Partners

Partners (1982)

Benson is a cop who wants to clean up the streets...his partner just wants to redecorate.

After a series of murders in Los Angeles's gay community, heterosexual police officer Sgt. Benson is assigned to go undercover as half of a gay couple with Officer Kerwin, a Records Clerk

Date of release
1982-04-30
TMDB
5.4 / 10 (31)
Runtime
1h 33m
Genres
Comedy, Crime
Director
James Burrows

Casting

Interesting facts

Partners is a 1982 American-Irish gay-themed buddy comedy film directed by James Burrows and starring Ryan O'Neal and John Hurt as Bob Benson and Fred Kerwin, a mismatched pair of cops.

Production

Francis Veber wrote the film in Paris, with little knowledge of the gay scene in Los Angeles. Veber wanted to do it because "it seemed to me it could be amusing and I wanted to do something quite different from Cruising which seemed to me to be a really bad eye on the gay world.

The film was developed by Michael Medavoy at Orion Pictures. When he decided not to make it he sent the project to Aaron Russo, who was Bette Midler's agent. "It's a comedy," said producer Russo. "It's a comedy that comes out of real situations, out of the tradition of French farce. I felt for both characters." Russo arranged for James Burrows, then best known for directing episodes of Taxi, to direct.

The leading roles were originally offered to Clint Eastwood and Woody Allen. Eastwood expressed interest if Allen signed, but Allen declined. Other actors considered were Alan Arkin, James Caan and Nick Nolte. Burrows said they almost cast Sam Elliott and Peter Riegert but Barry Diller who ran Paramount "didn't think he could sell the movie with them attached." Eventually the two stars cast were Ryan O'Neal and John Hurt.

The film was one of six relatively low budgeted films rushed into production by Paramount Pictures in 1981 prior to an impending Directors Guild of America strike, with budgets between $4–8 million. Paramount were interested to see what the results would be like on films with a shortened pre-production process. The other films were Some Kind of Hero, Jekyll and Hyde...

The movie was one of a number of gay-themed films being made in Hollywood at the time, the others being Making Love and Deathtrap. According to Burrows, Francis Veber "wanted it to be apparent that John's character was gay. He wanted to advance the gay rights movement, which was still taboo as a film subject in 1981. In the original script and cut of the film Hurt's character Kerwin commits suicide "because his life was so sad," said Veber.

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