I think it's time we revisit "Pretty Woman" (1990) and the birth of Julia Roberts as Mega Movie Star

No I hated it and I hated her.

It was okay, but it was no Harriet Tubman

I loved her hair back then

I so wish another actress was cast in that. She was tolerable in Sleeping With the Enemy and Steel Magnolias. She's an insufferable, mean bitch and doesn't deserve her success. Pretty Woman would have succeeded easily with any other random pretty actress.

[quote]She's an insufferable, mean bitch and doesn't deserve her success.

Argh and she's STILL around!

How the fuck didn't they notice she went from eating a croissant to a pancake?

It is ok, but overrated

HATED IT.

It was my ex-BF’s grandma’s favorite movie. This little old Jewish lady in Brooklyn. I have no idea why.

As if some gorgeous financier would marry a streetwalker. Ha.

I've seen clips from this movie, but never watched it. I never wanted to. A Cinderella story where Cinderella is a hooker? I guess girls and women swooned over the fantasy of a gorgeous hooker (how many street hookers out there look like Julia Roberts) getting "rescued" by a rich, handsome man. Julia Roberts became a star in this movie, but I never understood her appeal. That braying laugh! And this movie had one of the worst famous lines in film history "I want the fairytale." A hooker snagging a rich Sugar Daddy...some fairy tale!

This movie was originally intended to be very dark. The hooker is used and discarded by the wealthy man who had no intention of having a relationship with her (of course he wouldn't). But the script was changed so everything is cute and funny and there's a happily ever after ending. I think it would have been much more interesting the other way, although probably not as successful financially. Movie audiences do want their happy endings

Actually, I do a know a hedge funder who wifed up a “showgirl” he met in Vegas. Quite the scandal. He isn’t gorgeous though.

[quote]As if some gorgeous financier would marry a streetwalker.

It's those ugly, wealthy little trolls on Wall St. (like Somers Farkas' husband) who have to settle for absolute gold-diggers because they're so desperate for arm candy. The hot ones can actually get the hot, Ivy League chicks or someone with an actual career who wouldn't have to settle for the ugly troll.

If a hot financier is going with hookers, it's because he's fucked up and emotionally-disconnected.

I love reliable tv staple and excellent actress Elinor Donahue, nearly 50 years into her professional career, in a tiny role with one good line "they never are, dear" that she totally nails like the professional she is.

r2 you just made me laugh harder than I have in weeks! Bless you for reaffirming my love of DL!

Fuck Vivian! She was such a bitch!

As far as materialistic whores go, Vivian was a keeper!

Wasn't Jennifer Jason Leigh attached when the script was much darker? It seems like a movie she'd do. It does sound a lot more interesting, especially if the original script was pretty faithful to what we ended up getting for the first 3/4ths of the movie only to take that dark turn at the end and give everyone in the theater a wakeup call. It wouldn't have been a hit, though. It would have been critically praised, but it wouldn't have been a hit. That's a sad statement.

I like my hooker movies with a little bit of melancholy. I'd have been fine if she'd been dumped by Gere, her friend had overdosed, and she decided that she wanted to get out of the business at the end. It could have still ended on a more positive note with her starting to get her life in order. Maybe she succeeds and maybe she doesn't, but there could be that trace of ambiguity there.

What weird comments!! It was a fantasy Cinderella movie, not a documentary! I love it, especially the shopping scenes. Julia R was excellent and the movie is what it is only because of her charisma. Funnily, when I was a kid, I thought Richard Gere was sleazy, absolutely unattractive and old. Now that I'm in my 30s, I find him super hot. I was never averse to daddies, so I don't really know what changed.

[quote]It was a fantasy Cinderella movie, not a documentary!

Cinderella had some singing mice make her a dress, she wasn't a professional whore!

A "Cinderella story?" Cinderella wasn't a whore!

Could Julia Roberts' lips get any bigger? It looks as if she's giving birth to her own head!

It's weird that she was only 23 when it came out. Some 23 year old today look babyish.

R21, keep in mind she was younger when they started filming, so 21/22.

#metoo

Worked theaters. This is it folks, this is when Julia Roberts became a movie star. The whole auditorium fell in love with her. You could feel it, every show.

[quote] A "Cinderella story?" Cinderella wasn't a whore!

Now who's being naive? She put out for just one glass slipper!

I was 15

God, what bullshit @R24. Like all of the staff would be smiling like they're just so happy for the corporate raider and his hired whore! Meanwhile, they're in miserable jobs serving complete assholes, but at least the whore and the corporate raider are having fun!

THAT should be in the thread about bullshit you see in movies.

I watched it recently and sadly it has not aged well.. it feels cringy at times and very dated at others. I still love it for the time though and quote it often

Really, the only scene I liked was the "Big mistake" shopping scene.

I prefered her in ' Pretty negro woman., The story of Harriet'

As Harriet Tubman, she led the underground railroad

As a whore, she regularly took a train.

I preferred Whore

Vat bulshit story. Financir alvays fat n uglii.

[quote]A "Cinderella story?" Cinderella wasn't a whore!

I love how DL queens are simultaneously porn-addicted, world-weary Rhet-Buttleresque rentboy connoisseurs and pearl-clutching buttoned-up prissy puritans, especially when female sexuality is in question.

I thought it was ridiculous and mildly entertaining.

I took a screenwriting class and my instructor told me to read "$3000" the original screenplay that Julia Roberts got hired for but the company folded and got bought by the mouse house and the script rewritten to be Disney-fied.

The original story is a lot darker and deals more with prostitution and drugs:

Richard throws Vivian out of the limo, throws cash at her while calling her a whore. Then drives away leaving her in a dirty alley.

Then Vivian and Kate (Laura San Giacomo) smoke crack and take the bus to Disneyland. THE END

Think I'm kidding? Screenplay at the link. I think it would have been an awesome darker indie if the original story was used.

Oh yeah I know this for another thread but WHET to Laura San Giacomo after PW?

That cunt stole the movie from me.

[quote]dental floss and sucking off a man you hardly know

I am not a PROSTATUTE !

Wasn't she in that lovely sitcom "Just Shoot Me", R36?

That 80s hair! It was bigger than her head.

Her hair was fab.

Prefer the Juliette Lewis version.

Who wrote the $3000 script? Joe Eszterhas?

Enjoyed it when I was a kid, but not anymore.

PS. Helen Hunt won an Oscar from a rom-com movie.

Why has nobody made 3,000? it would be a good movie.

[quote]I took a screenwriting class and my instructor told me to read "$3000" the original screenplay that Julia Roberts got hired for but the company folded and got bought by the mouse house and the script rewritten to be Disney-fied.

I saw the movie as a preview on the Disney lot when it was still called $3000 (or at least that's how they referred to it in the materials they gave us--there weren't any credits on the print we saw.) and hadn't been finally edited. I've never seen the finished version--I don't really know how much was changed.

Do you all remember the DL troll, with industry connects, that swore Madonna turned down this role. Does it have any basis in reality?

I always heard Molly Ringwald was the one they wanted for Vivian when the script was still dark and gritty and both characters were kind of assholes. I could see Molly playing an angry, bitchy junkie whore. While I think they could have softened both leads up a little bit, I think they went a bit overboard in the final film and I would have preferred an ending when he still leaves her, but she's changed a bit from the experience and realizes that life isn't a fairy tale.

It came down to Molly Ringwald being offered the role, and when she turned it down it went to Julia.

Sandra Bullock would have knocked it out of the park too.

[quote]It was so bog that it got her an Oscar Nomination for Best Actress (how many Rom-Coms get Oscar nods?).

Non-romantic comedies seldom get Oscar nominations, and the only romantic comedies that do are invariably heterosexual. This needs to change.

She was not luminescent. She always seemed a tad anorexic, pale, drawn and dry. Maybe we should consider that the movie Pretty Woman is a biopic about JR's rise to stardom.

I've read $3,000 and it isn't all that gritty. Vivian likes to smoke crack and he leaves her at the end. Those are the only two major differences. The rest of the beats, aside from the polo match, are there so it still would have been a bad My Fair Whore movie, even with the "darker" ending.

I vaguelly recall Dave Chappelle did some parody of it on his Comedy Central show where he tells the hooker to get the fuck out of his room.

It would have been a much better movie with the downer ending imo. Better received by critics.

[quote]Better received by critics.

But not by fraus! It would've been a huge flop.

It had a great soundtrack.

Yes it was.

Natalie Cole, David Bowie, RHCP, Roxette, Roy Orbison, Peter. Cetera, Robert Palmer, and Jane Weidlin.

As a kid, I wore out the tape from playing it so much.

You didn't even mention the biggest hit on the album besides Orbison's.

R24 - That clip actually cuts off at my favorite part where she sits down and “takes in” the opera.

I bought the soundtrack just to get that song by Lauren Wood that plays during airport scene/flight (“Fallen”). It’s on my iTunes playlist 30 years later!

The very end MAKES the film. The app area CD by the grungy black homeless guy acknowledges the ridiculousness of what occurred, and also accepted the audiences desire to believe in happy endings.

[quote]“Welcome to Hollywood! What's your dream? Everybody comes here; this is Hollywood, land of dreams. Some dreams come true, some don't; but keep on dreamin' - this is Hollywood. Always time to dream, so keep on dreamin'.“

So do you think Kt gets jealous that Vivian got Prince Charming, gets depressed and OD's?

It should have been called 'Ugly Woman' - Roberts was and is hideous.

[quote]I've read $3,000 and it isn't all that gritty. Vivian likes to smoke crack and he leaves her at the end. Those are the only two major differences.

Vivian never says “nigger” in PW. She does in $3,000.

Nobody would have gone to that kind of lengths to woo Molly Ringwald. In the alternate universe where she and Julia Roberts trade movies, [italic]Betsy's Wedding[/italic] probably would have been the more successful of the two.

That = Those

I always hoped so r64 I hated that annoying skank. I thought that even in a movie about street walkers she seemed especially cheap and trashy.

It's probably a good thing Julia's star started fading long before TMZ took off. Can you imagine her surviving TMZ and social media? They would eat her alive.

Like my half-sister who just eats and eats!

Julia made me do the unthinkable--she had me AGREEING with one of Ann Coulter's columns. Sadly, I'm not joking. When Denzel Washington won the Oscar for Best Actor, Julia made a huge deal about it and kissed him and said "I love my life!". She made the moment all about her and she couldn't understand it was Denzel's moment. What a fucking attention whore. Ann Coulter called her out in her column about how she made it all about herself and you know what? She's 100% correct!

From R71:

[quote]Having once famously proclaimed she did not want to live in a world in which Denzel Washington had not won an Oscar for best actor, she preceded her announcement of his award saying, "I love my life!" This was about her, not him. It was her personal triumph over racism. The only patronizing remark Roberts skipped was to note that Washington and Poitier were "articulate."

After Washington accepted his award, Roberts leapt on him and would not let go. It was as if he had grown some sort of exotic Julia Roberts wart. Not only Washington, but, more urgently, his wife deserves great credit for their forbearance. Whatever indignities Hollywood has visited on blacks in the past, it would be hard to top this.

I really liked the movie back then and have to admit that she was absolutely beautiful in the movie. Then she became a superstar and superbitch.

Their reunion in 1999’s Runaway Bride was very unfortunate a putrid and vomit inducing film 🤢 🤮

I don't know why this movie works, but it does. I'd love to see the grittier version (and I guess we did if you've ever seen Whore), but the final film does have its own odd charm. It's totally unrealistic and sentimental, but a lot of moments do work like the "big mistake" scene. You really do root for her to tell off those awful, pretentious cunts. Any film that can make you feel for someone else's plight enough to want to applaud when they stand up for themselves has to be worth something.