Director Adrian Lyne Talks Revisiting ‘Fatal Attraction’ And ‘Flashdance’

“I’m very pleased that the people haven’t totally forgotten them,” mused director Adrian Lyne, the filmmaker behind Fatal Attraction and Flashdance, among other movies.

Both those titles are among a handful of Hollywood classics being remastered and rereleased under the newly created Paramount Presents banner.

“It’s quite fun to return to these movies and make this sound better and work on the color and things like that,” he added. “I quite enjoyed doing it. Also, I haven’t seen them for such a long while. It’s nice to make a film that people argue about and discuss and hate, or sometimes like. I like making those movies that are controversial.”

Lyne’s resume is peppered with movies that made headlines for various reasons, including Indecent Proposal, Fatal Attraction, Lolita, and 9½ Weeks.

“I remember thinking that Fatal Attraction was a fabulous read. I was in France at the time, at our place in Provence, I sat down on some steps on a staircase in our hallway, and I just started to read it. It was a terrific page-turner; I couldn’t put the f****** thing down,” he recalled.

“I remember going to tell my wife, she was asleep at the time, so I woke her up, and I said, ‘Do you know what? I think this is a huge movie. If I don’t screw it up.’ It really was a terrific script.”

He didn’t screw it up. In 1987, Fatal Attraction, made for $14 million, went on to gross $320.15 million and the highest-grossing movie at the worldwide box office that year. It was also nominated for six Oscars.

“I was fascinated by 9½ Weeks because it was so unusual. At the time, people told me that if I did that movie, it would kill my career, it was professional suicide, but I’ve always been attracted to things like that, movies that you don’t see every day, that are a little bit different. I love the idea of being able to do anything you wanted for ten weeks, being able to indulge your desires, it was fascinating to me.”

However, there is one thing that has frustrated him over the years about some of his movies.

“The thing is that people tend to remember the sex. In Fatal Attraction, there’s a minute of Michael Douglas and Glenn Close having it away over a sink in the kitchen,” Lyne explained. “That’s what people tend to take away, even though it’s a tiny part of the movie. I’ve always liked relationship pieces; I’ve always liked the small picture over the big one.”

“A movie that I’ve just shot, Deep Water, it’s a strange story based on the book by Patricia Highsmith, a marvelous writer who also did The Talented Mr. Ripley and Strangers on a Train among other books. She had a kind of a bleak outlook on life. It’s interesting to me.”

Fatal Attraction, which will get a theatrical rerelease later in 2020, achieved more than just becoming a box office hit, it became a pop culture sensation and is even credited as the reason for the phrase “bunny boiler” entering our vernacular.

“Did I expect that?” Lyne mused. “I didn’t really, no. It’s gratifying when that kind of thing happens, though.”

Hitting the right notes of tension at precisely the right time was something the director spent a lot of time on.

“I worked really hard on the last 20 minutes of the movie, to make it as exciting as possible,” he revealed. “That moment when Glenn Close appears in the mirror in the bathroom, it’s fun when people see that and jump out of their seats.”

“I used to go to a movie theater in Westwood in Los Angeles and watch the audience from their point of view of the screen. I stand by the screen and watch them. It was marvelous. The manipulation is fun.”

“I’ve always wanted to do, or I like doing movies, about you or me, where you can put your feet in the shoes of the actors, live through them vicariously. I think that if you can achieve that, you’ve got the audience, and they won’t have forgotten about your movie by the time they’ve left the theater and headed out for dinner,” added Lyne. “If you can make the audience recognize themselves in the characters in some way, that’s a big part of it. I don’t think there’s a formula. I’m not an intellectual by any standards, so I guess my instincts are fairly good.”

Flashdance is another of Lyne’s movies being celebrated as part of the Blu-ray collector’s series, Paramount Presents. It infused pop culture, from its soundtrack to the iconic dance sequences, and was another hit for the filmmaker grossing $201.5 million at the box office against a $7 million budget.

“I remember the opening weekends of my movies very well,” he said. “I remember when Flashdance came out and had a $4 million opening weekend. I remember a woman that I knew quite well coming up to me after seeing a preview and saying, ‘You’ve got a bonafide hit, kiddo.’ I had been ringing people up at Paramount, and I couldn’t get anybody on the phone because they thought the film would be a disaster. I remember that very well.”

“But it stayed in the theaters, and it kept making the same kind of money week after week, it didn’t go down, and that was rare. It was a fabulous feeling. The trouble is, I’m a bit of a depressive, and I always expect it to go down. Every time I went to see it in a theater, I thought to myself, ‘Well, there won’t be as many people as they were last night,’ but there were. I find it very tough to enjoy stuff.”

His movies being box office hits despite some lackluster reviews was something Lyne encountered from time to time. However, all of those films have gone on to become classics in their own right for various reasons, including the erotic romantic drama, 9½ Weeks.

It bombed at the US box office, grossing just $6.7 million against its $17 million budget. However, Lyne’s original unedited version was a hit overseas and saw the global box office hit $100 million.

“When 9½ Weeks came out, the version in America meant nothing. They made me cut everything out, the sex stuff,” he explained. “I remember the reviews of it being so bad that it was as if the critics had vomited on the newspapers. I had a pile of newspaper reviews; I was sitting in a cafe reading them. I was going through them and getting more and more depressed. I was sitting in a cafe reading them. It was nightmarish.”

“Then the movie went on to be played in Europe for years and years. It was a big hit. It’s funny how things turn out.”

The Paramount Presents Blu-ray line launches on Tuesday, April 21, 2020.