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As I understand it, an intimacy coordinator is basically a firewall between the actors and an aggressive director. The pressure for nudity and graphic simulated sex NEVER comes from the actors. It comes from studio heads chasing ratings in the streaming wars, movie producers who want to sell more tickets and directors for whom getting their actresses naked is a power trip and sexual thrill. Usually nudity and sex scenes will have been discussed before the actors sign onto the project, and plenty of pressure gets applied there. ("Wanna work or not? If you won't do it, we'll find someone who will.") But then directors notoriously push things further than discussed or disclosed when they start shooting. The intimacy coordinator's job is to make sure everything is exactly discussed and choreographed ahead of time so that there is no improvising, there are no surprises on set, and directors can't move the goalposts while shooting. They'll still shoot soft porn, but the actress will know exactly where and when she will be touched. The limits will be established ahead of time and will be enforced.

It's better than nothing and it's very late in coming -- a number of actresses, long upset with what they were being bullied and bribed into doing, took advantage of the #MeToo Moment to agitate for change. But it would still be much better if filmmakers didn't go there at all. There are ALWAYS other ways to shoot the scene. Nudity and graphic sex scenes are mostly a lazy substitute for good writing and tighter direction. The problem is, the major studios are now locked in a race to the bottom, and no one in corporate leadership seems inclined to stop it. Maybe shareholders should start raising hell at annual meetings. It's not just Disney and Netflix. AT&T owns WarnerMedia, which is HBO and myriad other big names. Comcast owns NBCUniversal. Sony is a big player. It's not just Hollywood degenerates running amuck; it's major corporate CEO's in respectable businesses. They should be called to account.

Actors are under enormous pressure to sell out and they risk blacklisting if they object and get labelled a "problem." I would bet that the vast majority of them would welcome reasonable regulation in this area. (The men don't like it any more than the women do; they always sound embarrassed when asked about it in interviews, and if they strip down, they admit to disliking it but say if the actresses have to do it, they will go along as well as a matter of fairness.) I'll bet that most producers and directors would like the pressure to go away as well. The fact is, the great majority of films and tv shows do NOT involve people getting naked. There are many good guys in Hollywood (on the sex stuff, not so much the politics). I suspect that most producers and directors like and respect the actors with whom they work and don't like being pressed to treat them like porn stars. But the bad guys have too much power, and when there are no limits to the downside, a competitive downward spiral can set in. HBO has now brought actual porn performers onto its sets and Netflix is now showing un-simulated sex in a couple of movies. Actors can always turn these roles down, and many do, but they pay a price. We need an updated Hays Code.