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The New York premiere of Sex Tape was appropriately hot and wet on Monday night as the stars of the Columbia Pictures R-rated comedy trekked under umbrellas to a humid and rainy Regal Union Square.
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Cameron Diaz, wearing a watercolor-like Vionnet dress, told The Hollywood Reporter how she feels about baring her bum on the big screen for the first time in her career. “I’m not really naked — it’s just my butt!” she laughed. “It’s not an objectification. If I had done it another time, if I was a young girl who was taking off my clothes to be sexy in a movie— that never felt right to me. For me, this is about two people who are in a loving relationship, being playful with one another and showing how much they love each other.”
In the film, she and onscreen husband Jason Segel hope to spice up their marriage with a sex tape (only to accidentally share it with their friends and colleagues, and embark on a quest-like adventure with the whole family), but Diaz noted that the best way to reinvigorate a relationship is to stay far away from iPads but close to each other. “We’re advocating communication — talking to your partner. You shouldn’t be sitting separately, thinking, ‘Oh, I wish we were having more sex.’ You should be communicating that to the one person that you actually do have sex with.” Segel echoed, “The key is communication, and to always remember to keep your romantic life with your spouse at the forefront of your relationship.”
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Segel, who brainstormed sex positions (with many, many props) with co-writer and director Jake Kasdan, also clarified what exactly he understands about the cloud after penning the script. “I do know what it is! It’s a bank of servers somewhere that anyone really has access to for any reason — if you read the user agreement, there’s some very nebulous language about who’s allowed to look at it and why,” he told THR. “But I’m terrified of the cloud…. We did a lot of research. Everything that happens in the movie could happen to you — it’s a cautionary tale!”
Diaz noted that she initially knew “very little, and I still don’t know very much about it! I understand it on a very basic level. But I think they used it very cleverly in this storyline, because it really is something no one really understands. I mean, we’ve done a lot of interviews, and nobody is saying, ‘Oh, what are you talking about? I got it!’ Everyone is saying, ‘Nope, nope, just don’t have any idea.’ “
The two stars, who were also both in Kasdan’s Bad Teacher, posed for family portrait-like photos with their onscreen kin, Giselle Eisenberg and Sebastian Hedges Thomas, before the film’s screening. Afterward, the premiere’s guests — which included Ira Glass, Nicky Hilton, Estelle, Hedwig’s Lena Hall, Pitch Perfect 2’s Ben Platt, Hannibal Buress, Katrina Bowden, Grizz Chapman, The Blacklist’s Amir Arison, designer Rachel Antonoff and Les Miserables’ Andy Mientus — headed to the new Meatpacking District hotspot The Brickwood.
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While on the red carpet, Kasdan also took a moment to praise Segel, who, as a writer, he said, has “got a great instinct for what’s gonna be funny for him to do, but also what’s gonna be funny for other people to do.” While on set, “it was a great thing, the three of us hanging out every day and figuring out this movie together. It’s a lucky thing I tripped into with this.”
And though their last collaboration inspired a short-lived CBS sitcom this past season, Kasdan laughed off the possibility of the same thing happening with the summer release. “I’m just gonna throw it out there — I don’t think Sex Tape would make for a good sitcom. This can’t happen every week!”
Sex Tape hits theaters July 18.
Email: Ashley.Lee@THR.com
Twitter: @cashleelee
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