Why Martin Scorsese pitched himself as the director of ‘Flashdance 2’: “No salary for me”
The industry has shifted to such a seismic extent over the years that it’s hard to imagine anything like the ‘Movie Brats’ happening again, with Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, Brian De Palma, and George Lucas seizing cinema by the horns and reshaping it in their own image.
To varying degrees of success and longevity, those five reached a rare position in Hollywood: virtually everything they made was a passion project, but they were allowed to make them with studio-sized budgets and almost unfettered creative control, toeing the line between art and commerce.
These days, the routes to the top of the directorial ladder are limited. Filmmakers can start off on small-scale independent features before graduating to the blockbuster leagues like Gareth Edwards, Colin Trevorrow, or Taika Waititi, or they can be plunged in at the directorial deep end and left to sink or swim, which has not gone too well for Carl Rinsch.
Ryan Coogler seems a safe bet to buck the trend, but even before he was given the leeway to make Sinners, his previous three films were the seventh instalment in the Rocky franchise, a comic book adaptation, and the sequel to that comic book adaptation. Scorsese has never been a director for hire, but he did put himself forward for the job once.
The closest he’s ever come to being a hired hand was with The Color of Money and Cape Fear, and they’re both great films that stand on their own as unmistakably Scorsese. However, desperate times call for desperate measures, and in the scramble to get The Last Temptation of Christ up and running, the auteur was willing to whore himself out to secure funding.
“We cut the shooting days down to 55 days, 55 days, all shot in Israel very quickly, and the budget down to $7.8 million, then to $6 million, including the $4 million we already spent. No salary for me,” he explained to Mary Pat Kelly. “And I told [Jeffrey] Katzenberg I would do Flashdance 2, if he wanted.”
Adrian Lyne’s move-busting romance was a monster hit at the box office, clearing $200 million at the box office to become the second-highest-grossing release of the year, behind only Star Wars: Return of the Jedi. It’s not a classic in the conventional sense because it’s sort of rubbish as a film, but the soundtrack took on a life of its own, winning an Academy Award, two Golden Globes, and three Grammys.
There’s an alternate timeline out there where the history of Flashdance becomes intertwined with two of the era’s most distinctive filmic voices. David Cronenberg had turned down an offer to direct, which would have been something, and Scorsese pitched himself for the sequel, so long as it ensured The Last Temptation of Christ would be made.
Remarkably, for a place where hit movies have sequels greenlit days after they’ve started raking in the cash, Flashdance remained a one-and-done effort. Scorsese would have breathed a sigh of relief, even if it would have been the most fascinating film of his career by far, albeit for all the wrong reasons. Of course, his passion project was made eventually, but he was willing to sell his soul to get it done.
