National Post (National Edition)
Fatal Attraction lives on
THREE DECADES LATER, THE CLOSE-DOUGLAS THRILLER CONTINUES TO PERVADE THE CULTURE
THIRTY YEARS LATER, PEOPLE WOULD STILL BE TALKING ABOUT BUNNY BOILERS.
The bunny almost was broiled. In the most notorious scene of the 1987 thriller Fatal Attraction, the spurned Alex (Glenn Close) terrorizes her ex-lover Dan (Michael Douglas) by boiling the family pet on the stove. “Initially, I had her grilling the bunny,” screenwriter James Dearden said in a recent interview. “But I thought that was too grotesque. So we boiled the bunny instead.”
The result remained fairly gory. “The stench was unbearable,” the film’s director, Adrian Lyne, recalled of shooting the scene with a rabbit purchased from a butcher.
Fatal Attraction, which became an Oscar-nominated cause célèbre and grossed US$320 million worldwide, continues to pervade the culture three decades after its Sept. 18, 1987, release. “Bunny boiler” has become synonymous with a female stalker; a Saturday Night Live sketch last season depicted U.S. President Donald Trump’s adviser Kellyanne Conway cooking a CNN anchor’s rabbit.
Producer Stanley R. Jaffe saw a short, Diversion, written and directed by Dearden, about an unfaithful husband whose lover phones his wife. Jaffe took it to another producer, Sherry Lansing, who thought it had feature potential. But no one in Hollywood would buy it, especially with Michael Douglas as the lead.
I recently spoke with the cast and filmmakers about the movie. These are edited excerpts.
SHERRY LANSING Diversion would not leave my mind. I had my own experience when I was rejected (by a man), and I felt like he took my soul. The film got rejected twice by every studio. They would say, “A guy who cheats on his wife for absolutely no reason!” Michael hadn’t done Wall Street. He had done the Romancing the Stone films and The Streets of San Francisco on TV, but he wasn’t big enough to get a movie made with a script they didn’t like.
Then Brian De Palma expressed interest in directing the film. He wanted to give the screenplay more of a horror feel.
JAMES DEARDEN The first draft ended with Alex running around with a mask and a 12-inch kitchen knife on Halloween.
LANSING Brian said: “I can’t do the movie with Michael. He’s unsympathetic. So it’s either him or me.”
DEARDEN Thankfully, Brian backed out. We were back to the drawing board.
Lyne got hold of the script. He had made the smash Flashdance and gave the project commercial juice.
ADRIAN LYNE I really felt it was potentially something that would make people talk.
DEARDEN Suddenly we went from being totally dead to being reanimated. But casting Alex proved nearly impossible.
LANSING We were turned down by almost every actress. Barbara Hershey was seriously considered and wanted to do it, but she wasn’t available.
LYNE Glenn was really anxious to do it. She’d done The World According to Garp and always played nice characters. So I wasn’t sure she was right.
GLENN CLOSE I just wanted a character that would demand more of me. I’d never played a character who was supposed to be sexy. I knew I could do it. They were so sure I was wrong. They didn’t even want me to read because they were embarrassed.
MICHAEL DOUGLAS We were doing a big favour for Glenn’s agent by letting her read with me. I don’t think any of us had high hopes — she’s a wonderful actress, but she always projected a Puritan vision. The moment I saw her, I was like, “Whoa!”
CLOSE I was terrified! I didn’t know what to do about my hair. Put it up? Ponytail? Finally I said, “I’ll let it go wild!” The acting gods were with me.
LANSING In less than five minutes, Adrian calls us in and says, “I think you should see this.” There was Glenn, her hair unrecognizable. She did the “Are you discreet?” scene, and we were blown away. Now I can’t imagine the film with anybody else.
Shooting began with Anne Archer as Beth, Dan’s wronged wife.
CLOSE I was intimidated by Michael because he was so suave and so Hollywood. I don’t mean that negatively. He would tell me these off-colour jokes, and half of them I wouldn’t get. He was trying to relate to me, but it only made me more nervous.
DOUGLAS I just feel it’s an actor’s responsibility to make the actress comfortable. It’s predominantly always a male set.
CLOSE Stanley and Sherry were perfect producers for Adrian, who could be all over the place. They kept him disciplined.
LYNE We would argue. Stanley’s opinionated, and so is Sherry. I think it was good because it brought the best out of me. Quite often, when you’re arguing, a third solution comes that is better than anything before.
LANSING To put it in a nice way, it was passion — three people who cared tremendously about the movie. We’re all best friends now.
One of the top challenges involved getting six-year-old Ellen Latzen to cry on cue.
ELLEN LATZEN I was instructed not to speak. I was standing there with Uni, my own stuffed animal. Michael came up to me and said: “Look at that stupid unicorn. I’m going to throw it in the garbage.” As you watch the scene, you can see I’m trying really hard to fight back tears. Finally, he was just yelling at me. I couldn’t hold it in anymore. Adrian said, “Cut!” Immediately, Michael ran to me and held me, and said, “I’m so sorry.” It was pretty intense.
DOUGLAS I felt pretty guilty. But you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do.
Test audiences loved Fatal Attraction until the end, when Alex, trying to frame Dan for her murder, slits her throat while listening to Madama Butterfly, which Dan had refused to see with her.
CLOSE In the original script, there was a scene of Alex at the opera alone, watching Butterfly kill herself. That was never filmed. I’m sure it was a financial consideration. But without that scene, the ending didn’t have the resonance it would have. I loved the original ending. I always felt Alex was more suicidal than psychotic.
DEARDEN I got several calls from Sherry, saying: “We just tested it. We’ve got to change the ending.”
DOUGLAS The audience viscerally wanted to kill Alex, not allow her to kill herself.
CLOSE Six months after we finished shooting, I got a call that we had to reshoot the ending. I fought it for two weeks. It was going to make a character I loved into a murdering psychopath. I was in a meeting with Michael, Stanley and Adrian. I was furious! I said to Michael, “How would you feel if it were your character?” He said, “Babe, I’m a whore.”
DOUGLAS Yes, I said something to that effect.
CLOSE My friend William Hurt said, “You’ve fought your battle, now be a team player.” So I shot it. And I learned something. It’s what the Greeks do. There’s order in the family; then some element creates chaos; then order has to be restored. It’s restored in tragedies through bloodshed. My blood was shed for order to be restored.
In the reshot ending, Alex attacks Beth with a knife, is seemingly drowned by Dan in the family bathtub, then emerges, only to be shot dead by Beth. The film was an instant box-office sensation, yet feminists argued that it demonized single career women and idealized stay-athome moms.
DEARDEN The critics decided we were saying, “Well done. You put another crazy bitch out of her misery.” That was absurd. But that ending probably put another $100 million into the box office.
ANNE ARCHER I always took it as an American tragedy. Here you have this idyllic family, and after this act, the family’s destroyed.
LYNE The idea that I was trying to condemn career women and say they’re all psychotic is just nuts. I’m a feminist.
CLOSE My feeling was I was playing a very specific character, so I never thought that’d be the reaction. Then again, I know women who went to hairdressers and said, “Give me a haircut like Alex Forrest.”
Fatal Attraction was nominated for six Oscars but didn’t win any.
CLOSE On Oscar night, I was eight months pregnant. They asked Michael and me to give an award together. I had been preoccupied and never thought about it. But when the two of us came out with me hugely pregnant, the audience burst out laughing. Of course, Alex was with child!
Still, the film tapped into AIDS-era angst and gained a reputation as a groundbreaking classic.
DEARDEN It came out at the very moment feminism hit its stride, and sex became dangerous again, so a lot was going on to help it become this zeitgeist movie. It’s still relevant. Most people have been in the positions of the mistress, the wife and the husband.
DOUGLAS There were some complete rip-offs. They helped remind us how well we pulled it off. I haven’t seen anything that achieved the level we did.
LANSING Fatal Attraction has become an expression. It’s thrilling to make a movie that really impacts the culture.
CLOSE I’m proud my character elicited such a visceral response. Now she’s considered one of the greatest villains ever, and that to me is a mistake. I’ve never thought of her as a villain, just in distress.
LYNE I never realized, 30 years later, people would still be talking about bunny boilers. It’s nice if your movie lasts beyond dinner of the night people watch it in the theatre.
Close has a memento from the film: the knife she used to menace Douglas.
CLOSE It’s hanging up behind me as I speak, on the wall of my kitchen. It’s beautiful, made of wood and paper. It’s a work of art! And it’s nice for our guests to see it. It lets them know they can’t stay forever.