American Gigolo the only role that Travolta has turned down only to be taken by Gere: it had previously happened with "Days of Heaven" (1978) and occurred again when Travolta was offered the lead in both "An Officer and a Gentleman" (1982) and "Chicago" (2002). Paul Schrader had threatened to sue Travolta if Richard Gere wasn't cast in the film knowing full well that Travolta had his eye on the script of another Paramount production "Urban Cowboy" (1980). Gere's very brief nude scenes marked the first time a major Hollywood actor was frontally nude in a film. According to Gere, the nudity
The Spook Who Sat by the Door (film) in the early days of affirmative action when the first Black person hired by a company or agency would be seated close to the office entrance so that all who came and went could see that the company was racially mixed. The word "spook" in the title has a dual meaning: a racial slur for an African American and a slang term for spy. The same dual meaning plays a role in the plot of the 2000 Philip Roth novel, "The Human Stain", as well as in the film made after the book. This is shown in the film when