In an excerpt from his book «Sexplosion,» Robert Hofler explores the late writer’s work on director Ken Russell’s groundbreaking film «Women in Love»
Playwright and AIDS activist Larry Kramer, who died Wednesday at age 84, got his start in the film business — including director Ken Russell’s Oscar-winning 1969 film “Women in Love,” an adaptation of the D. H. Lawrence novel that broke barriers with its depiction of frontal male nudity. In an excerpt from his 2014 book “Sexplosion,” TheWrap theater critic Robert Hofler looks back at Kramer’s work on the project.
Long before he became the world’s most famous AIDS activist, Larry Kramer made movies. Thinking back to his days as a production chief at Columbia in the 1960s, Kramer claimed, “Because of me, Columbia Pictures released ‘Darling.’ I told Columbia that this was a fantastic movie, and they took my advice and picked it up.”
He and the film’s director, John Schlesinger, were more than friends. “I met him. We went to bed a bunch of times. He was more serious than I was,” Kramer recalled.
Their paths crossed again when, hot off the success of United Artists’ “Midnight Cowboy,” Schlesinger was invited by Kramer to see the rough cut of his new film, “Women in Love,” also to be released by UA in 1969. Kramer did double duty on the film, having produced it and written the screenplay. Schlesinger praised the movie so effusively that Kramer thought his old boyfriend might still be smitten — until the director backed up his words by hiring “Women in Love” star Glenda Jackson, as well as most of that film’s crew, for his next project, “Sunday Bloody Sunday.”
Kramer could only hope that the version of “Women in Love” he screened for his old boyfriend would be the movie audiences saw. As the film’s producer, he had yet to negotiate a final approved cut with the British Board of Film Censors. Even before shooting began, Kramer had sent a copy of his script to the board’s chief, a man named Lord John Trevelyan, who often said, “We’re paid to have dirty minds.” Trevelyan didn’t hold out much hope for Kramer, and even went so far as to tell him that he doubted his “Women in Love” script could be filmed at all. “The male wrestling scene,” as it was soon to be dubbed, sent immediate shock waves through the BBFC.
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In his research for the film, Kramer had found an unpublished section of the D. H. Lawrence novel “in which the characters Rupert and Gerald go off and have a full-blown homosexual affair. Of course, it was not used,” said Kramer. “You get the sense, though, that Lawrence is playing around with all this, perhaps subconsciously.
