Boxing Helena

Boxing Helena (1993)

Beyond love, beyond obsession, there hides something beyond reason.

A top surgeon is besotted with a beautiful woman who once rebuffed him. Unable to come to terms with life without her, he tries to convince her that they need each other. She has other ideas, but a horrific accident leaves her at his mercy.

Date of release
1993-03-22
TMDB
5.0 / 10 (266)
Runtime
1h 47m
Genres
Drama, Romance, Thriller
Director
Jennifer Lynch

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Filmed in: Los Angeles

Boxing Helena is a 1993 American avant-garde thriller film written and directed by Jennifer Lynch from a story by Philippe Caland. It stars Sherilyn Fenn, Julian Sands, and Bill Paxton.

Production

Producer Philippe Caland came up with the idea, but wanted a woman to write it and approached Jennifer Lynch after she gave a poetry reading. At first, Lynch declined to get involved, reportedly telling him "Well, that sounds kind of terrible." But Caland was eventually able to convince her to work on it.

It always struck me the way people looked at the Venus. They didn't see her as broken, they saw her as beautiful. And it really made a huge impact on me. I thought I was broken and that maybe someday someone would find me beautiful. So this idea of a damaged boy who was in an obsessive situation who would try to recreate from his own view the one thing that didn't hit him or abandon him was this armless, beautiful woman.

Madonna was slated to play Helena but shortly before filming was to begin in January 1991 she dropped out, halting the production. The next month, in an attempt to salvage the film, Lynch met with Kim Basinger about playing Helena. Basinger agreed but closer to the new filming date she began requesting what The New York Times called "major script revisions", which according to producer Carl Mazzocone amounted to making Helena "less of a bitch".

Legal battles involving both stars then ensued. Eventually Basinger was the subject of an adverse jury verdict for over $8.1 million, which bankrupted her. The verdict was set aside on appeal in 1994 but Basinger later settled for $3.8 million. Meanwhile, Fenn, who had previously worked with Lynch's father David on Twin Peaks, was cast as Helena in December 1991.

The score heard during the scene where Helena showers in a fountain while a party crowd watches was originally composed by Graeme Revell and based on the "Love Theme" used sparsely elsewhere in the film, with vocals by Bobbi Page. At the producers' request, "The Fountain Song", written and performed by Wendy Levy, replaced Revell's score in the DVD and subsequent releases.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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