FLASHDANCE, THE ENCORE
Musical comes to Ottawa 30 years after movie was a surprise hit
Canadian author and editor Tom Hedley owes a debt of gratitude to his friend Robert Markle, a Mohawk artist who introduced him to the women who became the inspiration for the movie Flashdance. Markle, a native artist who also painted nude figures, brought Hedley in the early ’80s to some raunchy bars in the seedy parts of Buffalo. That’s where Hedley first met a dancer who went by the name Gina The Sex Machina.
“Robert brought me into this world and it was something I hadn’t seen before,” says Hedley, who was editor at Toronto Life at the time, and who wrote the screenplay for Flashdance, the 1983 hit movie that starred Jennifer Beals in the title role of Alex.
“I thought they only existed in Robert’s mind because it was hard to believe these creatures existed. Some of these girls were blue-collar workers, and they just wanted to make something dramatic out of themselves. They were between the ages of 17 and 21 (and) who just wanted to be outlaws. They knew that they were going to marry the plumber or the electrician in their neighbourhood, so what they were doing were creating these little burlesque shows in these downtown bars.”
Hedley emphasizes the women were not strippers, more like performance artists who found their mode of female expression by getting on stage and dancing. He says the women would choreograph their own routines, devise costumes, and pick music.
“It was like an amateur performance, and it was before pole bars and before lap dancing, it had kind of a naive quality to it,” says Hedley. The film was a huge success, making a star out of the-then unknown Beals, and the musical was a cultural phenomenon. Now, 30 years later, Hedley is preparing a reworked version of the movie into a Broadway-bound show that is expected to reach New York next spring after numerous delays.
A national touring show called Flashdance The Musical plays at the National Arts Centre Oct. 22-27. Jillian Mueller is Alex Owens, the Pittsburgh steel mill welder by day and a bar dancer at night, and Corey Mach is Nick Hurley, the steel mill owner who falls for her.
Hedley says Flashdance came out when MTV, the U.S. music video channel, was just beginning to hit its stride. He says Flashdance became closely identified with MTV because the film had a snappy editing style, flashy musical numbers and a hot visual veneer.
“I called it Flashdance because it was the collision between dance, fashion and music that came together,” says Hedley, who wrote the screenplay based on those visits to Buffalo bars.
Joe Eszterhas, the screenwriter of Basic Instinct and Showgirls, was called in later to “punch up” the script before filming began, but Hedley essentially created the movie that became a worldwide hit.
“It was a groundbreaking movie,” says Hedley. “Musicals were not encouraged back then, nobody was making them.”
He says the movie was turned down by 15 directors, and he even pitched it to legendary Broadway dancer and director Bob Fosse, who told him his screenplay wasn’t a movie, it was a Broadway show. His script eventually got to Adrian Lyne, a British-born director whose only previous experience was filming TV commercials.
“Without Adrian there wouldn’t have been a Flashdance,” says Hedley. “He turned it down too because he didn’t understand what it was at the beginning. Then he came back and said that he got it. The critics absolutely hated it because they said it wasn’t a film, it was a video.
“The brilliant thing that Adrian did was that he was going to use this new concept of music videos and try to apply that as a technique to tell the story. It was a stroke of genius,” says Hedley, adding that the film was the No. 1 R-rated movie of 1983 and was up against some big blockbusters.
Hedley says that over the years the film studio Paramount was after him to do a sequel.
He always resisted, saying he didn’t want to participate in a cheesy sequel that would take away from the uniqueness of the characters in the original film.
“The ending of the film is open-ended and to me it would have been corny to do a sequel.
“What would Alex do, go away and become a ballet dancer? I always thought that Alex was too old to be a ballet dancer but she could easily be in a dance company, in an ensemble and maybe do modern dance or performance art. Flashdance had its own magic and it’s very ephemeral.”
Hedley says he began working on the stage version of Flashdance several years ago and, although it’s hit a few bumps on the road, the musical show he’s reshaping should be ironed out by the time it reaches Broadway next year.
Many of the principal songs are in the stage show, including Flashdance (What a Feeling), Maniac, I Love Rock n’ Roll, Gloria and Manhunt, plus a number of new songs done in collaboration with Toronto musician and composer Robbie Roth.
The touring show will go on for another year and a separate cast — which may include members of the current touring show — will appear in the Broadway show, he says. The touring show will also go to Europe and it opens in Stockholm in January, he says.
“A screenplay and a book for a Broadway musical are different animals, different art forms.
“You can’t cheat on stage. A movie is all about the close-up and the emotion. I wanted the stage show to be theatrical in the sense that you have to tell the story in dance, music as well as the dialogue.
“But you don’t want to copy the movie.
“When I sat down to write this show I realized that I did a bad job with the male lead because all he seems to do is stare at Alex. I didn’t give him anything to do. He’s so wrapped up in these girls and I didn’t develop the love story between him and Alex.
“This show develops the love story in detail, which makes the narrative really work. It’s a class love story, about a girl who has these fears and feels there is no chance of really making it, anyway.”