Cinema: Manufacturing a Multimedia Hit

FLASHDANCE Directed by Adrian Lyne

Screenplay by Tom Hedley and Joe Eszterhas

Big Brother has arrived a year early, in the form of a lithe young dancer from Pittsburgh. From every electronic orifice in the U.S. just now—from radio and stereo speakers, from the projectors in 1,140 movie theaters and out of the 24-hour mouth of MTV—comes one unavoidable, irresistible message: Flashdance!

In the first two weeks of its release, the movie Flashdance, an airheaded $8.5 million romance about a pretty Pittsburgh welder, earned $11.3 million and, more remarkably, for Paramount Pictures, improved its business the second week. The Flashdance LP, with ten...

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