Wild Things Cut a Gay Shower Kiss Between Kevin Bacon and Matt Dillon

Wild Things, the twisty thriller known best for the steamy kiss between Neve Campbell and Denise Richards (also Kevin Bacon going full frontal), originally had another literally steamy gay sex scene, according to director John McNaughton.

via: Them

While speaking to Esquire as part of the publication’s For the Record video series, actor Kevin Bacon revealed that a shower scene featuring a kiss between him and actor Matt Dillon was cut from the 1998 erotic thriller.

Bacon says the script originally featured a different version of a scene in which Dillon, who plays guidance counselor Sam Lombardo, finds Bacon, who plays police sergeant Ray Duquette, naked in the shower. In the version Bacon signed onto, the two men kiss.

“In the original script, we start making out,” Bacon said. “Part of what was crazy about the movie was that there were all these twists.” He added, “That was the hook of the movie, so to me that was a great twist. I was like, ‘That’d be an awesome twist.’”

If it wasn’t already evident that Bacon was excited for the chance to kiss Dillon, the actor went even further and complimented his co-star's good looks. When asked by someone off-screen whether he was “attached” to the cut scene, Bacon said, “I definitely was, look at him, he’s gorgeous!”

Bacon said the scene was cut before they shot the film, so sadly, there is no footage on the cutting room floor. Though the kiss between Dillon and Bacon never made it to celluloid, Wild Things is famous, or infamous, for its same-sex kiss between stars Neve Campbell and Denise Richards, who both play students who have accused Dillon’s guidance counselor character of rape. (There’s a lot to the plot, but we won’t spoil it here.)

Bacon is not the only member of the Wild Things family who has spoken about the scene before. In an interview with Total Film in 2005, Dillon also discussed the scene, though, unlike Bacon, he seemed much less excited about it.

“I was relieved when they got rid of that scene. Kevin seemed pretty attached to it, though!” Dillon said. As opposed to Bacon, Dillon said he felt the kiss was “one twist too many.”

In 2023, Wild Things director John McNaughton also spoke to Entertainment Weekly about this much-storied lip lock. He said he received some pushback on the proposed scene, which led to it being nixed.

"I love surprise, and I love stuff that I don’t see coming," he said. “But in that moment it was like, ‘You win some, you lose some; we're moving on.’”

Though McNaughton didn’t say who gave him pushback, EW said that the director “refused to specify which star did not want to shoot the homoerotic tryst.”

However, when speaking about the scene previously in 2005, Bacon said that the film’s investors were behind the cut.

"I thought it was great because the whole movie is about secrets coming out, right? As reveals go, that one was just huge," he said. "Unfortunately, the financiers didn't like the idea of men making out. They felt it went too far. They felt it wasn't right."