ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: You like to pump smoke into the atmosphere when you're filming a movie. One of my favorite stories on the DVD is how Paramount issued a ''no more smoke'' edict midway through production — and you didn't stop. You just had a lookout so you knew when to hide the machine.
ADRIAN LYNE: Yes, and then we'd find less obvious ways of making smoke. I had these kind of biscuit things that you could burn. To be absolutely honest, I've used smoke on all of the films that I've done [including 9 1/2 Weeks, Fatal Attraction, Indecent Proposal, Lolita, and Unfaithful]. I like the way it changes the colors. It makes them less garish, more pastoral. If you do it right, it doesn't read like smoke. But of course, you screw up, and on a couple of takes it will come through like a forest fire or something. Then the executives watching the rushes have hysterics.
Is that because they're worried that you'll fall behind schedule if it takes a few extra takes each time to get the level right?
Or, they don't understand it. They think I've gone nuts. There's so much angst and worry. In the two weeks before Flashdance came out, I literally couldn't get anybody on the phone. It was like everybody had run for the hills because they thought it was gonna be a total disaster. I didn't know either. Paramount sold at least a quarter of their interest in the film in those two weeks. In other words, they saw the film, and thought, Well, this is gonna go down the toilet. It's funny. I remember Giorgio Moroder, the composer, was talking to somebody else after the premiere, and he said, ''But is it any good?'' [Laughs] He was obviously panic stricken.
When did you finally breathe a sigh of relief and know your career wasn't ruined?
When it did $4 million for the opening weekend. It did close to $100 million domestic [ultimately]. It was $3 a ticket then, so that would be like $300 million now.
Here's my one burning question after watching the DVD: You say you got the idea for Alex to take her bra off under her sweatshirt after you saw Beals do that trick. How does that happen? Were you like, ''Any special talents?''
She was just trying on one piece of clothing after another, and I guess for convenience, rather than rushing out to the dressing room, she took her bra off underneath the T-shirt or whatever, and I was just fascinated by the contortion. To this day, I don't quite know how she did it. I watched her at the time, and said, ''S---, I gotta use that. That's wonderful.'' Like I said, I adore seeing things and sticking them in the movie. I do that endlessly. I have lists, on bits of paper that I often lose, of stuff that I've seen. Like yesterday, I saw this great-looking guy and he was missing a tooth. It just made him way more interesting. So in my next movie, I'm gonna do that.
Do you have your next film lined up?
I'm working on a thing called The Town, that we're casting at the moment. It's from a novel called Prince of Thieves by Chuck Hogan. That's a crappy title, so we changed it back to the original title, which was The Town. But it's a terrific read about bank robbers in Boston.
Last question: Were you surprised that Jennifer Beals didn't participate on the DVD?
Yeah, kind of. I thought it was a pity, really. I have fond memories of it all. I remember so well when she came in [to audition]. I remember trying to get her to cry, because I wanted to see whether she could. She cried quite easily — but I think mainly because she'd just lost all her luggage.
