Kevin Bacon has revealed that a same-sex kiss was cut from Wild Things.
In an interview for Esquire’s ‘For the Record’ series, the EE actor reminisced on his career highlights including the 1998 erotic thriller, which also stars Matt Dillon, Neve Campbell and Denise Richards.
The film follows high school counsellor Sam Lombardo (Dillon) as he’s accused of rape by two female students, Suzie Toller (Campbell) and Kelly Lanier Van Ryan (Richards).
While the film already features a queer kiss between Campbell and Richards’ characters—which is widely regarded as one of the most iconic same-sex kisses in film history—it could’ve had another.
In a highly memorable and homoerotic scene from Wild Things, Dillon’s character enters the bathroom to take a shower, only to discover Ray Duquette (Bacon), the police sergeant who suspects the trio of being involved in a scam, in the nude.
“In the original script we start making out,” revealed Bacon.
“Part of what was crazy about the movie was that there were all these twists. That was, like, the hook of the movie. So, to me, the kiss was a great twist. That’s all. I was like, ‘That’d be an awesome twist.’”
He added: “But I don’t know. For some reason it got cut. We didn’t shoot it. I don’t think we shot it. I think it just got cut.”
One of the producers for Esquire then asked Bacon if he was “attached” to the kiss scene, to which he responded: “Yeah, I definitely was. Look at [Matt Dillon], he’s gorgeous.”
Bacon first opened up about the cut scene in a 2005 interview with Total Film, revealing that Dillon’s character was originally meant to climb into the shower with him for a kiss.
However, he said the “financiers” of Wild Things “didn’t like the idea of men making out”: “They felt it went too far. They felt it wasn’t right.”
Additionally, in 2023, director John McNaughton told Entertainment Weekly that they “were supposed to look each other up and down and then wham – go at it”.
Although Wild Things was met with mixed reviews at the time of its release, it has since earned cult classic status.
You can watch Kevin Bacon’s interview for Esquire’s ‘For the Record’ series below.
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