Making Love ( The movie from 1982)

I sneakily rented this film from Blockbuster video when I was 16, back when Blockbuster had a mix of VHS and DVDs. Yeah, even then I thought it was v. Lifetime'esque, but, GOD, was Michael Ontkean beautiful.

He showed his bare bum in Slapshot.

Making Love: The Sitcom!

At the time, it was groundbreaking. I still tear up at the theme song.

"Good-bye Zack."

I saw this on Netflix or antenna TV. The wife came across incredibly needy. I don't think she was even happy at the end with a straight husband and a kid.

r5 That's what I liked about the ending. She was still in love with him, but he would never love her the way she wanted. She still had a void in her life at the end. It felt realistic. Kate Jackson was actually quite good in this.

R6, it also seemed like he would have been OK to not ever be in touch with her again. Not out of hate, but just had no emotional attachment and was at a completely place. I remember thinking she probably sent him a Christmas card every year and he secretly wished she wouldn't.

I was 12 or 13 when this came out... I had to sneak watch it with my hand on the knob in case someone came in the room.... Was very turned on when they kissed and took their shirts off.. I don't know how that passed back then.

Ontkean was dazzling. It wouldn't have been fair if he was also able to act.

It caused a huge stir at the time it was released in the Reagan era. I was 21 when I saw it and am now 58. I remember seeing it at our Air Force base theater---the same theater that showed CRUISING. I swear, whoever chose those flicks must have either been a civilian or active-duty Air Force dude on his way to getting dishonorably discharged. But Travis A.F.B. is near San Francisco, so maybe that's why it was more "progressive," even for the early 80s. And Michael Ontkean was the reason I turned gay when THE ROOKIES (also with Kate Jackson) was on T.V..

This film was controversial for its time. Believe it or not.

The Roberta Flack Theme song is awesome

I think it hurts all their careers, too.

I saw this with my gal pal in High School. We were both gay and closeted and both loved Kate Jackson. Too bad it hurt the men's careers. Kate went on to do Scarecrow and Mrs King so she still had a successful career. She was quite lovely in this.

Very affecting film, very "tasteful" for its time. Big studio production released with some fanfare. Got decent reviews, as I recall, but audiences stayed away in droves.

I saw it the day it opened, closeted, married-to-a-woman me, in a small theater, part of a Manhattan multiplex, along with about six other people. I wonder how many of them were as closeted as I. And how many of them have survived.

Looking back, you can almost see AIDS around the edges. Ontkean survives because he's essentially a monogamous man in a monogamous relationship, living up in a high rise at the end, above earthly woe. Likewise Kate Jackson, in her nest of domesticity. Hamlin's character, on the other hand, an admittedly promiscuous multi-drug user, disappears in the crowd, like so many millions to follow.

None of that was even thought of at the time. But with hindsight we can see much in the past.

The good intentions of MAKING LOVE, ignored by the public at the time, were soon overwhelmed by more dire concerns.

If anyone's interested, the background music score was released on CD only recently, though without the title song, due to issues with copyrights.

Quite lovely, if restrained, or, if you will, "tasteful" music.

R3 Thanks. I saw that movie a year after I got married and realized that something was wrong.

I thought Michael Ontkean was the sexier of the two guys, and the ending was really sad.

Michael Dukakis had a son or nephew who played Hamlin's first pick up. I developed a thing for chili cheeseburgers after this.

It's a rotten movie. Even as a gay teen I thought it was awful.

I don't know why this movie gets such a bad rap on here. I thought it was a good story and everyone played their parts well. Sadly, the movie did hurt Hamlin's career. He was on his way to superstardom after Clash of the Titans and Making Love slowed down his career. Same with Ontkean. But they sure were beautiful in it!

The ending was sad: She lost the man she loved (her husband was just a substitute) and he found the man he loved.

I love this movie! It was the first gay film I ever saw and felt guilty after seeing it. I love watching it now, it is so early 80's. Hamlin was beyond beautiful.

They showed the alley behind Gold Coast... Was the bar that was shown The Gold Coast or MotherLoad?

Michael Ontkean made me hard. I jerked off to him hundreds of times.

The husband essentially traded his straight marriage for a gay "marriage" (before gay marriage was legal). The ease with which he apparently found Mr. Right has always seemed a bit pat to me. In reality, there probably would have been a period of transition, i.e., tricking with at least a few losers.

[quote]I think it hurt all their careers, too.

It was no Kramer v. Kramer.

I saw the film in a movie theater. When Harry Hamlin and Michael Ontkean kissed, waves of audible shocks of disgust echoed in theatre. I was deeply in the closet at that time. I was with a college friend, who I subconsciously thought was gay. He had to be as we both chose to see the movie. I lost touch with him and he later became a priest. We both are Catholic and we attended a Catholic College. Go figure.

Saw this movie in college in 1982. Was crying during it -- could no longer deny to myself that I was gay. I'd spent years building up my denial, but seeing this movie stripped every bit of that denial away in just a few minutes.

And why did I go see it in the first place? I was a movie buff and went to see EVERYTHING that came out. I vaguely knew it had something to do with homosexuality. If I'd known in advance, the need to protect my denial would have kicked in and I likely wouldn't have gone to see it.

[quote]If anyone's interested, the background music score was released on CD only recently, though without the title song, due to issues with copyrights.

[quote]Quite lovely, if restrained, or, if you will, "tasteful" music.

The score was by James Dean's close friend and piano teacher Leonard Rosenman, who also scored East of Eden, Rebel Without a Cause and camp classics The Cobweb and Fantastic Voyage.

Not entirely fair to call this a Lifetime movie since Lifetime didn't exist in 1982.

But I agree, it is indeed melodramatic. That's how stories like that are supposed to work. A very strong script and very well made movie..

Crepe paper is a bitch to tear

Let's be the movie, Making Love! Could someone post this?? It would be fun!

It was a period piece at the time, and is now, I think, the closest definition of what could legitimately be called a camp classic. A movie with an important "message:, very controversial for it's time, that is produced with complete earnestness and attempted honesty without trying to offend. But so unintentionally over-the-top. LIke a "special episode" of Blossom.

I'm surprised it's not up there with Valley of the Dolls and Showgirls as one of the great camp classics of all time. (Maybe it needed a couple musical numbers?)

I don't know how much it hurt Harry Hamlin or Michael Ontkean's careers. Both would go on to arguably their most memorable roles - Hamlin in L.A. Law and Ontkean in Twin Peaks. Admittedly, Ontkean is not the greatest actor but he is handsome and has a nice presence (and is now retired). You could argue that Hamlin's career should have been bigger but I think he's done well for himself. It's too bad he's done so many shitty B-movies and straight-to-DVD flicks. His role in Mad Men reminded me what a good actor he is.

"I don't know how much it hurt Harry Hamlin or Michael Ontkean's careers".

A lot. They wanted movie careers and both were on the verge. This destroyed it. Studios felt both could never now be accepted as romantic leading (straight!) men.

They both ended up having successful television careers. But that took years.

It hurt Kate Jackson's chance of a movie career, but less because of the theme, and more because it just didn't make enough money. She also went back to television. I don't think she ever left.

This came out when I was in high school, and I would set my alarm so I could watch it while the rest of the house was asleep. I was so afraid that my parents would walk into my room and wonder what I was watching on TV at 3am.

The ending always devastated me because I somehow related to Kate Jackson's character more than the gay characters. I wonder why that was?

The Dame Wendi Hiller character was so annoying with her Rupert Brooks infatuation. I wanted to see gay scenes, not that old gasbag.

Kate Jackson was at her prettiest in this film.

Kate was a favorite to get an Oscar nomination that year, but it never happened. She returned to TV and had a successful show called "Scarecrow & Mrs. King."

it really was awful OP. the only thing I love is that it shows how far we've come. we really had zero options back then.

r35 they must have known what it might do to their careers. I'm sure their agents were shaking.

Apparently Ontkean won't talk about the movie. I don't know how true that is, though. Hamlin remains proud of it and says he doesn't regret it.

Kate Jackson was offered the Meryl Streep role in "Kramer vs. Kramer". She had to turn it down due to her television contract. I think she was doing "Charlie's Angels" at that time, 1978. "Making Love" was her attempt at achieving movie stardom or at least a consolation prize for having to forgo "Kramer vs. Kramer." She was more fitting for television than theatrical movies.

The scene where Hamlin's character tells of how embarrassed his father was when his fey son couldn't catch a baseball always kills me. It summed up my relationship with my sports jock father perfectly. To this day, I can't watch that scene without getting teary-eyed.

"Kate was a favorite to get an Oscar nomination that year"

This sentence made me laugh harder than the National Enquirer claim of Vivian Vance's secret lesbian love for Lucy that was just posted.

A product of its time, Very ballsy. Remember walking other side of the street from the movie theatre for several hours before I plucked up the courage to go see it.

Kate absolutely was a favorite to get an Oscar nomination. Liz Smith wrote about in her column and I read it in other places as well. It's a shame that they snubber her.

This is a beautiful film, I do not understand the naysayers. Final scene is so poignant. Director Arthur Hiller cast Arthur Hill and Wendy Hiller in featured roles (note names). 3 principals are superb, the musical score touching, and no one gets killed. R25, with Zach's looks and credentials, he would have no trouble finding a live-in lover, not at all pat.

You know what ruined Hamlin and Ontkean's career even more than taking the roles in this movie? One scene. The kiss!!!

It might have been why Will Smith refused to do it for the movie version of Six Degrees.....

I couldn't stand that woman patient of Ontkean's with breast cancer. That scene where she told him, "He left me, Doc. He said he couldn't stand to make love to a woman with no tits," always made me laugh. She was such a boner killer.

R45 I remember that. It would have been a tight race that year between Kate and Meryl Streep for Sophie's Choice. How ironic!

You bitches can laugh all you want, but Kate deserved an Oscar nomination. She was living with Andrew Stevens at the time.

R16, thank you for tipping us that the score has been released on CD (along with "Race With the Devil"). I just purchased on EBAY!

r33 I found nothing campy about this. It's earnest and tasteful but I can't think of any scene that is over the top or campy.

R39 - zero options? It was released in 1982 not 1952. If I remember correctly Zach ends up with a lover and a great apartment. Compared to Bart who ends the movie going out cruising.

I'm not convinced the film harmed their careers. It really sholdn't have been feature film. So what you ended up with was a movie that should have been made for TV with actors who it turns out were also made for TV.

I know Hamlin thinks the movie led to "ruffles" in his career. But he also said his agent advised him to take the role - for which he was hardly the first choice. He was in a very public relationship with Ursula Andress. The agent didn't think anyone would assume he was gay. As it turns out all he had to do was show up and play Perseus again.

Hamlin kind of had two strikes against him with Clash of the Titans. It became a staple on cable, but did not perform well and the box office, did not get great reviews, and while he was pretty - very pretty - I don't think he made much of an impression.

He was still pretty young when he made it big on LA Law. I think if he had what it takes to be a movie star, he could have at that point.

I don't think Kate actually would have been a big movie star either, but she was pretty good in this role and probably should have had a bigger TV career. I think her career never really recovered from the breast cancer. She was a decent actress, and while Scarecrow and Mrs. King was not exactly high art, she did show a light touch in kind of a romantic comedy sort of way and probably elevated the material

Michael Douglas was offered, I think, a role in the movie. He turned it down, I suppose because it might have ruined his career. Of course, when it became "brave and popular" for a straight actor to play a gay role, he did so. Although, to give him credit, I think he was one of first straight male stars to do. (I think he did a "Will and Grace" episode as a gay man.) His portrayal of Liberace was phenomenal and he deserved an Emmy or Ace award for his magnificent performance.

I loved that huge state of the art TV they had. In the wood cabinet with those primary colors emitting light. High tech

Hey Op, this wasn't an awful film - don't be so bitchy. It was incredibly brave to make this groundbreaking movie way back in the early 1980's.

I saw it twice when it came out, the second time with a friend who really wanted to see it. I bought the theme song from the movie by Roberta Flack and the 45 vinyl single came in a sleeve with a fantastic photo of the 3 main stars on it - a great keepsake. Memories.........

Kate Jackson did not have that special star quality that's needed for the big screen. She was excellent in the movie, but she didn't have that je ne sais quio.

R58 Kate Jackson did have that something special which made people sit up and take notice. She was the breakout star of her first acting job, Dark Shadows, and went on to do other TV series. Had she started to make movies earlier in her career she might have had a film career but she didn't start until years later and by this time people were so accustomed to seeing her on television that her movie appearances didn't really seem anything special to her fans.

Kate had stardust in her eyes

R-59, Kate Jackson did not have that special star quality for the big screen. She was and is a great and excellent television star.

R21, It's got gay stuff in it. DL hates that.

R61 Initially she did - movie producers even wanted her for a plum role in Kramer Vs Kramer but she couldn't take it because of TV contracts. A movie career escaped the grasp of Kate Jackson and she had to be satisfied with television. Not that bad, all things considered.

Poor Kate Jackson. She's probably bipolar, had an eating disorder and was already abusing prescription meds by the time of Charlie's Angels. Either the mental illness or the addiction issues (or both) really amped up in the '90s. By that time she was "dating" Arnold Klein (who was Michael Jackson's dermatologist and who employed Debbie Rowe, who eventually gave birth to Michael's children) so she could have access to all the pills she needed.

By the end of the '90s, her reasonably lucrative TV movie career had dried up and her only offers were guest shots on bad tv shows. She was actually fired from an episode of Touched by an Angel (couldn't remember her lines, looked gaunt and unwell, screaming at crew and holding up production) and was replaced by Ann Jillian (the indignity!). In 2002, she had a guest spot on Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and she seemed shaky and uncertain of herself. In 2008, she appeared as a judge on the Jaclyn Smith-hosted hairdressing reality show Shear Talent; she was pretty much unhinged and Jaclyn Smith looked like she didn't want to be anywhere near her.

Her book was announced almost 10 years ago now and the release date was pushed back repeatedly and now it just seems dropped altogether. Though I would assume that if she ever cleaned up and got on the right med for her mental illness that she probably has a good story to tell, and that she could still make a few dollars if she chose to tell it.

The webmaster from charliesangels.com is in touch with all of the cast members and in the past five years has posted pics of Kate with a birthday cake he'd bring her each year. She actually looked okay.

A bigger pic.This is from 2013 and I don't think I've actually seen a pic since.

R64 - what tabloid are you getting this info from? I have to admit I don't have the inside scoop on Jackson but I do know she had two bouts of breast cancer in the late 1980s and had a congenital heart defect surgically corrected in the mid 1990s (I think).

So where does the leap to mental illness and drug addiction come from?

in it's own way - it's a little bit like VOTD - at the time they all thought they were making something really important, powerful and profound - and it came out as a cheesy campfest!

I mean - VOTD far more so - obviously! - and maybe this came up slightly short - and fell instead in the bounds of Lifetime made-for-TV-movie schlock - and therefore was pretty forgettable - instead of a camp classic?

I mean - it looked great - and the leads were all appealing - but from that very first moment - where the studio puts on a community service-style announcement and card about how MAKING LOVE is such an important film for adults or whatever the fuck they said (was that used in every version released? On TV as well as at the movies?) It kinda gave the whole thing this leaden pretension - and coupled with the telemovie levels of script and acting...it was never gonna be very much.

Having said that - know a few old friends who bawl whenever they see it and just think it's great! To be honest tho - without meaning to be bitchy! - they're not guys with particularly highbrow tastes. One was a not-very-good wannabe actor who aged out of his looks and got into doing drag shows - and because he belted out tunes rather than lip-syncing them, he actually had quite a bit of success (far more than in his 'legitimate' acting career!). I think there was a theme song from Making Love that he used to love and it became one of his signature 'serious' numbers...

And also - Ontkean and Hamlin. Sooooooo appealing! Fans of the movie tend to have huge crushes on them. And fair enough!

Two things: if it hadn't sucked as much and had been successful - critically and at the box office - it would have been really interesting to revisit the various characters a decade or so later after the AIDS crisis. That could have been some really interesting, poignant storytelling! I'd have been really surprised if either Ontkean or Hamlin's characters could have made it through that time unscathed given the timing. They were both playing on the edge of the volcano just at that moment in time...

Second: it's amazing to me that it's forty years later - and I still see this basic plot scenario going on today again and again in real life!

I like regular buddies for sex partners - and hookup with someone on scruff or wherever - and find out eventually they're "bi" and married/closeted. Got two fuckbuds right now - met one at a dirty bookstore backroom and now see him once or twice a month - married - mid forties - hot and fun! - no intention of leaving his wife - and happy to just play with me (and whoever else he is playing with online!). The other is late thirties - also hot and fun - versatile - and hadn't seen him for a while - but know he gets out and plays whenever possible. Turns out he's met THE ONE, and now wants to leave the wife and kids and come out...etc.

Like I said - it's forty years or so after that film - wouldn't you have thought western society and ideas and attitudes about sexuality wouldn't have progressed further -that and people's sexuality and feelings wouldn't have to he hidden and kept in the closet - much to the detriment of themselves and the others around them? I mean - these nice suburban boys still get confused and haven't explored and 'do the right thing' and get married and have kids - only to eventually discover what they really want is cock. Or arse. Or both.

Wish we could get beyond that and not have people feel they have to be something they're not. And who knows? Maybe with the current crop of teens, things will be different. There's unlimited porn at the click of a mouse - and the possibility of all sorts of imaginative sexual scenes at the flick of a tindr or grindr screen - so maybe they'll be more open and flexible and less inclined to fit in to some perceived norm orchestrated by family, friends, school, church, society or whatever...? Hope so!

Yes, she had two bouts with breast cancer in the '80s and the heart surgery in the '90s. Each of these illnesses actually seemed to be followed by a period of good mental and physical health (the last time I saw her do an interview where she seemed not altered was when Larry King interviewed her, post-heart surgery -- although, granted it may just have been her proximity to Larry King that made her look particularly lucid). But then she always seems to go downhill again.

The tabloids have been tracking her prescription pill problem for 40 years. About 15 years ago, STAR Magazine must have caught her red-handed or something, because she actually gave them an "exclusive" interview (and quite a lengthy interview -- she was chatty in a way she never is) where she said that she'd been in a car accident as a young adult and had back and neck problems from that and this had led to prescription pain mediation which, 40 years later, she continued to use on and off. You know she would never talk about that (or to a tabloid) willingly unless she was backed into a corner.

Later, a moving company she'd hired sold pictures to a tabloid of her "hoarder home" which showed a huge mess and a bunch of drug paraphernalia. She wrote a response to the webmaster of her own fansite, and although her explanation about how the pics were a setup seemed like it could be legit, the rambling nature of her response did her no favors. I'll post it next...

LIES!! LIES!! LIES!! It's KATE JACKSON here please read!!

Hi, Christos, Everyone,

I want to personally assure you that the horrible lies and staged photographs currently being printed about me are, without exception, TOTALLY false! I'm sure you already know that.

These past three years helping Farrah have not been easy. When she slipped away, I thought I had prepared myself, but I realized immediately that I had not. *I miss her every day. She hated these vultures and liars who will tear a person's beautiful home up, plant drug things, etc. for money. We came home from Spring Break & discovered mold growing in our beautiful little cottage. I immediately took Taylor to a hotel, for the mold appeared to be black, toxic Stachbachys, and can be fatal to human beings. Its presence in the house was not disclosed to us when we bought it, however after calling to report the finding of it, I discovered it had been illegally not disclosed to me and had been there all the time. It had made us both very ill, but we did not know the cause until we left town for 2 weeks, returned, and without my ndailey housecleaning, it had broken through surface areas all over. We have not lived in it since Spring Break. I have been with Farrah since Sept. 2006, splitting my time taking my son to & from school as he did hyis homework in her living nroom. Farrah loved Taylor, and would always call, "Where is that big, handsome boy of mine?" As he entered the room she held out her arms, hugged him tightly, and kissed him on the cheek. She was wonderful and funny right up until her final hours.

The last time I was at my house for more than a minute, a friend had hired some men to help lift heaqvy boxes in the garage. Rather than do that, they took every box out and threw them all over the backyard. When I arrived and took my 1st look at the leader, I was alarmed. I remember thinking,"This man is a criminal & has been in jail. He looks like a heavy drug user, too. I told Taylor to go across the street & play with his friends. I had offered to pay a friend in financial trouble (who had borrowed some money from me)if she could do errands for me, grocery shopping, etc. when I had promised to take Farrah to her treatments. She had agreed. I was not aware she told nanyone she was my "personal assistent". She was not. However, rather than feel like a "paid friend", she elevated her status to make herself feel better and admitted to me an hour ago that she called herself my "personal assistent". Shd hired the junk nhaulers from the phone book to take the refrigerator, which was broken beyond repair, out of the house and to the junkyard. Heavy items stored in the garage had come crashing down on me one recent afternoon, so she hired them to come back the next day to stack them back neatly in the garage, at my brequest. However, when they took the 'fridge out of the house, they realized it was my house by photos nof my friends and myself, asked her, and she unwisely told them "Yes". The crimal looking one somehow took my cell phone # when I placed it upon a box to lok around at the mess they had created. He began to stalk me on the telephone a few days later. He once called 42 times within about 2 hours. He told Pamela I owed him money. I did not. He had, evidently, gone to my home, broken in, torn it up from top to bottom, "planted" things that I have NEVER in my life seen before, such as what I am told is a "bong" in my home and photographed it. He and his three workers evidently thre trash around my home, made piles of things I cannot identify from the photos they then took, and sold a terrible, false, libelious story or stories to the tabloids. These people are worse trash than what they claimed to find in my home, such as "rat feces". I will bring lawsuits against them, the tabloids who printed this false and malicious stories and staged photographs.

(con't)

(con't)

I will bring lawsuits against them, the tabloids who printed this false and malicious stories and staged photographs. I want to assure you, who have always been so kind to me, that the tabloids have printed total lies about me, my used-to-be beautiful home, annd "staged phottographs of things I have never seen before. Thhis evil man has lied about me for money. You do not need to worry, everything is all right. I am fine, except for the sadness I feel after the loss of one of the most uniqued, beatiful, funny, brave women in the world, someone I am proud to say I loved, and was loved in friendship and sisterhood by, our beloved Angel, Farrah Fawcett. My friend of thirty three years, with whom I laughed and laughed and laughed. You can help me by NOT BUYING these horrible tabloids who have printed these terrible lies about me. DO NOT BUY THEM. Read them if you must, but put them back and DO NOT SUPPORT THESE EVIL PEOPLE WITH YOUR MONEY. That is the only way to hurt them for their outrageous lies about me at this sad time as I mourn the death of my friend. I TRUST YOU& know you will help me in this. Farrah, too, HATED these printers of such hurtful lies. PLEASE, HELP US & so many otheradmirable celebrities they hurt. DO NOT BUY THEM! Be well. Love, Kate

Didn't Kate have a baby with Andrew Stevens?

I hate you, R31, I was just about to come on and post that awful line!

Kate was sooooo bad in this. She stares at her fellow actor all wide-eyed but doesn't listen to a thing they say. I howl when Ontkean (indeed beautiful and the best actor in the bunch) finally tells her he has been with a man and she stares back, then gets up and asks if he wants veal for dinner, he repeats it and she tries another line and you can tell she is playing DENIAL! DENIAL! And it's just too fucking MUCH. Thank God she didn't get the role in "Kramer..."

I do love the film though, a guilty pleasure that was important to me in my youth. When I was a young man, I wanted a Zach so badly but, as I got older, I became more and more Harry Hamlin every year.

R64 Yes, Kate Jackson was supposed to be writing her memoir called The Smart One. I was interested and wanted to buy it but every time I turned around the publication of it had been pushed to a future date. The last I saw it is supposed to be published in 2020. I doubt that it will ever see the light of day. I've never seen a book being put off for such a long period of time. She obviously has issues.

R71 Kate Jackson did not have a baby with Andrew Stevens or anyone else. She adopted a boy in later years.

There have been many lesbian/bisexual rumors about Kate. Apparently she has had relationships with ladies, especially one in particular. Swings both ways which is not unusual for Hollywood.

R74 Apparently Kate had a same-sex affair with Marcia Strassman (born the same years as Kate) who appeared on Welcome Back Kotter. According to rumor Marcia bought Kate a motorcycle for her birthday, so there appeared to be something going on there.

The last time I saw Michael Ontkean was in the George Clooney film "The Descendants." Ontkean had a non-speaking, blink-and-you'll-miss-it role as one of the cousins waiting for the family inheritance that Clooney had control of. It took me a minute to realize it was him. Still looked pretty good after all these years. I'm not sure if he was even in the ending credits. I think he was...

Oooo,oooo, Mr. Kotter!

Your wife is a lez!

Kate and Cher were good friends. Chaz said she had a huge crush on Kate and Kate came over to the house often.

To quote one of the characters in the film:

Ontkean was a "hot little number".

But not as hot as he was in "Maid to Order".

R75 I noticed that too. I remember thinking, is that Michael Ontkean? Why doesn't he have any lines?

Turns out, he pretty much retired from acting years ago and moved full-time to Hawaii with his wife, (where The Descendants was filmed) . She's the former actress, Jamie Smith Jackson, (star of "Go Ask Alice") and has her own real estate company. She was also in the MOW Satan's School for Girls alongside Kate Jackson.

Sorry, the above was meant for R76

Thank for the interesting info, r80.

^^Thanks*

LOVE KATE JACKSON IN THIS MOVIE AND ROBERTA FLACK's SONG...

Like others have said, the ending is so heartbreaking. Sooo obvious that Claire still loves Zach and hasn't gotten over him and he can sense it and walks away from her. Claire sadly watching Zach drive away always breaks me up. And then the lovely/melancholy Roberta Flack song comes on...

This movie came out when I was about 8 years old, so there was no way I was going to see it then, but the Roberta Flack song was ubiquitous at the time. I could never understand the lyrics at the end of the song that Roberta repeats, so in my 8 year old head I assumed they were 'Hands off my pussy'. In retrospect, those probably weren't the lyrics.

[quote]It was a period piece at the time

What?!! No it wasn't.

[quote]Michael Douglas was offered, I think, a role in the movie. He turned it down, I suppose because it might have ruined his career. Of course, when it became "brave and popular" for a straight actor to play a gay role, he did so. Although, to give him credit, I think he was one of first straight male stars to do.

What?! No he wasn't.

Tom Hanks, Al Pacino, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Kevin Bacon, Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Will Smith, Matt Damon, Jude Law, Richard Gere, Daniel Day Lewis, Johnny Depp, and Robin Williams - among many others - are but a handful of then already established stars who identified as heterosexuals (whether they were or not is just as relevant as whether Douglas himself has or hasn't had bisexual experiences), who played homosexual roles in films years - some even decades - before Michael Douglas stepped into the set of Will and Grace as a mere guest actor in a sitcom, something dozens of also already established hetero stars had already done in countless TV shows as well (I know this is a long run-on sentence, but it's meant to sound like a Julia Sugarbaker rant).

[quote]It caused a huge stir at the time it was released in the Reagan era. I was 21 when I saw it and am now 58..

Unless you saw some advanced pre-screening of it two years before its release, either you are 55-56 years old now (as am I) or you were 23-24 when the movie came out in 1982. Do the math.

[quote]the movie is nearly 40 years old.

It's exactly 35 years old, too early to qualify it as nearly forty years old. You're like those people who have been calling Madonna a sixty-year-old hag since 2010.

Do we think Bart survived the 80s?

R-87, I bet you haven't been laid in a year! So someone's math is incorrect and I was wrong about Michael Douglas being one of the first established stars to play a gay role. You act as if it were a life and death matter. You need to get out of the house more.

Lyrics to "Making Love." Written by Burt Bacharach, Bruce Roberts, and Carole Bayer Sager. Recorded by Roberta Flack.

Here close to our feelings we touch again

We love again

Remember when we thought

Our hearts would never mend

And we're all the better for each other

There's more to love, I know

Than making love

Here no more confusion, we see our lives

We live our lives

Remember when we thought

We never would survive

But now neither one of us is breaking

There's more to love, I know

Than making love

Some things never change

Some things sometimes do

And now I'm feeling strong enough to let you in

And now neither one of us is breaking

Now we know there's more to love

Than making love

And I'll remember you and making love

And I'll remember you

And I'll remember you

And I'll remember you

And I'll remember you

R89, R55. If you intend to post here, learn the proper way to reference other posts.

No dash between the R and the reply number. Thus it's R89, not R-89.

[quote](the last time I saw her do an interview where she seemed not altered was when Larry King interviewed her, post-heart surgery -- although, granted it may just have been her proximity to Larry King that made her look particularly lucid)

LOL!

R13 did it?!?

I'll post the way I like....

[quote]Kate absolutely was a favorite to get an Oscar nomination. Liz Smith wrote about in her column and I read it in other places as well. It's a shame that they snubber her.

If they hadn't snubbered her, we would now be on our 600th "Least Deserving Oscar Nomination in HISTORY!" thread.

She is so community theater.

R94, you seem to be the strung up asshole who hasn't gotten laid in a while, what with your obdurate insistence in making your posts difficult to follow by not adhering to our easy format (thus making it impossible for people to close con on the people you're referencing and making it hard to make any sense of your posts), and especially the offense you took at being corrected.

Are you new here? We correct people all the time and you need a thicker skin. Better that than spreading false information by way of gossip.

Close con >>> click on*

To [R51]:

Check out Screen Archives Entertainment screen archives.com, for updated soundtrack information.

Can't believe it took 35 years for this soundtrack to finally get released!

(On the other hand, there isn't a lot of music in the film, but what's there is, "cherce.")

I'm so surprised Harry Hamlin has not been mentioned as a hottie yet in this thread

Another aspect about this movie is that it is so damned slowwwwww....... And I still can't understand what Wendy Hiller is doing in it at all, except to provide a reason for Ontkean and Jackson to meet again years later. And all those long, drawn-out moments of Ontkean just pondering....

And what about that sort of subplot involving the woman with the double mastectomy? Is she there to show us Ontkean is burning out? WTF!

But, apart from that, the sequences between Hamlin and Ontkean show a real chemistry between them, from their first meeting, when doctor Ontkean examines patient Hamlin, who then has a funny description of gradually revealing more and more drugs he is taking casually. But the flirting between them is clear on several levels.

Apart from that, one of my favorite images of Ontkean is of him skating around the rink in SLAP SHOT, wearing nothing but a jock strap. Very hot.

And I'm still affected by the image of the film's last shot, of the crossroads in their lives, where Jackson lives at one end of an ascending drive, while Ontkean drives away down the other. The separation is complete.

It would take me another 3 years, before I, too, ended the relationship with my wife, came out, and journeyed forth to find my own life as an openly gay man. And I sometimes wonder if MAKING LOVE didn't have something to do with it.

R86 How did you get "Hands off my pussy" out of "I'll remember you"?

I get the feeling Ontkean had a bigger role in "Descendents" and it was cut down so much that he looked like an extra. I don't think Alexander Payne would put him in the background where we would get pulled out of the movie (such as it was, not a big fan) and say "There's Willie from 'The Rookies'!"

By the way, sweet as he is onscreen, Ontkean had a bit of a bitch reputation off-screen. A friend who wrote one of the movies we are discussing here told me that a director was trying to tell him something to improve, then looked down and saw that Ontkean was peeing on the director's shoes.

R100 I noted upthread that I had been married about a year when I saw the movie. I remember taking a day off and sneaking into the theater in mid afternoon of a weekday at Hulen Mall in Fort Worth. There was one other man in the cinema.

I went on a diet that day and subsequently lost 40 lbs. And then had an affair with a cowboy.

That movie had an effect on me.

I saw the movie, hiding in the back of a theater miles from where I lived, so I wouldn't be recognized. I still remember two young queens shrieking when Kate's character slaps Michael's. "You hit him again, girl!".

Ontkean did a 3way film with Margot Kiidder and Ray Sharkey and he also shows his ass.

"Making Love" was beautifully made and the choice of the theme song was awesome. I've watched it several times in the past.

To me, it's one of the greatest gay movies of all time. We are not beaten up in it, Michael gets to live happily ever after, it's not about being a victim, it's what real life is like for a lot of people coming out. Harry's character is a partier so there's drugs and lots of sex, but that's normal for WeHo even now for some. I thought Brokeback Mountain was a huge step backward to movies about how gays can never be happy and will always be punished and even killed. Making Love was the kind of movie we need more and more of - where our psyche and subconscious is being shown that there's nothing wrong with being gay. I don't go to or support movies that portray us as victims anymore. It's been done and done and done. Then life imitates art and on it goes.

R107 Good observation! I also dislike 'gays are victims' movies. Show us as being normal - which we are.

Too cutesy though. Quoting lines from an old movie they'd watched many times. Puke.

A friend told me about seeing the film in Westwood, a fairly rich part of L.A. of course so you'd think it'd be evolved. But many in the theatre erupted in shrieks of horror when the male to male kiss happened. That was 1982. Now you can see that on daytime TV. We've come a long way, baby.

I loved the horror music that does play, however, on soundtrack when Zach is eyeing the gay bar from his car, debating going inside. My friends and I would chant, "Don't go into the Motherlode... don't go into the Motherlode..." during that part.

Why was Ontkean's character telling that patient that he'd still be just as attracted to Claire if she had no tits, when he wasn't attracted to her in the first place? He misled that poor titless woman.

I thought the blonde guy that Zach ended up with was a bimbo, and I think he probably ended up getting sick and dying. Blonde guys are almost always bottoms and he would have been promiscuous back then. So, I don't see the happy ending with Zach that the rest of you do. Although, I do think he ended up with a nice, successful Jewish guy in the end. He's definitely still alive, married, and has an apartment in Manhattan and a house in the Hamptons.

Well, R110, what he told the woman was true: he would be attracted to his wife exactly the same amount whether she had tits or not. That amount: none.

Two men in matching pastel sweaters, R110. A match made in Gay Heaven. And. best of all, blondie was NOT HARRY HAMLIN. (Damn, what was Harry's character name? I am spacing...)

Michael Ontkean in Slap Shot

I dated a married closet case who didn't want to see this movie as he would get sad (and he too loved Rupert Brooke).

I just checked and Michael Ontkean isn't going to be in the 'Twin Peaks' reboot because he's "fully retired from show business".

Ontkean is at his most adorable when he swoops in and takes that trophy at the end of that clip. Should have been a HUGE star. Again, I think he got a reputation for being difficult along the way.

I saw it in college too. I was coming out of the movie when a bunch of the jock homophobes from my dorm came piling out, pretending of course that they were okay with the gays when really their girlfriends dragged them to it and they had to hide their boners. My first love was there too. He said it was "pretty good," which was funny as it bothered me that they were so well to do and privileged and when she follows the bar phone number to a working class guy, you can almost smell the degradation.

From many of the posts I read here, including mine, it appears this movie had a profound effect on a lot of us, influencing us to be more open about ourselves.

Glad for all of you so affected.

More power to us.

Alexander Payne might have given Ontkean a small role in The Descendants with billing as a favor so that Ontkean could hold on to his SAG insurance. Directors do it all the time. It might have also required a line that could have been cut out before the final print.

R108. we have not come that far. most shows have gays as little jesters to entertain rich women, especially on bravo shows. makes my skin crawl. just like a woman i know would sometimes think she was bing hip by calling me blanche . STFU. this stupid talk of grouping all gays into little cliches and then calling them "my gays" screw you

Agree actually, R120, but that is more fallout from the "Queer Eye..."/"Will and Grace" bullshit period. I hate that too. But when it comes to male on male kissing, we have indeed come far past the censors. That's what I was referring to in my post.

Remember how freaked out the country was (and how much advertising was lost) when "thirtysomething" had two men in bed together (and they weren't even kissing). Those days seem long ago.

I recall chatting about this film with a straight woman after its debut. She was amused by the giant tub of Vaseline on the nightstand next to Harry Hamlin's bed.

LOL, I think that mega jar of Vaseline is on the end table of the guy Kate visits after finding his number in Zack's coat pocket. Not exactly subtle.

Hamlin and Ontkean were warned by agents that these roles could ruin their careers. Didn't happen.

[quote]I thought Brokeback Mountain was a huge step backward to movies about how gays can never be happy

A different place and time.

Movies aren't supposed to be always happy or propaganda.

I don't think it was nearly as awful as a lot of people on here think. I've seen far worse - mostly independent gay movies that a few minutes in became unwatchable. Great cinema, no. But for its time it was not bad.

I read in Wikipedia that Michael Ontkean tried to prevent clips of the film from being featured in the movie "The Celluiod Closet." Is that true?

[quote]Both would go on to arguably their most memorable roles - Hamlin in L.A. Law and Ontkean in Twin Peaks.

Twin Peaks was almost a full decade later. I don't think Ontkean would have agreed Making Love didn't hurt his career in the years in between. And Twin Peaks didn't exactly make him a star, either.

Seems Hollywood greenlit a lot of films with gay storylines or elements for release in 1982, but after AIDS became a thing those just dried up for awhile.

[quote]Apparently Kate had a same-sex affair with Marcia Strassman (born the same years as Kate) who appeared on Welcome Back Kotter. According to rumor Marcia bought Kate a motorcycle for her birthday, so there appeared to be something going on there.

Ohmygawd. In 1983 or so Marcia Strassman and Kate Jackson came into the office where I worked as a temp. They were the biggest, baddest, butchest dykes we'd ever seen, and were obviously girlfriends. We ere all a bit stunned, and talked about it forever after. They didn't seem to care a bit and must have known we all could see that they were lesbians. Nobody ever believed me. I read this post and that, "Good. It wasn't just me!"

Yep, R29, and then talk about "gays as victims". Gays were sick in every single movie and TV movie for about a decade or so. The road to hell with good intentions and all that but still... I remember walking out of "Philadelphia" or one of those and my gay friend saying, "For fucks sake, we're not ALL dying." And it made me laugh, gallows humor or not. Bad taste or not, I got his point. For while there, it was our ONLY story.

I hated [italic]Philadelphia[/italic]. Okay, I didn't hate it, but I was deeply disappointed and unimpressed with it considering Tom Hanks used his Oscar speech to out his old drama teacher. That's why [italic]In & Out[/italic] needed to happen, just as all those pop songs glorifying co-dependency were why Helen Reddy's career needed to happen.

[quote]And Twin Peaks didn't exactly make him a star, either.

I watched Twin Peaks a couple of years ago. While Ontkean was easy on the eyes, he was not exactly a great actor. The scene where he reacts to his girlfriend's death was pretty painful to watch, and not because you feel his emotional pain.

While Making Love might have been a set-back for the actors, I don't think any of them were destined for big movie careers. They all could be appealing and I think Jackson and Hamlin excelled in certain roles, but I am not sure any of them would have been stars on the big screen even if that movie was never made.

R132 I was also disappointed in Philadelphia. I had seen an episode of LA LAW dealing with the same issue and they did a much better job. However, I disagree with you on In and Out. I might be in a minority with that as well. I thought it was only okay, and somewhat patronizing. I admittedly had high expectations, but worst of all, although I though it was cute, I didn't find it all that funny.

Yeah, I walked out on "In and Out". Might feel differently now but at the time, as a younger gay guy, I did not like gay being portrayed by obviously gay behavior -- Yentl" and show tunes and all the cliches. I thought it should be defined by who one gets a crush on, love and sex, not knowing the score to "South Pacific". I'm sure I have mellowed since then. But I fought it so much during those "Will and Grace" years.

my bf did p.r. for "Making Love" and I went to several screenings. I was temping at ABC and invited a young female co-worker from Brooklyn to a screening and she brought her boyfriend. He and she walked out when the gay stuff started happening. He couldn't handle it. Probably was a closet case. the gay love scene is pretty hot and daring for two well-known young actors.

Does anyone think it's b.o. was underreported? To discourage further films? It was packed where I saw it.

R135: W&G was and is an embarrassment to the gay community. That they're reviving it along with the fact that the unwatchable-from-start-to-finish [italic]Full House[/italic] also is getting a revival is proof that right now is mainstream media hitting rock bottom.

[quote]not knowing the score to "South Pacific"

Thanks to having the movie on tape I had huge chunks memorized when I was 8.

Mr. Ontkean was so cheeky.

Wow! What a hot ass...I'd gladly pound it with my big cock.

It's the Canadian thing. Great full butts.

And yes, R138. I am not near as militant about it as I was then so I, too, have learned a lot more music from "South Pacific" -- and lots of Broadway, actually -- than I ever would have imagined. Catching up on classics like "The King and I" and discovering new stuff like "Dear Evan Hansen." I still don't know if i'd enjoy "In and Out", though.

This is an excellent thread. Some of the posts here are really touching. I've always been fascinated by this film and how well (or poor) it did at the box office and how people responded. It seems to be largely forgotten (I don't believe it's on Blu-ray yet).

Reading these posts give a LOT of context to the climate of 1982.

r107 - very thoughtful post. Definite food for thought.

Remember it was a 20th Century Fox release -- not some special branch either. I remember the "This is a First" momentous ad campaign, alas with a portrait of the three leads staring at the camera in earnest and demanding one see it (all three are never in a scene together in the film). Fox tried hard.

But it was all just too CLEAN. One of those where you can see all the fingerprints on it. He's a doctor, she's a high level TV exec, he's not just an author but a well known author. Success! Success all over. No freaks here. And then add in moments like poor Timmy wanting to get a cheeseburger after Hamlin hot sex -- and being rejected, not for sex but for the cheeseburger, the girl scout who makes Hamlin buy all her cookies for scaring off customers, and, yes, the woman who screams at doc when her husband leaves her ("Think I lost my knack?") and it's a mess. Don't even get me started on the windbag old lady.

But I think a lot of us loved it anyway. And I loved Barry's next one, "Crimes of Passion", even more. Which was originally supposed to star, get this, a young hot Kirstie Alley (who turned it down when she saw all the nudity) and Jeff Bridges. Just as well. Kathleen was perfect.

Does anyone know why Kate Jackson doesn't like Cheryl Ladd?

for it's time and subject matter this was as far from a "lifetime/hallmark" as it could be. the theme was very daring for the time, hence the sparse atendance and damage to the male leads' careers. The "happy" ending was a revelation to a generation of married closeted gays. few dream such an existence was possible. other than the holbrook tv movie"that certain summer", gay relationship were always depicted negatively. kudos to all who made this, even if from today's viewpoint it seems corny and dated

Who played the blond boyfriend?

michael's ass was stupendous in slapshot, but he didn't age particularly well and was barely recogizable in clooney's, the descendants

Miss Kate Jackson is a wonderful TV star, but a movie star she ain't.

Even if she'd been able to do Kramer vs Kramer, she wouldn't have had Meryl's career.

I was in school and living in Birmingham, where she is from, when Kate Jackson got married to hot midget Andrew Stevens. And I loved how her mom took out a wedding announcement in the paper so there was Kate's ultra-famous "Angels" face next to all the others and the small headline, ":Lucy Kate Jackson Weds Andrew Stevens." It was cute and I still have a copy, a little torn but it still lasted far longer than that actual marriage.

I wish they had used Kate's other "Rookies" co-star Sam Melville...he was hot.

As was Mr. Tyne Daly. That show had a great cast. None of whom seemed to work again save for Kate and Ontkean.

P.S,. Remember when Tyne showed up as a mentally challenged girl who witnessed a crime? And they wouldn't let her testify because of her, um, handicap? She was heartbreaking, especially when she saw film of herself before drugs were improving her (a total ripoff of "Flowers for Algernon"/"Charlie"). I wonder if that episode holds up now.

R146, blonde boyfriend is John Calvin, a 6'3" New York-born (11-29-1947) actor, with over 100 credits since 1971, and inactive in films/TV since 1995, per imdb.com

Its hard to imagine how this film was a career killer because of the gay theme. The movie Cruising was released right before or right after it, starred Al Pacino, and that didn't hurt his career. It was on Netflix several years ago and pretty explicit. Pacino was even tied up nude in one scene. Making Love seems tame compared to Cruising and both were rated R.

Cruising was about stereotypical homos, zoo animals to be observed for amusement. making love was about people a lot of middle americans knew and could relate to. the former confirmed conventional wisdom, the latter challenged it. as many who saw the movie in theaters in 1982 have noted, the "kiss" (between two "regular" guys) elicited shock, gasps, catcalls of disgust, and people walking out.

oh jeez, by the time pacino did curising in 1980, he had already done dog day afternoon in 1975, playing a man married to a pre-op trans

suck on that dl haters

Per IMDB.com: At least fifteen leading male Hollywood actors turned down the lead role of Zach in this movie. These included Harrison Ford, Michael Douglas, Richard Gere, Tom Berenger, Peter Strauss, and William Hurt, the latter of whom would within three years play a gay role in Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985) and win a Best Actor Oscar for it. They all expressed reservations about the subject matter.

I love the first scene in the movie, where Zach and Claire are checking a potential new house purchase, with Zach just sitting alone in the the bare house, pondering and reflecting, to perhaps "What am I getting myself into?"

Michael has fine skin, the kind that doesn't age well. Is he wearing a piece in the recent photo?

R158, I think he's been wearing a piece even in "Making Love." Please notice that his hair is always shaggy, front hairline unseen, and back is full and untapered. But his handsome, Ivy League features overrule all. And regarding Kate Jackson, she is beautiful, at 5' 8", lovely features, fine actress and a whole lot of woman.

r156 If you didn't live through the era, you really have no place to pass judgement about the way things were. It was a very different time. The LGBT community has come a long way in 40 years, most of it in the last 20 years, and people who didn't live through the era often don't understand.

As r155 explained, the primary difference was that Cruising, and Dog Day Afternoon, treated gays, and transgenders, as freaks, anomalies, people who were not normal and should therefore be looked down up in disgust and/or pity. Those movies maintained the status quo as far as society's views of homosexuality and transgenders.

Making Love treated gays as regular people, not freaks. Gays were just like your neighbors. they loved and lost, dated and kissed, found new love and kept on living their lives. Nothing more normal or everyday than that. And that portrayal challenged the status quo and made middle America uncomfortable. It was something that had rarely been done before, certainly not in a mainstream Hollywood movie.

I watched Cruising a couple years back. In retrospect, it's really a fascinating movie. I moved to Greenwich Village a few years after the movie was released. I remember I couldn't wait to get myself to some of the neighborhood locations. haha. In many ways, the movie was a pretty accurate depiction. The only thing they really got wrong was the sound track. It wasn't hard rock playing in the bars, it was dance music, or what they used to call tribal music.

The photo(on the right) at r147 looks like G.W.Bush with curly hair!!!!

If you watch the this movie on YouTube, the Vaseline scene is around the one hour and thirty minute mark...

There's also controversy surrounding an earlier scene where Zach buys Bart's book and goes on ahead outside the bookstore. I believe Bart is looking on and in the background is Aids in huge letters from the store behind him...

If my memory serves me, Pacino wasn't seen to have gay sex in Cruising. He never even kissed a man. Same as Dog Day Afternoon. It's one thing to say you are gay but another to actually demonstrate it physically, which Michael Ontkean and Harry Hamlin did in Making Love.

Also the above poster who claimed that Tom Cruise played gay before Michael Douglas. Cruise has never played gay on film and I doubt he would considering the rumors about his private life.

This was released when I was a senior in HS. I skipped school and went to see it at the Chez Artiste in Denver. At the time I was enthralled since it was the only gay themed movie I'd seen. The first time I witnessed men holding hands in a theater

Kate Jackson was the standout for me.

It's dated, but was groundbreaking for the time.

[quote]Cruise has never played gay on film and I doubt he would considering the rumors about his private life.

If Alan Autry can do it on an episode of [italic]Cheers[/italic] when I was a baby, then what's his excuse in 20fucking17? It's not like he's never done research for the role.

[quote]michael's ass was stupendous in slapshot, but he didn't age particularly well and was barely recogizable in clooney's, the descendants

I think he looked pretty damn spectacular for a 65-year-old.

The hot brunette date at the beginning of the film was portrayed (as asked upthread) by John Dukakis, who was the son of Michael Dukakis.

I worked with him on a play in the early 1980s and he was really sweet (and quite hot). I thought then that he might have a big show biz career but he apparently left show business not too long after the film's release.

Why did she hate Cheryl Ladd? Simple - Pure jealous when Charlie's Angels didn't sink and the NEW blonde walked in and American was rooting for the underdog!

John Dukakis = Timmy! The rejected cheeseburger guy.

Without cheating and looking it up, anyone care to guess what the one single Golden Globe nomination was for this film? Not repeated at the Oscars to some folks' surprise.

They are all B-level actors. None was going to have great success no matter what films they did.

r164 - What/where was the Chez Artiste?

....

Cher, Kate Jackson & Marcia Strassman used to go out to L.A. gay bars and play a game they called "Bitch." The object was who could be the biggest one. One time Cher held out her cocktail at arm's length for awhile, then dropped it.

The interviewer asks (at 4:20) if Zach discovers that he is gay because the Kate Jackson character is concentrating on her career too much.

For R171 from not a current and soon to be former Denverite (not R164)

Chez Artiste is a small 3 screen movie theater in University Hills shopping are at S. Colorado Blvd. and E. Yale Ave.

It's part of the Landmark Theater chain specializing in independent, foreign and revival films.

The other two Landmark theaters in Denver are the Mayan at 1st Ave. and Broadway and the Esquire at E. 6th Ave. and Downing St.

here r171

I remember the film and flipping through this thread seeing the movie's pics and clips makes me sad. Those men were beautiful and this was a big deal at the time. Time moves so quickly and in the time between then and now all hell broke loose. Ontkean was a beautiful man as was Hamlin and this story certainly takes me back to my twenties and all the heartache of young love and subsequent loss since- loss that I never anticipated at the time the movie came out. I am so lucky to be alive and well (63), but sometimes I wonder.

Thank you so much r175 - Nice to know the Esquire and Mayan are still there. When I left Denver, the Aladdin was still standing.

Was Kate known to be difficult? She is definitely giving me lez vibes in that interview.

r178 Sadly The Aladdin is now a Walgreen's. The first time I saw GWTW in 1975 was at The Aladdin.

While Harry Hamlin is handsome, I though Michael Ontkean was hotter. Harry Hamlin, though seems like a nice guy, who is very accepting, warm and gentlemanly. As Michael Ontkean, I don't know much about him, except he likely avoids discussing the movie. Am I correct?

Yes r180 , I know. I managed to be in Denver and rescue a chunk of Aladdin brick from the rubble before they built that damn Walgreens. I don't think you saw GWTW there. I started as a doorman there in 1975 when a return of Sound of Music was playing.

r182 Now that I think of you're right. The first time was at The Thornton 3. I did see it there later1980ish.

Other old Denver theaters still standing but no longer movie theaters, mostly music venues

The Oriental

The Federal

The Gothic

The Ogden

The Bluebird

John Calvin, the blond boyfriend of Zach at the end of the movie, played the son-in-law,on the Paul Lynde show. Paul was always giving him a hard time...

r184 - I'm glad they're still standing however they've been re-purposed. As a kid I was always fascinated by the interiors of Denver's movie palaces and how their designs/decorations reflected the decades they were built in. I'm old enough to remember the Denham (which I think began as a Vaudeville/legitimate theater). If memory serves it was one of those old wooden theaters that burnt down as did the Paramount. I loved the Centre, it was so garish. Which theater was on S. Broadway that had kind of a 50's Atomic Jetsons decor, the Federal? I grew up on Saturday matinees at the Fox Aurora. It was such a dichotomy as inside it had some semblance of Hollywood decor but looked like a quonset hut on the outside. A group of us eschewed senior prom and did dinner and dancing and a midnight screening of Pink Flamingos at the Bluebird. Are the Continental and Century 21 still there? I saw several movies at the Cooper ACTUALLY in Cinerama. Then there's the Aladdin. Built in 1926, it was the first theater built west of the Mississippi specifically for sound movies. TSOM was playing when I started there. Then: 2001, a Space Odyssey, Zandy's Bride, Earthquake (in Sensurround of course), and Tommy.

Boy, does this bring back memories! I remember seeing this movie about ten years to the day after I had finally gotten up the courage to leave my wife of twenty-five years finally admitting to her at 50 years old that I was gay. Seeing this movie really brought it all back.

R187 So you were 60 in 1982?

You win eldest eldergay of the DL!

R177 Thanks for expressing what I feel. I was 24 in 1982.

[quote]Without cheating and looking it up, anyone care to guess what the one single Golden Globe nomination was for this film? Not repeated at the Oscars to some folks' surprise.

In answer to r169's question, I believe the song Making Love got a Golden Globe nod.

Huh. I'm two years younger than r177 and two years older than r189 .....

Kate was a within one vote of receiving a Best Actress Oscar nomination. Debra Winger got an extra vote for Officer and a Gentleman and blocked her. That one vote changed her life and career forever.

Denver residents please start your own thread.

You win, R190.

r194 What's my prize?

A kiss from Michael Ontkean.

I saw this on cable as a teenager and thought that the Harry Hamlin character was seeing Michael Ontkean's character because he was afraid he had AIDS.

Cheapskate, R196!

Everyone knows that the best prize is a BASKET of kisses.

Everyone knows that Kate Jackson wrote the best hand, not Meryl. She deserved the penmanship medal.

As your prize, I will sing you the song the same way I recorded it: half asleep, face down on the couch, my mouth barely opening.

Looking at the clip a sad part is adults know no longer dress or act like adults

Wasn't Hamlin married to a trannie before Nic Sheridan?

The first time I saw this movie I was 16 years old. It ran on HBO, but I would only dare watch it late at night after everyone else had gone to bed. It was the first film with gay characters (who weren´t murdered) that I had ever seen. I wondered what my own life would be like when I escaped my small town. I, like some other posters, really sympathized with Kate Jackson´s character and thought that Michael Ontkean was one of the most beautiful men in the world.

I watched it again when I was in my twenties, out, and high on the superciliousness of cynicism. I saw it with a few gay friends and we laughed through most of it, especially a gay bar scene where the patrons seemed to dress like lumberjacks.

Now, at the age of 50, I feel much more affinity with that first viewing. I recognize that it must´ve been hard to get made and harder still to cast, especially for the two gay roles. I take for granted what life was like for gays at the dawn of the eighties and how the closet was the only means of survival for a lot of us. That movie that played in the middle of the night on the crap TV in my parents´basement was a glimmer of hope that I would someday have a better life. So I recall it with the real emotion that I felt as a teenager rather than the dismissive derision I accorded it later on. Cynicism does not hold much appeal for me anymore.

And even in my twenties, I think the ending choked me up a bit, though I would never have copped to that.

Also, the theme song by Roberta Flack is truly beautiful. Understated, not quite melancholy, but accepting of change and the loss that comes with it.

To be honest, I thought the song ill-matched to the movie. "There's more to love than making love," and yet it was this very thing sex that caused him to leave her.

With the female voice, it felt like it was sung from Kate's point of view. "I remember you... and making love." which makes sense even if it was a "gay" film.

[quote]Cruise has never played gay on film and I doubt he would considering the rumors about his private life.

Are you sure?

Tom Cruise did indeed play gay. The fact that he's a fantasy character doesn't make Interview With The Vampire's Lestat any less gay. And pretty monogamous and heteronormative as well, to boot!

I saw this in a suburban theater. In that scene where they pan and show Ontkean's fabulous NY apartment, a Mary in the row behind us said in a rather loud staged whisper:

"OH MY! She's doing well for a new girl in town!"

bump

I got soundtrack CD. It is great. They misspelled Zach as Zack on the track titles. If anyone remembers the 1969-1976 "Marcus Welby, M.D." television series, some of the cues sound similar, also scored by Leonard Rosenman.

Leonard Rosenman also scored Rebel Without A Cause (I love the theme song) and other films.

I'm rewarding twin peaks and am still in love with Michael ontkean

It says that Michael Ontkean has retired from acting. i think that is just a dumb statement. i mean its really saying, i am not getting contacted by hollywood for ANYTHING, so look, i am done......but if someone comes with something, I WILL TAKE IT

A doctor who agrees to have lunch with his patient is waving a red flag.

[quote] Kate and Cher were good friends. Chaz said she had a huge crush on Kate and Kate came over to the house often.

Cher is a fair weather friend.

[quote] You bitches can laugh all you want, but Kate deserved an Oscar nomination. She was living with Andrew Stevens at the time.

So she deserved an Oscar nod for pretending to be a straight woman married to a straight man in real life while playing a straight woman married to a gay man in a movie?

Kate on phone (with choky voice): "And Daddy? (beat, beat, 3, 4...)"

Does anyone really think that Debra Winger deserved an Oscar nom over Kate's seminole performance in Making Love?

seminole???

Kate on phone: "How, Chief!"

R210, good for you, that soundtrack is hard to find these days.. And I did like the movie's theme song (the instrumental version of "Making Love", I guess).

[quote]Kate was a within one vote of receiving a Best Actress Oscar nomination. Debra Winger got an extra vote for Officer and a Gentleman and blocked her. That one vote changed her life and career forever.

Did they publish the vote tallies in your People magazine, hun?

It is funny that Debra wanted nothing to do with that Oscar nomination. I don't think she even showed up.

Kate wasn't even nominated for a Golden Globe!

Making Love was groundbreaking at the time. It wasn't so much the quality of the movie--it was the subject matter, and at the time, the subject matter was a hot potato and front and center. As a result, the movie was extremely important because it pushed the subject matter a bit closer to understanding and hopefully to acceptance. The movie broke the mold. Movies at the time didn't portray a husband struggling with his sexuality and having an affair with another man. Every little bit helped get us to where gay people needed to be at the time. 'Making Love' helped. It also helped that three leading characters were appealing and known, so the story could be told by people who the public already accepted.

Someone upthread said that it was like a Lifetime movie. Maybe so, but it worked at the time. The movie had a great deal of publicity. And gay people today still struggle with the same issues, but it's gotten better. And that was the point. The quality of the movie doesn't matter so much. By the way, the quality of the movie was fine at the time. But the content mattered more. And for that reason, it was a great movie and served its purpose.

I want to hear more about the Cooper Cinerama.

R225 Bravo! Well spoken.

He looks today a lot like Nino Castelnuovo looks today. Two old Italian men who were incredibly handsome when they were young. If you only knew them from recent photos you could never imagine how gorgeous they once were.

Robert Redford played a bisexual actor in 1965 in a featured role in a major Hollywood film.

Though to be honest he wasn't aware of it when he shot the film and was pissed about it when the movie was released in early '66.

R210 - I have been trying for years to put my finger on what that score reminds me of.... MARCUS WELBY! Yes, exactly. I need to re-watch this again and see if Zach's wussy obsession with Rupert Brooke and Gilbert & Sullivan still makes me want to frow up.

What was that video system Bart had with the colored lights?

"Why don't you just do us a favor and buy your own fucking toothpaste?! "

Sorry to hear Ontkean was an arrogant prick though with his privileged life, talented hockey playing and gorgeous good looks I suppose it was inevitable.

fyi, Kate made the same complaint about toothpaste in an interview about Andrew Stevens when they were married, probably just trying to be all aw-shucks and cutesy. "He squeezes the toothpaste from the top which makes me crazy!" or the like.

They were divorced a year later. Toothpaste. Riiiiiight...

R374...like having children makes you straight? haaaaaa. wake up , do you go out from your basement much? ignorant. btw. dom deluise had like 6 kids... biggest flamer in town, how bout neil sedaka, do i need to keep posting? homos can produce kids, who knows , maybe they used a turkey baster, whatever, but plenty of homos produce kids. your an idiot

R23, I believe Bart's home system was a Front Projection Television, wherein the 3 colored primary lights are behind you as they project image on a front large screen, connected with a VHS player at the time.

^^^ I meant R231.

My b/f gave me the DVD over a year ago, I have yet to open it. Even when the movie came out I wasn't keen to see it, I felt that it looked more like a Movie of the Week. The only gay movie that really moved me was Maurice. I thought Brokeback Mountain was too depressing and I usually like depressing movies.

R238, it's actually a pretty sincere film. Not a tragedy, but certainly with a bittersweet ending.

I posted upthread that I was spellbound by it as a teenager, laughed at it in my twenties, and came back around to it in my dotage (50).

Kate Jackson is quite good. I think she is the principal reason that I found her side of the story just as compelling as Michael Ontkean's. (He is beautiful and sympathetic, but not much more.) Harry Hamlin seemed like a cad to me when I was young; now I see him in a much more positive light.

The film has some made-for-TV qualities about it, but it also has heart.

I agree but when it goes awry, it REALLY goes awry -- the nasty girl scout, the boring old lady reading to the couple, all the bullshit directed to camera in pastel tones but ESPECIALLY "Crepe paper is a bitch to tear" (it isn't). I love Barry Sandler and he gets things right but he also delivers some doozies too.

Ontkean absolutely embarrasses himself the least.

When Bart tells Zach, 'Physician, heal thyself", I yelled out, "You did NOT just say that?!'

I know.

Another doozie is Zach reminding Bart that "People who need people" is his favorite lyric. Bart doesn't seem to be a people person to me so this line rings false. Plus we never heard Bart say it in the first place so it just reads like a random Barbra reference.

Bart is damaged and doesn't know it.

Bart is rather jaded but not cruel or conniving. He doesn't really make any apologies for who he is, and he does nudge Zach into coming into his own - and then rightly anticipates that Zach will continue on whatever path he chooses.

When I first saw this movie, I was a bit scared by Bart. Then as an adult, I became far closer to Bart than Zach.

All 3 leads have brown hair and brown eyes. It's fascinating.

Yeah but it is a bit cruel when Bart urges Zach to leave his wife -- and then won't even let him spend the night on the first traumatic night after Zach does just that. He's definitely a bitch there (a familiar bitch, alas. Lots of men play that "I've got a deadline, see ya later" game).

By the way, there was a novelization of "Making Love" that I bought in paperback -- and actually had the nerve to read out in public. A lifelong friend always reminded me that was what I was reading when we met (thank God he forgave it).

In the novel, Zach had already had sex with a college chum too. Not that this means anything in the scheme of the movie since it wasn't the same writer doing both.

Can anyone identify the record mood music Bart plays for Zach in the seduction scene?

This movie creeped me out as a kid because of Bart. He seemed twisted.

R245 is damaged and doesn't know it.

It feels like a Lifetime movie because you're watching it on television.

We are all damaged in some shape or form, r251, but we are not all sanctimonious and judgmental.

Lovely Nancy Olson (Oscar nominee for Sunset Blvd.), playing Zach's mom, must have had her role cut. She says only one line, at the dinner table: "Would anyone like any more meat?"

Zach should have replied yes to that.

Bruce LaBruce shares his affection for Arthur Hiller's pre-AIDS gay melodrama.

I love Bruce "Hustler White" La Bruce, always called him my evil twin. Never in a million years would've guessed he would love "Making Love" though. Like Todd Haynes and his disgust for "Longtime Companion", it seemed like exactly the kind of white bread movie Bruce would hate. Guess I was wrong.

[quote]To me, it's one of the greatest gay movies of all time. We are not beaten up in it, Michael gets to live happily ever after, it's not about being a victim, it's what real life is like for a lot of people coming out. Harry's character is a partier so there's drugs and lots of sex, but that's normal for WeHo even now for some. I thought Brokeback Mountain was a huge step backward to movies about how gays can never be happy and will always be punished and even killed. Making Love was the kind of movie we need more and more of - where our psyche and subconscious is being shown that there's nothing wrong with being gay. I don't go to or support movies that portray us as victims anymore. It's been done and done and done. Then life imitates art and on it goes.

Didn't realize Hepburn biographer Scott Berg wrote this.

Wrote what? The review? Not the movie which is authored by Barry Sandler.

R256, that was a great essay to read. Thanks for sharing.

Harry Hamlin was SO handsome at this point in his life - the gorgeous, sexy face, bedroom eyes, bee-stung lips and that beautiful head of nicely styled hair. A young male god.

Scott Berg aka A. Scott Berg wrote the story that screenplay was based on.

Harry Hamlin told USA Today the goal of Making Love "was to tell a real love story, to ... show people what was really going on in a part of society no one wanted to look at the time." But, he says, "the studio became more afraid as we were making the movie, and as a result, the final product was much more saccharine than any of us had anticipated. It wasn't that well received in many areas. Even the gay community didn't embrace it."

Hamlin says Making Love ended his film career, though he did rebound with a lead in the hit TV series L.A. Law from 1986 to 1991. "In the early 1980s, Hollywood was pretty much a cowboy town, and not in the sense of Brokeback Mountain," he says. "And if you're sitting around saying 'Let's put this actor as the romantic lead with so-and-so,' and they say 'He was just gay in this movie,' well, I think that may be how the thinking went. I had been doing nothing but studio features until that time, and after that I didn't work at all for a while and then rolled into television."

Dear Lord, I had forgotten about Lucy and her Boobie Prize, another cringe scene. "I'm gonna sing my heart out and they're gonna like me!" Suddenly the film is set in Arkansas?

Hamlin nails it. You could tell the studio put its fingerprints all over it, hence the clean normal bullshit. The bar and trick scenes are all pretty fun and accurate for the time. I bet that's where the creatives wanted to go.

And thanks for info on Scott Berg, I didn't realize the story wasn't by Sandler too.

Barry Sandler reported that he and Scott Berg were involved in the 1970s. It was Scott that pushed him to write the first gay coming out movie. Sandler felt that Hollywood had never dealt with that subject in a positive way, and the existing images of gay people in movies were very negative and very down beat. They were either suicidal or humiliating butts of jokes, or they had kind of ugly, negative imagery. Classic examples were The Detective and The Children’s Hour where people were arrested for homosexuality or they ended up killing themselves because they couldn’t face it. These were very negative images of gay people. Scott was very pivotal in terms of him trying to push in the direction of writing the first positive movie about a regular guy who is trying to come to terms with his sexuality and ends up accepting himself.

Sandler said he resisted it for a little while because he knew if I was going to do it that it would have to be something; it would be a major turning point in his career, but he would have to go out and admit that he was gay. You couldn't write this movie and be a pioneer of sorts and deal with this issue without coming forward with some kind of legitimacy from coming from a point of truth. He never hid it, so maybe people in the industry knew he was gay, but he was never public about it. Sandler knew if he decided to write the script, then he would have to take the next step. so he finally decided that he would do it. It was time. One of the caveats, he told Scott, was that he didn’t want to write it and then try to sell it, because he didn’t want to put weeks and weeks of his heart and soul into something that everybody would be afraid of and nobody would want to do. He preferred to go see if a studio would be interested in the project and that if the script turned out well, they would be willing to make the movie. He needed the studio’s assurance that they were at least open to the idea.

Scott was close to Claire Townsend, who was the project executive at 20th Century Fox, which was run by Sherry Lansing. Sherry was the first female studio executive: head of production. They went in and they said, “Great, yes, we definitely want to develop this project,” and it took two women to shepherd this project, particularly Sherry. She was the first woman. She had a lot on the line and she really went all out for this project. She stood before the board and said, “I want to make this movie.” So it was developed it at Fox. He turned the script in and everybody loved it. Daniel Melnick had a production company, IndiProd. Daniel was an estimable producer, having done Altered States and All That Jazz. He was the head of certain studios and he wanted to do this as his first movie for IndiProd. Daniel warned that the studio was about to be purchased by Marvin Davis, so they needed to start production fast. They signed Arthur Hiller to direct, and Arthur really responded to the script. There were very, very few changes. The movie that was made was pretty damn close to the script that was written.

I see.

Newly uploaded online- "HARRY HAMLIN 1982 Rare Unaired INTERVIEW Making Love

Didn't Arthur Laurents write the screenplay? I think its Lifetime tone was intentional. It was made for the audience that patronized the numerous multiplexes all over the flyover states. It was meant to have mass appeal.

I am with R258. I love Making Love! It came out when I was 11 years old. I had to sneak and watch it on cable after everyone was asleep. It is a keeper along with Latter Days and Circuit.

Lifetime didn't exist when this movie was made. Lifetime copied the style of movies that were made in the eighties and early nineties, with a tighter budget and TV actors. It was perfectly normal to have melodramas made for theatrical release back then.

An example of what a movie with this subject matter was up against in 1982 is my memory of the live audience reaction to Kate Jackson promoting the movie on The Tonight Show. I distinctly remember her stating that the movie is about homosexuality and loud boos coming from the studio audience in response.

I was 16 when this movie came out , but didn’t have the means or opportunity to surreptitiously watch it at that time, as others described. My first experience doing that was four years later with “My Beautiful Launderette,” which I saw at a theater by myself, terrified that I’d be seen entering or exiting that particular auditorium.

My main memory of Making Love was me sitting in the theater (one that was as far away from my home as I could find) hoping nobody would recognize me. Then there was that scene where Kate slaps Michael. Two queens behind me yelled "You hit him again, Kate! Go, girl!"

Kate should have been comfortable around gays. When she was acting on Dark Shadows, almost every male actor was a big mo.

Daring for 1982. Love scene killed Ontkean and Hamlin's big screen careers.

Ontkean was so fucking hot.

John Calvin played the hunky himbo son-in-law on 1972's The Paul Lynde Show. Lynde must have been in hog heaven.

The trailer came out with a warning......

[quote]What an awful film

Yeah? Well fuck you and all your decendants

For anyone interested in the Intrada double release containing the Leonard Rosenman music from MAKING LOVE (Race With The Devil/Making Love), it is available at download-soundtracks.com. I use this site all the time. Enjoy!

Of course, it was just like a Lifetime movie when it came out. None of these things was great art.