Natassia Malthe and Simon Baker in Sex and Death 101 Courtesy of Anchor Bay Entertainment

Simon Baker's character says that there comes a time in every guy or gal's life you need to pick someone and settle down. Did you hit that moment and was that the inspiration behind this script?
Well, it's funny. I've never hit that moment. I haven't even gotten the dream yet. But a lot of my friends did. I'm sure we all have male friends who date a lot of different women and all of a sudden out of nowhere they say, "Yeah, it's time for me to get married... This one I'm going out with now is the one I'm going to get married to and have kids [with]." And there's something so the-little-pig's-house-is-made-of-straw, there's something so shallow and feeble about it that you're like, OK, wait, he's not coming from the right place. He's not coming from a place of love; it's a place of efficiency. And I wanted to take that character and have some fun with it. Obviously the movie's trying to be a throwback to the '70s: Richard Benjamin, George Segal, Warren Beatty movies [with] examinations of male machismo like Shampoo, Diary of a Mad Housewife, Carnal Knowledge, but at the same time I'm trying to update the zeitgeist. I think Susan Faludi calls it the myth of male control, that a lot of guys think they still can live these lives where they say, "OK, this is what I'm doing now, but the game's changed a bit." I think when they were making sex farces in the '70s the men were still playing offense. I think we're playing defense now. Especially at the start of the movie, he thinks he's in control of his life, but — [like] Eliot Spitzer showed us — all it takes is desire to pull that thread a little bit and it's all going to collapse.

Can you talk about the title of the film and the expectations it sets up for the audience, and how it informs the film?
Well if you must know, the working title for many years was Truly Fucked.

That would have been great...
Yeah, I just didn't want to have one of those posters with asterisks in the middle. And then I was very obsessed with like 72 names, kind of a reference to the 72 virgins. And I guess the Kabbalah has the 72 names of the soul. But then a friend of mine brought up that if you make it 101 women, then it ends up being not just literal but a collegiate course in sex and death. So I think people should be prepared to come in with their note pads and pencils.

You could have gone so much further in terms of dark comedic farce when you consider the premise of the film, a guy who knows in advance all the people he will ever sleep with. There's one moment that is skipped over where a gay tryst is implied, he toys with necrophilia and there's the school bus of catholic girls, but there's no sheep-shagging or incest. Did you put any limits on your imagination?
Everything was entertained. I probably avoided incest just because I didn't want to set up a sister character. I guess the movie was going on too long. I guess I could have had the accidental sister. I guess I could have... OK, I chickened out. All right. You can say it. And a lot of my friends were pulling for animal inclusion. But as outlandish as the movie is, I did want to keep it somewhat grounded. I treat this bizarre premise very seriously. I can believe it, [that] there's going to be something that predicts your life, because I think everybody's obsessed with knowing the future. And I've never understood that obsession.

NEXT: The Gulliver's Travels of sex...