For decades the legend about the notorious Don’t Look Now sex scene between Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie has been that it involved actual coitus and not just simulation.

Two and a half years ago Sutherland insisted that Peter Bart‘s recollection about Sutherland and Christie really doing it was dead wrong.

Sutherland said that the scene involved four people — Christie, himself, director Nicholas Roeg and dp Anthony Richmond — in a bedroom and that “the takes were 15 seconds long, maximum. ‘All right, Julie, hold your head. Okay, turn your heard a little to the side. Okay, Donald….all right Julie.'”

Seven days ago this video essay about the scene in question, “The Greatest Sex Scene in Horror,” appeared on YouTube.

The testy back-and-forth between Bart and Warren Beatty, Christie’s then-boyfriend who wanted some of the graphic portions removed, is amusing.