I just watched Boxing Helena with Sherllynn Fenn. The movie is probably ten years old. I was wondering why Kim Bassinger pulled out of this project and then consequently had to file bankruptcy? Rumor is because the producers sued her for breech of contract. But why did she breech?
Yeah it might have been a little disturbing having your characters arms and legs chopped off but the movie was not gross or gory. And woulnd’t Kim have had the opportunity to read the script before agreeing to do it? Did anyone hear any other info about why Kim pulled out?
Basinger’s rationale, IIRC, was that she felt that the character was demeaned and objectified, and she did not want to portray a woman in that position. The producers sued, she lost, hence her subsequent bankruptcy.
It was a crap movie. I don’t blame her for passing on it. As much as Basinger’s Oscar win is derided (I am not among the detractors on that point) I have strong doubts that we’ll ever see Sherilyn Fenn in anything even remotely approaching Oscar caliber. She’s pigeonholed herself, and picking up that Basinger reject lo those many year ago was the beginning of the end of any possible rise in her career.
It’s been awhile since I saw 9 1/2 weeks but IIRC she was a strong woman that was exploring her sexuality. She said ‘no’ to several of the things the man demanded and in the end (this probably doesn’t deserve a spoiler box but I will anyway)
dumps his sorry pathetic ass leaving him in his own misery while she goes out and presumably has a good life
Well I wonder why Kim agreed to do it in the first place if she felt that way (about being demeaned and all)???
Wouldn’t it have been better for her to do the movie and just chalked it up to a bad movie rather then to have to file bankruptcy and all? Not ALL her movies have been good. She could have just written off this one movie.
If nothing else this whole affair produced one highlight - the Variety headline HELENA COSTS KIM ARM AND A LEG but don’t forget the jury decision was overturned on appeal and Basinger settled out of court for her breech of an oral agreement.
Curious that Kim felt that way, because I thought the movie was a metaphor about the objectification of a woman. I mean, the screenwriter-director was a woman.
I’ll agree that 9-1/2 Weeks was far guiltier of sexist objectification than Helena. (Has Adrian Lynne ever made a movie that was anything more than a sexist objectification flick?) I suspect the reasons Basinger gave publicly were not the whole story. Not that I’d care to speculate about her real reasons, but her stated reasons don’t wash.
It’s not impossible for a woman director to make an anti-woman movie, Walloon.
Not that that’s necessarily the case with Boxing Helena. You can find many other flaws with the movie before you even get to its gender politics.
Most grating to me were the utterly unsympathetic nature of Julian Sands’s character (I mean he was loathsome, not that he couldn’t sympathize, although that’s probably also true), the technical flaw that Helena’s stumps kept changing in length, and finally
the awful “it’s all a dream” ending.
It’s an incompetent movie. Kim’s big mistake was signing on to it in the first place. Sherilyn’s too, for that matter.
Often, during the film making process, movies mutate so much that they don’t even resemble the first draft of the script or the original proposal. Perhaps there was a different spin on the version she agreed to do, but she disliked subsequent changes.
In defense of Basinger on this matter, I agree with what Sugaree said. In the beginning, Boxing Helena–despite its off-beat plot–probably looked like a promising project in light of some of the people initially involved. For example, although the movie was to be directed by Jennifer Lynch, I think a lot of people expected her father David would at least have some sort of “advisory” role on the film. Also, I believe Ed Harris was originally cast in the role eventually played by Sands. However, once it turned out that Jennifer would be pretty much on her own directing the movie and Harris would get cold feet and bail out, Boxing Helena no longer seemed like such a hot project but was rather the type of cinematic stinkbomb that would ruin even solid film (which it did, unfortunately, for Ms. Fenn). Kim Basinger may have been in a number of below-average flicks since 1993, but not one of them would’ve utterly stopped her career dead in its tracks like Boxing Helena would have.
(BTW, I’ve never seen the movie all the way through. I’d rather spend my time doing things like scrubbing mildew in my shower.)
Personally, if I somehow found myself in that movie, I would pay any money to escape from it.
I watched it with friends in college (cheap late show) and for days we pondered the question: can a movie that bad be made by accident? Or did the director actually set out to make one of the worst movies in history, and succeed roundly?
[Whiny Julian Sands voice]
But Heleeeeena…
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