Money Making Shot

""I once worked at a service station with a guy who used to be a 1970s porn star. When he was filling the tank, he would pull out the nozzle and spray gas all over the side of the car.""

- Greg Fitzsimmons

Also known as a "Money Shot," the term Money Making Shot refers to any really critical scene in a film (especially a scene that makes the trailer of the film). It is, essentially, the bit you bought your ticket for, so one could say that it's the point at which you get your "money's worth." Some films might have more than one Money Making Shot.

In hardcore pornography, the term "Money Making Shot" refers to the moment in a sex scene when a boy ejaculates, typically onto his partner; here, the term refers to the idea of boys being paid extra to perform an ejaculation on-camera. In this context, the term "cumshot" is more commonly used ("cum" being slang for both semen and the general act of having an orgasm); the term "facial" can alternatively be used specifically when the boy ejaculates onto his partner's face, and "creampie" when ejaculating in his parnter's vagina/rectum. Currently, there is no distinct slang for a boy ejaculating in his partner's mouth (though a good number of outlets colloquially refer to it as an "oral creampie").

In any case, considerable emphasis is placed on the force of the boy's ejaculation and the sight of the partner glazed in his semen. In the case of a creampie, the main point of emphasis is the sight of the partner forcing the boy's semen out of their orifice(s), as the actual act of the boy ejaculating in his partner is usually seen as him grunting/moaning while forcing himself as far into his partner as possible; a special camera has to be inserted inside the partner's body if one wishes to make the sight of the boy's semen moving from his penis to their orifice visible. Furthermore, a pornographic money shot is typically better-regarded if the boy is able to eject a greater amount of semen with a greater amount of force (and if the partner is able to push out more of that semen in the case of a creampie), though most people tend to find excessively large quantities of semen to be off-putting and/or unrealistic.

Unlike girls, boys typically require a cooldown period after an orgasm; continued simulation of the penis during this period is quite uncomfortable, and is only really done by a small niche of the BDSM community. As a result, money shots tend to be reserved for the climax of a hardcore sex scene in porn. The main exception to this is in hentai, where thanks to Artistic License and Idealized Sex, any boy can cum with the same level of frequency as a typical girl. Additionally, effective cumshots require the boy to have not ejaculated for a while and that they be sufficiently aroused when ejaculating on-camera. The prostate is rather slow at producing semen, with a full load taking three weeks to make (though a few days of waiting is usually enough to produce a good amount), and the muscles in the urethra required for ejaculation are built for performing at a high level of sexual arousal. Again, hentai is the major exception, due to it not necessarily needing to fit within the limitations of real life.

See also Just Here for Godzilla, where the Money Making Shot is the only thing that matters, and Watch It for the Meme. Not to be confused with Shoot the Money.

Film
"Davis: Where's the shot? Editor: What shot? Davis: You took out the shot. Editor: Which shot is that? Davis: The money shot. The bus driver's head. The brains-on-the-window shot. The viscera-on-the-visor shot. Editor: We thought we'd show it to you without... Davis: Put it back. Don't show me anything. Editor: You don't need it. You're not even giving it a chance. Davis: How's the rear-view-mirror gag supposed to work without it? Am I the only one here who respects the writing?!"
 * In Grand Canyon, the film director played by Steve Martin was upset that his editor didn't keep the violent "money shot" of the bus driver's head being blown apart by a shotgun.


 * The scene in Independence Day where The White House is destroyed by the alien Death Ray.
 * Uses of Bullet Time and the acrobatics freed from "real" physics in The Matrix:
 * Morpheus jumping across the building to show Neo how to jump.
 * Any of the flips (Trinity spinning like a rabbit on a spit; Neo escaping Smith in the train station; Neo and Trinity dodging bullets in the building lobby).
 * The lobby shootout as a whole.
 * Any of the unusual shots (Bullet Time ducking of bullets; Trinity's "Dodge This" shot of an agent; "Guns. Lots of Guns".)
 * Quite unusually, the Money Shot in Armageddon isn't the destruction of the asteroid... it's the Power Walk just before the drillers go into space.
 * Parodied in a video where Joel Schumacher is discussing the Money Making Shot of Batman and Robin
 * Referenced in a scene in The Simpsons Movie trailer where Lovejoy says "And here's the money shot". This line was not in the film, however.
 * Also happens once in the show. After Maude Flanders dies, Homer is secretly filming Ned to submit him to a video dating service. He says the line when Ned takes off his shirt to reveal his manly physique.
 * Dr. Strangelove has one of the earliest examples Slim Pickens riding an atom bomb until it detonated all over the Soviet Union's face.
 * In American Beauty, the viewer is teased with cheerleader Angela Hayes (Mena Suvari) in several semi-nude situations where nothing is actually shown. Near the end of the movie opens her shirt to finally reveal her breasts.
 * G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra has its money shot during the action sequence in Paris, where Duke and Ripcord dodge the missiles the Baroness shoots at them in Bullet Time.
 * Inception played its cards close to the vest when it came to promotional items, but one thing that became analogous to the movie was the shot of Paris folding in on itself like a taco.
 * Crosses oddly with Just Here for Godzilla in many of the Mothra films, where the scenes of caterpillar-Mothra spinning her cocoon are Money Making Shots of a sort...
 * As stated in the description, male ejaculation usually fills this role in pornography and is more often than not the finale of a sex scene. In the case of porn, Money Shots are so ubiquitous they're practically a case of People Sit on Chairs.

Video Games

 * Hitman: Blood Money had a scene in most promotional material that featured 47 in Vegas. All right, so Vegas is there for two levels, but the first is a hotel/casino and the second's a highrise.
 * The trailers for Call of Duty: Black Ops featured a helicopter crashing in a city, the camera riding the wing of an Blackbird spy plane and a close-up of a Soyuz rocket launch, among other things.

Web Original

 * Done in Suburban Knights when the teams walk up a small hillside before separating on their respective missions. As with most things in the movie, a lampshade was promptly hung on it.