"'Are you fucking kidding me?' was the response I would get when I would tell people I was going to do it." "It was completely unheard of that two men would embrace and then their lips would touch on film," Hamlin remembered over breakfast at a deli near his home.
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And there had been negative depictions of men kissing, like in the background of the murderous BDSM club in 1980's Cruising, and in 1968's The Sergeant, when Rod Steiger's character goes crazy and assaults the object of his affection with his lips.īut an affectionate kiss between men who care for each other? In a movie made in Hollywood, and produced by a major studio? That was historic. Men had kissed in European films, most notably in 1971's Sunday Bloody Sunday, which was also about a love triangle. In Wings, for instance, the 1927 movie that won the first Academy Award for Best Picture, two fighter pilot friends who had been rivals for the same woman share a kiss as one of them is dying. Men had kissed before onscreen, certainly. Ontkean played Zack, a 30-year-old Los Angeles doctor married to a network TV executive, Claire (Kate Jackson) and Hamlin played Bart, a physically fit, successful novelist, a player, an out gay man - and the object of Zack's closeted affection. They were both dark-haired, clean-cut, and a little nervous about the scene they were soon to perform. They were there to witness history, but also perhaps to gawk.Īt the center of all the attention were the two actors, Hamlin and Michael Ontkean. Director Arthur Hiller led the production, and Melnick and Lansing stood behind the camera with him.
A couple of days earlier, producer Daniel Melnick told the movie's co-star Harry Hamlin, "Two days! I'll be there!" Sherry Lansing, the president of production at 20th Century Fox, the movie's studio, was also looking forward to it. On the day the unprecedented same-sex kiss was to be filmed for the 1982 movie Making Love, the set was packed - and tense - after weeks of buildup.