Body Double (1984)
The idea for Body Double came when Brian De Palma replaced Angie Dickinson with a body double for a shower scene in Dressed to Kill. He examined many models who’d appeared naked in Playboy, Penthouse, or in adult films. He surmised that a beautiful body performing a seductive act is the surest way to capture a man’s undivided attention. This idea resulted in a new concept for a voyeuristic murder mystery, similar to Hitchcock’s Vertigo and Rear Window. A man hires a porn actress to pose as his wife to entice a colleague into watching her sexual acts through her window from a neighboring Manhattan apartment. The voyeur witnesses the real wife’s drowning in a bathtub by her husband, who is disguised as a thief that doesn’t exist, giving him an alibi.
Feeling burnt out on directing thrillers, De Palma wanted only to produce and write the Body Double story for an up-and-comer to direct. De Palma would channel his energy into a John Travolta vehicle, Fire, about a Jim Morrison-like rock star. After enjoying the 1981 slasher Eyes of a Stranger, De Palma reached out to its director, Ken Wiederhorn to read his thirteen-page treatment. Wiederhorn agreed on the condition that he could bring in screenwriter Robert Avrech, who he’d collaborated with on a couple of unproduced projects. De Palma’s agent possessed an original Avrech script he’d shopped around Hollywood called Geshem Barzel (aka The Steel Rain) about wives whose husbands were frontline soldiers in the Yom Kippur War. De Palma liked the writing and invited Avrech to his New York office in Greenwich Village to offer him Body Double. De Palma paid out-of-pocket for their services. Avrech shared De Palma’s admiration for Hitchcockian suspense thrillers. They screened Rear Window and Vertigo for inspiration for how to approach the script.
Avrech’s first two passes didn’t please De Palma or Wiederhorn. At De Palma’s encouragement, Wiederhorn joined Avrech in screenwriting to minimize future quibbles. Wiederhorn felt screenwriting wasn’t his bag, but De Palma advised he try because optioning story ideas helped support filmmakers financially between directorial efforts. Wiederhorn and Avrech spent six months eliminating plot holes while consulting with De Palma regularly.
Early interest from 20th Century Fox and Lorimar fell through, then the bottom fell out of the Fire project when interested producer Barish was bad and the price tag too high. De Palma offered Body Double as a fallback, but Barish declined. Craig Baumgarten, an exec who worked with both Barish and Columbia Pictures, thought both ideas were solid enough to take to Columbia.
Columbia was agreeable, but they wanted De Palma to be the director of Body Double, not Wiederhorn. When De Palma refused, they’d OK Wiederhorn if De Palma was on set every day. De Palma argued this was unnecessary, as his films were completed in pre-production with the screenplay, production planning, and storyboards. Columbia mulled this over.
Delays to Fire caused Travolta to leave for another film, effectively ending Columbia’s interest. When De Palma took over the reins of Scarface and it too became his second straight film to go over budget and lose money, he felt inordinate pressure that his next film was financially successful. Studios controlled the money and filmmakers were reliant on success to find their dream projects. He’d reluctantly re-enter the Hitchcockian thriller genre by taking the director’s chair for Body Double, so long as he had final cut rights. Wiederhorn was miffed about losing the gig, but also losing writing credit when De Palma rewrote the script.
During this period, De Palma was plagued with anger, resentment, and bitterness. In addition to canceled projects and financial disappointments, he’d undergone an unpleasant divorce with actress Nancy Allen. He eagerly channeled his angst against his detractors: movie critics, women’s leagues, and the ratings board who labeled his art as smut and glorification of violence. After tempering his films to avoid X ratings, he contemplated making Body Double without compromise. He could be the pioneer for a wave of X-rated films by mainstream studio directors. He’d show his puritan detractors what true pornography is, with more sex and violence than they’d ever experienced.
Avoiding bathroom deaths like Psycho or Diabolique, De Palma envisioned something modern, not done before. He once had an idea when making 1972’s Sisters where an electric drill was used to attack someone but became unplugged just before entering the intended victim, giving audiences temporary relief. The drill for Body Double served a narrative purpose to set up the Indian as out to break into the Revelle safe, but there were drills large enough to be visible to someone viewing from afar. The drill bit would be long enough to drive through both a human body and out of the ceiling below where Scully observes it.
De Palma also changed the ending where the Rastafarian’s identity is revealed when the husband’s blackface makeup gets washed away while fighting with the protagonist inside a swimming pool. De Palma changed the Rastafarian to an “Indian” (Native American) because De Palma felt that they were unafraid to work at great heights, which was needed to be shown spying on Gloria while pretending to work on a satellite dish nearby, as well as more aggressively macho, as opposed to the passive Jake. De Palma replaced the swimming pool with an open grave at an Indian burial ground.
That notion of being buried alive in an open grave inspired De Palma to add the protagonist’s fatal flaw of having severe claustrophobia, something he was knowledgeable about because Nancy Allen was a lifelong sufferer. The cemetery gave De Palma a vampire idea for the movie-within-the-movie, envisioning Scully as a B movie actor who can’t perform in his casket due to his phobia. Scully relates the origin of his claustrophobia in an acting class, stemming from an anecdote from De Palma’s childhood, where he was playing a game called Sardine with his siblings and hid behind a refrigerator, but got stuck, humiliatingly crying out for his older brothers. While location scouting, De Palma discovered a narrow tunnel near the beach and used it as the location for the antagonist to exploit Scully’s fear to fail Gloria, similar fashion to how Gavin Elster exploits Scotty’s acrophobia in Vertigo.
In the final script, a claustrophobic actor named Jake Scully (renamed from Jon) plays a vampire in the cheapie horror flick, “Vampire’s Kiss”. Fear and passivity overwhelms his performance on and off the set. He gets fired, then discovers his girlfriend is cheating. Needing a place to stay, he accepts a housesitting assignment in a ritzy mansion in the Hollywood Hills for the rich friend of fellow actor, Sam Bouchard. Through a telescope, Bouchard shows Scully a sexy female neighbor in a house across the canyon who performs a nightly striptease before masturbating. Scully becomes infatuated with the woman, following her around. He suspects trouble when he spies a sinister-looking Native American watching her every move.
To avoid Rear Window plagiarism accusations, De Palma changed the Manhattan setting to Los Angeles, where the adult film industry was located. Hollywood actresses he consulted for Holly Body, the porn actress hired by the antagonist to pose as Gloria during her sexual acts. None seemed comfortable simulating explicit sexual acts and dialogue. De Palma determined he needed an adult film star to properly play one.
De Palma cycled through dozens of pornographic films, contacting actresses that could handle sexually graphic material. De Palma ultimately selected Annette Haven to play Holly Body because she had a great physique and excelled at improvisation. She was very open with her attitude viewing her participation in the industry as a way to educate the public about sex. De Palma interviewed Haven extensively for insight into the adult film industry. He greatly expanded the role and adult film industry components with Haven’s vital input. Haven did object when De Palma put her anecdotes into the script; he removed them and rewrote Holly as Haven-esque but not Haven. De Palma found others he’d talked to within the adult film industry funny and refreshing. He expanded the second half of Body Double to showcase this aspect.
Efforts to secure Kurt Russell for the male lead fell through, so De Palma auditioned several actors opposite Haven, performing scenes from Body Heat and Scenes from a Marriage to determine their ability to handle eroticism and drama. Among them, he chose Craig Wasson because he saw similar qualities to Jimmy Stewart, the star of Vertigo and Rear Window. He could convincingly play a vulnerable patsy and confident hotshot as the story arc required. Columbia preferred a known star but De Palma dismissed the need; De Palma’s name was enough to sell his movies.
De Palma felt that most people were observers, not actors. They’re extras, rarely taking action for what they desire. Scully struggled as an actor because he fails to act in real life. His stagnancy to act makes him the perfect patsy for a murderer who CAN act, literally and figuratively. The killer’s power comes from his disguise. So long as he’s in character, he operates with impunity. The story’s turn occurs when Jake builds the courage to act on the world’s biggest stage: life itself.
It became apparent while auditioning the male candidates that Haven lacked the acting range for the role. She was comfortable performing sexual components, but she lacked the ability to flirt convincingly. Haven was game to do anything sexual, but she lacked sexiness. Wasson observed that Haven had spent years creating a persona to shield herself from criticism. The persona was a protective shell that was always there to the point where even she lost the connection with who she was. She couldn’t act naturally because she was a playing persona playing an adult film actress playing a sexy housewife. She was several steps removed from a reality she never shows anyone, certainly not any men, who she had a deep mistrust for.
Columbia refused to fund an X-rated film, especially one starring a porn actress. X-rated movies had extremely limited distribution, theater bookings, and advertising opportunities. De Palma was contractually obligated to deliver a film no harder than R. De Palma expressed his predicament while at dinner with his friend, Scarface actor Steven Bauer, and Bauer’s actress wife Melanie Griffith. De Palma wanted Melanie to get him in contact with her best friend, Jamie Lee Curtis. Curtis declined because she’d wanted to avoid sex worker typecasting, having just played a hooker in Trading Places.
Griffith inquired why De Palma didn’t ask her. Like Curtis, she was the daughter of a star actress in Hitchock films, Tippi Hedren. De Palma told Griffith that the actress playing Holly must be uninhibited about nudity and sex. Griffith was fired from Carrie after she refused to kiss an actor she didn’t know. Griffith assured him that she’d changed and would screen test to prove she would do anything he asked Haven to do if he promised to destroy the tape. De Palma compared Griffith’s audition tape with Haven’s and concluded Griffith was the right actress due to her ability to show a Marilyn Monroe-like vulnerability.
De Palma replaced Haven but paid her as a consultant. Haven was unhappy and initially cold to Griffith but warmed up after getting to know her and growing to like her. Griffith admired Haven’s independent attitude, choosing to portray Holly as an intelligent, liberated businesswoman rather than a victim. De Palma spent two weeks going over the Holly Body look with Griffith before determining that cropped platinum blonde suited her hair color and style best. As the character changed, Griffith no longer felt that Holly would be in cahoots with Sam in his wife’s murder, and also didn’t deserve to die in the end. De Palma rewrote the part so Holly didn’t know why she was asked to perform and she’d survive. Rather than have Detective MacLean save the day in the end, he had Scully save himself and Holly by overcoming his fears.
After De Palma became enamored with an aqueduct while location scouting, he set the location of the climax there in an open pit rather than at the Indian burial ground in the woods. The intended ending had Bouchard falling into the aqueduct’s rushing water after trying to bury the protagonists when Scully finds the courage to fight back. However, De Palma felt this ending lacked sizzle, so he wrote in canine companion for Bouchard that knocks himself and Bouchard into the waters while scuffling.
De Palma’s scripted scene where Holly performed exercise prior to her masturbation but Griffith asserted that no woman would find that an erotic prelude to nightly self-stimulation. Haven mentioned that she had a seductive dance she performed during her live stage shows and trained Griffith on how to perform it. De Palma agreed that it was an improvement. Griffith did not need a body double for her scenes but she did have bouts of self-consciousness that resulted in the set being cleared of onlookers.
For the bad guy, Sam Bouchard, De Palma preferred Gregg Henry over runner-ups David Dukes and Guy Boyd because he fit the mold of John Lithgow in Obsession, the quintessential De Palma trope of the good guy who is actually the bad guy. Henry had a tiny part in Scarface and De Palma was fond of his style. De Palma cast Boyd as Detective MacLean instead.
For Gloria, De Palma felt that he needed a stunning actress who’d captivate a man without saying a word, but vulnerable, not unapproachable. Someone like former Miss USA and Miss Universe finalist Deborah Shelton, best known for her stint on TV’s “Dallas”. Shelton wouldn’t do nude scenes, She’d declined a six-figure offer from Hugh Hefner to bare all in Playboy Magazine several years prior, despite posing for its cover. A body double performed her racier scenes, echoing the plot. De Palma gave individual instruction to Shelton, coaching her on exactly how to look, act, and say. Canadian actress Helen Shaver reportedly dubbed Shelton’s voice.
For her death scene, Shelton was to get chased in a negligee, but De Palma was not happy with the shape of her hips and thighs (“It’s not a De Palma body”, i.e. perfection) and ordered her to diet and exercise. She hired a personal trainer to look her best while wearing the least. Shelton wanted Gloria to fight back but De Palma declined. After asking several times, De Palma jokingly said he’d have Gloria hit with a bat if she asked again.
De Palma wanted a shot rotating 360 degrees around Jake having sex with Holly during the X-rated movie shoot while intercutting his imagining making love to Gloria on the beach where they kissed. This idea was similar to one in Vertigo, where how Scotty imagines himself in the livery stables kissing the woman he thought was the real Madeleine.
Dennis Franz agreed to play b-movie director Jon Rubin (same name as the character played by Robert De Niro in De Palma’s Greetings and Hi Mom!) as a favor, only if he could portray him as De Palma, including using De Palma’s own clothing for the wardrobe.
After De Palma learned that Wasson was a songwriter and musician, he asked him to write a song for Body Double. Wasson wrote a ditty the vein of the Police’s “Every Step You Take” called, “What You Do, I Do”. However, Columbia saw a better opportunity to promote a song by one of their acts, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, called, “Relax”, The band loved De Palma’s style, hoping to use the sequence as their music video. However, MTV deemed it too explicit and wouldn’t air it. The band created other videos they felt better served the song’s promotion.
Voyeurism is a common theme in De Palma’s works. Films themselves are voyeuristic, observing other people’s lives without participation. Voyeurs are looked down upon in our moralistic society; the police disregard Scully because he’s a peeping tom. But we relate because we’d all peek at a sexy neighbor undressing. The difference is how far we’d go beyond looking.
Jake’s voyeurism also leads him to watch adult movies, finding porn actress Holly Body performing the same seductive dancing as Gloria. Compelled to meet Body, Jake enters the underground world of pornography. In this den of immorality, he finds salvation, adopting the mantra, “I like to watch.” He sheds his self-consciousness in being watched by realizing that everyone’s a watcher. Manhood comes by disregarding others’ opinions and doing for self, a credo of De Palma in his approach to filmmaking.
The epilogue calls back to the shower scene use of a body double in Dressed to Kill. De Palma had originally intended to place this scene at the beginning but felt it tipped off audiences regarding the body double twist.
Sneak previews originally scheduled at over 500 theaters nationwide were canceled after the first one in Van Nuys found an unhappy audience recruited from nearby shopping malls. A significant number, mainly women, walked out early, especially after the bloody drill murder. The remainder gave low scores. De Palma railed against removing elements based on one test screening, especially that Columbia would put the opinions of random mall shoppers who weren’t seeking to see the film above those of people in the film industry their whole lives.
After the press screening, a Columbia exec told De Palma that the critics would kill him with their reviews. And they did. Critics were mixed to negative in their responses, offering praise for Griffith’s gutsy performance but slamming De Palma for continuing his trend toward gratuitous sex and violence while also further cribbing Hitchcock. They also derided the mystery elements, finding it too easy to deduce the killer’s motives and the bait-and-switch aspect of the plot.
He dismissed criticism of promoting violence against women, stating that violent films actually purged audiences of these impulses. He asserted that morality shouldn’t apply to art; art reflects reality, not the opposite. He felt he’d be vindicated artistically; critics also derided Psycho as too violent, but now they laud it.
Although Hitchcock’s influences are undeniable, De Palma bristled at plagiarism accusations, proclaiming that Hitchcock pioneered every story form and technique possible in the suspense genre, dooming all who follow to inevitable comparisons. He felt he’d brought enough distinction to merit his own trademark style.
Body Double was a box office failure, taking in under $9 million and failing to remain in the top 10 weekly charts beyond its second week. Griffith earned a Golden Globe nomination, but De Palma was nominated for Worst Director again at the Razzie Awards. Wiederhorn called Body Double De Palma’s worst picture, feeling he’d stripped away the meticulous plotting in Avrech’s script, adding gaping plot holes and an unappealing lead actor.
Body Double is a potent but largely trivial distraction where De Palma doesn’t rip off Hitchcock so much as rip off himself ripping off Hitchcock in his prior films. However, it’s also rarely boring. De Palma isn’t blessed with a talent for solid storytelling or logic, and the cast, while spunky, falls far short of the likes of Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly. Nevertheless, it’s an attention-grabber that entertains so long as you don’t expect to dissect its plausibility afterward.
- Pehla Nasha (1993) is an Indian remake
Qwipster’s rating: B-
MPAA Rated: R for strong sexuality, nudity, graphic violence, and language
Running Time: 114 min.
Cast: Craig Wasson, Melanie Griffith, Gregg Henry, Deborah Shelton, Guy Boyd, Dennis Franz
Director: Brian De Palma
Screenplay: Robert J. Avrech, Brian De Palma