BEST SALIVA - CRUEL INTENTIONS
Cruel Intentions
cruel intentions’ kiss wins best saliva
Sarah Michelle Gellar and Selma Blair’s kiss-complementing saliva in Cruel Intentions (1999) was the catalyst for the Itty Bitty Awards. Unlike every subsequent Itty Bitty winner, this, the Itty Bitty’s founding award, wasn’t selected with a criteria outlined and a list of movies to research. This saliva was the enduring voice in the head, it was the whisper in the dark; for generations, it begged to be celebrated.
I have thought of this saliva, intermittently, for almost two decades. My memory of this saliva predates memories of my own life. Seeing kids sneak off for first kisses behind the bike shed in the playground, I would think of it. Biting into a burger and seeing a delicate string of saliva still attached to the bun before finally snapping, I would think of it. During my dissertation concerning whateverthefuck in Kubrick’s oeuvre, I would think of it and how there was no such immaculate saliva to be found in the titan of cinema’s work.
Last week, I thought of it and I realised, perhaps years too late, that this was my purpose. It was calling to me. Not just for itself, but for all exquisite little details of film.
We must celebrate the itty bitty.
cruel intentions and the kiss scene synopses
Spoiler-free synopses of Cruel Intentions and the kiss scene are in drop-downs below for anyone who hasn’t seen the movie or needs a refresh.
From Google: Annette (Reese Witherspoon) unwittingly becomes a pawn in Sebastian's (Ryan Phillippe) and Kathryn's (Sarah Michelle Gellar) deliciously diabolical wager of sexual conquest when she writes an article in Seventeen Magazine about how she intends to stay pure until she marries her boyfriend. However, Sebastian gets more than he bargained for as he attempts to woo Annette into his bed.
From a human: Despite the infamous kiss, Cruel Intentions is a straight love story centred around rich kids who see everyone else as a plaything to be manipulated. Ryan Philippe wants to fuck his step-sister, Buffy, and she says she'll let him if he can seduce infamously virginal Reece Witherspoon. They're all beautiful. The soundtrack cooks.
Kathryn (Gellar) wants to destroy people, she sees everyone as a pawn for her entertainment. She’s a sexually experienced, confident rich-kid with an untouchable puppeteer complex. Cecile (Blair) is, by contrast, a bumbling innocent who happens to be in love with her black cello teacher, Ronald. Kathryn knows Cecile's family would never let her date a black man, let alone one under their employ, so she does everything in her power to get Cecile and Ronald together, just to watch the inevitable outrage and heartbreak. To convince Cecile to make a move on Ronald, Kathryn first has to coach her how to be sexually confident, including teaching her how to kiss. Under the guise of friendship, Kathryn takes Cecile on a picnic, where she proceeds to instruct Cecile on how to kiss and, in doing so, births the perfect saliva pictured above.
due dilligence
I knew there was only one saliva deserving of Best Saliva. This, the people’s saliva. A generational saliva. I think of Gen Alpha and wonder if they will ever know a saliva like we did and I know the sad truth is that they won’t. This saliva was the giant’s shoulders upon which, arguably, the most infamous kiss of the late-90s stood, winning Blair and Gellar ‘Best Kiss’ at the 2000 MTV VMAs.
“I’m gonna stick my tongue in your mouth, and when I do that I want you to massage my tongue with yours.”
As a professional, I couldn’t name Best Saliva from instinct alone. I couldn’t take my personal journey with this saliva and, under great bias, give it an award. This isn’t the Oscars. The Itty Bittys don’t do anything willy-nilly.
Thus began the part-time saliva side quest of January 2026.
When considering the contenders for this prestigious and hotly contested category, saliva shots typically fell into one of two buckets: spitting (chewing tobacco, sports scenes, male peacocking) or drooling (sleeping, dying).
Upon reflection, I feel silly (ashamed, even) to have been so naive in my approach to the Itty Bitty Awards and their inherent philosophy of ‘nothing too small’. Spitting and drooling are, of course, two completely distinct categories within the saliva realm and could spawn Itty Bittys of their own. That said, spitting and drooling are still eligible for this broader category.
It was also interesting to see how often saliva would appear in ostensibly the same scene across different movies. For example, one popular recurring saliva provider is the withered gas station clerk, posted out in the middle of nowhere, occasionally seated in a wooden chair, predominantly with an air of hostility, and always with remarkably moist thin lips.
Wrong Turn (2003)
Director: Rob Schmidt
Gas station attendant: Wayne Robson
Honourable mention
Whilst the Itty Bitty Awards seek to shine a light on brilliant moments from any movie, no matter how dire the rest of it might be, it’s important to clarify that the Itty Bitty Awards aren’t averse to piling more accolades on top of already award-adorned films. And there is no better example than this 11-Oscar-winning contender for Best Saliva.
Titanic (1997)
Director: James Cameron
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Billy Zane
Frame by frame, this is the best bang for my buck I could get of Jack’s saliva as he teaches Rose how to ‘spit like a man,’ something they didn’t teach her in finishing school.
This golden hour spit shot shows Rose simultaneously disgusted and impressed. Jack isn’t simply showing Rose how to spit, he’s showing her she can be free from her stifling class expectations and abusive fiancé.
The money shot. We’ve been waiting three hours for this payoff and it was worth every second. The implications of this saliva are huge, a perfectly crafted character climax.
One final little treat to showcase the thick, tacky texture of Rose’s saliva: a shining string of betrayal and loss of power.
behind every great kiss is even greater saliva
I know, after the above you’re wondering how the hell is Cruel Intentions’ little kiss-adjacent saliva going to top Titanic?
Well, as deeply flawed as it was given Cruel Intentions’ predominantly sexual themes of manipulation, this iconic saliva was the raw backbone of a same-sex mainstream kiss at a time when queer representation was scarce.
In the late 90s, there wasn’t much queer visibility, especially for teen audiences. Then, along comes Cruel Intentions and suddenly Buffy has Selma Blair’s tongue massaging hers in a full-screen cinematic close up. With saliva. A real human concoction of Sarah and Selma’s saliva, right there… this wasn’t movie magic, this was a kiss. An incredible, sensual kiss between two women. And they were just sitting in a park acting like it was normal, with neither of them becoming deathly ill or ostracised... could it be? Could being gay have been absolutely normal and fine this whole time?!
Retroactively, the kiss between Kathryn and Cecile has been cemented as part of the shifting cultural zeitgeist in the early 2000s, influencing the increase of queer representation in Western media. As much as Rose’s saliva was a fuck you to the class system (on the Titanic, no less, the maritime Parasite), it can’t match the real life impact of Cruel Intentions and its perfect, parallel, glistening salival connection between two women.
