411 Movies Interview: Flashdance Director Adrian Lyne Interview
Posted by Tony Farinella on 09.14.2007
411's Tony Farinella sits down with Adrian Lyne to discuss the new Special Collector's Edition DVD of Flashdance.
Adrian Lyne has directed a number of great films in his storied career. He's directed films such as Lolita, Fatal Attraction, Jacob's Ladder, and 9½ Weeks. But perhaps his most popular film of all time is Flashdance, which broke free in 1983. Even to this day, people still talk about the film. The soundtrack is also a top-seller with the hit song "What A Feeling." I recently interviewed Adrian Lyne to discuss the arrival of Flashdance on a Special Collector's Edition DVD.
TONY: When you were first offered the chance to direct Flashdance, you turned it down. With that said, how do you feel about the film after all these years?
ADRIAN: I think it stands up pretty well, really. In fact, I was surprised, really. It really is just a fairy tale. It's a familiar story, really, if you like. But I think that the dances stood up quite well. I was looking at it, and I thought they looked pretty good. And I thought it was sort of interesting that David LaChapelle, the photographer, I remember he did a video for Jennifer Lopez. And I remember he truly did it frame-by-frame. And I thought that was kind of flattering. I was pleased about that. And that wasn't so long ago.
TONY: What did you see in Jennifer Beals that made you want to cast her in this film?
ADRIAN: It's so tough to define what it is. She was at that stunning age, as well, where somebody at 17 or whatever. When they're 20, they don't look the same. That sort of beautiful quality is gone. I guess it was sad. I felt like I was lucky to have her at that moment, ya know? She was just stunning and lovely. She wasn't conventionally beautiful, I guess. She just had a quality of vulnerability as well, which I think beautiful people tend to be tough. She had a vulnerability that was sort of unusual.
TONY: Why do you think the 80's are so loved and so remembered to this day?
ADRIAN: I guess it was sort of pre-AIDS, so there was an innocence about it. I guess AIDS started right around that time, didn't it? One quality that I liked, which is going back to Jennifer, her mother was black, I think. I think that made her that much more beautiful as well. She had that sort of beautiful skin.
TONY: On the DVD, you talk about how you're not a director, you're a selector. How do you make your selections, and what goes into your decision-making process?
ADRIAN: I think you sort of blunder around, really. So much of what I do is sort of instinctive, really. One of the reasons that I don't do many films is that when I come to do one, I think I have a certain freshness. I feel almost like I've never done a film before, which is sort of agonizing, because you feel like you're learning the whole process once again. You manage to keep fresh, though.
TONY: You seem to really have a keen eye for actors and personalities. When you're looking at actors in a film, what do you look for?
ADRIAN: Obviously, I always think that you're not casting individuals, you're casting what happens when they're together, ya know? I'm not casting Jennifer Beals in isolation or Michael Nouri in isolation. It's how they are together and what happens. It's the chemistry, really. I think that applies to everybody. A lot of it is guess work, but you put them together. I'm very emphatic about reading people, even if they're kind of famous. I always want to get them in and read with whoever they're gonna work with, because that's the only way to find out whether it's gonna work. I've always thought it must be strange picking people like you're picking them out of a phone book, ya know? It's like, "We'll have him, and we'll have her." You really have to see them together.
TONY: How much of your own likes and interests did you incorporate into this film? On the DVD, the editor said that the scene at the dinner table with Michael and Jennifer was all you.
ADRIAN: I remember saying this, and I do agree with it, but I think it's always more interesting when you avoid the cliche of the man sort of grabbing the woman in his arms and sweeping her off. It's more interesting when the woman is the aggressor, if you like. When it's coming from that side, I think it's more appealing, especially when you have someone Jennifer, who was young and had this vulnerability. It didn't come over as sort of cheap, ya know? I thought she pulled it off, like a kid, with the way she eats the lobster. If it had been somebody older or somebody different, it wouldn't have worked. It would have been horrible. But Jennifer managed to make it work.
TONY: Why do you think the film didn't do so well with critics?
ADRIAN: Oh, god. That certainly applies to lots of my films, really. If your films do well with the public or whatever, it doesn't necessarily endear you to the critics, ya know? This was sort of half and half. I remember one critic said, "Don't look for advertising on this film, just look for strategic signs of pollution." Later on, I met the critic who said that. And then somebody else said that it was state of the art film-making at that time. And neither, of course, are true. You have to take it with a pinch of salt, really.
TONY: You've done a wide variety of films over the course of your film-making career. When you're reading a script, what do you look for?
ADRIAN: I always tend to say the same thing. I always tend to say that I like films where you can put your feet in the shoes of the actor, where you are the actor and you're living through them. And that's what I like, really. I'm not really interested in doing Matrix's or films about hardware or whatever. I've always been interested in making films about you and me, really.
TONY:Flashdance was really one of the first female empowerment films. Do you think Flashdance opened the door for other films about female empowerment?
ADRIAN: Maybe. I remember thinking of this idea of female welders and construction workers and stuff like that. But then I thought it was a bit weird. And then I sort of did some research, and in fact, there are a lot, ya know? It happens a lot. I think in the original script there were more of them. There were like 5 or 6 female construction workers, and we cut it down to 1, I guess, to make it more believable.
TONY: Your film really was one of the first films to use music-video style editing. How does it feel to know that your film started it all?
ADRIAN: It was right at the beginning of MTV. MTV started, I think, right when the movie came. It sort of coincided at the time, so I wasn't aware. I had done commercials a long while ago, so I was used to quick-cutting and that sort of thing. Compared with looking at the Bourne Identity or whatever it's called, I don't think it is quick cuts compared with that.
TONY: What's changed about the movie industry since Flashdance came out in the 80's?
ADRIAN: I think that, what I'm aware of, there's a lot less passion from studios. When I think of the way Dawn Steel was then as an executive, she's not with us anymore. And she died. And Don Simpson, people go on about his drug-taking and that sort of stuff, but more than that, he was an incredibly passionate guy. And he made you better. Again, just as when you're looking for chemistry with actors ... You're not looking for Jennifer Beals or Michael Nouri, you're looking for what happens when they're together. And it's the same thing for me, really, working with a studio or a producer. There are certain people who make you better and enthuse you. And I think there's less of that now. People seem to be more frightened now.
TONY: When the film came out, women all over the world responded to it and really connected with the message behind the film. Were you surprised that the film had such an impact on people?
ADRIAN: Oh, yes. Now and then, a film becomes more than just a successful film, it becomes a part of everybody's life. For that summer, people just talked about it endlessly. The film went off doing the same business exactly for something like 6 months. It just went on and on doing the same business and the same grosses, if you like. And that never happens. You're lucky if the second week, it's sort of gone down 25 or 30 percent. You're really lucky if that happens. With this particular one, it just sort of sat there.
TONY: Finally, what are your plans for the future?
ADRIAN: I'm working on a movie that I love called The Town. It's from a novel The Prince of Thieves by Chuck Hogan. And it's about bank robbers. It's a love story between a bank robber and the victim of one of his robberies in a bank, which he doesn't know, because he was masked when he did the robbery. It's a terrific story.
