Making Love is a 1982 American drama film directed by Arthur Hiller and starring Kate Jackson, Harry Hamlin and Michael Ontkean.
They first met in college, have been married for eight years, and are generally happy in their relationship, sharing a love for Gilbert and Sullivan and the poetry of Rupert Brooke, to whom they were introduced by their elderly former neighbor, Winnie Bates.
He picks up men in his car and starts frequenting gay bars in West Hollywood on his lunch hour, although he does not follow through sexually.
Bart leads a fairly hedonistic single lifestyle, picking up multiple sexual partners, frequenting gay bars and clubs, and occasionally taking recreational drugs.
Angered, Zack leaves, but later challenges Bart's fear of intimacy, which stems from his own troubled childhood with his domineering and emotionally abusive father growing up.
Throughout the film, Bart and Claire deliver several mini-monologues, speaking directly to the camera about aspects of their lives and their feelings about the scenes that had just played out on-screen.
The core concept for Making Love purportedly occurred to writer Scott Berg while he was touring to promote his 1978 biography Max Perkins: Editor of Genius: the tour occasioned Berg's touching base with several male friends from his college days who confided that they were opting out of marriages for same-sex relationships.
[2] Sherry Lansing, newly appointed president of 20th Century-Fox, greenlit the project based on an outline of Sandler's projected screenplay, of which a 125-page rough draft was completed in the autumn of 1980 when directing duties were assigned to Arthur Hiller, whose helming of the iconic 1970 film Love Story would be heavily referenced in the promotion for Making Love, the latter film being posited as the "'Love Story' of the '80s".
[2] Harrison Ford, William Hurt and Peter Strauss have also been cited as being unsuccessfully approached to play Zack.
[5] Making Love was one of several mainstream Hollywood films to be released in 1982 that attempted to deal with themes of homosexuality in a more tolerant and sympathetic light.
By the film's end, she does have a child, but it is unstated whether she is still working, so that issue ultimately remains unresolved (although it is implied she's now a housewife).
[7] Making Love would open during the "dump months" of 1982, but 20th Century-Fox hoped to boost the film to hit status, having devised a "three-pronged" advertising campaign costing $5 million - more than half the $8 million cost of making the film: besides being promoted as a "sympathetic view of...'coming out'" to draw gay audiences, Making Love was pitched to the "mainstream audience" as a "'women's film' - Hollywood marketese for 'soap opera'" - and also as a purported cinematic milestone, the latter a tactic to draw "educated young adult males".
[8] Opening 12 February 1982, Making Love was originally hailed as a hit, earning an inaugural four-day box office tally of $3 million and swiftly expanding its theatre count from 300 venues to 700.
Upon its release, Making Love was typically dismissed by critics as a glossy soap opera which dodged its sensitive ostensibly core issue.
"[16] Social critic Camille Paglia in 2006 cited Making Love, which she considers "intelligent", as her "favorite film to date about gay men.