ZAMM.COM

Slams from the critics and blasts from feminists didn’t keep moviegoers from making INDECENT PROPOSAL one of 1993’s top hits.

The big lure was Robert Redford & Demi Moore starring in Amy Holden Jones’ adaptation of Jack Engelhard’s 1988 novel where a millionaire stranger offers a young couple $1M — if the wife will spend the night with him. Paramount, after acquiring rights to the novel for $120,000, signed Adrian Lyne to direct. That reteamed Lyne with producer Sherry Lansing, with whom he’d made FATAL ATTRACTION, a huge hit for Paramount in 1987 that did $320.1M worldwide.

INDECENT was supposed to star the then-married couple Tom Cruise & Nicole Kidman. Warren Beatty was to have played the husband role that eventually went to Woody Harrelson. That dream casting evaporated when Cruise dropped out, leaving Hollywood thinking the erotic romantic drama’s morality — or, perhaps, lack of — conflicted with his commitment to Scientology. Critics complained the storyline wasn’t believable and feminists argued it depicted women as property.

The long list of those considered post-Cruise to play the millionaire David  included: William Baldwin, John Cusack, Johnny Depp, Val Kilmer, Tim Robbins & Charlie Sheen. For the wife, Diana, they wanted Julia Roberts, who passed, or Andie MacDowell.

When Redford agreed to play David, the catch was that his character had to be rewritten to be less villainous. Instead of the studio’s proposed $4M salary, Redford took a boxoffice gross profit participation deal. He had to have been happy about having done that since INDECENT, which opened April 7, 1993, grossed $266.6M worldwide on a budget of just $38M.

Was Redford the ideal casting? Jones, the screenwriter, has said she thought the movie might have been even better with an actor who was a less perfect David — somebody like Danny DeVito!

During production Lyne had heated disagreements with Moore about whether her Diana seemed sufficiently vulnerable. Later, while editing those scenes over and over, Lyne realized Moore was acting exactly how he kept telling her she should — after which he apologized to her.

Lyne wasn’t keen on Harrelson playing Moore’s husband until he saw him in WHITE MEN CAN’T JUMP. To do INDECENT, Harrelson quit his starring commitment for MGM’s BENNY & JOON, costing Paramount a $500,000 settlement when, predictably, MGM sued. In one of those only-in-Hollywood stories, Harrelson was replaced in BENNY by Johnny Depp, who’d earlier turned down an offer to play David.

Harrelson might have been happier had he done BENNY instead. He confided while promoting INDECENT that he was very uncomfortable doing the lovemaking scenes with the voluptuous Moore since her then husband, Bruce Willis, was one of his best friends.