American Gigolo (1980) - 1/23/2024
Is Richard Gere too hot to be a believable prostitute?
American Gigolo is a flawed and problematic film for a bunch of reasons a 1980 film about an LA-based male prostitute could be. The language it uses and the way it presents homosexuality, how it shows sex work, and the actual sex scenes1 are just a few examples of how and why this film doesn’t hold up in 2024. But I think one of the oddest ones is that Richard Gere, who was and is an absolute stud, might be too hot to be playing a prostitute.
Now, this is not to say that sex workers cannot be attractive - a large part of sex is aesthetics - but it just doesn’t seem to mesh well in my mind. This idea very well could be because by the time I watched this film, I had seen all of the other hot movies that made him a heartthrob for a generation of mothers2, making any suspension of disbelief I had of him useless. When Gigolo came out, he really only had one other star role in Terrance Malik’s Days of Heaven, and An Officer and a Gentleman had not come out yet - which was his real launching point into stardom. He was still a moldable young star that Hollywood hadn’t type-cast yet.
With that being said, I can see how he was cast for this part given his character in Malik’s film and that smolder that makes him a believable, sleazy businessman or a skeezy lawyer. It suits him for this type of underbelly world that Schrader loves to inhabit. But at the end of the day, there’s no way this man can be passed off as just another face. Julia Roberts, while obviously gorgeous in her own way, has more of the “every person” type of look, which is why Pretty Woman can work: she’s someone you believe you can pass on the street on any given day. Gere has way too many hot, distinct features that could never make him blend into that scene3. Then again, his hotness could be why he was a successful pro with rich, older women in the first place.
Funny to think about how the experimental/artistic sex scene was considered “hot” at the time.
Which probably really starts here because of his affinity for only banging older women.
And why he was unable to successfully go “under cover” as a homeless person.