Impact of "Making Love"/"Personal Best" (1982)

"Making Love" (1982)

"Personal Best" (1982)

I watched Personal Best when I was a teen on cable. That movie solidified that I was a straight woman. Yuk.

PS Meant no offense to lesbians/bi women. But, the thought of licking snatch makes me gag. Have a nice day!

You don't know what your missing sisterfriend!

I remember going to see making love in Clearwater Florida back in 1982. My favorite scene was when Kate Jackson I found the phone number of the husbands trick ( trick is what we used to call hookups in those days) and arranged to met him. She arrives at a rather nominal studio apartment with a hide-a-bed pulled out and an open jar of Vaseline jelly highly visible on the nightstand with a big scoop out of it. I remember the guy saying "he must have been hot if I gave him my number".

r6 Bart and his "quaaludes".

It had a huge impact on the once-promising careers of Harry Hamlin and Michael Ontkean. Today, they'd be up for Oscars.

Kate Jackson was positively BRILLIANT in that film. She deserved an Oscar for it.

Trish @ r3/r4…

Were those exact quotes from your journal in 1982? You don’t sound too contemporary…

R9 She really was good in it. The final scene of the movie as she stands alone after Michael Ontkean leaves is heartbreaking.

R9 Her best scene in the movie starts at 1:36:05 in R1's post. A great performance.

R11, I agree. The telephone scene, when she reached out to her father, was powerful, as well.

Comparing the two movies, what I remember most is that "Making Love," despite its subject matter, was very chaste. Yes, it showed two men kissing passionately, but the one sex scene in the movie is basically just two out of focus bodies rolling around her bed sheets. You don't even see a naked butt in it. It's like the producers knew they couldn't push the envelope too much when it came to showing male-male romance.

"Personal Best," on the other hand, was much more daring. Lots of full frontal female nudity, plenty of female-female sex. They weren't afraid to push boundaries with this film.

And that just proves that Hollywood back then thought audiences would be much more comfortable with lesbians than gay men.

Yeah Making Love should have had naked male butts. Let's face it only gay men and many women wanted to see this movie so it was a terrible lost opportunity in this made for TV film. Didn't Personal Best the lesbian movie even have frontal male nudity? Ontkean had already shown his butt in Slapshot. So more was necessary to its dramatic integrity.

R15 Yes, Personal Best had one male full frontal scene. Too bad the guy wasn't cute, though.

Nobody was cute in personal best.

[quote] Yeah Making Love should have had naked male butts. Let's face it only gay men and many women wanted to see this movie so it was a terrible lost opportunity in this made for TV film.

Made for TV?

R18 No. It was an R-rated theatrical release.

By today's standards, though, it could easily be a TV movie.

R19 and it feels like a made4tv film

Beyond the lovely Roberta Flack score, “Making Love” is best known as a motion picture career killer.

The thought of licking yours sure makes me gag, R4.

Have a nice day.

I meant yes it had the quality of a made for tv film. Considering how few people saw it how it ruined careers I'll never know though yes it did seem to throw a monkey wrench into them.

R3. What was it like being a teen on cable?

I was never on cable as a teen or otherwise R24

The trailer is self-congratulatory

It is not sexually explicit, but it may be too strong for some people

We are proud of its honesty

We applaud its courage

r15 It was 1982, so they were not going to go there with it.

Apparently in its first run, all the gays were sobbing uncontrollably by the end of Making Love. It was a very MARY! moment.

Kate Jackson got great reviews but I saw it years later and she was no Meryl Streep.

It was certainly a landmark film. But I don’t think it changed anything. It wasn’t a box office hit. It was said to have killed the careers of the two actors involved, though Hamlin - one of the most undeniably handsome and sexy actors of the era - would have the biggest hit of his career a few years later on LA Law.

By decades end, another landmark gay film about the AIDS crisis, Longtime Companion, would struggle to get financing and was eventually made by PBS/American Playhouse when the incredible producer, Lindsay Law, completed the budget of just $3M. To make the first American drama about the AIDS crisis, 7 - 8 years into the pandemic.

"Personal Best" would have attracted a bigger audience if it had been an ABC movie of the week starring Kate and Donna Pescow.

R4 Thanks for your useless comment Trish. Keep sucking those dicks. You have sperm in your teeth btw.

Thanks for your comment, “Trish”. It enabled me to block you.

r8 Doesn't seem like Michael Ontkean was too upset about that.

Kate was beautiful in it.

Who was the top in it?

r34 Good question! I've always thought it was Bart as He was the seasoned one in the pair. It could've been Zach. It never did seem like they touched upon that. The kiss alone was like "gasp!" to a lot of people back then. Very different era.

I never saw Making Love but have always thought the title song sung by Roberta Flack was sublime.

The Hidden Cost of Harry Hamlin's Gay Role in 1982's "Making Love" Interview

But naked male butts had been in movies since the 60s. And they had even been in major big budget war movies during the silent era. So in Making Love with these two enormously handsome men it was a lost opportunity. Wasn't it even rated R simply because it was about homosexuality? But honestly I don't remember.

R29, I would love to have seen Donna Pescow portray a world class runner in a film, complete with skin tight running short and a headband on her 4'11" 185lb frame...

More camp than anything else. The performances seem phoned in, and the dialog computer generated. And the dreary song by Roberta Flack is awful.

Are you sick, are you in trouble? Look whatever it is I can handle it. I can handle it no matter what it is, but I cannot handle the silence-Kate

Actually, I'm very conscious about not fucking up my system. I smoke a little dope once in a while, maybe a line or two of coke, a Quaalude or two now maybe a Percodan once in a while, a little acid but if you mean am I into drugs, no way-Harry

Sure you don't want to drink hit off this joint or something?-Zach's trick

Can I ask you a stupid question are you happy?-Kate

Let me put it to you this way I lose my temper in traffic, I bleed when I cut myself shaving, I don't enjoy giving up half my salary to pay for a hamburger otherwise I would say I am pretty happy-Zack's trick

Look Claire can I be honest with you, I really don't remember. I mean I got more tricks coming in and out of this apartment in one day it looks like a bargain day at Woolworths-Zack's trick

R26 The studio was so worried about the potential negative public reaction to the movie that all the marketing was around how it was "brave" and "daring" and that it was a prestige product.

I remember going to see it in the theater when I was in college, and they were handing out these 8 x 10 pamphlets with a lengthy message inside about the film, the subject matter, and how daring and important the movie was.

R38 I think the "f" word was uttered a couple of times in it, but it was really the subject matter that got it an "R."

I mean, just 13 year earlier, Midnight Cowboy got an "X" rating for its subject matter.

I know they cut the scene of Ontkean and Hamlin after their first night together, but it is on the Bluray extras, I forget all of what was said, but I definitely know Ontkean's character says, "Youi didn't tell me I would be shtting cum afterwards" and then they laughed...

Didn’t Ontkean’s doctor character end up living in some fabulous Manhattan penthouse? That’s all I remembered about the movie. And all the shame associated with being gay.

Personal Best made my skin crawl. The cast was so unattractive, sweaty and sinewy. The gals had those huge bushes too. I saw it on VHS when it first came to home video.

I had to turn Personal Best off after they had that closeup of Mariel Hemingway, face all shiny and spitting out little hairs, having just come up for air from Patrice Donnelly's tremendously opulent bush...

I had a sort-of connection to Personal Best. One of my high school friends was a state champion runner, and she was hired as a technical advisor and an extra during our senior year. She actually became friends with Mariel Hemingway.

It wasn't long after graduation that Making Love came out (if you'll pardon the expression). I lived in a military town, and the trailer showed the two guys kissing and the whole theater erupted in hooting and booing. That prompted me to actually go see the film at a theater in another city. -for safety's sake. I was still young and closeted, and the scenes between Ontkean and Hamlin thrilled me -I was rock-hard through most of the movie. I came away from the experience with the clear realization that I was gay, and love of the poetry of Rupert Brooke.

R34 - My personal experience is that married "straight" men either want to bottom if they're doing anal. They also prefer to get sucked if it's just oral. Ontkean was the bottom.

Why can’t you have one without the other?

Mariel Hemingway and Patrice Donnelly were godesses in Personal Best. I'm a straight woman but even as a teen in 1982 could imagine why, as a woman, you'd want to get in bed with either of them. Incredible, strong bodies. Love watching that movie.

I love the double penetration scene in Making Love. Very brave

"I meant yes it had the quality of a made for tv film. Considering how few people saw it how it ruined careers I'll never know though yes it did seem to throw a monkey wrench into them."

So, I just watched it recently. And I disagree---it was much better than expected.

"It wasn't long after graduation that Making Love came out (if you'll pardon the expression). I lived in a military town, and the trailer showed the two guys kissing and the whole theater erupted in hooting and booing."

So strange. I mean they open the movie making it clear that it's about a bisexual love triangle, and Harry Hamlin's character is immersed in the gay world. Every scene us of him talking about or pursuing hos sex life and going to the doctor to make sure he doesn't have AIDs.

R37 I didn't recognize Steve Kmetko in that interview until I looked up who conducted it.

I just finished watching Making Love for the first time in several decades. As a film, it holds up surprisingly well. The cast is strong. The writing is honest, if a bit on the intellectual side. Everyone is articulate and erudite, but there's a real lack of passion. I remember watching it as a teen and drooling over Harry Hamlin. This time I found myself very attracted to Michael Ontkean. Go figure. Must be that my nesting instinct kicked in over the intervening years...

I don't suppose the twenty-somethings of today would understand this film at all. Lucky them. But for people of my generation it brings back a lot of feelings -good and bad- about those times and what it meant back then to be gay.

As for the big sex scene -it turns out the two leads wouldn't agree to do it, so the director hired a couple of body doubles to do it it, filming it in shadows through a window (or maybe it's in a mirror).

[quote]R17 Nobody was cute in personal best.

Mariel Hemingway has always been unusually beautiful.

R55 If I recall correctly, they went to Santa Monica Boulevard and hired two hustlers to film the scene where Hamlin and Ontkean are in bed together.

[quote] I'm a straight woman but even as a teen in 1982 could imagine why, as a woman, you'd want to get in bed with either of them. Incredible, strong bodies.

Thanks r50. But since Trish has already set the boundaries, how do you feel about licking snatch?

“Making Love” is essentially a TV docudrama, in which the subject is announced loud and clear at the outset and there are no surprises. People have described the movie to me in one sentence as “Kate Jackson finds out her husband is a homosexual,” and they haven’t left out much.-Roger Ebert

I watched it again on R1's post.

What stood out for me watching it this time was how the movie mostly seemed to minimize Kate Jackson's pain. Here was a woman who built her life around this man, and she suddenly has the rug pulled out from under her. She has no way to get him back, and she has to give him up.

Yet the movie mostly focuses on Michael Ontkean, who comes across as kind of a selfish prick, especially in the final scene. His character doesn't seem a bit interested in what's going on with Kate Jackson now, and he never asks her if *she's* happy all these years later. He just takes off and leaves her standing there in the driveway, her pain still at the surface.

Well, Kaye was reportedly a pretty unpleasant person.

^^ Kate

The segments where the characters talk directly to the screen is unnecessary and amounts to incessant babbling as they describe things that the viewer could easily pick-up on visually. Wendy Hiller’s old lady character adds nothing and the scene where Zach goes home to visit his folks (Arthur Hill, Nancy Olson) is equally pointless and should’ve also been excised as the film’s runtime is too long to begin with.

R63 Wendy Hiller's character symbolizes the death of an emotional bond. The dinner scene with Ontkean's family is meant to imply that because of Ontkean's dysfunctional relationship with his father, he's looking to find an emotional connection with another man.

R63 The part they could have done without was Ontkean's patient who had breast cancer. He tells her that her husband will still love her after her mastectomy, and when he doesn't, she screams at Ontkean, calling him a liar.

We're supposed to believe that that moment upset him so much that he was compelled to drive to a dark WeHo alley and pick up a dude.

I always found that to be the case...R65

Arthur Hill and Arthur Hiller and Wendy Hiller.

Both Harry Hamlin and Michael Ontkean were on upward trajectories in their respective careers before Making Love came out.

Hamlin nearly vanished until LA Law. Ontkean never regained the hype surrounding him during his The Rookies years - he was David Caruso before David Caruso. He slowly rebuilt a semblance of career.

I've always wondered whether Hamlin and Ontkean did Making Love as a cynical grab at credibility or whether it was lack of other acting roles. It did seem to affirm the belief that doing a gay role is career suicide for leading men.

Michael Ontkean as Sheriff Harry Truman in Twin Peaks was somewhat of a career resurgence for him.

R66 I believe you mean Dr. Kildare.

If the movie were a hit, their careers could have going a huge boost. Straight guys playing gay became the rage after Philadelphia and Brokeback. Too bad the Making Love guys missed that boat

Saw it when it first came out. When the two men kissed you would have thought someone yelled FIRE! in the theatre. Several people ran up the aisle and, presumably, asked for refunds. Other audience members were clearly disgusted. A few others laughed. I sank down in my seat with my little gay heart fluttering over gorgeous Michael Ontkean.

R64 Like most of the scenes in the movie those scenes were equally trite and cliched just like the argument Zack and Claire had over toothpaste!

All of the people bitching about the scene with his dad, the old lady, the cancer patient, yadda yadda are missing the point. The point is to establish Ontkean's character as the protagonist, which is why the other two talk to the camera about him. And why the film takes the time to show that he's somewhat jealous and still pained by his divorce when he meets his ex wife's new husband and the kid with the name their kid was supposed to have. The should have went a little farther with giving us glimpses into his inner world, but oh well.

Claire, Zack and Bart are so much alike that they have the same taste in music, the same enthusiasm for their careers, the same pleasant standard of living and the same sad story about the father who neglected them. If Claire didn't wear skirts, and Zack his doctor's uniforms, and Bart his fashionable variations on a single gray-sweatshirt theme, it might be difficult to tell them apart.

Every possible disruptive element is avoided. You can bet your boots that Claire and Bart never have a showdown - they never even meet, as a matter of fact. When Zack tells Claire he's been seeing someone else, she somehow forgets to ask who that might be. Instead - remember, this is a soap opera - she blindly picks up the telephone to call a friend. Then she puts the phone down. Then she asks Zack what he wants for dinner.

[Quote] Made for TV?

Well, the three leads were certainly best known for television. They never really had careers in film to speak of. And Making Love is probably largely responsible for that

They should have remade it with Matt, Ben and JLo.

I disagree about the scene with Zack's family. I think it was included to show us why Zack had to suppress his feelings for so long. That family would never have accepted him if he had come out. Zack spent his life dealing with other people's expectations.

R78 I chuckled at the mother @41:33 "would anyone care for any more meat?" (a gay guy in the writer's room)

R74 I didn't get the impression that Zack was pained at all about Claire finding a husband and having a son she named Rupert. In fact, I got the opposite impression - that he was relieved she had appeared to move on from him so he didn't have to feel guilty about what he did to her.

[quote] If the movie were a hit, their careers could have going a huge boost. Straight guys playing gay became the rage after Philadelphia and Brokeback. Too bad the Making Love guys missed that boat

Making Love was a necessary step on the road to gay representation in Hollywood.

Pioneers risk arrows in their backs

R81, sometimes their fronts as well.

Hamlin did hetero soft core as I recall after all this.

In a way he handled it well - not unlike Leigh McCloskey and his art career.

I prefer to take my arrows in the back...

No impact. It only made $12 million. Nobody saw it.

R3 / R4 / “Trish” has shown us her homophobia. She is the type of fetid, rancid homophobic gash who loves her “gays” (men only). She thinks we’re funny and she can convince herself that we’re her “friends” and she just loves going to brunch and having one too many mimosas and laughing with her “gays” (again, only men). But she’s disgusted by us. She votes against us, rl”rationalizing” her vote in her head — but lying or ignoring the question when she’s asked how she voted.

I say this with absolute sincerity, Trish. May you never know joy. May you know only hard stools and rectal tearing. May you know deep loneliness and confusion. May your hypocrisy and homophobia continue to eat you from the inside. May you never know love. May you never have an orgasm that isn’t if your own doing. And most of all, may your gay friends figure you out and dump you. May you live the rest of your life confused and distressed lover why they did.

Finally, and I mean this, leave. Stop coming to DL. We aren’t your “gays” or even your monkeys to laugh at.

Trish. The name says it.

R86 The fact that it's still discussed 42 years after its release proves it made an impact.

Torch Song is still discussed on DL 70 years after its release.

Kate Jackson's character wore the same skirt throughout the entire movie.

And that's how I knew i was gay.

[quote]r80 I didn't get the impression that Zack was pained at all about Claire finding a husband and having a son she named Rupert.

She should have known he was gay when he approved that name.

R85, who is that beauty?

"Claire, Zack and Bart are so much alike that they have the same taste in music"

Not quite true. Bart scoffs at Zack's Gilbert & Sullivan records lol. Also, he dies drugs. Claire and Zack are clearly Reagan yuppies. She didn't even have sex before she got married to him.

But yeah, they shoulda played up the lifestyle tension more.

"I didn't get the impression that Zack was pained at all about Claire finding a husband and having a son she named Rupert. In fact, I got the opposite impression - that he was relieved she had appeared to move on from him so he didn't have to feel guilty about what he did to her."

Dude, watch it again.

Hot for teacher!!!

Back in the 11th grade I had a P.E. teacher named Miss Seboka, she looked just like Anne Murray which was a HUGE turn on for me as I had posters of Anne all over my bedroom wall. Miss Seboka was the coach of the Volleyball team and I was her star player. One night after an away game, my dad didn't show to pick me up. I called my mom who told me that he was working late and if there was anyway one of my teammates could give me a ride. Well, all of my teammates were gone and the only person left was Ms. Seboka. I asked if she could give me a ride and she responded with an emphatic yes. We get into her car and the whole front seat was covered with Janis Ian, Indigo Girls, and Michelle Shocked tapes. I knew then that this lady was definitely into some hot gal on gal action.

I asked her if we could stop off at the Wendy's because I was totally famished. I got a frosty from the drive thru and then she asked what time I was expected home. I told her it didn't matter (It did and my parents would be furious, but who cares when I was going to get a taste of her pink taco!)so she asked if I wanted to come over and watch a movie.

We got back to her place and ate some trail mix and watched "Personal Best" which I had never seen. Boy did it get my juices flowing. Next thing I know my purple nylon workout pants were around my ankles and Ms. Seboka was going to town on my pork chop sandwich like an Ethiopian at an all you can eat jumbo fried shrimp buffett at Shoney's. I was loving every minute of it, althoug I could have done without her sticking her index finger up my butthole, but what are ya gonna do?

Then it was my turn, I slid her black fitted stirrup pants down around her white tube socks and black half boots. The minute I stuck my face down there I knew something was very, very wrong. She smelled like wet hay mixed with diahrea. I gagged repeatedly, but still tryed to keep going, the final straw was when a substance with the consistancy of Campbell's Cream of Potato soup and the color of metal started pouring out from inside of her. I wound up vomitting all over her lap and ran out of the house.

I walked home that night and it was about seven miles. I got a lot shit from my parents as well. Things were never the same with Ms. Seboka again and I dropped off the volleyball team two weeks later because I was so uncomfortable.

Moral of the story-Sometimes your fantasies are not all their cracked up to be.

R95 they’re

I saw both as a teen growing up in a VERY homophobic place where I was sure I was the only gay on the planet. Whatever their artistic merits (or lack thereof), just seeing gay people on screen was inspirational to me. And I was a runner and loved that all this went on in that world...It's hard to picture what it was like 40 years ago for closeted, isolated gay kids and what any representation (no matter how melodramatic or trite) could mean.

I remember the movie theatre erupt when the two men kissed in DeathTrap in the 1980’s

My God, we have moved on, for the most part

[Quote] Saw it when it first came out. When the two men kissed you would have thought someone yelled FIRE! in the theatre. Several people ran up the aisle and, presumably, asked for refunds. Other audience members were clearly disgusted.

What did they think the movie was going to be about?

R99 lovemaking, probably.

But the movie opens with the Harry Hamlin character talking about being in a relationship with the same guy as Kate Jackson's character.

Actually, R101, it is written to imply they Hamlin and Jackson are talking about each other. She finally names Zack, and then Hamlin also names Zack and we suddenly find out they are talking about the same person. Big shock amongst the audience as the lightbulb goes off.

Desert Hearts was superior to Personal Best as was Maurice to Making Love.

"Actually, [R101], it is written to imply they Hamlin and Jackson are talking about each other. She finally names Zack, and then Hamlin also names Zack and we suddenly find out they are talking about the same person. Big shock amongst the audience as the lightbulb goes off."

But it happens during the first three minutes!

And they talk about him as if he's dead