 |
| Sandler, Berg, Hamlin and Hiller w/ Duralde (c) (GIH) |
OUTFEST hosted the 30th anniversary screening of Making Love, the 1982 film that was considered so controversial at the time because of its story of a young married doctor (Michael Ontkean) coming to terms with his homosexuality. Kate Jackson played his television executive wife and Harry Hamlin an author with whom he becomes involved.
After the film screened, Hamlin was part of a panel that included director Arthur Hiller and writers A. Scott Berg and Barry Sandler.
“The first time I read the script I was turned on, I really liked it,” said the 88-year-old Hiller. “When I read it the second time I thought, ‘This is the kind of movie that should be made and I want to make it.”
Hamlin also talked about why he agreed to do the movie: “I read the script and did have a lot of people say I shouldn’t do it. I had just done Clash of the Titans and I always thought that movie was kind of stupid. I felt I wanted to do something to balance that out, something relevant to the time. I was looking for something real.”
Hamlin said that while watching the film again Saturday, he was struck by how it took place in “a more innocent time. No one had ever heard the word AIDS before.”
The handsome actor, once named People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive, went out to gay bars – something his character of Bart did just about every night – and had to explain he was doing research for a role because he kept getting hit on.
“He was committed to the honesty of the part,” Sandler said.
The movie was the first major studio release with a gay story at its center and was the first film to come out after 20th Century Fox was bought by Texas oilman Marvin Davis whose reaction about releasing a “faggot movie” was not good.
But Sandler feels the studio did a good job at promoting the movie with a campaign aimed at gays and another more ambiguous campaign aimed at straights.
“The gay community was ready for it, there was great anticipation and excitement,” he said.
“The studio was nervous about the straights. There was cryptic advertising that would say everything except what it was.”
The kiss was put back in.
Hamlin and the writers pointed out that the version shown on Saturday at the Harmony Gold Theatre did not include an overhead shot of Hamlin and Ontkean’s characters having sex.
Then they revealed that the shot was not of the two actors anyway.
Said Berg: “Barry went up to Santa Monica Boulevard to get two guys off the street from [the gay bar] Blue Parrot.”
“We just found the two hottest guys who we could find,” Sandler added.
Hamlin, who went on to star for many years on LA Law, continues to be reminded about the movie 30 years later.
“Pretty much not a day goes by, if I’m out in public, does somebody not come up to me and say something about this film. Some will have tears in their eyes and say, ‘Thank you for making this film.’ It really is seminal to a lot of people.”
VIA GIH
No comments:
Post a Comment