Monogamish Movie Cast as Trendsetters of Alternative Relationships. Part I

Tao Ruspoli spent quite a lot of time since 2014 shooting a documentary Monogamish which is a one and a half hour long talk about monogamy and sexuality. The director asks the questions to get answers of the sex-positive world icons: from bestselling authors teaching us about sex and relationships to lawyers specializing in sexual rights and scientists studying gender issues. It is a multiple narrative that looks into the theory and practice of monogamish relationships from all sides of the spectrum.

We’ve kept our eye on the countdown to Monogamish release on their website and the film’s Facebook  page. Since it’s taken this long, we’ve had our time to dig out some info on all of its characters. What grabs you right from the start is their original ideas and persistence with which they’ve been pushing those ideas onto the world. Many of those speakers have since published books, penned blogs or went on to host their own TV shows. Thus we can now skip the pain of waiting for the film’s release and delve into the juicy details of their work right here.

Tao Ruspoli—the director of Monogamish movie

Тао, the film director and its main narrator, stems from an aristocratic Italian background.

His movie Fix garnered him three Best Picture Awards at different festivals back in 2008. Furthermore, Tao has a Heineken Red Star under his belt received for being “the most innovative and progressive filmmaker” of the day.

Tao is also a skilled Flamenco guitarist. This drove him to make films like Flamenco: A Personal Journey and El Cable, as well as produce his own musical CD.

How did Monogamish come to be?

After seven years of marriage Tao went through a heartbreaking public divorce from his spouse, actress Olivia Wilde. Three years later he decides to make a film Monogamish, never hiding the fact that the product was largely inspired by his personal experience.

Maybe it was his own failure at monogamy that sprouted the idea of monogamish relationship. Maybe he saw the fallacy of monogamy as such, and decided to look deeper into it. In any case, through the words of different speakers the film scrutinizes various issues of gender, marriage, sex, love, and relationships.

Dan Savage,“father” of the word “monogamish”

We already wrote about him in the article Dan Savage’ Definition of Monogamish—and More published on our blog. For it was him who first came up with the word.

Dan has dedicated his life to the rights of LGBT and sex minorities, monogamish relationships, love and sex.

Since 1991 he has been a columnist in thestranger.com. Today Dan is chief editor of the same weekly. For 11 consecutive years  Dan has been airing his Thursday editorial on savagelovecast.com. The website has 565 audio publications available for listening. You can also call Dan directly with a question.

Dan’s Q&A sessions can be read at Savage Love. Dan publishes his texts in American Life and Out; sometimes he is a guest at MTV, HBO, MSNBC, 360 CNN. He was the first guest at Twice Removed, as well as coordinator at Hump—an adult film festival. Author of seven books.

Together with his spouse Dan started the blog It Gets Better which serves to prevent suicide among LGBT-teenagers. The blog collects more than 50 thousand videos by people of different sexual orientation, including celebrities, where they share their experiences of how their lives have changed after puberty and teen age. Dan was among the cast of Do I Sound Like Gay—a David Thorpe’s documentary about the stereotype of the gay image. He was in one of the first 11 couples who got married after same sex marriages had been made legal in Washington.

Esther Perel, author of the ‘Erotic Intellect’ concept

Practicing psychologist and author of the bestseller Mating in Captivity, a book that is available in 25 languages. Esthel was twice a TED speaker. Her 2013 video got ten million views, and 2015 video—almost eight million. The questions Esther raises in those videos include ‘Why sex life of couples tends to wither as years go by? Why intimacy doesn’t guarantee great sex? Why kids destroy their parents’ sex life?’

In her public speeches and books Esther Perel studies the paradox of the need of intimacy and the need of distance in relationships. In her book Mating in Captivity she suggested the concept of erotic intellect.

“There were two groups: those who didn’t die, and those who came back to life...

Those who came back to life were those who understood eroticism as an antidote to death”.

She has been practicing for 30 years helping family couples in medical centres at the University of New York and Columbia. Esther is a frequent guest at TV shows. Her ideas have been popular topics in most popular American magazines.

Christopher Ryan, co-author of the ideas described in Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality

Writer, blogger, psychologist. His bestselling book that he co-wrote with his wife studies the evolution of human monogamy. His doctor’s thesis on philosophy analyzes prehistoric roots of human sexuality.

The idea of his book can be learnt from his TED speech ‘Are people sexual omnivores?’ His style of presentation, tolerant yet full of spot-on arguments, is very inspiring. Chris also writes for Psychology Today. He is the host of an interview podcast Tangentially Speaking where you can find about 263 interviews with an extensive cast of guests, such as Garry Powell, Debra Bergen, Kai Larssen or Tao Ruspoli. Chris calls himself a troublemaker. He has a personal blog where he speculates about porn Oscars, innovations and sex shows.

Anthony Cristofani, monogamish practitioner

Anthony was one of the characters in Season 1 of Polyamory: Married and Dating, a series about families with more than two partners. The show ran for two seasons, each one featuring different cast. The characters face the problems that arise from open relationships: trust, jealousy, how to accept a third-fourth into a family, safety, honesty.

The show is not only for those who would like to know more about monogamish, but also for those who like to see people getting into all sorts of unusual situations.

Alexi Wasser, actress & blogger who writes about women in the world of dating and sex

Author of Iamboycrazy, a blog where she shares different nuances of women dating men. Like for instance, what do you do when you meet someone who you really want to have sex with. The blog features materials like the seven minute long video Love Alexi that starts with her masturbating on camera. She acted in 32 different movies, has been engaged in producing and screenwriting.

To be continued

Busy writing an article about the rest of the Monogamish cast, we send our gratitude to the director and participants for their continuous exploring the subject and sharing their insights with us. These heroes of sex-positive world break new grounds for the sake of our progress and the culture of future generations.

While we’re eagerly awaiting theoretical part of Monogamish, you can find a lot of practical stuff in our sex-positive app Fantasyapp.

And you can read about the difference between monogamish and open relationships  in our article Monogamish vs Open Relationship: What is the Difference?