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As the five-week, mostly outdoors shoot began outside Montreal, some of the most unpredictable summer weather in recent Canadian history caused delay after disastrous delay, and Mantello had to choose which incidental scenes would survive in McNally's already-abridged screen adaptation (the play ran three hours; the movie had to run two). "We could not go one minute over 25 days, because Fine Line wouldn't pay for that," says Mantello. "There was about a week and a half when our completion-bond company was checking in with us every day, saying 'Shoot, shoot, shoot! It doesn't matter if nothing matches!'"

"The pressure was enormous," says Glover, who recalls producer Doug Chapin appearing on set to call out, "Move on, move on — we've gotta get to another setup!" But Mantello often overrode him. "If it wasn't the take he had wanted...Joe would say: 'No, no. One more take.' He'd let us go again, and he was strong in that."

Once the shoot wrapped, however, the problem the filmmakers thought they'd take the most heat for — the considerable frontal male nudity — never materialized. "We didn't want to get coy about draping legs just so, but we also didn't want to flaunt it in people's faces," says Mantello. "Our attitude was, if you saw somebody's d---, you saw it and if you didn't, you didn't. It just seemed natural and innocent that way." That, he guesses, is why the MPAA not only came back with an R rating instead of an NC-17 but complimented the filmmakers for making "a really tasteful film. We were shocked. But we said, 'Um, gee, thanks.'"

In the end, Fine Line's marketing staff may well wish the MPAA had balked: By all accounts, they were counting on a controversy to help sell the movie. "The $64,000 question is, who's the audience?" says Alexander. "Well, the gay community will probably come. The art-house community will probably come. We think it'll be a movie that critics take to. But after that audience is exhausted? My folks are not homophobic, but I don't think they've ever seen two men kissing, and I don't know how comfortable that would make them on a huge screen, with no place else to look. My mom kept saying [during shooting] 'When is it coming out?' And I had to honestly say to her, 'You know, I'm not sure that this is gonna be one where you wanna bring everybody from the condo.'

"Mostly," continues Alexander, working up into punchline mode, "because tutus are not flattering to anybody, especially to me." Ranging his voice into flighty Buzz altitudes, he falls completely into character. "Those things make my breasts look very small. Not to mention I come off very hippy."