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As the '80s continued, films like An Early Frost, Parting Glances and Longtime Companion picked up where Hiller's movie left off. But if you look at those two dots, it's pretty easy to connect them."Įven though Making Love failed to change the industry overnight, it does mark the beginning of a turning of the tide for depictions of gay characters in movies and on television. Could it have been that I pissed off people in the studio system? I don't know. Now could that have been because I just was really s****y in the role? Maybe. After that movie came out, I never had any more meetings for studio pictures. "Before Making Love, I had been on the A-list and I was going out for every movie that was being made with a character in my age range. "That was the last studio picture that I ever did," he notes. Hamlin as Perseus in the 1981 fantasy favorite, Clash of the Titans (Photo: Courtesy Everett Collection) And Hamlin says that he noticed an immediate impact on his own career.
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12, 1982, Making Love was greeted by indifferent reviews and disappointing box office returns. Unfortunately, it wasn't a risk that paid off - at least in the short term.
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"It was a movie about something that was going on in the zeitgeist, and no one was really talking about it," Hamlin says. As a result, 20th Century Fox struggled to find an actor to co-star alongside Hamlin, with everyone from Michael Douglas and Harrison Ford to Tom Berenger and William Hurt reportedly turning down the role of Zack, whose romance with Bart blows up his marriage to Claire (Kate Jackson.) Eventually, Ontkean signed on and cameras finally started to roll.
At that time, being an out gay actor - or even being perceived as being gay because of a role - remained a potential career death sentence. Ironically enough, the "true to life" aspect of the script is what kept Hollywood's biggest stars away from Making Love. And I said, 'Regardless of that, I like the theme of the movie.'" "He told me that of all the actors who'd been offered the role and had turned it down, because I was in the press a lot for having had a son with Ursula Andress, nobody was going to mistake me for being gay. but not for the reasons you might expect. The only person who endorsed his decision was, surprisingly enough, his agent. "I was cautioned against doing it by a lot of folks." "They cautioned me against doing it," he says. But those friends all told him the same thing. Hamlin didn't have to rely on the kindness of strangers as research for Bart he also had several gay friends he could talk to about the role. One guy gave me his phone number after I explained what I was doing, and said he'd like to help me 'understand the whole paradigm.' I never called him back!" People came up to me and propositioned me and wanted to buy me drinks and stuff like that. I had been in a couple of movies, so I was somewhat well-known and was spotted right away. "I'd never been to one before, and I went in to get the flavor of it. "I went to a gay bar on Santa Monica Boulevard," the 70-year-old actor remembers now. And Hamlin tells Yahoo Entertainment that he did his homework before filming began. Scott Berg, the movie starred Hamlin and Slap Shot's Michael Ontkean as Bart and Zack - the first gay couple depicted in a mainstream studio movie. Directed by Arthur Hiller and written by out gay screenwriters Barry Sandler and A. Forty years ago, the Clash of the Titans star stepped up and accepted a part that every other actor in Hollywood had turned down, playing one of the leading roles in 20th Century Fox's pioneering romantic drama, Making Love. Never let it be said that Harry Hamlin doesn't do intensive research for his roles. Michael Ontkean and Harry Hamlin play gay lovers in the 1982 drama, Making Love.