A young girl visits a 17th-century arts museum in Amsterdam and decides to take the audio tour. The girl is struck with surprise when the voice that guides her takes on a life of its own…

Back in December 1953, the 27 years old Hugh Hefner published the first Playboy Magazine in Chicago, and the American system of values – God, family and work – got muddled up forever. There was no match for Playboy or for its founder. At the head of the company was a man whose lifestyle stimulated men’s fantasies just as much as the magazine itself. Hugh Hefner, hedonist, icon of virile machismo and the most famous playboy in the world. Initiator of the sexual revolution, a fighter for civil rights and supporter of the arts, a liberal saint – or, after all, just an amoral materialist, chauvinist and pornographer? Fact is, no other magazine has had such an impact on American and Americanised culture as the glossy Playboy from Chicago.

Today, Playboy is one the five best known brands in the world alongside Coca Cola and McDonald’s. According to the Far Eastern Economic Review Playboy is even the most popular brand in the People’s Republic of China – a country in which the its most famous product, Playboy Magazine, is categorised as pornography, i.e. illegal. But the Chinese know absolutely what Playboy represents: sex, beautiful women – and sophistication. And in India too, the sexual revolution, thanks to Playboy, is just a step away.

LET’S PLAY, BOY tells the story of the cultural and economical phenomenon called Playboy – in times in which the species “playboy” seems to be dying out: An acute evaluation of the broad impact both the Playboy magazine and the brand have had over the past 50 years.

Mark and Erik have been together for ten years, and they’ve decided it’s time to have kids. But they don’t want to adopt. Is there a woman out there willing to serve as a surrogate mother and help them realize their dream?

PATERNAL INSTINCT chronicles two years in the life of these New Yorkers on their journey to become fathers.
Mark, a computer engineer, and Erik, a land conservationist, choose to pursue parenthood through surrogacy, a process increasingly considered by gay couples as an alternative to adoption.

Placing a “NYC Gay Couple Seeks Surrogate” ad on the Internet, they begin the process of fulfilling their primordial desire to have biological children. Mark and Erik are delighted when they get a response from Wen, a married mother living in rural Maine. At an initial meeting in Boston, they work out the paperwork and payment, kicking off a two-year odyssey that will be filled with anxiety, disappointment and, ultimately, joy.

PATERNAL INSTINCT has been featured at a number of domestic and international film festivals, including the recent Miami Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, where it won the Jury Prize. It was directed by Murray Nossel, whose other credits include the Oscar®-nominated short film “Why Can’t We Be a Family Again?”

PATERNAL INSTINCT was produced by Murray Nossel and Craig Harwood; directed by Murray Nossel; edited by Susanne Rostock; director of photography, Edward Marritz; original music composed by Hahn Rowe. For CINEMAX Reel Life: consulting editor, Geoff Bartz; supervising producer, John Hoffman; executive producer, Sheila Nevins.

Academy Award® and Oscar® are registered trademarks and service marks of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Narrated by Laura Linney

In the early days of silent film, Mary Pickford soared to global fame, becoming the world’s first international superstar. An actress of extraordinary talent, she was also a sophisticated businesswoman who helped shape a culture of celebrity that defines America today.

She began her career in 1900 when she was just six years old. By 1914 she was the most popular woman in the world. Her films and her private life, especially her “romance of the century” with Hollywood heartthrob, Douglas Fairbanks, thrilled fans around the world. Pickford was also immensely successful in the business side of her career.

Together with Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin and director D.W. Griffith, she founded United Artists to give the partners complete artistic and commercial control of their films. Audiences eagerly awaited new UA films and in the 1920s — the glory days of silent film — their movies raised production standards for all of Hollywood.

But when talking pictures made their appearance, Pickford’s golden touch faltered. Her world began to collapse around her and she became the first to pay the price of extravagant fame.

Using home movies, archive footage, photographs, atmospheric shooting and, of course, her own films, ‘Mary Pickford’ builds a poignant, complex portrait of the most powerful and adored woman in the history of movies, “America’s Sweetheart.”

Major funding provided by: the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Additional funding was provided by the National Endowment for the Arts.
Major funding for American Experience provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. National corporate funding provided by The Scotts Company and Liberty Mutual. Additional funding provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and public television viewers.