The Buzz.

Here a kiss ...

DAWSON'S CREEK'S NEXT-TO-LAST SHOWS of the season on May 17 offered a network TV first: a series main character, Jack (Kerr Smith), takings his same-sex love interest, Ethan (Adam Kaufman), to the junior prom. What's next? A kiss? Well, yes. "The WB has been a champion" of letting Jack and Ethan kiss on the May 24 season finale, says Creek's co-executive producer Greg Berlanti. While "it's not solidified"--the scene was also shot minus the lip lock--"it's the most organic way to close out the scene," he adds. "And it's something we've been leading up to in the 35 episodes since Jack came out of the closet." In the episode Jack travels to gay pal Ethan's boarding school to tell him how he really feels. Befitting the often-stormy Creek, there's a twist, but the smooch went off without a hitch. "I think it was more nerve-racking for the crew than it was for me," Kaufman says with a laugh. "I felt like the greatest actor in the world that day."

... there a kiss ...

HUNG. UNCUT. INSATIABLE.

To promote its upcoming version of the gay Brit hit TV series Queer as Folk, Showtime distributed tens of thousands of cardboard fans emblazoned with those stimulating syllables- and more--to festivalgoers at the Millennium March on Washington. But will the Americanized Queer, slated to air later this year or in early 2001, really be as provocative and controversial as its French kiss-filled U.K. counterpart? You bet. "The whole notion here was mat we can do it as honestly as they did it--and no one else can," says Mark Zakarin, Show time's executive vice president of original programming. "The thing that makes Queer as Folk special is the reality of it. It does push all the boundaries. I think you'll say that American television has never seen such frank sexuality of any sort, heterosexual or homosexual." Sounds hot. Bring on the fans!

... everywhere a kiss-kiss

LADIES, POP YOUR ALTOIDS: Girl-girl kisses make a curiously strong showing in the nominations for the 2000 MTV Movie Awards, airing June 8. Batting it out for Best Kiss are the smooch between Sarah Michelle Gellar and Selma Blair in Cruel Intentions and the Hilary Swank-Chloe Sevigny buss in Boys Don't Cry--as well as Katie Holmes and Barry Watson in Teaching Mrs. Tingle, by out writer-director Kevin Williamson, and Drew Barrymore and Michael Vartan in Never Been Kissed.