Production
Originally the film was slated to go into production in 1986 for Warner Bros. but the studio got cold feet when director Julien Temple's previous film, Absolute Beginners, proved to be a dismal box office failure. The role of Valerie was offered to some of the era's box-office draws such as Madonna and Molly Ringwald, but when they rejected it, WB dropped the project. Several other studios expressed interested in producing the movie, but none wanted Temple to direct. Ultimately French bank Crédit Lyonnais agreed to finance the film with Temple at the helm (if $4 million was shaved off of the film's estimated $14 million budget) and the De Laurentiis Entertainment Group agreed to distribute it.
Principal photography was finally underway in early 1988 and Temple brought his own ideas to the table, including peppering the background with then modern sounding pop songs, featuring an homage to The Nutty Professor and using iconic model/actress Angelyne in a brief cameo (the director declared her "the patron Saint of Los Angeles"), but Temple's studious eye for detail caused delays on the set and according to producer Tony Garnett, "The first cut we had of the picture was a problem." The film underwent more than five months of post-production tinkering, including the removal of numerous scenes and the production number "I Like 'em Big and Stupid" (a different version of the song plays in the club; the deleted sequence appears on the DVD extras) and reshoots later commenced (the song "'Cause I'm a Blonde" was injected into the film late in the game), by which time the De Laurentiis Entertainment Group had filed for bankruptcy.
The finished print of the film had several very positive previews, which captured the interest of potential distributors Nelson Entertainment, New World, MGM and 20th Century Fox, but ultimately Vestron Pictures picked up the distribution rights. The film debuted at the Toronto Film Festival in September 1988 and was slated to be released the following February, but legal entanglements delayed its release until May 1989.
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