Gay Sex Scenes That Made Movie History

... I had no idea about Wet Hot American Summer. 

One correction:  The Rocky Horror Picture Show came out in 1975, not 1977.

I won't even TELL you the extremely embarrassing reason I made that mistake. Thanks... I'm debating going in and fixing it myself and risking crashing the entire AfterElton.com website by accidentally pushing the wrong button, or waiting patiently and demurely until morning, when Michael or Brian can fix it... eeek....

Not sure if this qualifies or if you wanted to include made for TV movies, in 1985 this movie starred Marlo Thomas and Martin Sheen as parents of a gay son who comes out to them. There were no love scenes but gay sex was definately implied when Jeff gets picked up in a restaruant and makes out in the car with the guy.

I'm confused. Is it bitch slap or slap a bitch?

But you overlook two items. For the Golden Age Predecessors there's Lindsay Anderson's If. . . just out on DVD with liner notes by yours truly.

In the antecedents block there's L'Homme Blesse and Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train -- both by Patrice Chereau. Also just about everything by Tsai Ming-Liang.

First we see Wallace (Richard Warwick) doing his gymnastics routine in the gym specifically for the delectation of Bobby Phillips (Rupert Webster) the blond beauty much prized by the Evil Upper Classmen. Later on Wallace and Phillips are shown in bed, enjoying a post-coital snuggle. Then at the last they're up on the roof with Mick (Malcolm McDowell) Johnny (David Wood) and The Girl (Christine Noonan) blasting the entire school to hell with sub-machine guns.

Richard Warwick was gay in what's generally referred to as "real life." He went on to work with Derek Jarman. Sadly he is no longer with us having died of AIDS.

Rupert Webster still walks among us, but not as an actor.  

the Swedish/Danish coming of age story "Venner för altid" (1987) One of the absolute best movies, and I recomend it to everyone if you can get it over wherever you are.

the sex scene is both hot (sexual) and has quite a bit of nude in it, but more importantly, is the reaction by the friend who catches his best friend. It was not horror or anger, or anything like that. instead he uses it as a way to tease his friend, but not in a bad way, a fun best friend kind of way. (I guess you need to watch to understand). I thought this was really great when i wathced it in the 1980s.

And if I understnad this article it is also about how the sex scene is treated.

imdb http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092160/

Thank you, and very nice article!

-S

Is that the one where the kids play... I think it's soccer, and the one guy walks in on his friend having sex with the slightly older guy who is their coach? That was a really lovely scene. I didn't include that film (if it's the one I'm thinking of) because it was really only seen in the U.S. on the gay film festival circuit, which is where I saw it in San Francisco, years ago.

I looked around for it when I was writing the article but couldn't remember the name... do you know its English title?

Another British Gay movie in the "Beautiful Thing" vein.

Friends Forever is the American title per IMDB.com.

These may be more limited release titles, but some that do feature notable gay sex scenes:

Come Undone from France has a hot sex scene on the beach between the two leads.

Eating Out has the infamous scene where the gay guy gives the straight guy oral sex while the straight guy is talking to the girl he is really interested in on the phone.

And of course Shortbus has several hardcore gay sex scenes including a three-way and self felatio ...

Hello?  Where'd everybody go ... ???

Thanks

-S

Can't forget Edge of Seventeen which had a riming scene in a parking lot of a gay club.

This movie will be released in the US August 21, 2007.

Here's info at Amazon: http://snipr.com/1np8b

 

 

Hi, I saw these two films recently and concluded both were well done. Not sure they fit your listing for "gay sex" but some of your readers may enjoy watching them.

"Just a Question of Love" (French, 2000) - Wonderful romantic story about the struggles of two families and young men trying to find love. http://www.amazon.com/Just-Question-Love-Cyrille-Thouvenin/dp/B0008ENHXA

"Regular Guys" (1996) - A "polished" German film with treats the straight / gay subject matter in a very mature manner. Quite a few laughs - but none of the regular gay bashing. The bath tube scene is wonderfully done http://www.amazon.com/Regular-Guys-Christoph-M-Ohrt/dp/B0000B1A36/ref=sr_1_1/104-3098646-4331969?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1183295766&sr=1-1

Vincent

I would definitely add the UK's "Get Real."  The sex scenes do a great job of showing the awkwardness of first experiences, the actors are very attractive, and the film's ultimate message -- the impact of each character's ultimate choice about accepting his sexuality -- is very powerful.  This is my favorite gay themed film, and I've seen all but one on your list.

You did a helluva good job on this article and I have to say that the posts that followed have been a very helpful supplement.

I particularly want to thank you, though, for remembering Buddies and acknowledging Artie Bressan. I knew Artie through his favorite cameraman, Doug Dickinson, with whom I was madly in love until we figured out that our lives were headed in very different directions. They were both very talented- Doug was a documentary filmmaker on his own- but handicapped by the absence of funds. For his hardcore film Passing Strangers, Artie had to raise funds almost one shot at a time and then got trashed by critics in gay publications for "exaggerating" how little money he had to work with.

Anyway, both belong to that army of wonderful, creative individuals we've lost to the Plague and will never completely recover from losing... and it's wonderful that in thoughtful pieces like yours, Artie is remembered for his work.

Thanks again.

I saw this movie in the 90's and it stirred nostalgia in me because I saw myself as the teenager.  Dutch film and may have been subtitled.  I thought it was very romantic although the subject was taboo and ended disappointingly because the main character couldn't come to terms with his loss. 

It was about a 30-or-40-something man's quest to re-connect with the Canadian soldier with whom he fell in love as a young teen during WWII.  The story is told in flashback.  The moral of the story:  do a great enough service and behavior normally considered inappropriate will be ignored.  I remember the production values as being quite good and it caused quite a bit of controversy. 

"For a Lost Soldier" !!!  A great movie with a controversial yet surprisngly tender love scene.

On the opposite end of the spectrum:

An awful movie that wallows in its own pretensions but nevertheless has some startlingly graphic sex scenes:  "O Fantasma".

Just wonder how Hedwig and the Angry Inch missed out??????  Guess I'll dig out the DVD and watch it again ;)

Even though Barrowman made a mistake in his tenses about gays in the British military, is it true that one branch accepted gays at one time while the rest didn't???

Isaiah Washington is crazy like a fox. His statement about Knight finally getting the recognition he deserves is probably just his way of saying that T.R.'s dastardly plan to further his career did indeed pay off.

On the first page you refer to Matt Weiner as Matt Weiss.

Certainly Federico Fellini's Satyricon which got a mainstream release in 1968 should be included in any listing of important film with gay themes. Fellini was very daring to bring as much of the book to the screen as he did, but from what I know of his films, the homosexual scenes were in included because it would be hard to ignore in any film supposedly based on the novel by the first century writer Petronius. But since the action takes place in Roman times, I suppose it gave its themes aesthetic distance. Both the novel and the film will be enjoyed by anyone interested in gay subjects and the novel is wicked funny.

I could post a film clip but that featured seems to be disabled.

 

 

There is another recent film which has a hot sex scene between the lead and a male escort it's called "In The Blood". It is a thriller with the lead who has visions but only when he has sex with a man. He tries at one point to have sex with his girlfriend (during the film he is in the closet) but no visions and near to the end he has to embrace his homosexuality in order to save his sister. 

Live Long and Prosper

It's kind of interesting how, in retorspect, some of the best films are actually from the 80's and 90's.  Even more interesting is how many come from the UK.

My Beautiful Laundrette was unbelievably groundbreaking especially at the time.  The way that Kureishi managed to fold racial issues, Thatcherite economic and social issues and a gay romance into one film was nothing short of amazing.  It still is a film against which others can be measured even more than 20 years later.

Beautiful Thing (those Brits and their obsession with beautiful) was also amazingly well-done especially since, as with My Beautiful Laundrette, the boys coming together and coming out was woven into the story with other lives and events around them.

Maurice was another great film, especially given it's handling of period.  Priest did likewise with handling the complex life challenges faced by priests, and not limited just to sexuality.  I remember watching Priest in a theatre on a Saturday afternoon mostly with an elderly, upper-middle class straight audience (it was playing at an arthouse theatre in a rather genteel suburb).  Expected outrage at the gay sex scenes never came, but there was very much a clear absorbtion in the story.

Depiction of homosexuality in American cinema is often more negative, even when it's supposed to be positive.  Making Love had a happy ending (quite unusual for a gay themed film at the time) but was overall a pretty dull movie.  We otherwise had an abundance of AIDS dramas, which often added even more morbidity to an already depressing time period.

Even as groundbreaking as Brokeback Mountain is it remains a tragedy.  We've been slow to get to the notion of being gay as not being something that should entail suffering and the exceptions are usually screwball comedies like Wet, Hot American Summer and Another Gay Movie. 

Latter Days is perhaps one of the better improvements on this.  Shelter also counts as an example of positive evolution in gay-themed drama, even though the love scenes often went extreme close-up and became symbolic.  Not as hot as Latter Days but maybe less soapy.

It seems we're still waiting for gay cinema to truly emerge from decades of angst into parity with straight cinema.  I freely admit that I'm now to the point where I want gay action heroes and gay sci-fi/fantasy.  Personally I'm hoping that we can start to move beyond the coming out storyline and focus on the story as a whole.  This is perhaps what was so groundbreaking about My Beautiful Laundrette.  Omar and Johnny were resuming a previous relationship, rather than discovering their sexuality and coming out.  The concealment of their relationship was relevant to life in both Thatcher's England and Pakistani community, but it was not one of the themes in the film that they were coming to terms with being gay. 

We've got a ways to go yet.  Hopefully we'll get there.

Future epitaph: "It seemed like a good idea at the time."

The version on DVD in the U.S. runs 97 minutes; the British cut runs 105.  There's supposedly a lot (a LOT) more about the two men's relationship--as well as some much more explicit sex scenes--in the British version.

Pity; Robert Carlyle is wonderful, and Linus Roche gives one of the greatest male performances you've ever seen.  It's a shame so few people have seen it in its full context.

One of the most affecting films I've ever experienced is Bent with Clive Owen and the amazing Lothaire Bluteau. One of the most profound lines which absolutely does not translate in print - "I love you. What's wrong with that." Those few words seem so trite and yet when uttered against the backdrop of a Nazi concentration camp by one man to another they resonate with the eternal question. Another quote, after the two have fantasized a sexual encounter and climaxed all the while standing shoulder to shoulder, at attention in the blazing sun, never touching - "We did it. Fucking guards. Fucking camp. We did it. They're not going to kill us. We made love. We were real. We were human. We made love. They're not going to kill us." If you haven't seen the film just do. I can't do it justice.

I remember seeing Maurice at exactly the right time in my life to think: 'Yes, this being gay thing isn't easy, but with the likes of James Wilby and Rupert Graves around, there are benefits'. To this day, I am still pathetically grateful to Rupert Graves for getting naked 'because the role demanded it' (and from his rare appearances on screen these days, he's still hot enough to stop traffic).

One absence from your list that struck me as unusual was Derek Jarman. In Jubilee, apart from having a young Adam Ant wrapped naked in cling film to recommend it, the themes of anarchy + punk + gay + sex are pretty hard to escape (especially in the multi-sexual orgy scene at the end). But the more glaring omission is Sebastiane. OK, it's in Latin, but given that it's about St Sebastian, the patron saint of homosexuality, and revolves around largely naked men (Jarman said they couldn't aford costumes) falling in love and lust and stars Richard Warwick (from If, mentioned above, who went on to star in a sitcom as Judi Dench's son-in-law) it surely rates a mention. In this day and age, it's also a nice change to see a gay man being persecuted to the point of death for being an open and proud Christian. Also, as it's the first British film featuring an erection that received a mainstream classification, it has a special place in British screen history (the next British feature film to get mainsream classification despite the stiffie was Angels and Insects, which I can recommend highly to fans of Douglas Henshall from the British sci-fi series Primeval).

On your inclusion of Querelle - yep, it definitely needs to be there. Like, you said, it's strange, unsettling and challenging and Fassbinder seems to have been more of a nightmare than usual to work with (apparently he waited till one actor's wife and children were on set before filming a scene in which the actor was buggered by Brad Davis). However, it is uncompromising in its artistic and sexual stance and probably laid the groundwork for the treatment of gay sex in much of the British and other European cinema and TV that followed.

This was a great movie that to me was dead on as far as a lot of men act when they are getting "too" close to someone they really like. I think it was funny as well.

This French-Canadian movie, made in 1992, enjoyed decent commercial success in its home territory, being nominated for film of the year.  It stars Roy Dupuis, subsequently known in English markets for his role in Nikita.  The movie is an adaptation of a play, and largely consists of the tense interrogation of Roy by a cop, after Roy killed his lover.  The movie does not judge Roy for being gay, but tries to understand his motivation.  The movie's long opening scene is a tastefully shot of Roy and his lover making love, setting up the mystery of why then Roy behaved as he did if he loved his mate.  I am raising it here as an example of a fairly explicit scene, in a decade that moved away from such.

Cheers

 "And then they end up in bed together, where it's made absolutely clear to the audience that the two men have sex together as well as with the woman"

  Really? I came away with a very different impression of that film - that they basically gave everyone what they wanted except the gay guy, who had to settle for getting to cop a feel. I thought it was a terribly cowardly milquetoast film. I'm surprised you interpreted it as a fact that the two men have sex together.

I’m telling my age here, but I remember a ground-breaking made-for-TV movie in 1972 called

“That Certain Summer”

It starred Hal Holbrook, Hope Lange, Martin Sheen, and as Holbrook’s son, Scott Jacoby.  At the time I thought that Scott was the hottest thing I’d ever seen.  While there was absolutely no sex, I think it was quite significant.

Just realized that this movie is mentioned in “Ask the Flying Monkey” in January of 09.  Bravo!

 

I would like to add Something For Everyone to this list, the stunning film starring Angela Lansbury and Michael York. This very, very dark comedy included a torrid relationship between Michael York and the son of the household where he was a servant. This includes one of the most exciting kisses on screen, and one of the earliest between two guys in a major motion picture. The film came out in 1970 and was the first movie directed by Harold Prince. Sadly, it has yet to make it to DVD, but if ever it does, it's something that should not be missed.

.. what movies count, but what about "Urbania" or "Sommersturm" or "Lola + Bilidikid"?

Nice to see "Making Love" on your list!

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R.I.P. - Heath - R.I.P. - Heath - R.I.P. - Heath - R.I.P. - Heath - R.I.P.

Is a spanish movie, it was released in this decade, don't exactly remember in which year, the sex scene is shown very early in the movie and is quite splicit, the highlight is that the gay couple is played by spanish actors Jordi molla and Javier Bardem, unfortunately it does come to a unhappy ending.

 

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