Inside The Creative Battles Adrian Lyne Fought To Make ‘Flashdance’ The Classic Audiences Love

“I saw it a couple of days ago and was surprised that I was less depressed than I thought I would be,” confessed Flashdance director Adrian Lyne. “That was because of Jennifer Beals. I thought she was a good choice for the lead role. Jennifer had a vulnerable quality that I think helped add something to what was a very thin story. It’s a fairy story if you like.”

The movie is being released on 4K UHD for the first time to mark its 40th anniversary, a landmark the celebrated British filmmaker affectionately called “ridiculous.”

“When I first read the script, I thought it was kind of dumb and turned it down a couple of times,” Lyne recalled. “Then I thought I could do something with the dancing and give it some energy. I thought it was absurd, this idea of a welder with big clunky boots wanting to be a ballet dancer. I thought it was a little far-fetched, but in the end, it overcomes that. “

Beals wasn’t a star when she took on the role of Alex Owens, but audiences were drawn to her, and the romantic drama grossed $201.5 million against a $7 million budget. The critics, however, gave Flashdance a hard time.

“I was massacred by most of them. One guy said, ‘Don’t look for publicity for this movie; just look for strategic signs of pollution.’ That’s a tough one to get over, right?” Lyne chuckled.

However, the movie and the resulting publicity campaign ended up giving fans some of the most iconic cinematic imagery of the 80s.

“Stuff from the movie, like the wet dance, was everywhere,” the director reminisced. “I really wanted to do it, but I didn’t quite know how. I knew that in the scene, the water flying off would drench people in the audience, and that would be fun. They’d get pissed off, but it was a really good visual. This idea of water bouncing off her body was fun.”

Although Lyne knew it was a great idea, he needed to convince studio bosses that it would work.

“I had to show the executives at Paramount
PARA
what I was going to do with the wet dance,” he explained. “They all sat there, about 30 of them in these bleachers. I was down the bottom with a girl that I had wound a hosepipe around, and I was desperately trying to describe and show them what I was doing. You have no idea of the skepticism. It was agonizing, but I would have been crazy not to do it because it felt real.”

Flashdance was not expected to perform as well as it did in theaters. As the film is celebrated 40 years later, Lyne revealed where he believes that concern originated.

“We had done some previews that had done rather well in terms of the numbers, but I heard that they thought that we’d fiddled the audience and that it was all my buddies,” the filmmaker said. However, they didn’t all go smoothly. He added, “I was in one preview and very unsure of myself. I was with my assistant, Casey Silver, who went on to run Universal, and I said to him, ‘Is this as bad as I think it is?’ There was a long silence, and then he said, ‘Yes.'”

“I asked, ‘Well, is there any way we can get out of the theater without being seen by the executives?’ and literally at that moment, the audience started laughing. Thankfully, it was good laughs, not bad ones, and I realized they were on board with the movie. That was a strange moment because I wanted to die, but then the audience rescued me.”

Another major win for Flashdance was the soundtrack which included several hits, including Irene Cara’s Oscar-winning ‘Flashdance… What a Feeling’ and ‘Maniac’ by Michael Sembello, which was nominated for an Academy Award.

“I thought the music was great, and I had a lot to do with ‘Maniac,’ produced by Phil Ramone,” Lyne revealed. “I had listened to a tune that Kraftwerk had done and it had a kind of a bell motif in it. I brought it to Phil and said, ‘This is good. I like the bing bong thing,’ and he liked it too and said, ‘Well, let’s use it.’ I guess we kind of stole it from Kraftwerk.”

Although the director was nervous about watching Flashdance again, he was delighted that the restoration hadn’t removed any of the film’s aesthetic charm or character but did feel “trepidation” going into the process.

“I’m not usually technical, but there were various sorts of incremental improvements in the sound, which are great, and I was involved in the mix,” he concluded. “I love the grain of films from that era, which can be lost with digital. Losing that entirely would have been a pity, but I think this looks great.”