USA: Teenager turns madam in new film, "The Babysitters"

Record ID: 749658

  • Title: USA: Teenager turns madam in new film, "The Babysitters"
  • Date: 9th May 2008
  • Summary: NEW YORK, NEW YORK USA (MAY 5, 2008) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) JOHN LEGUIZAMO SAYING: "It's not a little risqué, the movie is really going for the jugular in risqué. It's a taboo movie, basically, but it has a lot of redeeming factors about it. It's exploring this world of no morality, lack of morality, what, how are you supposed to behave in this society where ev
  • Embargoed: 24th May 2008 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Usa
  • Country: USA
  • Reuters ID: LVA4SKFXT6WRIRY0Y930PF770DEP
  • Story Text: John Leguizamo's latest film "The Babysitters," is a risqué tale about an affair between a man undergoing a mid-life crisis and his teen age baby sitter - turned madam.
    John Leguizamo's latest film "The Babysitters" is the sort of tale that is so sleazy it makes most people cringe, yet you can't stop watching.
    The story follows Shirley Lyner (Katherine Waterston), a high school girl who baby sits for a couple and unexpectedly has an affair with the father Michael Beltran (John Leguizamo).
    While the two are awkward and opposite, it's through their inadequacies and neediness they find an unspoken language between them.
    The unexpected affair takes a twist and turns into a business relationship, as a guilt laden Michael tips Shirley for her post-baby-sitting favours.
    "It's not a little risqué, the movie is really going for the jugular in risqué. It's a taboo movie, basically, but it has a lot of redeeming factors about it. It's exploring this world of no morality, lack of morality, what, how are you supposed to behave in this society where everything is stimulating you and sexualized. Every show, every commercial is telling you to get it on, get it on."
    After Michael's married friends find out about the liason, they want in on the baby sitter action. It isn't long before Shirley recruits a group of her friends to baby sit for suburban married couples in the area, and provide extras for the husbands on the ride home. Shirley gets 20 percent of their pay, and has quickly become a madam with a booming business.
    Needless to say, the resulting complications threaten to unravel the lives of everyone involved.
    While there is a lot of sex in the film, there is only one scene in which Waterston strikingly bares herself both physically and emotionally for her key role.
    "You know these sex scenes between an adult and a middle age minor, they were very carefully orchestrated not to be exploitive, tantalizing. But the last scene is where she's trying to communicate with him is the first time you see nudity and it was important because that was the need to try to express herself," Leguizamo says.
    Waterston adds that this was what the character needed - to "give herself to him in the only way she knows how."
    "The Babysitters," which opens in theatres on May 9th, was also co-produced by Leguizamo.
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