“Deep Water” auteur Adrian Lyne confirmed that his method behind erotic thrillers like “9 1/2 Weeks,” “Fatal Attraction,” and “Indecent Proposal” includes cheering on actors during intimate sequences. Demi Moore wrote in her 2019 memoir “Inside Out” that while filming a sex scene with co-star Woody Harrelson for “Indecent Proposal,” director Lyne “literally didn’t stop talking, practically hollering, the whole time.” “Lyne would cry things like ‘Fucking raunchy!’ and ‘Oh god, got a boner on that!’” Moore wrote, as reported by The Independent. “Here was this guy getting all sweaty and worked up, yelling about boners. But once I got used to it, I saw its advantages: having Adrian carry on that way took the focus off my own awkwardness.”
Lyne responded in the interview, acknowledging that he does in fact become very captivated on set.
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“But I’ve always thought there’s something awful about actors going at it in total silence. Or very glumly, and then wondering whether their arse looks good, or if their thighs are sagging,” Lyne said. “So I always act as a kind of cheerleader. Sometimes I’ll go, ‘It’s good! It’s good!’”
He added, “You sense their confidence mounting, so it’s a better scene. I do that a lot.”
Lyne’s sex scenes have notoriously pushed audiences’ and censors’ buttons. He had to trim a graphic moment in the 1986 film “9 1/2 Weeks” to avoid an X rating, while Lyne’s Oscar-nominated “Fatal Attraction” featured plenty sex scenes of its own.
Lyne described his relationship with “Fatal Attraction” stars Glenn Close and Michael Douglas as a “menage a trois” of sorts. “Not literally,” Lyne clarified, “but what’s really important is to get so close that you’re sort of like their husband, their wife and their shrink — then it starts to work.”
Lyne’s “Deep Water,” now streaming on Hulu and starring Ana de Armas and Ben Affleck, is the director’s first film since 2002’s “Unfaithful.” The story of a husband and wife who agree to open up their marriage to save it — and to murderous ends — the movie has been garnering mixed reviews since premiering March 18.
“It’s a very bizarre movie, certainly the strangest that I’ve done,” Lyne said, citing his reservations with an on-set intimacy coordinator for the film.
“It implies a lack of trust, which I loathed,” Lyne added. “That’s all I have with my actors: They trust me and I trust them, totally. It wasn’t a big deal in the end, though.”
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