This article is no longer available online. ORDINARY PEOPLE: The makers of 'Jeffrey,' the movie, hope audiences - gay and straight - will see a kiss as just a kiss VERY EARLY ON in the new movie "Jeffrey," which Paul Rudnick adapted from his Off-Broadway hit, two men kiss passionately. What follows is what is described in movie-making parlance as a "smash cut": The camera immediately angles in on two young couples sitting in a theater watching a movie, presumably "Jeffrey." The guys say, "Gross! Yeew!!! Puke! Two dudes kissing!" Their female dates sigh romantically. When it comes to gay sexuality onscreen, a kiss is not just a kiss, a sigh is not just a sigh. While films have increasingly become less chary of homosexual subject matter - "Philadelphia" being the most recent example - it is arguable that "Jeffrey," an independent film that opens Friday, will test the audience appeal for a romantic gay love story. Unlike most previous films about gays, the homosexuality among the characters in "Jeffrey" is presented as a given - outfront, unapologetic and exuberant. And while the bare-bones budget of the $1.75-million independent film keeps the financial risk to a minimum, the presence in the cast of well-known actors - Steven Weber ("Wings"), Patrick Stewart ("Star Trek: The Next Generation"), Sigourney Weaver ("Alien") and Olympia Dukakis ("Moonstruck") - enhances the film's potential to attract a mainstream audience. "Actually, there is plenty of kissing between men within the first five seconds of the movie," says the 36-year-old Rudnick, who has achieved renown as a humorist through novels ("I'll Take It"), Broadway plays ("I Hate Hamlet") and movies ("Sister Act," "Addams Family Values"). "We wanted to get it out of the way so that the audience would realize that 'Jeffrey' is not about some kind of shocking revelation. People have been so programed to expect gay theater and films to be about soap opera and nobility in hospital rooms. 'Jeffrey' is not about that." Indeed, when Paul Rudnick's play opened Off-Broadway in early 1993, where it ran for nearly a year, it won rave reviews and much media attention for daring to approach the subject of sexuality and AIDS with humor. The title character is an aspiring and cheerfully oversexed gay actor ("I'm not promiscuous, I'm cheap") who chooses to put his sex life on hold because, as he puts it, "Sex wasn't meant to be safe or negotiated or fatal." But no sooner has Jeffrey (Steven Weber) made his vow of celibacy than he meets Steve (Michael T. Weiss), a hunk who pursues him with all the ardor of Cary Grant chasing Ingrid, Audrey and Doris. Complicating the issue is that Steve, though in robust good health, happens to be HIV-positive. As in the stage play, the movie is a series of vignettes exploiting Manhattan as the backdrop for the adventures of a family of droll gay men, including Sterling (Patrick Stewart), a wise-cracking interior decorator, and his boyfriend Darius (Bryan Batt), a dancer in the Broadway musical "Cats." Using fantasy and satire, "Jeffrey" skewers NewAge gurus, sexual compulsives, horny Catholic priests and pseudo-macho gym rats while celebrating Martha Stewart, Mother Teresa, Yoko Ono, the Empire State Building and the fearless embrace of commitment in the face of a terrifying disease. - - - The hip kaleidoscopic world of "Jeffrey" was colorfully on display last summer when the film was being made in Manhattan. On a sweltering afternoon midway through the 26-day shooting schedule, drag queens in beaded gowns and taffeta, their bouffant hairdos battling the humidity, mingled with muscled young men in sleeveless shirts and tight jeans. With rainbow-colored banners flying in the breeze, the filmmakers were in Central Park to re-create a portion of a Gay Liberation Day parade and rally. Looking on as director Christopher Ashley finished shooting a scene with Dukakis as a proud Mafia princess mother of a "preoperative transsexual lesbian," Rudnick expressed satisfaction with the way filming was going. "Look at that over there," the writer said, pointing to a drag queen wearing full skirts, holding a parasol and sitting under a huge oak tree. "Doesn't that just look like a Merchant-Ivory film gone cosmic?" Standing in the shade, Rudnick conceded that there had been no interest from the major studios in "Jeffrey." "They were very wary of it," he said. " 'A comedy about AIDS? Ahhhh, no thank you.' " Nonetheless, the financing came together rather quickly in 1993 from Working Man Films. Mitchell Maxwell, who is president of the New York-based company, was one of the backers of the Off-Broadway production, and he was keen to option it for film. His two partners, his sister Victoria Maxwell and Mark Balsam, are acting as executive producers, with Rudnick sharing coproducing credit. "We traded money for a sense of control and involvement," said Rudnick. "We didn't want the movie to have the burden of huge and inappropriate financial risks. Besides, it's a story better served by imagination than money." Although "Jeffrey" was greenlighted before the opening of "Philadelphia," the young executive producer believed that the success of the Jonathan Demme film about AIDS could help the chances of "Jeffrey" to cross over to heterosexual audiences. Nonetheless, the producer conceded that despite the rave reviews and honors, the Off-Broadway production has yet to recoup its initial investment, indicating its success in attracting large numbers of urban straights was limited. The four-month run of "Jeffrey" in Los Angeles also was something of a disappointment, though there have since been productions in places as diverse as Omaha and Tokyo. Yet Maxwell thinks the film - because of lower ticket prices for movies, a better-known cast and more marketing options - may have greater potential than the play. - - - While the money to make the film came relatively easy, casting did not. According to Rudnick, there was "terror" among both gay and straight actors when it came to the central roles of Jeffrey and Steve, which eventually went to Steven Weber and Michael T. Weiss. There were problems as well in casting Sterling and Darius, who will be played, respectively, by Patrick Stewart and Bryan Batt, who created the latter role Off-Broadway. "You'd be surprised how many gay actors were much more afraid than straight actors," said Rudnick. "Many actors will play gay roles as long as the parts are not sexual or behaviorial. They'll play the martyr but not the happy gay man. It's possible they just didn't like the material, but so many people turned us down that it started to become embarrassing." In fact, casting was at something of a standstill until ICM agent Steven Dontanville began to push clients to become involved in the movie. Sigourney Weaver, who plays a pushy, NewAge guru, was the first to break the stalemate. Other ICM clients followed, including Weber, Stewart, Kathy Najimy and Christine Baranksi, all of whom are working for scale, approximately $430 a day. Patrick Stewart, who plays the flamboyant decorator, Sterling, said he was immediately attracted to the humor of the piece and had no hesitation saying yes. Actively looking for a role that would move him "as far away from the Starship Enterprise and Captain Picard as possible," he said he found it in a character who had previously been treated in films and television as something of a cliche. What elevates the witty Sterling above stereotype is the emotional journey he must undergo when his lover dies of AIDS. "There are so many colors to him," said Stewart. "He represents a point of view in the film that says we have to say yes to love, no matter what pain it may bring. Any alternative to that simply means cauterizing your life and not being in the world. He says that with such elegance and style that I would've been foolish to turn it down." On the other hand, both Weber - known to audiences as the quick-witted and womanizing pilot on the series "Wings" - and Weiss ("2000 Malibu Road") confessed to bouts of "heterosexual angst" before they agreed to play the romantic couple. At the first rehearsal, Weiss recalled, he went up to Weber and said, "Look, I'm going to kiss you right now and get it over with." The kiss apparently went off rather believably. "It was all so very unfraught," said Ashley, which wasn't always true with some of the gay actors who played the roles on stage. " There's never been a sense from either Steve or Michael of backing down." In fact, Weber, as Jeffrey, may have one of the most challenging roles of his career. Not only is he called upon to be a likable romantic lead on the verge of a nervous breakdown; he has to have an aptitude for farce and be willing to don some outrageous garb (at one point, a red velvet cape and a tiara). Weber conceded he had to be prodded into the project. "The piece didn't jump out at me when I read the script," he said during a break in filming. "All I saw was something sad. The emotional issues, about love, contact and commitment, happen to be issues in my own personal life that I've been struggling a lot with. It was more about that for me than sexual behavior." Weiss said he approached playing Steve as he would any other role, trying to be as believable as possible as an HIV-positive gay man in search of someone to love. "How can you fault anyone for finding love someplace?" said Weber. "This is a love story, not a sex story. We'll be successful if people watching the movie don't think about the 'gay issues' but about the 'human issues.' " Weiss said he believed that Tom Hanks, who won an Oscar for his portrayal of an AIDS-infected gay man in "Philadelphia," had paved the way for other actors to comfortably assay gay roles. He denigrated as "wimps" those mainstream actors who reportedly have it in their contracts that while they will play gays, they refuse to kiss another man. "If you're going to play a character, you have to accept fully the embodiment of that character," he said. "I've kissed a lot of women on screen that I've had as much passion with as I've had with Steven Weber. But if people think it's sexy, that's great. That's the idea." Although Weber noted he thinks the movie-going public is more intelligent than sometimes the studios and the media give them credit for, he's still nervous enough about the response to the film. "Maybe I should be hoping that my next movie role will involve a lot of diving into ditches, throwing grenades and saying the 'F' word a lot just to compensate." When Rudnick was told that Weiss thinks he might need an Oliver Stone movie to compensate for being in "Jeffrey," he quipped, "But darling, this is an Oliver Stone movie, except it's catered better." The writer added that if "Jeffrey" turned out to be a good movie, then the success of it at the boxoffice will only be "an added bonus." "From the beginning, when we started working on the play, Chris and I were always worried that 'Jeffrey' would offend just about everybody on some level," he said. "But it never happened. I think it's because people are hungry for new stories, new characters, gay or straight. It wouldn't be such a burden if there were more films about gay subject matter. You have to have a license to fail. At the least, the success of 'Philadelphia' has taken some of the pressure off. "But we've got to get more positive images out there," Rudnick added. "What will defeat bigotry more than anything else will be ordinariness. More than Senate sessions or public debates, good stories and movie stars and appealing characters will help eliminate the stigma and fear of what's considered 'strange.' How can you reject Sterling when he's played by Captain Picard? Maybe some of this is wild wishful thinking, but all the editorials in the world will never convince a teenager the way a movie at the mall will." Copyright 1995, Newsday Inc. PATRICK PACHECO, Newsday, 07-30-1995, pp 14.