Article: Is a kiss just a kiss?: Gay love goes mainstream in 'Brokeback Mountain'

Screenwriter Barry Sandler had watched the debacle unfold in test screenings of his film "Making Love," and now, in a movie house in Miami on Valentine's Day weekend in 1982, it was happening again. As the sexual tension built between Harry Hamlin and Michael Ontkean on the screen, a different kind of tension built inside the theater: discomfort, then nervousness, and finally something akin to panic. When the two actors kissed, much of the audience burst into gales of derisive laughter or shrieks of anger and disgust.

"People were actually storming up the aisles to get out," Sandler recalls. "It was like there was a bomb in the theater. People just didn't want to deal with two men having ...

Related newspaper, magazine, and journal articles:

 
 
Newsweek Harper's Magazine The Washington Post Chicago Tribune Crain's Chicago Business PRNewswire Pediatric News The Nation Advertising Age The Economist (US) A FREE trial gives you access to over 80 million articles! Access over 6,500 publications with a FREE trial!