Ghost's Classic Pottery Love Scene Was A Bit Messy Behind The Cameras
One cannot underestimate the enormity of Jerry Zucker's "Ghost" when it was released in 1990. In the film, Molly (Demi Moore) and Sam (Patrick Swayze) are a well-to-do couple in New York who are very, very much in love. Despite their closeness, not to mention their sexual chemistry, Sam cannot entirely commit, replying only with "ditto" when Molly says "I love you." When Sam is murdered by muggers, he returns to Molly as a ghost, using a medium named Oda Mae Brown (Whoopi Goldberg) to communicate. Can Sam figure out the rules of the afterlife in time to express his undying love for Molly?
"Ghost" was made for a modest $22 million, but made over half a billion dollars worldwide. It was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and won Oscars for Whoopi Goldberg and Bruce Joel Rubin, its screenwriter. "Ghost" was a juggernaut, and it's unusual that it was not more widely discussed as a fulcrum in supernatural romance when the "Twilight" movies were hip in the early 2010s.
One of the film's most notable scenes is when Sam and Molly snuggle up and get sexually messy with a pottery wheel. Molly is an artist, and she and Sam bond by shaping a pot together, kissing, and getting wet clay all over their hands. The Righteous Brothers' version of "Unchained Melody" plays on the soundtrack, and I defy any human being with a pulse not to get at least a little ... stimulated.
Naturally, shooting the pottery wheel scene wasn't as sexy or romantic as "Ghost" made it look. It turns out that working with wet clay is a sloppy endeavor, and preventing clay from splattering all over the actors' faces takes meticulous skill. The scene was recalled in a 2015 retrospective printed in Yahoo! News.
I neeeeeeed your love
The pottery scene was invented by Zucker when Moore was researching her role. Moore said on the "Ghost" DVD's special features that she took a few pottery classes just so she would look like she knew what she was doing. When Moore showed off her know-how, Swayze sat down next to her to get some pointers, and, lo, a sexy pottery scene was conceived. Zucker said:
"When we did the rehearsal, I just remember that it was sexy enough that it embarrassed Patrick and Demi a little bit when they were doing it. They both had all their clothes on ... but it was still ... even then, there was something about it that was sensual."
To shoot the scene, Zucker closed the set (to increase a sense of intimacy and comfort for his actors), save the crew a few professional potters who were there to set everything up. Moore knew how to handle the pots, but Zucker noted "There's a lot of footage of things flopping and splattering." The film's production designer, the prolific Jane Musky, recalled needing "that wetness, so it was sensual, but not that it splattered all over their faces."
Yahoo! quoted the Patrick Swayze biography "Patrick Swayze: One Last Dance" by Wendy Leigh wherein the actor confessed he liked the pottery scene despite the messiness. "Getting all that mud stuff all over my arms," Swayze said, "that was pretty sexy. Definitely got my juices going." Moore, however, recalled things differently, saying in a 1990 People Magazine interview that they were blushing the entire time and that her shirt threatened to expose parts of her body she didn't want exposed. "We finally just said, 'I'm really nervous and I hate this.' Then it was okay," Moore said.
Awkward. But eventually celebrated.