Fatal Attraction

The film was adapted by James Dearden (with assistance from Nicholas Meyer)[2] from Diversion, an earlier 1980 short film by Dearden for British television. In Meyer's book "The View from the Bridge: Memories of Star Trek and a Life in Hollywood", he explains that in late 1986 producer Stanley R. Jaffe asked him to look at the script developed by Dearden, and he wrote a four-page memo making suggestions for the script including a new ending for the movie. A few weeks later he met with director Adrian Lyne and gave him some additional suggestions. Ultimately Meyer was asked to redraft the script on the basis of his suggestions, which ended up being the shooting script.

Producers Sherry Lansing and Stanley R. Jaffe both had serious doubts about casting Glenn Close because they did not think she could be sexual enough for the role of Alex.[3] Close was persistent, so that after meeting with Jaffe several times in New York, she was asked to fly out to Los Angeles to read with Michael Douglas in front of Adrian Lyne and Lansing. Before the audition, she let her naturally frizzy hair "go wild" because she was impatient at putting it up, and she wore a slimming black dress she thought made her look "fabulous" to audition.[4] This impressed Lansing, because Close "came in looking completely different...right away she was into the part."[5] Close and Douglas performed a scene from early in the script, where Alex flirts with Dan in a café, and Close came away "convinced my career was over, that I was finished, I had completely blown my chances."[3] Lansing and Lyne, however, were both convinced that she was right for the role; Lyne stated that "an extraordinary erotic transformation took place. She was this tragic, bewildering mix of sexuality and rage—I watched Alex come to life."[6]

To prepare for her role, Glenn Close consulted several psychologists, hoping to understand Alex's psyche and motivations. She was uncomfortable with the bunny boiling scene, which she thought was too extreme, but she was assured on consulting the psychologists that such an action was entirely possible and that Alex's behavior corresponded to someone who had experienced incestual sexual abuse as a child.[3]

Alex Forrest was originally scripted slashing her throat at the film's end with the knife Dan had left on the counter, so as to make it appear that Dan had murdered her. After seeing her husband being taken away by police, Beth finds a revealing cassette tape that Alex sent Dan in which she threatens to kill herself. Upon realizing Alex's intentions, Beth takes the tape to the police, which acquits Dan of the murder. The last scene shows, in flashback, Alex taking her own life by slashing her throat while listening to Madame Butterfly.

After doing test screenings, Joseph Farrell (who handled the test screenings) suggested that Paramount shoot a new ending.[7][8] Alex is killed by a gunshot during the three-week reshoot of the action scene. Alex's killing by Beth juxtaposes the relationship between the two characters; with Alex being victimized and Beth violently protecting her family.[9]

In the 2002 Special Edition DVD, Close comments that she had doubts about re-shooting the film's ending because she believed the character would "self-destruct and commit suicide".[9] Close eventually gave in on her concerns, and filmed the new sequence after having fought against the change for two weeks.[9] Close has described how protective she was of her character, whom she "never thought of as a villain",[10] stating that: "I wasn't playing a generality, I wasn't playing a cliché. I was playing a very specific, deeply disturbed, fragile human being, whom I had grown to love."[3] However, though the ending made Alex into a "psychopath" against Close's wishes, she has also acknowledged that the film would not have experienced the enormous success it did without the new ending, because it gave the audience "a sense of catharsis, a hope, that somehow the family unit would survive the nightmare." [3]

The film's first Japanese release used the original ending. The original ending also appeared on a special edition VHS and LaserDisc release by Paramount in 1992, and was included on the film's DVD release a decade later.[11]

The character of Alex Forrest has been discussed by psychiatrists and film experts, and has been used as a film illustration for the condition borderline personality disorder.[21] The character displays the behaviors of impulsivity, emotional lability, frantic efforts to avoid abandonment, frequent severe anger, self-harming, and changing from idealization to devaluation; these traits are consistent with the diagnosis, although generally aggression to the self rather than others is a more common feature in borderline personality disorder.[22] Some have instead considered the character to be a psychopath.[9]

As referenced in Orit Kamirs' Every Breath You Take: Stalking Narratives and the Law, "Glenn Close's character Alex is quite deliberately made to be an erotomaniac. Gelder reports that Glenn Close "consulted three separate shrinks for an inner profile of her character, who is meant to be suffering from a form of obsessive condition known as de Clérambault's syndrome" (Gelder 1990, 93—94).[23]

The term "bunny boiler" is used to describe an obsessive, spurned woman, deriving from the scene where it is discovered that Alex has boiled the pet rabbit.[24][25][26][27]

As Alex Forrest is portrayed as a psychopathic, love-obsessed woman seeking revenge, behaviors that represent stalking are present. According to a study of 148 people conducted by Randy and Lori Sansone, over half of the people who were found guilty of stalking-related incidents also experienced borderline personality disorder among other mental health concerns. It can be noted that Alex Forrest's femininity was seen as toxic and fearful to the people in the film that she interacted with, which is a crucial representation of women as possessive and psychotic when it comes to dominance over a man. People who experience borderline personality disorder can also have higher risks of issues like bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.[28]

Further, most stalking situations occur from people who were previously involved in relationships with the person who is being stalked, according to research by Spitzberg and Vekslet.[29] In the case of Alex Forrest, her obsession was for a man that she could not have due to other circumstances in his life. These circumstances, Beth and Ellen, are his family, and though Alex and Dan did not have a deep or meaningful relationship, Alex's clinginess caused assumptions of mental health issues.

Alex's representation of poor mental health in this film shows exactly the clinginess and attachment that people with stalking behaviors present. Slitting her wrists and pretending to be pregnant are manipulative techniques that someone with a personality and attachment disorder might use to attempt to regain the desired intimacy with a former partner.[30]

American Film Institute recognition

• AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills—No. 28[31]
• AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes & Villains: Alex Forrest—Villain—No. 7[32]

A play based on the movie opened in London's West End at the Theatre Royal Haymarket in March 2014.[35] It was adapted by the movie's original screenwriter James Dearden.[36]

On July 2, 2015, Fox announced that a TV series based on the film is being developed by Mad Men writers Maria and Andre Jacquemetton.[37] On January 13, 2017, it was announced that the project was canceled.[38]