The Accused

Glenn Close should have won the Best Actress Oscar for Dangerous Liaisons that year, not Foster.

R1 I haven't seen Dangerous Liaisons yet. I want to read the book first.

[QUOTE] What a sad and terrible thing that happened to Jodie Foster.

Jodie is an ACTOR. Did you mean the sad and terrible thing that happened to the real-life woman who Jodie was portraying in the film?

One of the rapist, Steve Antin, is openly gay, successful in his own right, and recently dated David Geffen.

R3. Cunts like you are tedious. You know what he means, within the context of the movie.

I didn't know Kelly McGillis was a lesbian

I would have sent this to TV and let Jodie win the Emmy. Meryl, Glenn and Siggy each gave career best performances in 1988

They have the viewer wait until almost the end to see the actual gang rape which is very effective. It’s very disturbing, brutal and real.

Jodie deserved it. This wasn’t viewed as a “TV movie” quality at that time. It definitely has an 80s look but that doesn’t mean it’s Lifetime.

At the time there were rumors that Jodie and Kelly were in a love triangle with Whitney Houston

R9 Whitney is better than them. and NOT a lesbian

Her new biopic begs to differ, R10.

This movie was based on a crime perpetrated against a Portuguese woman, Cheryl Araujo. By casting Foster, the movie completely erased the racial aspect of the case. Even after the verdict, Araujo was ostracized and moved to Florida for start over. She died in a car accident shortly thereafter.

R12 thanks, poor woman.

I agree it did well as a theatrical movie but it also was one of the few movies who's star won Best Actress without it getting any other Oscar nomination. It would have done better on TV.

Great film. My first thought was how badly I wished it was me on the pinball machine. I would have happily complied with those hot straight men. So much cum. YUM

R12 Yeah, that was on an episode of Trial by Media.

The gang rape scene is brutal. Love Jodie - she was fantastic in this.

Seek help, R14.

Fuck off R17. Go police somebody else's thoughts and desires. Who are you to tell me getting knocked up by a train of men means I need to seek help. Help yourself!

R14 = that slut who caught hiv and monkey pox in dubai

I've always thought this is interesting trivia: McGillis and Foster were originally cast in each other's roles. Before filming started, they went to the director and asked to switch. He had to think about it but eventually told them to go ahead.

r13, sadly, it's not so rare. Films that give meaty roles to women are often ignored in other categories by the Academy, whose membership tends toward male-driven fare. Kathy Bates in Misery, Jessica Lange for Blue Sky, Charlize Theron for Monster, and Julianne Moore for Still Alice were also the only nominations for their films. (And there are several others where the only other nom was for makeup, which seems related, like The Iron Lady and The Eyes of Tammy Faye.)

r4, not so recently. Antin and Geffen dated in the 80s.

R21 Except for Silence of the Lambs

The delicious bared rears shook me out of the melodrama, and how. They looked like ripe peaches 🍑 rolling along on a grocery store conveyer belt.

R12 Portuguese people are white Europeans, like Spaniards or Italians.

R4 SHOCKINGLY FROZEN IN TIME IN HIS ELDERGAY CRYPT. Where 1980s is recently.

[quote]I've always thought this is interesting trivia: McGillis and Foster were originally cast in each other's roles. Before filming started, they went to the director and asked to switch. He had to think about it but eventually told them to go ahead.

Not according to Wikipedia(or IMDB).

R27 He is getting that confused with the Rue McClanahan/Betty White Blanche/Rose swap in the Golden Girls.

I've actually herd tat before. Remember Kelly McGillis was the bigger star at the time and received top billing. The Jodie role was originally intended for her but the director thought they would be more believable in the the roles in which thy played.

I never heard they swapped roles either.

r30, I don't care wtf you've heard, were telling you now.

Jodie thought she sucked in it, and was going to go back to college if it flopped. She probably wouldn’t have gotten Silence of the Lambs if the Accused went nowhere. So this movie and Oscar win completely transformed her career.

It's strange that McGillis wasn't nominated(for anything). The academy also failed to nominate her two years before for Witness, even after she was nominated for a GG award and a BAFTA. I wonder why.

The movie is middling Lifetime tv crap. Jodie's attempt to dance "sexy" in the bar scene is one of the most cringeworthy things I have ever seen.

r34, Well you aren't straight so you won't get it. She perfectly captured a drunken unassuming young woman.

It was not a great performance at all. I'm not sure what everyone is seeing in it. Her accent was terrible and really unconvincing. And the material wasn't anything special. It is not a great movie. There have been good/great movies that involve sex crimes and this isn't one of them.

That rape scene is uncomfortable to watch. Jodie must have been emotionally and physically exhausted. They must have shot that over a few nights.

A fascinating article from The Hollywood Reporter on the difficulties of making the film. The problems with the perception of the content were constant. Everyone in the production was incredibly brave (I did not know the K McGillis had been raped just a few years prior to filming) to tackle the subject and its complex ugliness. It was a strong year for actresses, but Jodie deservedly won the Oscar, as well as a Golden Globe.

Jodie won an Academy Award pretending to be irritated she got some dick? Such range.

Thanks for your perspective, Justice Kavanaugh.

The movie is actually very similar to Town Without Pity, although that movie unfolds in a conventional manner. Kirk Douglas plays the defense lawyer. Ironic.

[quote]At the time there were rumors that Jodie and Kelly were in a love triangle with Whitney Houston

A scar/black eye was supposedly written into the movie after Whitney allegedly stormed the set, trashed Kelly's trailer and punched Jodie in the face. This is pre-internet gossip literally decades before Kelly or Jodie publicly came out and we heard of Whitney's bisexuality from her best friend.

R25 actually most Portuguese in New Bedford, MA immigrated from the Azores, where most inhabitants descended from a mix of Sephardic Jews and Muslims/other North Africans as well as Portuguese. The Accused made it seem as if class facilitated the crime and hindered the subsequent fight for justice; the assailants were preps, the victim townie white trash. In reality, it was college students who rescued the victim, who was raped by other Portuguese.

Jodie fosters best performance, bar none.

I saw this as a kid, and it left a memorable impression (censorship didn't exist in the home I grew up in).

The one thing I have to laugh at standing out was that awful haircut she gave 'herself'. WHO greenlit THAT look?!?

It also felt like it could have been a lifetime movie, but bc my mother was a mess with substances it definitely resembled that type of character which left a totally different, scarier impression. (She actually was like the character Uma Thurman played in Hysterical Blindness- desperate, townie with a drinking problem and bad reputation).

So has anyone here been lucky enough to get it like she did on the pinball machine? Tell all

^ Still trolling. Still a failure.

I see what you did there, R44.

R25 they were all considered 'white-adjacent' in New England.

Does anyone find any e idence for R31's claim Jodie and Kelly swapped roles? I find it very hard to believe since the Producers really did not want Jodie for the movie in either role and Kelly flat out refused to play Sarah. There's no mention of this swap on the internet, I do think they've mixed this up with Rue and Betty!

R50, Madonna was actually the lead choice for this. She turned the film down. She also turned down Scarface, Goodfellas, and Sophie's Choice. Madonna was on the shortlist of many acclaimed directors films but she turned them down to do edgy films like Shanghai Surprise.

Madonna didn't turn down SOPHIE'S CHOICE. She was a nobody in 1982. Her first album wasn't released until 1983 and she didn't make a splash until 1984 with her second album LIKE A VIRGIN. And she wasn't offered film roles until the success of DESPERATELY SEEKING SUSAN in 1985.

[quote] The movie is middling Lifetime tv crap. Jodie's attempt to dance "sexy" in the bar scene is one of the most cringeworthy things I have ever seen.

The film would've been more interesting if they had someone actually sexy and a little more trashy than Foster. I'm thinking something like Margot Robbie in I, Tonya. Foster couldn't pull that off.

The character didn't need to be sexy.

No, it would add an interesting dimension if she was.

Dimension? She's supposed to be a trashy, not particularly likeable, average bar girl. Someone the public would not care about or might even think deserved what she got. The point is that even a trashy girl can be raped, and that it is a crime. She represented the hundreds of thousands of victims who had largely been ignored up until that point.

[quote]or might even think deserved what she got.

That's the point. Foster doesn't succeed at playing that. Not smutty enough. Too buttoned-up.

Oscar said otherwise.

R57 Foster looked/acted pretty smutty to me in the bar/rape scenes. She was openly flirting with the men, flinging herself at them and dancing provocatively toward/with them. They said it was unfair to the young men because she was leading them on.

I don't know if she really succeeded in selling it. Her 'sexy' thing doesn't really take off.

You seem like a delusional viewer of the CW network, where EVERY character is a sexy, pouting vixen.

R55 it actually added a dimension because she wasn't particularly sexy yet was in the wrong place at the wrong time

R60 sexiness wasn't the point but that she was seemingly promiscuous.

And Jodie failed at seeming promiscuous.

R64 this isn't going to end until one of us dies, is it?

To add fuel to this fire, Foster was really, very believable as a desperate, ill mannered, loose and slutty type because of her lack of glamour. The type of woman being depicted exists in every town in every state of the U.S. and Jodie was organic and rough enough to play this type. The kind of woman who becomes pathetic to a degree when knee deep in booze and other things. She didn't need to be beautiful to be believable and overwhelming good looks would've detracted from the resonance of the film.

The role needed someone like Laura Johnson

They should have cast Faye Dunaway.

Don't FUCK with me fellas! This ain't my first pinball machine!

That's David Geffen at R22 in the middle? I had no idea what he looked like - he looks a lot younger in the 80s than I was expecting. I thought Joni wrote "Free Man in Paris" about him in the early 70s, so assumed he would look older. He wasn't bad looking either.

I think is the most recent photo of her available.

She looks happy now. Good for her!

Men who rape are TRASH.

Ooops!

Forgot the photo.

[quote]This movie was based on a crime perpetrated against a Portuguese woman, Cheryl Araujo. By casting Foster, the movie completely erased the racial aspect of the case.

The racial aspect? A white chick playing a Portuguese i.e. European i.e. white chick erased the "racial aspect" ?

The director actually wanted me but I wasn't born yet.

I never heard that they switched roles either.

What I heard is McGillis was offered her choice of parts and picked the lawyer (speculation was that as a rape victim in real life she didn't want to go thru it again on film.)

Jennifer Jason Leigh and Jodie were the finalists for the other part. Leigh was the more conventional choice but they decided to take a chance on Jodie. (She even says in her Golden Globe speech that she knows she wasn't the conventional choice for the role.)

R170/R171 that isn't this Cheryl Araujo, who died in a car crash in 1986.

R72 what part of 'the Portuguese were viewed as white-adjacent' don't you get?

This case spawned a lot of anti-Portuguese/anti-immigration sentiment, particularly in New England. Portuguese-Americans were subjected to racial slurs and harassment.

She got the trailer trash element down. But not the slutty element. The idea that 'she was asking for it' would've made the film more interesting.

R72 Araujo, like most immigrants in New Bedford, was from the Azores and thus of mixed racial and ethnic descent. She was not “white” in the eyes of anybody in New England/the USA at the time. Her own community vilified and threatened her and the case stoked animus against the Portuguese community. Casting Jodie Foster and turning the rapists into college kids completely erased this dimension of the story. While Araujo’s actual rapists were convicted, the onlookers/cheerleaders were acquitted, unlike what happens in the movie.

Bud from Halloween II would NEVER be a rape cheerleader.

I spoke with Leo Rossi at a convention about filming the rape scene and he spoke very highly of Jodie Foster. He was so impressed with her skills and how she handled everything.

This is Jodie's best performance, even better than Silence of the Lambs. I generally find her acting to be very mannered. but she was very believable in this role.

R38 Interesting how Kelly and Jodie don't talk about each other at all in that article

For those interested in the actual case, it was profiled on an episode of the Netflix series TRIAL BY MEDIA. The episode is titled "Big Dan's" after the name of the bar.

The case received so much publicity that it angered many Portuguese-Americans toward Araujo. They felt that she was shaming their community, because Portuguese men were now being eyed skeptically as potential rapists.

The movie is just ok, but I thought Jodie was fantastic and usually I'm very meh on her acting. What could have been a bombastic melodramatic performance became much more subtle, quieter and vulnerable. It was more deserved than her oscar for SotL for sure.

[quote] Interesting how Kelly and Jodie don't talk about each other at all in that article.

Love Is A Contact Sport.

I only watched this once as a teen but I totally understood Jodie in that bar came across as drunk, cheap and flirty. She didn't need to be sexy, more beautiful or alluring. Those rapists weren't looking for a great beauty or someone "special". They were drunk, horny and thought she didn't matter enough so they could do what they liked.

I still think Glenn should have won over Jodie in hindsight but Meryl gave the performance of the year as Lindy Chamberlain. The Academy would never give her a third so soon though.

[quote]Araujo, like most immigrants in New Bedford, was from the Azores and thus of mixed racial and ethnic descent. She was not “white” in the eyes of anybody in New England/the USA at the time. Her own community vilified and threatened her and the case stoked animus against the Portuguese community. Casting Jodie Foster and turning the rapists into college kids completely erased this dimension of the story. While Araujo’s actual rapists were convicted, the onlookers/cheerleaders were acquitted, unlike what happens in the movie.

I don't know that much about the case, R78, but I have a feeling that you're perhaps overstating Araujo's colouring as a factor. Yes, the ethic make-up of the Azores is different from the mainland, but I don't think that adds up to much. Perhaps you're confusing the Azores with Cape Verde or São Tomé and Príncipe?

Yeah race was not such a factor