How many women have come forward to say they aren’t getting paid as much as their male costars? How many reports have found that women get less screen time than men, and fewer lines of dialogue as they age? Those are just some of the numerous protests from a binary perspective-trans and gender-nonconforming actors face even more obstacles and catch fewer breaks than cisgender performers in the business. And in recent years, the industry has very publicly reached a boiling point when it comes to gender parity. It’s no secret that Hollywood is not what most would call a balanced place. The Green Knight didn’t quite show Sir Gawain’s (Dev Patel) entire lower half, but the aftermath of his brief sexual encounter in the film was a major talking point, and Janicza Bravo’s Zola displayed a montage of penises that was certainly unforgettable.

There’s Red Rocket, in which Simon Rex (the former MTV VJ and rapper known as Dirt Nasty) runs fully naked down a Texas road to the tune of *NSYNC’s “Bye Bye Bye” Benedict Cumberbatch has a moment of self-pleasure while his fellow cowboys splash around in the lake during Jane Campion’s excellent study of masculinity, The Power of the Dog and even Josh O’Connor strips down to his skivvies in Mothering Sunday (though, it should be noted, it’s not his first full-frontal foray-the actor also bared all in God’s Own Country back in 2017). So why the history lesson on male full-frontal nudity in film now? It seems to be the case that this winter, if there is one in-your-face trend at the cinema, it’s men baring it all-from the front, particularly-on camera. We’ve come a long way since 1980, but there still haven’t been many major Hollywood moments in which the actors show everything on screen (actresses, on the other hand, have been exposed far more often, especially topless). But because of that role, Gere almost instantly became a sex symbol. (And about eight years ago, the actor told the Advocate the nudity wasn’t even written in the original script). Back then, it was considered a bold move for him to not only appear in a film with so much queer subtext, but also to show his penis several times on camera when it hadn’t been done before, outside of pornography. Neither did The New York Times, nor Rolling Stone.īut if you ask just about anyone who saw that film in theaters in 1980, Gere-who had only just begun to make a name for himself as a stage actor with a few small film credits-appearing fully naked was the central takeaway. Oddly enough, though, Roger Ebert’s review doesn’t mention Gere’s full-frontal nudity once. Schrader’s treatment on male loneliness is another element of the film (and in many of his following features) that was commended by critics.

In the film, Gere plays an escort involved with the wife of a politician when it was first released, critics and audiences praised American Gigolo for its stylish neo-noir take on a seedy, hypersexual Los Angeles. In 1980, a young Richard Gere did something never before shown in mainstream American cinema by any well-known Hollywood actor: he appeared on screen, fully nude, in multiple scenes of Paul Schrader’s American Gigolo.

Simon rex sebastian