With so many ordinary people exposing themselves on reality-TV, YouTube, Internet dating services, and online friends’ networks, sharing your intimate thoughts about your marriage or sex life to a camera, seems -- if not normal -- at least unremarkable. This was not yet so in 1989, when director Steven Soderbergh came out with his indie film: sex, lies, and video tape.  In the film, Graham (James Spader) an old college friend, visits a married couple, Anne and John (Andie MacDowell and Peter Gallagher). Ann has never really been into sex, John is having a secret affair with Ann’s sister, and Graham can only get it up by taping and watching videos of women talking about sex.  At 26, Soderbergh won the Cannes Palme d’Or; at the time, he was the youngest director to have ever received this prize (the youngest is now Iranian director Samira Makhmalbaf, age 20).

sex lies and video tape not only made it trendy for everything from titles of films and books to restaurants to be written in all lowercase letters, but it also stirred up conversation about technology and voyeurism (Have we entered the age of virtual gratification?) and the blurring of moral hierarchies (Is it worse to cheat on a friend, a wife, or a sister?). While this film may have been the precursor to reality-based shows, Soderbergh practices such restraint and artistry with his story, dialogue, and characters that it never becomes a tabloid feature film. This is no Paris Hilton or Jessica Simpson speaking to the boy-toy of the day.  When Ann talks to Graham about sex through his camera, the exchange is simultaneously virginal, dark, and erotic. There is here a theme of emotional invisibility and disconnection; Anne and Graham’s affair may seem deviant by nature, but behind or in front of the camera, they are by us, truly seen.

(Picture: SEX, LIES, AND VIDEOTAPE, Director, Steven Soderbergh directing James Spader in a scene, 1989. (c)Miramax/ Courtesy: Everett Collection)