scene in 2005's Brokeback Mountain seems quaint, if not precious. It doesn't advance the plot, it's not related to their sexual relationship and it serves no function within the film. It almost feels like director Ang Lee was worried that he'd be criticized for making a gay-themed film and not including peen.

Velvet Goldmine

I was a little surprised when the editor asked me to be sure to include a Ewan McGregor film in this piece. I mean, I thought “Ewan McGregor gets naked in movies” was just one of those show business truisms, like “Never work with animals or children.” Or “Zooey Deschanel can't act.”

McGregor has gotten his kit off in several films, including Trainspotting, The Pillow Book and Young Adam, but a personal favorite of mine is Velvet Goldmine, directed in 1998 by pioneering New Queer Cinema director Todd Haynes. Set in 1984, Velvet Goldmine follows reporter Arthur Stuart (Christian Bale) as he investigates glam rock superstar Brian Slade (Jonathan Rhys Meyers, himself no stranger to full frontal), who faked his assassination on-stage a decade earlier and faded into obscurity. His investigation leads him to Curt Wild (McGregor), Slade's former lover and collaborator. We flash back to a dodgy outdoor music festival in 1970, where Slade first sees Wild. Wild is performing “T.V. Eye” in leather pants, stripped to the waist. As he screams and jumps around the stage, dousing himself with oil and glitter, the crowd responds with boos and catcalls and cries of “Wanker!” Wild turns his back on the crowd and drops his pants. He begins by mooning the crowd, then grabs his banger and mash and thrusts it back between his legs at them. He stands back up and faces the crowd, jumping up and down and flipping a double bird while his other “bird” flops and bounces away.

Curt Wild was partially based on punk rocker Iggy Pop (who originally recorded “T.V. Eye”). Reportedly McGregor was only supposed to moon the audience, but inspired by Pop's wild stage performances he decided to imitate him and extend the naked dance. Good decision.

Sadly, McGregor announced earlier this year a self-imposed moratorium on nude scenes. “I’m getting older and the actresses stay younger. I don’t want to become Clint Eastwood, where his love interests seem 50 years younger than him. You never want female co-stars to feel like you’re taking advantage of the situation.” The obvious answer? Get naked with male co-stars. Just not Jim Carrey, because, ew.

The Silence of the Lambs

Possibly the most disturbing full-frontal scene of all time appears in 1991's The Silence of the Lambs. Serial killer “Buffalo Bill” (Ted Levine) is preying on women, murdering them and skinning their bodies. As the FBI works to rescue his latest victim, we see Bill in the basement of his murder house. As “Goodbye Horses” by Q Lazzarus plays, Bill makes up his face and adorns himself with jewelry. He dons a parti-colored shawl and switches on a video camera. As the song reaches its climax Bill dances for the camera, his penis tucked between his legs to make the area look like a vagina.

More about Buffalo Bill is revealed through the film. His real name is Jame Gumb and he's a former patient of serial killer-slash-psychiatrist Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins). He's bisexual and incorrectly believes himself to be transgender, having unsuccessfully sought a sex change in the past. The skin he's harvesting from his victims he's using to make himself a “woman suit.” He also minces, lisps and has a poodle named Precious.

LGBT activists were infuriated by Buffalo Bill. Although Lecter states in the film that Bill isn't transgender, he was still a deeply negative portrayal of a queer, gender-variant character, one in a long series out of mainstream Hollywood unrelieved by positive portrayals. Two months after Silence opened, filming began on Basic Instinct, another film with a bisexual serial killer. Queer Nation and other activists disrupted filming on Basic Instinct in San Francisco, cutting electrical lines, shining lights into the camera and even holding up signs asking motorists to honk for the San Francisco 49ers to interfere with sound recording.

At the 1992 Academy Awards, Silence was nominated for seven Oscars. With Basic Instinct having been released ten days before the awards ceremony, rumors swirled through Hollywood that activists would disrupt the Oscars and out closeted gay actors including Silence star Jodie Foster. Although the tabloids ran hysterical headlines (“Gay Activists Plot to Destroy Oscars!” was typical) many mainstream media outlets offered respectful coverage and placed the possible actions in the proper context of other Oscar protests. Silence won the “Big Five” Oscars (Picture, Actor, Actress, Director and Screenplay). No protests materialized but Hollywood's homophobia and its on-screen treatment of gay and AIDS subject matter became important topics of conversation in the entertainment industry. Silence director Jonathan Demme's next project was the AIDS drama Philadelphia and more than one observer theorized that the film was Demme's penance for Buffalo Bill.

The Crying Game

Full-frontal was front and center in the surprise twist in 1992's The Crying Game. In the film, Fergus (Stephen Rea) and his compatriots in the IRA kidnap Jody (Forest Whitaker), a British soldier. Captor and captive bond and Jody makes Fergus promise that after Jody dies Fergus will make sure his girlfriend Dil (Jaye Davidson) is all right.

Wracked with guilt over his part in Jody's death, Fergus keeps his word and visits Dil, first at her hair salon and later at a bar, where she sings “The Crying Game”. Fergus grows protective of Dil and finds himself falling in love. They begin to make love until Fergus spots Dil's pickle. He's initially revolted but the pair soon reconcile. In what passes for a happy ending, Fergus takes the fall for a murder Dil commits and Dil stands by her man while he serves her time.

The American advertising campaign for the film urged people not to reveal the secret of The Crying Game and for the most part audiences and critics complied, with even the staid New York Times referring to the ambiguously named Jaye Davidson as “Jaye” and not the standard “Mr. Davidson.” The film received a huge buzz and the word of mouth sent audiences flocking to theaters to get in on the secret. It was the Motion Picture Academy that ultimately spilled the (frank and) beans when Davidson was nominated for an Oscar as Best Supporting Actor. Dil was probably the first non-exploitative trans character that many audience members had ever seen on-screen and may have cleared some of the damage wrought by Buffalo Bill a year earlier.

The Blue Lagoon and A Night in Heaven

Christopher Atkins went full-frontal in two films, 1980's The Blue Lagoon and A Night in Heaven in 1984. In each instance the nudity served an opposite purpose. In The Blue Lagoon, Atkins plays Richard Lastrange, who is shipwrecked on a desert island at a young age along with his cousin Emmeline (Brooke Shields). As they grow up together they fall in love and discover sex together. Although Atkins does appear naked from behind during sex scenes, the frontal nudity is always couched in terms of innocence: swimming with Emmeline and playing with her and the son they eventually have together.

Innocence plays no part in Atkins' zip slip in A Night in Heaven. Here he plays Rick “Ricky the Rocket” Monroe. Community college student by day, exotic dancer by night, Atkins sets out to seduce his married speech professor Faye (Leslie Ann Warren at her twitchy best) in hopes of improving his failing grade. They have sex in a hotel room, where “Little Ricky” makes its first appearance. It pops up again near film's end, when Faye's cuckolded husband Whitney (Robert Logan) kidnaps Rick from the hotel and maroons him naked on a sinking skiff. The talent-impaired Atkins warbles his final line, “What about my clothes?” to which Whitney replies, with the agreement of everyone in the audience, “You're better without them.”

All the Right Moves

Back in 1983, Tom Cruise made a film called All the Right Moves. He has a sex scene with Lea Thompson and he briefly unveils the Cruise missile as Thompson slides his jeans to the floor. I'd say more but my lawyers have advised me not to.

Porky's

The 1982 teen sex comedy Porky's centers around a group of sex-obsessed high school boys who unsurprisingly spend much of the film trying to have sex. Porky's is unusual because in addition to the T&A that was standard for the genre, it included more than a little P.

Central characters “Pee Wee”, “Meat” and Tim, along with peripheral characters Steve and Frank, wind up naked in a shack in the middle of a swamp because they think the hooker who lives there is willing to service all of them. Why naked? So she can inspect them for VD of course. Unknownst to them, Billy and Tommy, two more of their friends, are playing an elaborate practical joke which culminates in an enormous man bursting out of the back room waving a machete. The naked boys scatter into the night, putting everything on full display and proving that the actor playing “Meat” was... woefully miscast.

Another full-frontal scene of Tommy putting his member through a glory hole-like opening in the girls' shower only to have it grabbed by gym teacher Beulah Ballbricker was reportedly shot but cut from the final film. Porky's inspired two sequels, Porky's II: The Next Day and Porky's Revenge, and in each installment the males accounted for as much if not more of the nudity as the females.

Monty Python's Life of Brian

The year before the Monty Python comedy troupe began filming Life of Brian in 1978, the editor of British Gay News magazine had been convicted of “blasphemous libel” for publishing a homo-erotic poem about a Roman centurion fantasizing about Jesus. There was a genuine, if unlikely, possibility that Life of Brian, about a man mistaken for the Messiah during Jesus' lifetime, could inspire a similar prosecution.

The nude scene takes place the morning after Brian (played by the gay Graham Chapman) has spent the night with his girlfriend Judith. He awakens and crosses quietly to the window. He throws open the shutters, exposing himself to the hundreds of worshippers who believe him to be the Son of God. Except for his large nose, the light haired, light eyed Chapman is almost a parody of the stereotypical Western image of Jesus, which bears little resemblance to an ethnic Middle Easterner. And it's hard to be sure but it appears that Chapman wasn't anatomically correct “downstairs” to play Jewish either.

Life of Brian was filmed in Tunisia, which is a Muslim country. Women are forbidden from seeing male nudity and Chapman later recalled, “when I flung open the shutters, half the crowd ran away screaming.”

The film opened in 1979. While no one associated with the film was prosecuted for blasphemy, campaigner Mary Whitehouse, who had instigated the criminal prosecution against Gay News, protested it. She was joined by such figures as journalist Malcolm Muggeridge and the Bishop of Southwark. Some towns in the UK banned the film but it was still a financial success. Stateside, screenings of the film were picketed in New York City by nuns and rabbis but the film was a moneymaker here as well.

American Gigolo

The granddaddy of full-frontal, American Gigolo came out in 1980. Richard Gere plays Julian Kaye, a high-priced male escort. He only services women but makes enough to afford a Mercedes and an Armani wardrobe, so this is science fiction. Dick displays his Richard in a scene following a liaison with his married paramour, Michelle (Lauren Hutton). She asks why he prefers sleeping with older women. He rises nude from his bed and crosses to the window, adjusting the mini-blinds as he tells her of an older woman whom he brought to climax for the first time in ten years as shafts of sunlight stream over his face and body like Joan Crawford in Mildred Pierce.

Gere was the first “name” Hollywood actor to go full-frontal in a mainstream film. American Gigolo was an enormous hit and helped cement Gere's status as an international superstar and sex symbol. He would go full-frontal again in 1983's Breathless.

This is hardly a comprehensive catalog of full-frontal scenes. (The aforementioned Ewan McGregor and Harvey Keitel for instance could each have an article all to himself.) Please discuss your favorite scenes in the comments.