Anatomy of a Scene’s Manatomy: Richard Gere Goes Frontal Early in His Career for 'American Gigolo'

<< Blog | Editorial Features Thursday, August 27, 4:00 PMThu, 27 Aug 2020 @ 4:00 PM by Jake Jizzenhall

Throughout cinema history, there have been some iconic nude scenes that have transcended the bounds of the films in which they appeared. Our weekly column Anatomy of a Scene's Manatomy will take an in-depth look at these scenes, their history, their deeper meanings, and their legacy. This week, Richard Gere takes a big risk early in his career by baring his dick in Paul Schrader's American Gigolo.

Regardless of your opinion of Richard Gere right now, at this moment, before you've read this article, I guarantee you'll either like him even more or be won over by him by the end of this piece. It's not an exaggeration to say that Gere's career would not exist without John Travolta turning down some key roles, including the lead role in this flick, though whether he turned it down or writer/director Paul Schrader turned him down is another matter. Either way, just as with the male lead in the Oscar winning flicks Days of Heaven,An Officer and a Gentleman, and Chicago, Gere landed the role in American Gigolo because Travolta passed on the role.

Following a small but memorable turn as the serial killer in Looking for Mr. Goodbar, Gere soon became a bankable leading man thanks to the success of this film and his follow-up, the aforementioned An Officer and a Gentleman. The 1980s were not a very popular time for male actors to show any nudity outside of their bare ass, usually in a non-sexual context, and though the late 60s through the mid-to-late 70s saw an explosion of male nudity, it died out almost completely by the time American Gigolo was ready to shoot in 1979.

Writer/director Paul Schrader, meanwhile, was a well-established screenwriter having penned Taxi Driver for Martin Scorsese, but he was still a relative novice as a director, with American Gigolo being his third film behind the camera in three straight years. Schrader's entire aesthetic, up to that point, really revolved around a fervent, staunch masculinity and the idea that most men are sexual creatures who, if deprived that which they crave, give into their baser instincts. This script was something of a departure for him because, although there's still plenty of female nudity in the flick—it revolves around a high-class male escort—there's quite a bit of gay subtext to the lead character of Julian.

As reported by The Advocate in 2012, Gere told Entertainment Weekly that he took the role inAmerican Gigolo because of the gay subtext and how he had little to no exposure to the gay community or experience in his life prior to this film...

"Paul came to see me in Malibu and said, 'You've got to say yes to this by tomorrow at the latest.' I read it and I thought, 'This is a character I don't know very well. I don't own a suit. He speaks languages; I don't speak any languages. There's kind of a gay thing that's flirting through it and I didn't know the gay community at all.' I wanted to immerse myself in all of that and I had literally two weeks. So I just dove in."

The film's first thirty minutes establish Julian as desiring the best and always projecting an image of wealth and power to his very rich clientele. He eventually gets dragged into a murder mystery plot when one of his clients won't provide him with an alibi, but Gere's full frontal comes well before that. After shacking up with Lauren Hutton's Michelle, a California state senator's wife, Gere gets out of bed naked to tell her about the night they first met and how it took him three hours to bring the wife of a wealthy financier to orgasm. He then clearly turns his body so there's no mistaking that you're seeing his dick...

Compared to the nudity his contemporaries were doing around that same time, like Al Pacino in Cruising or William Hurt in Body Heat, Gere was clearly willing to go above and beyond when it came to nudity on film. Most of his contemporaries, particularly at that time, would've played that scene in the bed, under the covers. It seems that it may even have been written that way, but as Gere revealed in that aforementioned interview, the full frontal nudity wasn't in the script...

"If I recall, [the nudity] wasn't in the script. It was just in the natural process of making the movie. I certainly felt vulnerable, but I think it's different for men than women."

Okay, bravo for that qualifier at the end there, with female nudity often being considered a given in films, the vulnerability of it is often not in play for female actors. Male actors, on the other hand, have to be literally stripped nude and put in that most vulnerable of all positions to begin to feel even slightly exposed. This combination of sensitivity on screen and off, coupled with his ability to drive a substantial portion of the nation's women wild with sexual desire, made him a real threat to your average, inadequate, self-loathing, straight white male.

It's really no wonder that Gere became the victim of a savage smear campaign in the early 90s, likely by these same straight men who were threatened by a wholly sensitive and well groomed man, which most certainly mean that he must be closeted. According to Snopes.com the whole gerbil rumor first began making the rounds in earnest right around the time that women everywhere were once again swooning over Gere in 1990...

The rumor’s spread was aided by an anonymous prankster who, not long after the film Pretty Woman led to a tremendous increase in Gere’s popularity, flooded fax machines in Hollywood with a phony “press release” purportedly issued by the Association for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, claiming that Gere had “abused” a gerbil. But, as a reporter from the National Enquirer found when he attempted to track down the gerbil story, there were no facts to be had.

Yes, Richard Gere has made a fool of himself on film and in real life—his 1993 Oscars demonstration of the vapidness of celebrity is a crowning example of this—but his words about his craft prove he's a serious actor who cares about the craft. Now he's simply doomed to be forever associated with this stupid, homophobic rumor until his star has faded so much that it gets attached to someone new. Hopefully between now and then he gets a role that gains some actual awards buzz for him and we can put the focus back on his acting.

Catch up with our other editions of Anatomy of a Scene's Manatomy...

—Two of History's Manliest Men Wrestle Naked in Women in Love

—Ewan McGregor Has Got It, Flaunts It in Velvet Goldmine

—A Pair of Stars are Born in Y Tu Mamá También

—Harvey Keitel Goes Hog Wild in Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant

—Viggo Mortensen is Naked From Every Imaginable Angle in Eastern Promises

—There's No Shame is Michael Fassbender's Dick Game

—Kevin Bacon Steals the Show Going Full Frontal in Wild Things

—How We Met Jason Segel's Dick in Forgetting Sarah Marshall

—Jack Reynor is Uniquely Vulnerable for a Man in Midsommar

—Jaye Davidson Knows All There is to Know About The Crying Game

—David Bowie Battles Rip Torn for Dick Supremacy in The Man Who Fell to Earth