"Zack and Claire, an upwardly mobile couple, have been married for 8 years. As far as Claire's concerned, they've been very happy times. But when her husband begins an extra-marital affair with a gay writer, Claire realizes she and Zack have been living a lie all this time."
Thirty-three-year-old A. Scott Berg conceived Making Love after six of his friends came out after marriage. "This is the next big social movement," he said, after the men left their wives for other men. " What the black movement was in the sixties, and the feminist movement in the seventies, they gay movement will be in the eighties." Berg, a writer, had never written a screenplay and contacted his friend Barry Sandler, who'd written the films Gable and Lombard, The Duchess and the Dirtwater Fox, and the Mirror Crack'd.
Sandler hesitated, because the story "touched certain buttons id never allowed to be touched in my work." Sandler later became the only out-of-the-closet member of the making Love production team. He told the Advocate, "I went through a period of telling myself that my homosexuality tendencies were just a phase and I was only experimenting." This is reflected in Zack Elliot (Michael Ontkean), who marries, both despite and because of his homosexuality. Marriage to Claire (Kate Jackson) is happy and sexually fulfilling, but...
"I have been involved with men in the past," said Sandler of his prior relationships, "but I was always the one to break it off. This is the case with Bart McGuire (Harry Hamlin), who - though long uncloseted - is unwilling to commit to relation ships beyond a physical level.

Sandler's script was backed by Daniel Melnick, a former Columbia Pictures chief who was one of the biggest single contributors to 1978s Anti-Proposition-6 political campaign in California. Melnick decided making Love would be the first project from his new company IndieProd. His partner was Cosmo Bachelor of the Month and ex-Columbia vice president Allen Adler. Melnick, producer of All That Jazz, with its straight and gay couples, said, "All the great romances are when two lovers cant be together. Making Love and Love Story are in a direct line from Romeo and Juliet." It was Melnick - after Arthur Hiller was hired to direct - who described making Love as "the love story of the eighties." The ads relied heavily on "From the director who brought you Love Story." 
Condescending reviewers failed to mention Hiller's other credits, including Hospital, Popi, The Americanization of Emily, and the Man in the Glass Booth. Another making Love backer was Fox executive Claire Townsend (after whom the Jackson character was named). She predicted. "there's too little romance in today's movies, and we may get criticized for bringing it back." After the male leads were turned down by actors like Harrison Ford and Michael Douglas, the film-makers agreed to go with "unknowns". Melnick referred to Staircase: "We decided Making Love would not be served by having a star who was identified as heterosexual...it would be like carrying a sign. Hey I am only playacting. Melnick signed "Rookies" star Michael Ontkean, a Canadian who came to U.S. on a hockey scholarship and starred in Slap Shot and Willie and Phil.

Ontkean said, "Zack is a character in transition, trapped by the expectations of those closest to him. he's allowed others to shape him and tends to live by the rules. he doesn't fully know himself. it isn't until he meets Bart that he begins to break through, to come to terms with his sexual identity. Zack is determined to avoid a double life. He know the only shame is in lying." Zack is the sole bond between between Claire and Bart, who never meet. Both speak directly to the camera about him, and Bart also reveals his feeling and his past, which includes a relationship with a "coed." Claire discusses her insecurity and need for a father figure. It is Claire with whom straight audiences identify, and she was the ad's centerpiece, posing with both men. "I felt you needed Claire to give the audience a grounding," said Sandler. "Most people find two men together alien or threatening...Even after Zack comes out, Claire says she wants her baby to have somebody like him to look up to. the audience discovers the situation isn't as threatening as they may have thought."

Best known for televisions, "The Rookies" and "Charlie's Angels", Kate Jackson lost the lead role in Kramer Vs. Kramer (overseen by Melnick) to Meryl Streep because of her heave television schedule. Alabama born and bred, Jackson "used to believe all homosexuals live in new York." When she told her mother about making Love, Mrs. Jackson noted that a local couple had had the same experience as Zack and Claire. "If it could happen in Birmingham," figured Kate, "It could happen anywhere."
Harry Hamlin starred first in the title role of the television version of Studs Lonigan and then as Perseus in Clash of the Titans. A graduate of san Francisco's American Conservatory Theater, he did more research for his role than Ontkean. Both viewed Women in Love, and Hamlin said, "It helped me in relation to working with Michael. Without being blatantly sexual, its the best male-male relation ship on film - about the need men have for another man in their lives, be it sexual or not. We came out of the film with a succinct idea of what we anted to do."

Hamlin, who later gained fame on televisions "LA Law," also hung out at Mother Lode, a Los Angeles gay bar and Making Love location. "A guy almost picked me up. When I told him I was doing research for a film, he said, I've heard that before." The actor, who screened Cruising and "Didn't like it at all," determined "not to play Bart stereotypically. i wanted to depict him as an individual who happens to be gay, whose wariness of commitment is characteristic of a lot of people, regardless."

Hamlin's personal publicity during this period focused on his relation ship with over-forty Ursula Andress, with whom he had a child. Initially he had qualms about making Love: "I thought, I cant do this. But it was what i wanted to do, and I finally thought, if people don't accept it, screw em." he told US magazine, "Perhaps Making Love will help break down negative attitudes. Its absurd to accept murderers and psychotics and not someone in search of their own romanticism - with men or women."

As for the Kiss, he explained to After Dark magazine, "I wasn't apprehensive. Michael and I never really discussed or rehearsed it. We wanted the element of surprise, as it would have been in the real moment." There were two takes; the first was printed. Later, Hamlin, told the press that he'd thought of his girlfriend during the scene. eleven years earlier, Peter Finch answered the same stupid question (one never asked of gay performances doing straight love scenes). He said, "I just closed my eyes and thought of England."

Making Love's gay sexuality is presented gradually. Driving through Los Angeles, Zack spots a handsome, rugged male couple on a motorcycle. At night he parks in a gay backstreet, lets a man into his car, then suddenly changes his mind. He visits a gay bar but retreats the first time a man makes advances. But that same bar is Bart's home away from home, where he picks up Tim, a handsome young trick played by John Dukakis. Dukakis - whose father was running for reelection as governor of Massachusetts at the time - asked his agent, "Would you play a homosexual if your father was running for office?" Answer: "Sure. But if I were really gay, I wouldn't." Similarly, some extras in the gay-bar scene declined to be included in the stills photographs. They may have recalled that at last one lesbian spotted in newspaper photos taken during the filming of Sister George's bar scene lost her day job.

When Zack and Bart meet, they go back to Bart's house. they kiss in a long-shot, after Bart admits he is gay and Zack allows that he is "curious". The men move into the bedroom. In a medium-shot, they remove each other's shirts and kiss passionately on the lips. Next they appear in bed together, and Bart permits Zack to spend the night. One gay critic, more attuned to the more blunt Taxi zum Klo, called the kiss "as tasteful as a Harlequin romance." But for straight audiences it was heavy stuff. Zack's basic decency by his active sympathy for a female masterectomy, and he's shown to genuily love Claire. A brief scene proves that he's also a dutiful son to his parents Arthur Hill and Nancy Olson. Somewhat stereotypically, Zack and Bart reminisce about youthful failures at sports and their unrequited affection for stern fathers. But the diversity and general contentednes of gay men is made apparent. When Claire visits Ted (Asher Brauner), a trick of Zack's whose address she finds in a matchbook, she asks if Ted is "happy". He answers that if pricked, he bleeds. Ted explains that he dislikes having to pay a disproportionate amount of his salary to buy hamburger, etc., but yes, he's really happy.

Associate producer Sandler noted that the idealized Zack is "balanced out by Bart, who isn't necessarily a negative view of gay life but certainly an honest one... Say what you will, but I don't believe any gay person will walk out of this movie feeling any degree of shame. This is what I intended" he told the Los Angeles Times.
Sandler fully expected irrelevant criticism from the straight press. "What I'd like, and what's important, is for a gay man to be able to take his parents to Making Love and see solid, human, decent gay men. I'd like a seventeen-year-old boy sitting in the back of a theater in Oklahoma City, terrified of the feelings he's experiencing about other men, to see the models and conflicts and say, 'This is what I am; I'm going to go for it and ultimately be happy'". Making Love was a turning point for Sandler. "I can't go back. None of us can. The negative stereotype is out. Straight and gay people want positive images."

The "positive stereotypes" were decried by straight critics as well as by some gay ones. Dr. Newton Dieter, head of the Gay Media Task Force, said, "There have been so many projects, such as Cruising, which have portrayed gays as psychotics, suicides, murderers. There are gays who are those things, and there are also a great many more gays who are warm, giving and well-adjusted. If the script over-romanticizes in that direction, my reaction is, 'So what?'"

Clifton Montogmery, the Advocate: Making Love is a bittersweet romance from the same time honored tradition as The way we were ..... Herein lies its importance, because for the first time, attractive, intelligent characters who are gay have been plugged into the formula .... The men grow and benefit because of their acceptance of their sexuality.
Jeff Barber, Lambda News: The gay breakthrough movie. For the first time in a production by a major American studio, two men are allowed to kiss romantically, appear in bed together, and whisper "I love you". Unlike all the Hollywood films we grew up with, being gay is no sin in Making Love; no one is "punished".
Not only is Making Love politically correct, it is tender, funny, and warm. Zack's coming out is portrayed as difficult and painful; it takes enormous courage to risk the rejection of family and friends .... You can recommend Making Love without reservation to straight family and friends as an honest, positive portrayal of gay life.
Michael Lasky, B.A.R: Making Love is a great title: something we all do, with a societally accepted partner or not ... The first film from Hollywood to broach the untouchable theme of Gay sex, it is also the first to treat Gay people maturely and really no different - a socially and historically significant film. Making Love treats Gay lovemaking with kid gloves, which is okay. It guides easily upset straights at their own pace. The filmmakers are eyeing the middle-American audience first. Gays already know what this picture has to say. Middle-Americans don't. Making Love puts Fox into the twentieth century; gays should be overjoyed that it actually got made, not cynical and demanding that it isn't blatant. Hollywood has packaged homosexuality attractively enough to break down some hard-edged preconceptions. This picture is the first step. If it goes over at the box office, more pictures will explore farther. Amen.
Howard Weiss, Bicoastal: I saw making Love in a suburb north of New York City. Though the town has a gay bar or two and plenty of closet space, the hetero audience's reaction was shocking. I heard catcalls every time Zack and Bart touched. one woman screamed, "Oh, my God, he's a doctor!" People actually walked out in the middle. Why did they come to see it in the first place? Upon leaving the theater, I noticed many gay singles and couples present; they appeared to be thinking what I was - however, to speak it would probably have led to a lynching.
David Castell, Photoplay (U.K): Making Love is can-died when it should be candid. Hiller phrases his film in the cliches of old movies - Hamlin is a video buff who watches weepies like An Affair to Remember and emasculated films of homosexually-oriented plays like Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Hiller demonstrates that those movies had more style ... Wendy Hiller represents the spirit of romantic love that the gay world, shown here, rejects ... Hiller's film trails light-years behind the movie from which the idea is taken - Sunday, Bloody Sunday.
Buddhist Eye (Japan): The ideologically advanced movie treats its gay characters honestly and realistically. Both care about women and friends, the doctor more so ... The two marrieds find more suitable partners but remain loving to each other, while the novelist stays alone by choice .... The personalities' appeal is exceeded only by the revolutionary intentions of the open-hearted creators.