According to an article written by director John Cameron Mitchell in the magazine “Time Out New York,” his movie “Shortbus” contains “seven real onscreen orgasms and one fake one – you gotta guess which.”

The film, opening Friday at the Drexel Gateway, contains scenes of its actors actually engaging in non-simulated sexual acts.

Its release coincides with “Before Brokeback,” a film series at the Wexner Center for the Arts examining sexual taboos portrayed in films from the 1930s to the 1990s.

The series title, “Before Brokeback,” refers to last year’s best picture nominee “Brokeback Mountain.”

“I think the evolution of, the depiction of and public reaction to sex in Hollywood films is always interesting to examine,” said Dave Filipi, film and video curator at the Wexner Center, who set up “Before Brokeback.”The series began Oct. 6 with “Midnight Cowboy,” the only X-rated movie to win the Academy Award for best picture, and “The Outlaw,” which discusses a love triangle between a woman and cowboy legends Doc Holliday and Billy the Kid, and ends Oct. 27 with “The Moon is Blue” and “Henry & June,” the first film to warrant an NC-17 rating.

Friday, the films “Baby Doll” and “Pretty Baby” will be shown back to back, starting at 7:00 p.m. Both films deal with young women and much older men, in the case of “Pretty Baby,” a 12-year-old girl, played by Brooke Shields, lives in a brothel.“Paramount would never release ‘Pretty Baby’ today,” Filipi said. “I think that illustrates that Hollywood was much more willing to make films for grown-ups and to deal with more challenging material just 30 years ago.”

Filipi said what was interesting about the film was how it was received so differently by different groups. Some condemned the film for portraying love between two men, or being too explicit with the sex, and yet “some people were mad that it wasn’t explicit enough.”For “Shortbus,” Mitchell wrote in his article that growing up gay in a Catholic family, with sex never really discussed between he and his parents, contributed to his wanting “to make a film about sex – or more correctly, a film about what sex is about.”

“Shortbus” explores relationships both gay and straight.

When asked whether audiences would be comfortable seeing a film with actors engaging in sexual acts on screen, or rather rent the film and watch it privately, Emilie Curtis, manager of North Campus Video, said it depends on the individual.

As for the difference between films like Mitchell’s and pornography, Filipi said it is often a matter of intent, where the audience decides if the sex was integral to the plot, or the identity of the filmmaker.

“You can almost argue the fact that (Mitchell) is the director means it’s not pornography,” he said.