A look inside Hollywood and the movies. : THIS IS A TEST : What’s a Kiss Between Friends? Better Not Ask

Imagine “Prelude to a Kiss” without the kiss. Twentieth Century Fox did--briefly.

And not just any of the kisses between lovers Peter (Alec Baldwin) and new bride Rita (Meg Ryan), but the kiss Peter later plants on an older man (Sydney Walker).

As ridiculous as it seemed to the filmmakers themselves and to many Fox executives, some members of Fox’s marketing department actually considered cutting the most important scene from the movie because it offended “a very vocal minority” of the film’s test audiences.

The audiences apparently didn’t understand that the kiss between the two men had nothing to do with homosexuality and everything to do with dramatic structure--much like the pivotal kiss in the frog/prince fairy tale upon which playwright and screenwriter Craig Lucas loosely based his story.

To explain in the briefest terms, “Prelude to a Kiss” has the old man in the role of the frog whom the prince must kiss in order to be reconnected with his wife-princess. The play was a critical and commercial success, first at the South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa and later both off and on Broadway.

But movie test audiences aren’t always in the same demographic group as theatergoers, said the diplomatic Lucas in a telephone interview from New York. Some people confused a chaste kiss with one having homoerotic undertones. “It was a big gross-out with teen-agers,” he said. Those who got it? “The hipper audiences.”

But movies go out to the un-hip as well, which is where Fox’s concern came in.

It’s no secret that studios try desperately to attract as wide an audience as possible. The fact the movie has star power in Baldwin and Ryan goes a long way to helping the film’s appeal, but there’s always the chance one potentially offending scene could kill it at the box office--or so the marketing rationale goes.

In any event, after one preview showing of the movie with the so-called offending scene removed, Lucas said Fox had no choice but to concur. It just didn’t work without the kiss.

“It shows a certain courageousness on (Fox’s) part. There is no gay content in the movie, but it does raise the whole question of perception--whether it matters what’s on the outside when you understand what’s on the inside,” he said.