Beautiful people change partners

American filmmakers often have a problem confronting sexual topics with relaxed candor, and American audiences have never responded with much enthusiasm to a frank exploration of sexuality onscreen.

They might buy teen comedies about sexual frustration but rarely embrace adult dramas about sexual fulfillment. That doesn't bode well for "Breakfast's" box-office prospects.

Two couples -- James (Macaulay Culkin) and Heather (Alexis Dziena), and Ellis (Kuno Becker) and Renee (Eliza Dushku) -- seek the services of sex therapist Dr. Wellbridge (Joanna Miles), who promotes the therapeutic value of wife-swapping and orgies.

Heather is having a problem reaching orgasm, though we can't help but wonder if group sex is the best solution.

As for Ellis and Renee, it's not quite clear what their problem is, except a mild sense of boredom and Renee's confession of fleeting lesbian fantasies. Their partner-swapping strengthens one relationship and destroys the other.

The movie's main virtue is its highly photogenic cast. Dushku and Dziena are luscious camera subjects, and Becker also will steam up a few spectacles.

What a Time for a Breakthrough

In the earliest stages of a Hollywood career, it's a necessity to exploit any chance to increase your public stature among industry players.

So if you're a young writer-director who's somehow managed to make a movie that will get a theatrical release, however limited, capitalizing on that moment is key to advancing your filmmaking ambitions.

So what do you do if your little debut film hits when the entire industry is distracted and hamstrung by the most impactful talent strike in 19 years?

This is the reality that 26-year-old writer-director Miles Brandman is facing with his tiny drama, "Sex and Breakfast," based on a short film he made at Emerson College a few years ago.

Brandman scraped together $400,000 and over 15 days last summer shot his ensemble story about two struggling couples that experiment with group sex.

And the producers have managed to secure a weeklong local theatrical run starting Friday at the Laemmle Sunset 5.

Since Brandman has yet to acquire an agent or manager, this showing should be the perfect window through which to catapult himself to the next phase of his career.

But those potential meetings and new assignments (not to mention guild membership) may be frustratingly inaccessible given the limitations of the strike.

"I like to think that maybe agencies and studios would be more interested if it was a marketable time in the industry," Brandman says.

"But I support the WGA strike completely. I've got a lot more that I'd like to say and do, so if this is the sacrifice that's made at this time then maybe that's OK. And when this is over, maybe I'll be able to figure out how to do it again."

Eliza Dushku Goes from 'Buffy' to Group Sex [Original]

In 'Sex and Breakfast,' the 26-year-old actress

explores a controversial topic.

IF you make a movie about group sex, you must be prepared to own up to your point of view on the subject.

But when actress Eliza Dushku, star of the indie "Sex and Breakfast," which opens in limited release Friday, is asked whether she's pro or con group canoodling, she giggles, before fessing up, she's more of a monogamous kind of gal.

"It doesn't even make sense to me," she says on the phone from her childhood home in Watertown, Mass., where she spent the Thanksgiving holiday.

That would be a pass from Dushku, 26, best known for her stint on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and as the title character on the series "Tru Calling." That's why they call it acting. "Let us live it up for you," she cracks.

Sex is certainly a hot topic in Hollywood, whether it's sexual dysfunction, unplanned sex, too much sex, too little sex.

Sexual problems seem so distinctly less nihilistic -- so eminently solvable -- compared with the war in Iraq or global warming or anything else in the newspapers.

The burdens of sex are driving such comedies as "Superbad," "Knocked Up" and "Juno," as well as the TV dramas like "Californication" and "Tell Me You Love Me."

Now come the twentysomethings' turn. "Sex and Breakfast" tracks two couples ("Home Alone's" all-grown up Macauley Culkin, Kuno Becker, Alexis Dziena and Dushku) who've lost the passion in their relationships and consult a therapist who advocates communal sex.

Still, Dushku points out, the movie is less risqué than your average Paris Hilton sex tape.

"It wasn't about the sex so much, than about the feeling, the confusion, the experimentation," she says. "Those are really honest things that aren't necessarily explored in the movies I've seen. Relationships can be so maddening and just all over the map. Of course, the sex is a major part of it, but it goes so much deeper."

Although she doesn't play the girl next door, Dushku, a sloe-eyed beauty with an insouciant air, steers away from her more typical screen image as "the bad, sexy girl."

She was pleased when writer-director Miles Brandman, 26, offered her the other female lead, the not-as-adventurous-as-she-thinks woman who's "more personal and just vulnerable at times, raw."

Dushku has been acting since she was 10, debuting opposite Juliette Lewis in "That Night." She played Arnold Schwarzenegger's daughter in the James Cameron film "True Lies," traveling for nine months to locations all over the world.

"I hung off airplanes in Miami. My poor mother was standing on the rooftop. My mother is a political science professor. Never, ever in a million years would she have put me in this business, except I tripped and fell in my brother's audition when I was 9."

That pratfall snagged the attention of the powers that be. Coming of age in Hollywood sounds tabloid-esque.

"There was a lot of craziness, immaturity. . . . These stories about kids in the industry, where adolescents are left unprotected and hung out in this town. It can be a disaster. I really truly felt what a lot of these women feel. I wish them the best."

Dushku admits that she got "sober" a couple of years ago, and that has made a difference. "I'm clean and relatively unscathed by the whole process."

Up next is "Dollhouse," the TV reunion between Dushku and "Buffy" creator Joss Whedon. Part "Truman Show," part "Alias," the series will begin shooting after the writers strike is settled.

The new show concerns people who live in a biosphere who are imprinted with personalities and sent on spy-like missions, after which their memories are wiped. Dushku, who also executive-produces the series, says, "It's the ultimate outlet for me to direct this constant stream of crazy energy. I get to be a new personality every week."

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