The botched kiss has always been particularly irritating, though, because of what it truly obscures: a fluid and altogether wonderful adaptation of Guare’s great, Pulitzer Prize–winning play, not to mention a nuanced, shape-shifting performance from Smith. Of course, no amount of film magic can really trick the viewer into seeing the opposite of what’s actually there: an obvious and not-at-all rare example of an actor’s attempt at self-preservation that expresses so very much about the puritanism and homophobia that have gone into so much Hollywood image-making for so long.
#Smiling boys vintage gay movies movie
The result is a flagrant and prototypical movie cheat, in which strategically placed backs of heads and judicious editing are meant to create the illusion that the two actors did the deed. As has been widely reported and mocked, Will Smith, fresh off The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and protective of his burgeoning stardom, refused to lock lips with co-star Anthony Michael Hall during a crucial scene.
To get the overdiscussed out of the way: Fred Schepisi’s film version of John Guare’s play Six Degrees of Separation features one of cinema’s most laughably evasive gay kisses. Images from Six Degrees of Separation (Fred Schepisi, 1993)
In this biweekly column, I look back through a century of cinema for traces of queerness, whether in plain sight or under the surface.