IS HOLLYWOOD GETTING THE MESSAGE ABOUT SAFE SEX?

As a TV character, Sgt. Christine Cagney of CBS’ landmark female cop show “Cagney & Lacey” is in serious trouble: She’s a sexually active single person in the age of AIDS. And she’s part of a larger problem facing almost every writer, director and producer in the film and television industry--how to depict sex, sensuality and romantic relationships at a time when incautious intimate contact is potentially deadly.

AIDS is a life-and-death issue that’s going to affect onscreen portrayals of sex and romance for years. A Calendar survey shows that most movie and TV producers are struggling with the problem now. “For the first time in the history of the show, I am stymied,” says “Cagney & Lacy” executive producer Barney Rosenzweig. His celebrated series has examined such themes as abortion, incest, apartheid, breast cancer and alcoholism--mostly told in an intensely personal way through the lives of the lead characters. “As a film maker, I feel I have a responsibility to have a clear point of view. But I am confused. We do not know a whole lot about this disease yet.

“In the past, we went out of our way to portray Cagney as a sexually liberated woman. It became clear to us about 8 to 10 months ago that we were sending an improper or irresponsible message to the public. But we didn’t know what to do about it. We didn’t want to create any more of the homophobic hysteria that already exists.”

The plan now, says Rosenzweig, is for Cagney to “practice abstinence for the first half of (next) season, which is not really a practical message.” Then she’ll have her first “blue-collar relationship” with a maintenance man that will reflect her gradual awareness of the dangers of unsafe sex, and a change in her romantic life style. But it’s giving the writers and producers fits.

Says Rosenzweig: “We’re still struggling with it. I’m not very proud of our leadership in this area.”

The safe-sex issue has exploded in Hollywood like a time bomb that had an inexplicably long fuse. Recent feature films heavily dosed with casual sex and hothouse sensuality--”Body Heat,” “Crimes of Passion,” “9 1/2 Weeks,” “About Last Night,” “Blue Velvet,” “Angel Heart,” the “Porky’s” series, to name a few--now seem like period pieces made in a different time when there were different rules. And TV programmers are feeling more than ever the burden of social responsibility in a medium that reaches over 200 million viewers in the United States alone, many of them children and teen-agers.

The United States still lags far behind many countries in educating the public about unguarded sex. (In British movie theaters, for example, audiences are treated to a humorous but informative AIDS short film, and European TV allows fairly explicit contraceptive commercials and educational spots.) But most media-conscious Americans probably have at least heard the basic rules: barring abstinence, limit your number of sex partners and avoid the exchange of bodily fluids. (And, intravenous drug users, stop doing drugs--or at least avoid contaminated needles.)

Safe sex is certainly on the collective mind of the Hollywood creative community. But how will it affect what ends up on screen? Are we about to enter a new era of non- permissiveness, with scripts largely sanitized of sex? Will couples be portrayed exchanging blood-test results on the first date? Tough guys carrying condoms as well as guns for protection? Will audiences wince because safe sex is suggested in romantic scenes--or because it’s left out? What kind of marketing problems--if any--are presented by titles such as “Casual Sex,” “Fatal Attraction,” “Consuming Passions” and “Hot to Trot,” all films now being developed or awaiting release?

And is all of this--as an AIDS backlash contingency claims--part of a snowballing hysteria pushing the issue way out of proportion?

The reality of acquired immune deficiency syndrome is raising questions in production offices about taste, social responsibility versus artistic freedom, the delicate balance between caution and panic and the long-term psychological effects of a new restrictiveness. The bottom line seems to be: unsafe sex is taboo. Or, at the very least, a troubling creative and commercial concern.

“Absolutely,” says Susan Merzbach, president of Sally Field’s Fogwood Films. “Every writer I’ve talked to, if the story involves free sexuality, you can’t ignore it.”

Merzbach tells of a Fogwood project in development for HBO called “Bridal Shower,” in which five women discuss their lives; as originally written, one talks blithely of an affair. “We realized we’d better take consideration of this--the dangers of their sexuality,” Merzbach says. “It was something we hadn’t considered six months ago.

“You don’t want to do a lecture series (on safe sex), but you can’t ignore it. It’s the new rule.”

Already well-publicized are the condom scene inserted into “Dragnet” (Tom Hanks, in bed with his girl, finds the condom box empty and the action cuts to the next day) and a monogamous James Bond in the new “The Living Daylights.” Also revealed: a title change for Warner Bros.’ “Dying for Love” to “Masquerade” because of public sensitivity to AIDS (a condom has also found its way into a love scene between stars Rob Lowe and Meg Tilly, according to a source).

Further examples are not hard to find:

In writer-director David Seltzer’s original script for Columbia’s upcoming “Punchline,” Sally Field and Tom Hanks fell into bed on the first date. It was shot that way. But “it will probably not end up in the picture,” Seltzer says, after viewing the scene in the editing room. “There’s been a lot of talk and consideration here on whether it’s a responsible thing to put on screen.”

For a scene in “Glory Days,” a teen film recently wrapped in Seattle, director Martha Coolidge (“Valley Girl”) employed several hundred eager teen-age extras. But she had to search hard to find two for a simple boy-girl kissing scene, so great was the general fear of acquiring AIDS from a stranger. She finally found a couple going steady who were willing to touch lips for the camera.

Coolidge also reshot a scene involving a visual gag--a hand-written sign stuck on a teacher’s back--alluding to a sexual act now associated with high-risk sex. “It didn’t bother me too much on the written page. But when we saw it at the dailies, everyone was appalled.” Also excised: a kissing-booth scene, although there is no medical evidence linking smooching and AIDS transmission.

Safe sex and trust about sexual backgrounds plays an important part in Universal’s “Cross My Heart,” starring Martin Short and Annette O’Toole. The studio describes the film, due out this fall, as a romantic comedy about “two single people who experience excitement, romance, despair and joy on their critical third date,” with mutual deception about their pasts at the crux of their problems.

One of the four young women characters on NBC’s “Facts of Life” “will have her first sexual encounter this (coming) season, in a positive way,” says executive producer Irma Kalish. “We do plan to make a responsible statement about safe sex, even getting into protection. And we’re likely to do an AIDS story if we find the right approach.”

ABC, the network probably best known for sexually oriented TV movies dealing with extramarital affairs, housewife hookers, et al, is changing its image. “My own proclivity is to not make those kind of movies, notwithstanding the current health problem,” says Ted Harbert, ABC’s vice president, motion pictures. “You’re seeing less of them already. But does the current health crisis influence that? Sure.”

“Love Potion No. 9,” an original screenplay by Dale Launer (“Ruthless People”), has been rejected by almost every studio. A comedy about an insecure young man who drinks a potion enabling his voice to “psycho-acoustically stimulate” members of the opposite sex to fall madly in love with him for four hours, it contains a montage showing him on a 48-hour sexual binge. Launer denies the suggestion--by a source close to the studios--that AIDS consciousness hurt his script’s reception when he first sent it around. But Launer concedes that in recent months, studio executives “have had problems” with the character’s sexual profligacy, especially the montage.

Launer, who hopes to close a deal with an independent to also direct, plans to shoot the montage with safe sex, with unsafe sex and with no sex--”and probably go with the safe-sex version.”

A source who has read the script for 20th Century Fox’s “Less Than Zero” reports that it is a “much more moralistic story now” than the source novel by Bret Easton Ellis, “which had no morals.” Gone is the random and rampant sex, including teen-age bisexuality and homosexual prostitution. The lead character of Clay (Andrew McCarthy in the film), morally directionless in the book, is now “something of a hero trying to save his friend from drugs.”

Producer Steve Tisch says flatly that his biggest hit, the landmark teen film “Risky Business” (1983), “could not and should not be made in 1987.” The movie about an enterprising boy using his parent’s house as a brothel to serve local high schoolers “did not even address the fears and realities of AIDS. I’d feel irresponsible (today) making a film aimed at teen-agers, as ‘Risky Business’ was, that introduces them to the world of call girls and casual sex.”

Not everyone is so willing to personally discuss the subject. Top executives at studios and the “mini-majors” were particularly reluctant, with most declining comment or issuing innocuous statements through press representatives. Producer Jon Avnet (“Less Than Zero”) did not return Calendar’s phone calls. Producer Lawrence Kasdan and writer-director Armyan Bernstein declined to talk about “Cross My Heart.” James Bridges, directing the trendy “Bright Lights, Big City,” would not comment on the issue, said a publicist, “because there’s no sex in our movie.” Producer Marcy Carsey and Tom Werner of “The Cosby Show” “declined comment,” according to a press spokesman, because the show “doesn’t tackle issues.”

But many others seemed almost compelled to talk about how AIDS has affected their work, sometimes going off the record with personal stories and feelings. The responses ranged from secretaries and assistants giggling with nervous laughter when apprised of the subject to personal anguish on the part of some film makers.

A screenwriter spoke numbly of having attended seven funerals in less than two years. A producer told of a close male friend who had slept with only one person in his life--his wife; she contracted AIDS during an extramarital affair, transmitted it to her husband, and both have since died. A director spoke of a teen-age actor whose nuclear nightmares have been replaced by AIDS nightmares. Within 15 minutes, in separate conversations, a reporter heard the same joke from a director and a producer:

A 3-year-old, playing with another, says, “I found a condom on the patio.” The other asks: “What’s a patio?”

Significantly, the words gay and homosexual rarely came up, although that segment of the population has been hit most hard by the crisis in this country. Most of those interviewed talked about AIDS as if had become a concern in their daily lives, regardless of sexual orientation. And most mentioned that they had lost at least one friend or loved one to the disease.

And at least one--director Penelope Spheeris (“Suburbia,” “The Decline of the American Empire”)--while bemoaning the AIDS epidemic, found some creative relief from its impact.

“Everyone is at a loss to say anything positive about AIDS,” Spheeris says. “But at least now directors won’t have to shoot gratuitous sex scenes. I’m personally uncomfortable shooting them, or even having to watch them. I’ve always felt that way.”

Her new film, “Dudes,” due out this fall from New Century Vista, tells of three New York City punkers headed for California who become entangled in an Old West adventure in the Southwest. In a love scene between Jon Cryer and Catherine Mary Stewart, says Spheeris, “I shot it so they did the dialogue, kissed and I cut away so audiences could assume the rest.

“Now (with the AIDS crisis), I’d shoot it so they didn’t even kiss. I wouldn’t ask an actor to kiss another actor, even though they say you can’t get AIDS from kissing.”

That kind of reaction triggers near-disbelief in writer-director William Richert (“Winter Kills”). Among those interviewed, he stands pretty much alone.

“I’m living my life ignoring it (AIDS), and I’m making my films the same way,” he sayspassionately but congenially, his words occasionally sliced with dark laughter. “They took smoking out of movies. Now are they going to get rid of kissing and sex? Men and women have enough trouble getting together without (worrying about) this. What will happen to instinct?

“Making love is such a glorious event, and I’ll show it that way every time (I make a movie). People are disturbed enough. It’s so easy to scare people. So many are already scared about sex. Now we’re going to really scare them--all because of a plague that’s supposed to happen?”

Richert questions the statistics flooding from the media, some of which project AIDS-related deaths in the tens of millions worldwide by the end of the century, with central Africa particularly devastated. He also suspects that fear of AIDS is partly hysteria in an era when right-wing politics and religious fundamentalism have flourished. “I don’t want to be glib about it,” he says, “but aren’t there more important things, like war, to worry about?”

In his new picture, “Jimmy Reardon,” to be released by Island Pictures later this summer, Richert will take his audience back to a more innocent time. Starring River Phoenix and based on Richert’s 1967 novel of the same title, the film revolves around “a day in the life of a kid, 17, who’s loaded with hormones. Basically, he follows his instincts (bedding three women, including his father’s mistress) but eventually learns that’s not necessarily best. But he certainly has fun.

“It’s got a lot of sexuality in it and it’s about teen-agers and it certainly won’t turn anyone off on it (sex). But there’s also no obvious sex in it. It’s comical and touching. Really, it’s basically sweet.”

Richert added, “Mercifully, it was written and set in 1962. It’s a historical piece. The movie has no AIDS consciousness whatsoever.”

Will period pieces take on a new appeal in the age of AIDS?

David Permut, who has just gotten a green light to make the story of earthy rock and roll legend Janis Joplin, based on the sensational book “Buried Alive,” feels “the ‘60s predates the AIDS era. Because it’s a period piece, I think you overcome some of those problems.” And Martha Coolidge says, laughing, “Thank God my next film is a period piece, so I don’t have to think about it (AIDS).”

But Phil Robinson (he wrote “All of Me”) doesn’t feel historical material lets film makers off the hook. He’s in post-production as a first-time director on “In the Mood,” formerly called “The Woo Woo Kid,” for a fall release from Lorimar and King’s Road Entertainment. It’s based on the true story of Sonny Wisecarver (played by newcomer Patrick Dempsey), the famous Woo Woo Kid (as newspapers dubbed him) of the early 1940s who married two women in their 20s when he was 14 and 15. Beverly D’Angelo and Talia Balsam co-star.

“We decided early on, particularly because of AIDS, to not have nudity and not show sex scenes,” says Robinson. “We were very aware while making it that attitudes about sex outside of marriage were changing.”

Robinson decided to excise a favorite voice-over segment at the beginning of the film in which the Wisecarver character says, “Some historians even claim I started the sexual revolution, but if I did, I swear to God, I didn’t mean to.”

Why? “We took it out because in the three years since I wrote the script, the sexual revolution has taken on a whole different meaning.”

Robinson feels he actually has a film of innocence that is well-suited to the times: “In the 1940s, the media played up the sex angle. But they missed the point--it wasn’t sex in the relationships, it was love. The reason the women fell in love with him is because he treated them so well. It was not about sex. The misconception promulgated by the media in the 1940s would be dead wrong (for a movie) today.

“You can tell people it’s the ‘40s, but when they watch it, they’re going to apply a contemporary perspective.”

Others are less certain.

“I don’t know yet what audiences want,” says Dale Pollock, A&M; Films vice president, production. “I don’t think we’re at the point yet when audiences want to see safe sex acts depicted onscreen. There may be an analogy to the (Depression-era) 1930s, when audiences wanted to see wealth, luxury and comfort. Today, they may prefer to see a time reflected when there was more sexual freedom.

“The mistake would be in getting so cautious that you end up calling attention to yourself,” Pollock said. On the other hand: “We definitely will be seeing more cinematic monogamy. It’s an issue that’s definitely being discussed with writers and producers at all the studios.”

One likelihood, predicted a number of film makers: the filming of alternative shots--safe and unsafe sexual activity, or references to same--to test on audiences in sneak previews to see where the discomfort is.

Zalman King finds himself in a quandary.

“I usually do films involving passionate, once-in-a-lifetime relationships, in which the characters are willing to risk everything, literally willing to lose their life for the person they love,” says King, who produced “9 1/2 Weeks” and co-wrote it with his wife Patricia Knop.

“9 1/2 Weeks,” starring Mickey Rourke and Kim Basinger, was essentially about sex--two people plunging into a steamy relationship, with few sexual holds barred, including sadomasochism. “When you’re talking about a relationship that’s already high risk, you sort of bypass the concept of safe sex (as a film maker). It kind of moves into an area of passion. They were gambling anyway. (But) I think both characters in that film were very bright. They probably would have known if they had AIDS.

“I love watching people in love,” King adds. “What can you do? Stop making romances--or carry on?”

Rewrite, in the case of “The Pickup Artist.” The film from Warren Beatty’s Mullholland Prod., being edited for a possible release later this summer from 20th Century Fox, revolves around an insecure, compulsive and unsuccessful womanizer (Robert Downey Jr.) who more than meets his match in Molly Ringwald. The title, meant to be ironic, will not be changed, according to first-time producer David MacLeod, who acquired the property and took it to his cousin, Beatty.

In early drafts, Ringwald’s character was “somewhat promiscuous,” MacLeod says, but now it’s “just the opposite. We had an ongoing discussion since we began shooting the picture (last summer) in New York. As our awareness grew, particularly in New York, where so many were affected, we started making changes. It was written and rewritten in the context (of AIDS), though there’s nothing specific about that. As the script evolved, she’s no longer promiscuous.

“By the end of the story, it’s clear that they’re going to attempt a serious relationship together. The final draft gives them much more of a chance.

“Maybe if we’d shot the picture in St. Louis or somewhere (in middle America), it would have been different. But in New York . . . we were all influenced by it.”

As a dramatic storyline, AIDS has been understandably limited in feature films, but it has turned up in at least three--”Parting Glances,” “Buddies” and “As Is,” all with gay characters and now on video after brief theatrical runs. And Barbra Streisand has reportedly reopened negotiations for film rights to Larry Kramer’s angry AIDS play, “The Normal Heart.”

But dramatizations of the subject have reached tens of millions through television. NBC presented the moving two-hour drama, “An Early Frost,” last season, dealing with a young man trying to cope with the disease. And AIDS has turned up as a recurring storyline or in individual episodes of NBC’s “Hill Street Blues,” “St. Elsewhere” and “L.A. Law.” Showtime’s “Brothers,” which has two regular gay characters, got serious in late 1985 with a segment about a professional football player afflicted with AIDS. CBS will present the one-hour “An Enemy Among Us,” about a teen-ager with AIDS, on Tuesday at 8 p.m. And ABC plans an After School Special examining the subject next season.

The Entertainment Industries Council, an industry-supported organization formed to deal with drug use in the entertainment community, is now pressuring the networks to include even more programming that might educate the public about AIDS, with a safe-sex, no-drugs approach. “It’s a particularly touchy subject with the networks right now,” said Brian Dyak, the group’s president. “They don’t know who they’re going to alienate.”

However, said Ted Harbert, ABC’s vice president, motion pictures, “While it’s good to do (some) storylines about AIDS, it’s more important for us to treat the issue of responsible relationships and safe sex on an ongoing basis. I’ve passed on a couple AIDS movie ideas, because we don’t want to capitalize on the misery of others, or give the wrong message.”

NBC has also rejected safe sex-related material for similar reasons: “We’ve turned down some stuff where they were just exploiting the issue, not using it constructively,” says Maurie Goodman, NBC’s vice president, broadcast standards, West Coast.

NBC has led the way with AIDS and safe-sex material. The subject of condoms turned up on the network’s “Family Ties” three years ago. “We had at least a dozen episodes last season when the word prophylactic or condom was employed,” says Goodman. “But we’re talking about unwanted pregnancy and a serious disease. If someone came to us now and wanted to say something about a condom or safe sex, the last thing we would say is no.”

He expects to see a safe-sex attitude worked into such NBC shows as “Cosby,” “The Golden Girls,” “Cheers,” “St. Elsewhere” and the new hour drama, “A Year in the Life,” in the coming season. “I can tell you which producers won’t, but they’re in a minority,” Goodman says.

At the same time, the network is casting a harder eye at shows where sex is treated rather glibly, or exploited for high ratings. Sex will generally be toned down: “In our soaps, it’s becoming particularly apparent.” (See related article on sex in the soaps.)

One likely target for discussion with producers, according to Goodman: Rue McClanahan’s lascivious character Blanche on “The Golden Girls,” where “all they seem to do is eat and hop in and out of bed,” as Goodman put it.

Paul Witt, a “Golden Girls” co-executive producer, insists that McClanahan’s character is “mostly talk and little substance. I think the character’s so clearly defined by now that the jokes about her promiscuity are not a problem. Maybe there will be fewer lines (about it), but the character will essentially stay the same.”

But he concedes that there may be less sexual chitchat and greater AIDS awareness next season among the four mature women on “The Golden Girls.” “Whether we deal with it in a specific show, I don’t know. But it will probably begin to come up in (their) conversation, just as it has in daily life.”

What does all this mean for artistic freedom in Hollywood, not to mention that time-honored staple, screen romance? One screenwriter claims that a policy memo is already circulating at a major studio warning executives that scripts with extramarital affairs are to be shunned. To some, after decades of moving away from the restrictive period of the prudish Hays Code, it portends a return to pre-’60s morality and sexual repressiveness--and a new censorship, whether mandated or self-inflicted.

“I don’t live in fear and I won’t let anyone force me into portraying fear,” director Bill Richert says defiantly. “Movies can be art, and that transcends a whole lot of stuff. There are already enough cautions in too many heads about what you can and cannot do in films. If this is going to be the new censorship, then AIDS has doubly hurt us.”

Then he laments, “Maybe someday, just telling a story about two people who make love spontaneously will be miraculous.”

Screenwriter Barry Sandler (who wrote the landmark gay romance, “Making Love”), currently writing a futuristic thriller for Warner Bros., says: “We’ve already been operating to some extent in a repressive shadow the past couple years with these raging hypocrites like Edwin Meese and the pornography commission looking over our shoulders. Now, with AIDS, it will certainly shift things in another direction on screen.”

But: “I think romance will be unaffected. My sense is, you’ll have to go back to the spirit of the ‘40s and ‘50s--a clutch and a fadeout and you assume he’s putting on his condom. (Laughing) You just don’t see it!

“Sex is alive and well. It just has to be cautionary sex.” (In the script he’s writing now, Sandler says, “I think the hero kisses his wife, and that’s about it.”)

Producer Steve Tisch, whose TV movies have included “The Burning Bed,” about wife battering, and “Silence of the Heart,” concerning teen suicide: “I haven’t had to deal with the (safe sex) issue yet on a specific project, but it’s in the back of my mind when I talk to writers and directors, particularly TV movies, because when a TV movie is successful, it reaches tens of millions of people. And there’s an intimacy to TV, almost like talking to a friend.

“I’ve made films with gratuitous violence and sex. But this is a much bigger issue. We have to use our film-making power to show kids that lives are at stake. If you deal with it responsibly, lives will be saved. If you deal with it irresponsibly, lives will be lost.”

Like several film makers, Penelope Spheeris mentions “Last Tango in Paris” as an exception (“It’s a shame that films like that one can’t be done anymore”). But as a director, she says, “If I had a script that depended on (sexual) scenes, I’d turn it down. I couldn’t in good conscience do it.”

“People are going to be more careful,” predicts producer David MacLeod. “As the whole AIDS situation has evolved, you’re hard-pressed to meet someone who hasn’t been touched by it. Things just aren’t going to be the same. As a producer, I’ll still be open to all kinds of ideas. But it will affect how I perceive what I’m looking at.

“It’s a very complex issue. To think that you can get around the problem with an insert of a condom coming out of a pocket is simplistic. It’s much more complex than that. It’s going to give rise to a whole different attitude.”

Many middle Americans may not be as sensitized to the crisis as those who live in the major urban centers, MacLeod guesses, but in time they will be.

“It’s like the early years of the Vietnam War. When sons and brothers and boys down the street started dying, people started to be troubled by it. It’s the same with AIDS.

“More and more of us will be troubled in some way, and attitudes will change.”