Spare Us: Jason Segel's Full-Frontal Nude Scene In Forgetting Sarah Marshall Was A Ploy To Show The World His Good Penis
Jason Segel's full-frontal hog feature in the 2008 hit comedy, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, was good for us. The scene comes in the first five minutes of the movie, we don't see it coming, and it sets the tone for one of the better comedies made in a decade of spectacular funny movies.
But in the years since, the rhetoric around Segel's penile reveal has become a fucking eye-roll for the ages. Articles have touted it a gender-balancing act of cinematic nudity. Revolutionary! Courageous! Honest! VULNERABLE.
One piece in Men's Health claims that Segel's drawing on personal experience as inspiration for the scene is what makes it so profound, saying:
Because Segel used his own breakup as a blueprint for Peter’s in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, the scene takes on metatextual significance: It’s about Segel being willing to make himself the butt of a joke written around Peter, while also being willing to make himself vulnerable. That takes guts.
Dick should be normalized in the movies, and not a phenomenon that inspires headlines. That would be a start toward equality; in a 2019 report, the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media found... that women are far more likely to be naked, partially or fully, on screen than men. Bridging the screen nudity gap will take more than guys like Segel... discarding inhibited male notions of modesty, of course, so while that kind of gesture makes for a good start, it isn’t exactly revolutionary. -Men's Health
Fuck's sake. Don't misdirect me with a false impetus and call it progressive.
It is the opinion of this blogger that Jason Segel wanted his penis in the film not to "normalize" male nudity in film; not to "brige the screen nudity gap"; not to be liberated, or to even add a more punch to a comedic scene. I believe that Jason Segel's penis made its way into the film because, quite simply, Jason Segel wanted the world to see his penis.
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The facts:
1) He wrote the scene
Jason Segel wrote the scene into the script. In fact, he wrote the entire script, but he seems to have been rather insistent on the full penis scene, even going over his director's head during a massive meeting with the studio:
"[Jason] and I were talking about the script and he said he thought it would be funny if he showed his penis in the opening," recalls director Nicholas Stoller. "I was like, 'I don't think you can do that…' And then in this meeting at Universal, he said, 'I really think it would be funny if I did full frontal in that scene,' and everyone laughed.'" - Entertainment Weekly
Imagine you've been hired to direct a movie. Your lead actor says "I want everyone to see my penis. All of it." You tell him no, down boy, hush now. And instead of tucking his dick between his legs into a mangina and slinking away, he brings it up again in a board room to the big execs at Universal?!
Kinda makes that director's chair feel ceremonial at best.
2) He worked it up
Everyone knows that for comedy's sake, small penises > large penises (see: Ken Jeong in the Hangover films). Yet on a notably frigid movie set, Segel took the time to fluff himself in a "private room" he had "set up":
"He was mainly nervous that his wiener look normal, which in a very cold stage is hard to achieve," says Stoller, laughing. "So he had set up a private room where he got his wiener looking normal. And Kristen and I just waited and he'd yell, 'Okay, I'm ready,' and then I'd say action and he'd run out to do the scene."
Added Bell of the shooting experience: "Jason psyched himself up to doing it and he really owned the fact that he did write it and that he was going to go through with it." -EW
Look normal, Jay? Wouldn't looking normal just be leaving it to God? Good dick day, bad dick day, we mortals shall not interfere. Instead, Jason Segel went behind closed doors to perform a dynamic warmup on his dong. We've all been there, hell. That rare time when you find yourself back in the apartment with a girl so far out of your league that you have to go to the bathroom to stare at yourself in the mirror and beg your penis to work? Offer it a few love taps and wrap it around her cold curling iron to elongate and awaken?
Don't get me wrong: Segel's dick looked good in the film. But that's because he wanted it to. Any man in his position would likely do the same thing. But most of us wouldn't be in that position. Because we don't demand our dicks make cameos in movies we make, like they're our burnout failure of a younger brother.
3) He did it twice
Just in case you didn't get the message in the first five minutes, we get to see Segel's full dick again towards the end of the movie. Mila Kunis bursts in on him in his changing room at the Dracula musical and there he is, completely naked, as puppet-operating-musical-theater-actors so often are. What?!!! Get the fuck out of here.
As J. Cole sorta said, expose your penis to me once, shame on you. Expose your penis to me twice? Put the blame on you.