‘Fatal Attraction’ Oral History: Rejected Stars and a Foul Rabbit
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/14/movies/fatal-attraction-oral-history.html?smid=fb-share
The bunny almost was broiled. In the most notorious scene of the 1987 thriller “Fatal Attraction,” the spurned Alex (Glenn Close) terrorizes her ex-lover Dan (Michael Douglas) by boiling the family pet on the stove. “Initially, I had her grilling the bunny,” the screenwriter James Dearden said in a recent telephone interview. “But I thought that was too grotesque. So we boiled the bunny instead.”share
The result remained fairly gory. “The stench was unbearable,” the film’s director, Adrian Lyne, recalled of shooting the scene with a rabbit purchased from a butcher. “It permeated the whole house.”
Three decades after it became an Oscar-nominated cause célèbre and grossed $320 million worldwide, “Fatal Attraction” continues to pervade the culture. “Bunny boiler” has become synonymous with a female stalker, and a “Saturday Night Live” sketch last season depicted the Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway cooking a CNN anchor’s rabbit.
Thirty years after the film’s Sept. 18, 1987, release, I spoke with the cast and filmmakers about the movie and its surprising aftermath. These are edited excerpts from the conversations.