Trivia / 9½ Weeks

• Box Office Bomb: Budget, $17 million. Box office, $6,735,922 (original theatrical release tally only). The film's initial failure in cinemas got offset by several critics championing the film and it being vindicated by video. It also managed to play at a Paris cinema for 5 years straight.
• Creator Breakdown: Kim Basinger described the shoot as emotionally draining and admitted that it contributed to marital problems with then-husband Ron Snyder which were eventually patched up.
• Dyeing for Your Art: Mickey Rourke lost thirty pounds (at the behest of the filmmakers) before filming began.
• Enforced Method Acting: Adrian Lyne used emotionally manipulative tactics on Kim Basinger during the shooting to elicit the performance he wanted from her, which she later criticized harshly. For example, Lyne did not allow her and Mickey Rourke to talk to each other off-set. The two were kept isolated from each other and Lyne would tell Basinger rumors about how Rourke intended to make her like or dislike him so that she would carry that attitude into the scene. Lyne would also offer Rourke performance notes, but Basinger none, in order to unnerve her. In a very unusual and expensive move along these lines, Lyne shot the film sequentially, so that Basinger's actual emotional breakdown over time would be effectively translated to the screen.
• Missing Episode: Kim Basinger owns 14 hours of deleted scenes that MGM thought were very psychologically damaging to people. The footage has never been made available for public viewing, even in the Director's Cut DVD edition.
• The Shelf of Movie Languishment: The film sat on the shelf for a year after it was finished because the studio couldn't figure out how to market it, nor what they could cut to avoid an R rating, and because the original distributor (TriStar Pictures) dropped the film due to the content (at the time, their parent company was owned by Coca-Cola and they had a ban on releasing X-rated movies). MGM picked up and opened it in a limited run more than six months after the original release date.
• Star-Making Role: While Kim Basinger wasn't entirely a newbie to the film business, 9½ Weeks was nonetheless, her first full-fledged starring role in a motion picture. Basinger herself, said that she didn't feel like a "real actress" until she made this film.
• Technology Marches On: The creators seem to have wanted us to be impressed with how John sets up the famous striptease scene using his CD player, and indeed that probably was the first time someone used one in an American film. Today it looks quaint.
• What Could Have Been: Demi Moore auditioned for Elizabeth, but Adrian Lyne didn't find her worldly enough at 21 to play a divorced art gallery operator. Screenwriter Elizabeth McNeill suggested Sylvia Kristel. Jacqueline Bisset, Teri Garr, Andie MacDowell, Tatum O'Neal, Isabella Rossellini, Kathleen Turner and Sigourney Weaver were also considered.

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