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ehearsal, you watch a kiss, it ceased to be very meaningful.
There are a lot of factors that tend to make this stuff nobig-deal.
First of all, everyone in the business understands,
going in, that it's part of the business. It's not a surprise or
anything. I work with an ensemble of actors, and I think, by
now, most of them have played sex scenes together. no one
cares. We joke about it.
Second, it's almost never sexy. It's choreographed. You
simply can't tell two actors to "go at it" and let them improvise.
no one in the audience would see anything. Heads would be
in the way, etc. It's even less romantic in the film world, where
there are camera men in track suits and mics stuck all over
the place. even if the spouse wasn't there during rehearsal,
he would know — just from being married to the actor — how
unsexy this stuff is.
(once, when I was acting — long before I was married
— I got to make out with an actress I was very attracted to.
I was excited beforehand, but in the end it turned out to be
totally un-titillating. It was by-the-numbers. Turn head, count
to three, press lips together . . . )
Added to this, most people in the business, if they stay in
the business, are very professional and have a good sense of
humor about this stuff. It's rare for anyone to "pull anything"
or to try to take advantage of a sex scene. Actors do their work
and then quit.
Which is not to say there isn't a fantasy element to it. If
you're playing a bad guy, part of the fun is . . . getting to be the
bad guy. To get to pretend you're blowing up the White House
and have a blast doing it. And part of the fun of a sex scene
is . . . making out with someone.
I am sure my wife has enjoyed making out with some of
her co-stars (and I know that she's suffered through others).
That's human nature, and it doesn't make me jealous or uncomfortable.
It would be odd if she hated every minute of it,
wouldn’t it?
The final piece of the puzzle is that theatre and film folks
tend to be very liberal and pretty easy-going about sexual matters.
That isn't a coded way of saying, "We're all swingers."
We're not. But we're very far from being prudes, we're very
touchy feely in general, and very used to make believe. Some-
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