OFF-CENTERPIECE : The Sound of Two Men Kissing : Outlandish, perhaps, but with a low budget and well-known cast, the gay-themed romantic comedy ‘Jeffrey’ boldly aims for the mainstream.

Very early in the new movie “Jeffrey,” which Paul Rudnick adapted from his recent Off Broadway hit, two men kiss passionately. Then the camera immediately angles in on two young couples sitting in a theater watching a movie, presumably “Jeffrey.” The guys say, “Gross! Yeew! Puke! Two dudes kissing!” Their female dates sigh romantically.

When it comes to gay sexuality on screen, a kiss is not just a kiss, a sigh is not just a sigh. While films have increasingly become less chary of homosexual subject matter--”Philadelphia” being the most recent example--it is arguable that “Jeffrey,” an independent film that will be released Friday, will test the audience appeal for a romantic gay love story.

Unlike most previous films about gays, the homosexuality among the characters in “Jeffrey” is presented as a given--out front, unapologetic and exuberant. And while the bare-bones budget of the $1.75-million independent film keeps the financial risk to a minimum, the presence in the cast of well-known actors--Steven Weber (“Wings”), Patrick Stewart (“Star Trek: The Next Generation”), Sigourney Weaver (“Alien”) and Olympia Dukakis (“Moonstruck”)--enhances the film’s potential to attract a mainstream audience for its challenging material.

“Actually, there is plenty of kissing between men within the first five seconds of the movie,” says Rudnick, 36, who has achieved renown as a humorist through novels (“I’ll Take It”), Broadway plays (“I Hate Hamlet”) and movies (“Sister Act,” “Addams Family Values”). “We wanted to get it out of the way so that the audience would realize that ‘Jeffrey’ is not about some kind of shocking revelation. People have been so programmed to expect gay theater and films to be about soap opera and nobility in hospital rooms. ‘Jeffrey’ is not about that.”

Indeed, when Paul Rudnick’s play opened in early 1993 Off Broadway, where it ran for nearly a year, it won rave reviews and much media attention for daring to approach the subject of sexuality and AIDS with gay urban style and wit. The title character is an aspiring and cheerfully oversexed gay actor (“I’m not promiscuous, I’m cheap”) who chooses to put his sex life on hold because, as he puts it, “sex wasn’t meant to be safe or negotiated or fatal.” The advent of AIDS has persuaded the protagonist that real emotional contact carries with it the heartbreak of losing someone to a terminal illness.

But no sooner has Jeffrey (Steven Weber) made his celibate vow than he meets Steve (Michael T. Weiss), a hunky dreamboat. Complicating the issue is that Steve, though in robust good health, happens to be HIV-positive.

As in the stage play, the movie is a series of vignettes exploiting Manhattan as the backdrop for the antic adventures of a family of droll gay men, including Sterling (Patrick Stewart), a wisecracking interior decorator, and his boyfriend Darius (Bryan Batt, who created the role Off Broadway), a dancer in the Broadway musical “Cats.”

The hip, kaleidoscopic world of “Jeffrey” was colorfully on display when the film was shooting in Manhattan last summer. On a sweltering summer afternoon midway through the 26-day shooting schedule, drag queens in beaded gowns and taffeta, their bouffant hairdos battling the humidity, mingled with muscled young men in sleeveless shirts and tight jeans. With rainbow-colored banners flying in the breeze, the filming unit was centered on a registration booth that had been erected on the south end of Central Park’s Great Meadow to re-create a portion of the previous Gay Liberation Day parade and rally.

Looking on as director Christopher Ashley finished shooting a scene with Dukakis as the proud Mafia princess mother of a “preoperative transsexual lesbian,” Rudnick expressed satisfaction with the way filming was going. “Look at that over there,” the writer said, pointing to a drag queen in full skirts and a parasol sitting under a huge oak tree. “Doesn’t that just look like a Merchant Ivory film gone cosmic?”

Standing in the shade, Rudnick admitted that there had been no interest from the major studios in “Jeffrey.” “They were very wary of it,” he said. “ ‘A comedy about AIDS? Ahhhh, no thank you.’ There was a lot of appreciation but no offers.”

Nonetheless, the financing to make the movie came together rather quickly in 1993 from Working Man Films (“Key Exchange,” “The Lipstick Camera”). Mitchell Maxwell, who is president of the New York-based company, was one of the backers of the Off Broadway production and he was keen to option it for film. His two partners, his sister Victoria Maxwell and Mark Balsam, are acting as executive producers, with Rudnick sharing co-producing credit.

Rudnick said that he pushed for Ashley, 31, to get the nod as director. They had collaborated closely on the stage play and Rudnick credited Ashley for helping to establish the tone for a work that veers wildly between farce, romance and fantasy. “Chris is a dream choice because he has perfect comic pitch and a complete understanding of the material.”

Reached by phone later, Mitchell Maxwell said that “Jeffrey” transcended its subject matter. “The message of ‘Jeffrey,’ which is to grab passionately at life and love while you have a chance, is universal,” he said.

Nonetheless, the producer conceded that despite the rave reviews and honors, the Off Broadway production has yet to recoup fully its initial investment, indicating that its success in attracting large numbers of urban straights has been limited.

The four-month run of “Jeffrey” in Los Angeles was also something of a disappointment, though there have since been productions in places as diverse as Omaha and Tokyo. Yet Mitchell Maxwell feels that the film, with a lower ticket price, a better-known cast and more marketing options, may have greater potential than the play.

“It’ll rise and fall on its considerable humor, goodwill and emotional power,” he said. “Heterosexuals refusing to see the movie because they think it’s not about them is like saying, ‘I’m not seeing “Schindler’s List” because I don’t know anybody who was in the Holocaust.’ ”

While the money to make the film came relatively easy, casting did not. According to Rudnick, there was “terror” among both gay and straight actors when it came to casting the central roles of Jeffrey and Steve. There were problems as well in casting the featured roles of Sterling and Darius.

“You’d be surprised how many gay actors were much more afraid than straight actors,” Rudnick said. “Many actors will play gay roles as long as the parts are not sexual or behavioral. They’ll play the martyr but not the happy gay man. It’s possible they just didn’t like the material, but so many people turned us down that it started to become embarrassing.”

In fact, casting was at something of standstill until agent Steven Dontanville began to push clients at ICM, where he works, to become involved in the movie. Sigourney Weaver, who plays a pushy New Age guru, was the first to break the stalemate. Other ICM clients followed, including Weber, Stewart, Kathy Najimy and Christine Baranski, all of whom worked for scale, about $430 a day.

“Actors were afraid of how the public might perceive them if they were in ‘Jeffrey,’ ” Dontanville said. “All I saw was a great piece of writing, funnier and more touching than the play, that deserved to be made into a movie. Once Sigourney signed on, it became easier to convince others.”

Stewart said he was immediately attracted to the humor of the piece and had no hesitation whatsoever about going to a place where few men had gone before. He said he was actively looking for a role that would move him “as far away from the Starship Enterprise and Captain Picard as possible.”

On the other hand, both Weber--known to audiences as the quick-witted and womanizing pilot on the series “Wings”--and Weiss (“2000 Malibu Road”) confessed to bouts of “heterosexual Angst “ before they agreed to play the romantic couple. At the first day of rehearsal, Weiss recalled, he went up to Weber and said, “Look, I’m going to kiss you right now and get it over with.” The kiss apparently went off rather believably.

Weber admitted that he had to be prodded into the project. “The piece didn’t jump out at me when I read the script,” he said during a break in filming. “All I saw was something sad. The emotional issues, about love, contact and commitment, happen to be issues in my own personal life that I’ve been struggling a lot with. It was more about that for me than sexual behavior.”

Like Weber, who believes “that actors should be like tofu and take on the flavor of what’s around them,” Weiss said that he approached playing Steven as he would any other role, trying to be as believable as possible as an HIV-positive gay man in search of someone to love.

“How can you fault anyone for finding love someplace?” said Weiss, exuding sensuality in tight jeans and sleeveless shirt, a tattoo traced on his muscular forearm. “This is a love story, not a sex story. We’ll be successful if people watching the movie don’t think about the ‘gay issues’ but about the ‘human issues.’ ”