Twice, Adrian Lyne made a polite refusal. From the scenario inspired by real events, featuring young girls from a fashion school financing their studies by performing in striptease clubs in Toronto, Canada, the British director only retained the title, flash dance. History, no. Too dumb. The title, on the other hand, is magical. Adrian Lyne doesn’t know what he means exactly. Never mind. Either way, no. But this title makes everyone dream.
Starting with the two producers, Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer, for whom this is their first feature film, before they rain or shine on American cinema with The Beverly Hills Cop (1984), Top Gun (1986) or bad boys (1995), yet know just as little about its meaning. The screenplay by Tom Hedley, a former journalist, had been circulating unsuccessfully since 1979, but for the duo there was hope. All you need is the right story and the right director. However, no one would have imagined then that forty years after its release in the United States, in April 1983, we are still talking about flash danceits international success and its famous soundtrack.
From his home in Los Angeles, 82-year-old director Adrian Lyne, who has long shared his life between Hollywood and the Luberon, talks about his second film like a gifted child who arrived in his life by accident. He was nobody before getting down to flash dance, the film propelled his career. At the time, he was contacted after a good twenty filmmakers. The future director of 9 1/2 Weeks (1986) and Fatal Link (1987) is at the bottom of the list. Approached before him, Canadian David Cronenberg, who specializes in science fiction and horror, replied to the two producers: “One day, you will never thank me enough for saying no to you and not scuttling this story. »
Brian De Palma attached to the project
Brian De Palma was attached to the project for a time, even if his sensitivity hardly matches. Simpson and Bruckheimer ended overnight Act of Vengeance, the film on corruption in the union environment on which the filmmaker was working for them, in order to put it on flash dance. Ulcerated, the director, who will go away to shoot scarface (1983), prepares and scouts only to pocket money, with the firm intention of going no further.
Choosing Adrian Lyne was going in a completely different direction. Although remarkable, his first film, foxes (1980) – released in France under the strange title of It’s high, girls! –, about the malaise of four lost teenagers in California, with Jodie Foster at the top of the bill, was a failure at the box office. “I tried to realize other projects, without success, remembers Adrian Lyne. I could no longer afford to refuse everything. So I said to myself that if I was offered again flash dance, I would accept. » The third time is the good one.
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