![]() There are many movies that have a rape incident in them, but The Accused is about rape, there’s no other subject. There were almost no movies where the subject of the movie is rape. TOPOR Jonathan and I looked at a lot of old films, and we couldn’t find one that had explored the subject. I really wanted the rape victim character to be front and center with the lawyer. The rape victim was just that - a victim, a prop. KAPLAN The script with Jane was very focused on the lawyer’s story. ![]() Then Jane left the project because she had to do another movie. LANSING We had Jane Fonda attached to play the lawyer. Then, a few years later, Dawn and I were at a birthday party for Chuck Roven, and she told me she was developing a movie with Sherry and Stanley and that Jane Fonda had been brought in. JONATHAN KAPLAN (director) I had met with Dawn during the trial of the New Bedford rapists, and we talked about how there might be a movie there. TOPOR We were all determined to make sure it was about rape as violence. We wanted to make it somebody who was provocative but, no matter what, did not deserve to be raped. LANSING When we were working on the script, we purposely did not want to make the main character a debutante. My original draft had the pool table, but the producers were terrified of being sued, so it was changed to a pinball machine. TOPOR I interviewed 30 rape victims, a lot of rapists, a lot of prosecutors, defense attorneys, scrub nurses. It wasn’t meant to preach - but it was entertainment with a message. STANLEY JAFFE (producer) It was a story that disturbed us all, and we wanted to tell it. Dawn had talked to Stanley, and we decided to make a movie. Not only was there the crime, but then they were victimized again with this idea that they deserved it. I was obsessed with the culpability of the bystander and the double victimization of people who were raped. I thought, “How could people do that?” Then there was the incident in New Bedford, Mass., where a woman was raped and men stood around and cheered. SHERRY LANSING (producer) I was deeply moved by Kitty Genovese, this woman who was assaulted in a courtyard and 36 people watched. They were like terriers with their teeth around your ankles - they were not going to let go. ![]() Dawn and Sherry were the bulldozers all the way through. Dawn was really the instigator, and then Sherry Lansing and Stanley Jaffe signed on to produce it. A few weeks later, Dawn Steel called to ask if I’d be interested in doing a movie. TOM TOPOR (screenwriter) The real trial of Cheryl Araujo had just become national news, and I pitched a script based on that story around town. Overcoming a difficult shoot and some of the “worst test screening scores in the history of the studio,” The Accused - which was a solid box-office performer, drawing $32 million domestically ($65 million today) on an $8 million budget - became a critical hit and won Foster her first Oscar at age 26. ![]() During interviews, McGillis would reveal she had been raped at knifepoint by two men in her New York apartment a few years earlier - and had been met with her own victim blaming. Two fearless actresses became the faces of the film: Jodie Foster, who plays the rape victim, and Kelly McGillis, as the lawyer who takes the bystanders to trial. ![]() It was led by a pair of unstoppable women: Dawn Steel, then president of production at Paramount, and Sherry Lansing, who produced the film with Stanley Jaffe. Jodie Foster Says Superhero Movies Are a "Phase That's Lasted a Little Too Long"īack in the mid-1980s, getting a film made that centers on a tough, young woman who is raped in a bar was an uphill battle from start to finish. ![]()
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