Dearly beloved—we are gathered here today to get through this thing called Flashdance. The totemic 1980’s dancin’ flick that spawned a thousand 1980’s dancin’ flicks. The film that single handedly rescued the leggings industry and caused people all over the globe to take scissors to the neckline of their sweatshirts. Before I attempt to explain the movie’s threadbare plot, I must first make a confession (the first of several confessions we’ll be discussing today): I had never seen Flashdance before this week! I know...I know! How could I have missed out on this cultural juggernaut that was the 45th highest grossing film of the 80’s!? Let’s see—it’s a medium hard R-rated flick that hit theaters when I was 4 years old...but I had already seen Porky’s 2 and Hardbodies 2 and every other smutty sequel on the market. I would say it has more to do with my intense aversion to dancing than anything else. I mean...I’m not adverse to the concept of dancing. It’s ok if other people want to do it. I’m just no damn good at it and would be less mortified if someone walked in on me masturbating than if they walked in me practicing the Cabbage Patch (note: I have done quite a bit of both in the privacy of my own home...though probably more of the former). That said, I’ll admit that I absolutely LOVE Footloose...although I tend to come down on the side of John Lithgow’s reverend in that one. If this Ren MacCormack wants to dance so bad maybe he just hop in his Beetle and drive straight back to wherever it is he came from! Unfortunately I don’t own a copy of Footloose on VHS so I can’t sit here and barf up 5000 words about how Kenny Loggins’ “I’m Free (Heaven Helps the Man)'' is one of the greatest songs ever created by a human person. I think the reason I continued to avoid Flashdance over the decades has more to do with the fact that it was produced by Don Simpson, one of most repugnant ghouls to ever slither into Hollywood. In my review of Top Gun, also a Simpson co-production, I said that Don Simpson made Harvey Weinstein look like Mr Rogers, a line that I dig so much I’ve decided to recycle it here in this sentence. Simpson probably has the worst reputation of all of the abusive, cokey 80’s mega producers...second only to former Sony president and man who was bizarrely married to Pamela Anderson for ten days in 2020 Jon Peters (he’s 75. She’s...less than that). What’s that? Jon Peters ALSO produced Flashdance!? And the script was written by the profoundly overpaid lech Joe Eztherhas, he of eventual Basic Instinct and Showgirls ``fame”. That’s a sleazy triumvirate of terror right there, y’all. I’m thinking this film cannot possibly be good! Having finally broken down and watched it, I will say that at the very least Flashdance does not contain a scene where Kyle McLachlan gets fucked to death in a swimming pool, unlike Showgirls. And that’s the last positive thing I have to say about Flashdance. Read on...
What happens is this: We open on the ash grey streets of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania...and I can immediately tell that Flashdance is going to be a dark movie. Like...literally. I had to get up and fuck with the tracking and eject the tape and blow on it before I realized that the movie is just supposed to look like it does. Usually I’m totally on board with the gauziness of 80’s movies...it’s why I host a VHS blog...but this film is so dark that I was frequently unable to tell what I was even supposed to be looking at. It’s one of the few times in my life where I wondered if I might have been better served hunting down a copy on blu ray. Did the cinematographer not know how to operate a light meter!? Jesus. The theme song (you know...the real big one) plays over the opening credits and here I need to admit that, for the last 38 years, I thought the lyrics in the chorus were “What a feeling...beans believing. Beans as in actual beans: Pinto’s, kidney’s, Black-eyed’s. I looked it up and, come to find out, Irene Cara is actually singing “bein’s believin’.” Honestly, I liked it better with the beans. What the hell does that even mean?? Anyway, we are introduced to 18 year-old Alex, played by 19 year-old lady who holds a B.A. in American Literature from Yale, Jennifer Beals. Alex works as a welder at Pittsburgh’s smokiest steel mill by day but dreams of a career as a ballerina. She also appears to have just fallen out of the goddamn sky fully formed. She has no family and no backstory whatsoever. Ok, so later in the film we DO learn that she grew up in Altoona but that’s not exactly a fountain of information, now is it? Altoona is less than 100 miles from Pittsburgh. It’s not like she’s from Palau! How did she become a welder by the age of 18?? What led her to that career?? Is she in the union?? After she clocks out of her welding gig, she heads to Mawby’s, which is simultaneously the type of wood-paneled dive bar where grody dudes munch greasy cheeseburgers, slug pitchers of Schlitz, and play “Mississippi Queen” on the jukebox...and also a high tech, neon cabaret with ample dressing room space and a seemingly unlimited budget for elaborate lighting and set designs. Like...there is NO EARTHEN WAY that all of these things are occurring under the same roof. I guess this is where Alex goes to interpretive dance because soon Alex is up onstage interpretive dancing. Alex does her...what have you, and for the big finale, she parks her ass on a chair, reaches up and grabs ahold of one of those Europeans toilet flushing chains and yanks it, releasing about 200 gallons of water. I realize this shot of all that water cascading down on Jenny Beals is probably one of the most iconic images in cinematic history. But it’s also like...HUH!? Where did all that water come from?? It’s way, way more than a bucket’s worth. And the audience/bar patrons? They’re friggin’ soaked. It’s like a Gallagher show but with no jokes and 100% less watermelons. Her little number immediately catches the eye of the swarthy Nick, played by actor I do not know Michael Nouri. He asks some of the steel workers, whose voices are all so gravelly they make Tom Waits sound like a castrato, what’s the sitch with the dancing queen? One of the dudes tells him that she works at a steel factory. Specifically--his. Nick owns the goddamn steel factory but does not recognize his only female employee. The next day at the mill, Nick spots Alex reading a copy of Vogue on her lunch break and is all “you spreken zee French? Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?” Alex says she recognizes his name from her paychecks but doesn’t like to mix business and pleasure so he should take his Francophile ass elsewhere.
After the quittin’ whistle blows, Alex bikes home and we get a chance to see where she lives and what the FUCK, dude!? I think the story is supposed to be that she hobo’d her way into an abandoned warehouse and built herself an unsanctioned squat. But the place is tricked...OUT!! It’s like the apartment from Ghost...but bigger! She’s got a brass bed and a shit ton of plants and a color television with cable and an air hockey table and ColecoVision (ok...I’m lying about the last two things). She also has a pitbull named Grunt. When she arrives at home she asks Grunt if he’s been getting laid, which is a really weird thing to ask a housebound dog (he has not, to my knowledge, been recently laid). She watches some ballet on the telly which gets her in the mood to move...which means it’s time for the infamous “dancing around the apartment to Michael Sambello’s “Maniac” sequence.” I know I’ve said this before but I love it when the songs on the soundtrack describe exactly what is happening in a given scene. She is, indeed, a maniac...maniac on the floor...and she’s psyched she lives in a 5000 square foot apartment in which to engage in said maniacal dancing. Although I’m pretty sure I read that Beals had a dance double...or at least an ass-through-torso double. I’m glad I finally got to see this scene, though. Next time I watch Gremlins and the gremlin dances to “Maniac” I’ll finally get to be in on the joke!
Alex decides that she absolutely positively must apply for admission at Pittsburgh’s Fictional Conservatory of Dance and Repertory. But when she arrives, all of the other ballerinas are lined up holding the passe en releve position and shit and Alex is wearing a dirty ass pair of Carhartt work boots. They all mean mug her while the school admin prattles on about how all applicants need to have 20 years of experience and blah blah blah. Fictional schools are impossible to get into! Why don’t they just let her get up in there and cut a rug, jitterbug? Show ‘em her stuff? It’s at this point that I realize that my entire ballet knowledge base comes from seeing The Nutcracker in the 6th grade and from the film Black Swan. Although...I should mention that while I was in the theater waiting for Black Swan to start, a stranger tapped me on the shoulder and said “Hey man--you know Brittney Murphy? She’s DEAD!!” Totally ruined Black Swan for me. I love Clueless, man! Alex goes to see her 87 year-old ballet mentor, Hanna, who never really offers her much beyond “you are good dancer...you’ll be fine.” I’m not sure what the point of this character is, really. She can’t even get out of her lazyboy let alone show her any wax on, wax off. Next, Alex heads to confession, where she tells the priest that she can’t stop thinking about sex...which is what the nasty old bastards who wrote this movie hope that 18 year-old girls talk about in the confessional booth. Friggin barf, dude. Alex says “I mean--I guess who DOESN’T think about sex all the time?? Well, probably not you, Father.” Eeee...is this a catholic priest...cuzzzz. Then she starts to ramble on about her lack of confidence in her dancing abilities and the priest is like “have you taken the lord’s name in vain or anything like that? If not, maybe tell this bullshit to a shrink.” Actually, this priest never says anything. At all. Maybe the actor didn't have his SAG card or something.
When she isn’t welding, Alex pals around with a Mawby’s waitress named Jeanie, who is an aspiring figure skater, and primo dancer Tina Tech, played by Penny of “The Penny Situation” from Dirty Dancing. The ladies are routinely harassed by strip club manager Johnny C (Fear frontman and Mr Body’s body from the movie Clue, Lee Ving) who wants them to, you know, strip. When they decline Johnny C’s advances, he calls the ladies a bunch of C-words! Real nice, this movie. Alex and her pals head to the gym to listen to some Joan Jett and work off some aggression. The only problem is that this gym seems to exist in the ether! It’s just a bunch of weight machines that appear to be located on a cloud. This sequence seems to exist so the filmmakers could offer some more closeups of butts and boobs, as if there’s a dearth of that in this movie. Meanwhile, back at the Mawby’s, Jeanie’s boyfriend Ritchie decides to try his hat at stand up comedy with disastrous results. He’s up there telling Polak joke after Polak joke and WHAT IS THIS MOVIE EVEN ABOUT!?? Why should I care about Jeanie the figure skater and Shecky Green over here?? This movie has so little in the way of a plot it makes Purple Rain look like Inception.
One night, while Alex is walking through the bar, Johnny C grabs her ass, so she pours a glass of beer on his dick, which is awesome. Later, when she exits the club, Johnny C and his henchman throw Alex on the ground and try to rape her, which is less awesome. Fortunately, Slick Nick is just a few feet away getting into his Porsche 911 and is all “hey, knock it off fellas” and the fellas knock it off. Nick does the only reasonable thing you can do for a lady after she’s been attacked: ask her if she wants to hang out...and when she declines...follow her ALL THE WAY HOME in your sports car while she tries to outrun you on her 10 speed! He keeps asking her out and she keeps telling him that she does not want to date an employer...particularly one who is TWENTY YEARS OLDER than she is! She does not say this last part out loud...but...GAH! He tells her that she’s fired and that he’ll pick her up at 8 the following evening. Neat. Before she can hit the town with Nick the Dick, though, she has to check out Jeanie’s super big important figure skating competition. The one for all the marbles...or whatever it is one is awarded for outstanding figure skating. At this point I realize that I have never seen the actress who plays Jeanie in another film so I googled her and learned that she died suddenly of a brain aneurysm all the way back in 1984. Then I realize that she’s skating to the song “Gloria” by Laura Brannigan, who died suddenly of a brain aneurysm in 2004. Coincidence!? I THINK SO! Jeanie eats shit twice and blows her figure skating career, which is sad. Not as sad as all of those terrible real life events I just told you about, but sad nonetheless. Alex still manages to make her date with Nick. They grab a pizza and head back to hers. When he sees her spread he’s like “howwww much are we paying you again!?” They hang out in the living room wing of her warehouse and Alex sits on the floor and starts to remove her bra from under her sweater while explaining the concept of synesthesia to Nick. She’s all “you know that if you close your eyes you can actually see music?” and he’s staring down at her like “you want me to close my eyes NOW!??” They ball.
The pizza date was a smashing success. We know from the sex, yes, and also from the walking around the smoking rubble of the burned out factories of Pittsburgh montage that follows (how and why these buildings burned, we do not know). Alex tells Nick that she’s super self conscious about dancing in front of other people...but that she dreams about getting up on stage and trancing out 24 hours a day (“lose yourself to dance”--Daft Punk). Nick puts his hand on her tit. They screw again. The next time she gets a slot at the club, she paints her face up like a mime and performs a number that looks like Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” video if it had been directed by Herb Ritts. Out in the crowd (which...again...cannot POSSIBLY be located in the same space as these over the top performances) Johnny C is still at it, asking poor Jeanie if she knows how to do the horizontal mambo. She tells him to fuck off but then Johnny C leaves her a huge tip so she’s like “ahh ok...I guess I’ll come strip at your club now.” Did I mention that Richie dumped Jeanie and moved to LA to pursue a career as a standup? It really doesn’t matter.
Everything's coming up Alex when she steps out to the ballet with her elderly mentor friend. But while she’s there she sees Nick loading some strange blonde into his Porsche. She’s beside herself, Alex is. She’s probably thinking “I never wanted to date this old prick anyway. Now I’m pissed!” She bikes all the way out to Nick’s mansion just to throw a rock through his window. Nick comes running out of the house barechested, looking all half-sexed, but Alex is off like a flash(dance). The next morning, Nick saunters over to Alex in the gravel pit and tells her she’s welcome to order anything she’d like from the lunch truck. Alex, however, is hungry for revenge, not pierogis. She comes out hot! Guns a blazin’! She’s all “who's the goddamn blonde!?” Nick explains that it’s just his ex wife and that they still occasionally ballet together but Alex is far from satisfied. “Go fuck a blonde!” she screams, while her fellow co-workers hoot and holler, no doubt amused at the spectacle of an 18 year-old giving the owner of the plant a verbal ass thrashing. “Go fuck a blonde,” though—that’s a good one! I’m gonna have to use that sometime. No idea when/why/how. Nick is like “Jesus...first someone breaks my window and now I gotta listen to this!” “I broke your window, dipshit!” comes the reply. Nick is like “umm...yeah...that’s special custom-made Italian glass I had flown over on the Concorde sooooo...” They agree to squash it and are sitting in a high falutin resto chowing face on shrimp cocktail and chicken lobsters in no time (Pittsburgh being so famous for its seafood and all). Alex inexplicably wears a tuxedo with a sleeveless shirt...a little gender role reversal that Flashdance director Adrian Lyne would have Kim Basinger repeat in his 1986 film 9 1/2 Weeks. Dude likes the look of a lady in a tuxedo...what are you gonna do? Nick’s blonde ex wife just happens to be at the same restaurant (of all the gin joints!)...and I’ll tell you...it certainly doesn’t seem like she and Nick are ancient history. She’s super rude but it doesn’t bother Alex any. She tells the blonde that she’s been fucking Nick’s brains out. She also strokes his junk with her feet under the table...so there’s that.
Alex decides to give it another go at fantasy dance school, frosty amin be damned! Nick gets wind of this and decides to make a few phone calls because DUDE—he owns a fucking steel mill! Do you have any idea what one of those suckers cost? Neither do I but it's gotta be a lot! Alex gets the audition because of course she does. She’s got Big Steel behind her now! So the moral of the story is that a young vagabond can pull herself up by the bootstraps and score an audition at a prestigious school...aaaaanddd schtupping a powerful millionaire is mad helpful also. Alex goes to tell her mentor that she scored the audition. She tells her that she knows Alex will make it. Truly a sage, this lady. I see that I wrote what appears to be “I love the way here” next in my notes but I haven’t the slightest clue what that means. Love the way where? To the end of this movie?? Nick takes Alex out to yet another fancy dinner to celebrate and, on the way home, Alex raves about the ease at which they were able to score a rezzy at this exclusive restaurant. She’s all like “I can’t even believe it: there were 50 people waiting in line but we were whisked right in...just like in that scene in the movie Goodfellas that does not yet exist!” Alex says that she could totally get used to a life filled with line-jumping and landlocked shellfish. Right but then, in the very next breath, Nick mentions that he made reservations 24 hours in advance. But Alex didn’t know she’d been invited to audition until earlier that day! Nick is found...OUT! Alex jumps out of the 911 right in the middle of a tunnel, calls Nick an asshole, and says that she will not audition at the audition. Nick is all “didn’t you JUST SAY you loved being able to cut lines??”
So now, all of a sudden, everything's coming up shithouse. Alex gets word that Jeanie is stripping at Johnny C’s joint so Alex busts up in there and pulls Jeanie right off the pole and drags her outside, where she makes Jeanie deposit her wad of cash tips in the gutter. Poor Jeanie. Alex holes up in her million dollar loft, where she develops a cigarette smoking habit. Nick comes to see her but she is nowhere near ready to forgive him. We know this because she cracks him in the face not once, not twice, but THREE TIMES! He tells her she needs a kick in the ass and peaces out. Alex tries to visit Hanna, which proves impossible as the old lady has croaked. That sucks. Alex returns to the confession booth to see her mute priest friend and, once again, has no sins to confess to him. She balls her eyes out and says “I want...I want...I want so much to...SCENE!! The scene just ends while Alex is mid sentence! You want to WHAT, Alex!? Doesn’t matter--it’s climax time! Alex decides that she will audition for the conservatory after all (WHAT!??). She enters a grand hall with floor to ceiling windows that is somehow smokier than the steel mill. She faces an unsmiling panel of 80 year-old, cigarillo smoking stuffed shirts and tells them that she will be dancing to a song called “Flashdance...What a Feeling” and they’re like “weird! isn't that also the name of the movie we’re all acting in??” The needle hits the groove and Alex just goes buck wild! She’s flyin’ through the air and breakdancing and doing the robot. I kept waiting for Huey Lewis to stand up and say “sorry...you’re just too darn loud?’ But these geriatrics? They’re all tappin’ their toes! The suspense-o-meter stays pinned at zero...and the reason for this...besides everything that happens in the 90 minutes that lead up to this scene...is that we, the audience, have NO IDEA what she’s supposed to be doing in her audition! I know she’s trying to get into a ballet school...but she’s doing headspins and shit! Traditionally, every movie that climaxes with a big competition or audition revolves around some impossible to execute move. Will Moira Kelly and Toe Pick be able to nail the Pamchenko? Can Rodney Dangerfield pull off the Triple Lindy? Will Patrick Swayze be able to lift Jennifer Grey’s body over his head? There’s NONE of that here! She’s just danin’ (dancin’...dancin’!) How am I supposed to know if she's good or not!?
Anyway, after the audition ends, Alex sprints giddily outside, where she finds Nick waiting for her with a giant bouquet of roses. Even though she slapped him in the face thrice the last time they were together, she leaps into his arms. And then FREEZE FRAME--the movie is OVER! That’s it. Nothing more to see here, folks. Like...like...did she get into the conservatory or not!? Are we supposed to assume she did just because she’s happy!? You know what my 4th grade teacher said about assumptions? Go fuck yourself. Maybe she’s just happy because she really, really likes roses? And what about her deep-seated aversion to nepotism? Did that also vanish in a cloud of smoke machine smoke!? I can’t even with this movie! So--The end.