What could go wrong with a $20 million budgeted film from the 1980s, a stunning John Travolta, and a skimpily clothed Jamie Lee Curtis dancing in an aerobics class?
As it happens, quite a bit.
This is the story of the film that had everything it needed to be successful but ended up failing for a number of surprising reasons.
When Jamie Lee Curtis and John Travolta were announced as Perfect’s stars in 1985, few could have predicted the film’s failure. Both were highly sought after in Hollywood and loved by audiences during the height of their careers.
With director James Bridges in charge and Columbia Pictures contributing a whopping $20 million, it seemed like a definite smash. When the film did eventually come out, though, it was one of the worst disappointments in Hollywood history. Globally, only $12.9 million was earned.
Worst Actor (Travolta), Worst Supporting Actress, and Worst Screenplay were among the three Golden Raspberry Awards for which Perfect was nominated. Furthermore, it was nominated for the Stinkers Bad Film Awards’ Worst Picture category.
In case you haven’t heard, Perfect is about journalist Adam Lawrence who is assigned to interview a successful businessman who might be implicated in drug trafficking. However, he meets aerobics instructor Jessie Wilson (Jamie Lee Curtis) for his second project, an exposé on fitness clubs, who doesn’t seem to like journalists.
So what went wrong? Let’s look at the mistakes and intriguing elements that led to this film’s complete failure.
Contents: Extremely exposing workout shorts
Jamie Lee Curtis’s method for losing ten pounds of muscle
John Travolta has no qualms about it.
The longest shot in history?
The film’s true star
What was meant by the Perfect title?
The aerobic scene’s sad reality
Her final “naked” moment?
Quentin Tarantino’s surprising evaluation
Reenacting her famous aerobic exercise routine
Excessively exposing workout shorts
Some critics referred to Perfect as one of the most unintentionally campy films of the 1980s, with a number of strange choices that made it both ridiculous and strangely engrossing. From John Travolta’s revealing gym shorts to the uninterrupted images of aerobics classes that looked like softcore fitness porn, critics were unable to ignore the film’s odd vibe.
One well-known aerobics scene that included more pelvic thrusts than anyone could have predicted is likely what earned the movie its R rating. We’ll discuss Jamie Lee Curtis’s disapproval of this later in the article.
All of the gym sequences, which featured a lot of close-ups of crotches and gleaming bodies, added to the movie’s “weird gay vibe,” which also had a soundtrack featuring Whitney Houston, Jermaine Jackson, Berlin, and Wham.
Variety gave Perfect one of the most scathing marks in their unvarnished review:
“Perfect” is a disgrace and is unlikely to win over any audience.
Jamie Lee Curtis’s method for losing ten pounds of muscle
Jamie Lee Curtis was the greatest aerobics instructor in the modern period, and if anyone remembers Perfect, it’s him. By playing the confident and energetic fitness trainer Jessie Wilson, she instantly became a sex icon, captivating viewers with her agility and energy.
Jamie Lee Curtis declared, “I’m an athletic person, a minor sort of closet jock,” showing his enthusiasm for the movie. I would imagine myself teaching an exercise class every time I went to one. But even though I was interested in the subject, I was more excited about working with these people.
She trained for months before to filming, and the dramatic scenes were shot after all the aerobic ones. By the time the last workout scene was finished during the credits, Curtis had actually lost ten pounds of muscle, despite only eating one meal a day.
She even worked with Jermaine Jackson on a music video to help promote the movie. What dedication!
John Travolta has no qualms about it.
John Travolta was quite well-liked around the middle of the 1980s, or at least a few years earlier. By the late 1970s, he was one of the biggest movie stars in the world because to his parts in Saturday Night Fever (1977) and Grease (1978). He was a pop culture icon, a heartthrob, and a box office titan.
However, his career had started to decline by the time Perfect (1985) was released. Despite the fact that Perfect was a box office failure that temporarily put a stop to his career, John Travolta has no regrets about starring in it.
Making friends with the performers and working with director James Bridges again were the highlights for him.
In contrast, some critics weren’t so kind, stating that “the entire film feels like just a series of scenes of Jamie Lee Curtis and John Travolta working out.”
After Perfect, John Travolta unexpectedly took a break from the big screen, and it wasn’t until 1989 that he made a comeback with Look Who’s Talking and The Experts. One of the longest periods in his acting career was four years, during which he would not be seen in another film.
The longest shot in history?
Director James Bridges began work on Perfect, an adaptation of Aaron Latham’s script about a Rolling Stone reporter, with an 81-day runtime in mind. The film took an astounding 140 days to complete, and that deadline was quickly abandoned.
Jamie Lee Curtis, who was used to the fast-paced world of low-budget filmmaking, wasn’t particularly thrilled about the extended timeline. In a 1984 interview with The Boston Globe, she cracked the following joke:
“This hasn’t been the fastest production I’ve ever worked on.” In the time it took to finish this film, we probably could have shot all of my earlier ones.
The amount of time and money invested in the film is further demonstrated by the fact that a nearly identical, two-story replica of the Rolling Stone offices was built on two soundstages at Laird International Studios in Los Angeles because it was not feasible to film the Rolling Stone sequences at the magazine’s headquarters in New York.
Director James Bridges, however, provided justification for the lengthy process by saying:
When everything is completed, put together, and ready to be screened, that will be the real test; if everything works out, we didn’t spend too much time on it. No amount of time, though, can set things right. The box office staff will let us know.
Today, we know the solution.
The film’s true star
In Perfect, Jann Wenner, the real co-founder and editor of Rolling Stone magazine, gave one of the most unexpected performances. It wasn’t from a Hollywood star. Even experienced performers were unable to equal Wenner’s level of authenticity in his role as Travolta’s editor, Mark Roth.
Wenner actually went through a thorough screen test with John Travolta before landing the part! And he didn’t mince words when asked if the movie was realistic:
Dead-on precise. Jim’s films are all quite journalistic in that they examine a scene and present it truthfully, however there are unavoidably some liberties used.
Wenner added that he hoped the film will dispel certain myths around Rolling Stone, saying:
“I believe the movie portrays Rolling Stone in its truest form. I believe that many individuals who might not know what Rolling Stone is will learn about it from the film.
It’s debatable whether Perfect did it in reality, but what about Wenner’s performance? very sturdy.
What was meant by the Perfect title?
For Jamie Lee Curtis, what did the term Perfect mean? For her, personal freedom was more important than perfection.
There is no such thing as perfection, but in my opinion, it is the right of everyone to be whoever they wish to be,” she clarified. I think that’s what’s ideal. And in the film, [my character] Jessie defends the idea that everyone has the right to that privilege. Jessie Wilson is all about standing up for the freedom to be whoever you want to be.
Although “Perfect” was a highly commercial yuppie drama about journalism and health clubs, the movie’s buzz was mostly about Jamie Lee Curtis and the phrase “You’ve got to see her body!”
The aerobic scene’s sad reality
Jamie Lee Curtis wore leotards that ranged from exposing to nearly transparent for the aerobics sequences in Perfect (1985), which became well-known for their sexual content.
Many viewed her hip-bending, pelvic-thrusting workouts in these sequences as pushing the envelope, going beyond simple suggestion to outright obscene.
Curtis expressed openly how disappointed she was with the way these scenes were handled.
“They’re meant to be stand-in love scenes,” she clarified in a New York interview in 1984. However, the scenes are rather more explicit than if I were nude. I’m really disappointed in the photo. The sequences, in my opinion, are prolonged. And since the point of them is so strongly emphasized, I believe it may be a little gentler if you witnessed me making love.
Curtis was informed that the sequences had already been chopped down when she requested that they be. This behind-the-scenes look at the notorious aerobics scenes demonstrates how the film’s provocative features became a focus point rather than merely a plot point, which irritated Curtis.
Her final “naked” moment?
Even though she played a legendary role, Jamie Lee Curtis was more than just a sex icon. “That’s been my biggest problem ever since I started,” she said honestly. I never received any acting instruction.
However, I made the small horror movie Halloween when I was eighteen, and it was a great success. Curtis continued by discussing how she eventually did more horror movies and even naked sequences, but she made a commitment that “that’s going to be a negotiated item for me going forward.”
Jamie Lee Curtis revealed in a 1985 interview with the Chicago Tribune that she was glad her role in Perfect didn’t call for nudity after being nude in two earlier movies. She hoped that her time stripping on screen was over, and it was. As of November 2021, she hasn’t been shown naked on screen since a fleeting glimpse of her breast in The Tailor of Panama (2001).
Quentin Tarantino’s surprising evaluation
Perfect has developed a cult following despite its initial negative reviews and scathing criticism.
It even appears on John Wilson’s list of “The 100 Most Enjoyably Bad Movies Ever Made” in The Official Razzie Movie Guide.
In a 1994 Rolling Stone interview, Quentin Tarantino also lauded the movie, describing it as “extremely under-appreciated because of Curtis’ extremely tight performance.” Not too bad!
Reenacting her famous aerobic exercise routine
Jamie Lee Curtis demonstrated that she still has the moves and a terrific sense of humor nearly forty years after she starred in Perfect. Curtis and Jimmy Fallon collaborated on The Tonight Show to recreate the iconic aerobics sequence from the 1985 movie, bringing the hip-thrusting choreography to life in an outrageous and entertaining dance.
The spoof, which is set to the 1985 popular song “Shock Me” by Jermaine Jackson and Whitney Houston, opens with Curtis leading an aerobics class while sporting her trademark striped one-piece. Fallon puts himself in John Travolta’s position and works out with her, imitating the notorious moves—yes, there is a lot of thrusting.
When Fallon chose to show Curtis a video of his own dancing moves, the humor took a ridiculous turn. As always, Curtis pulled her phone out of her tight dress, blew him a kiss, then proceeded to eat pizza and splatter herself with champagne. She performed her hip rolls without missing a beat, of course.
With even wilder antics, the two went to the next level, with Fallon letting go of a dove from his shorts and Curtis using a defibrillator to get a “dead body” to join the routine. Fallon made a joke about the sequence’s duration, expressing his admiration for the original: “That scene went on – I’m not kidding – for like five minutes, right?”
“No, no, that scene went on like seven minutes!” Curtis laughed in response.
Even after decades, Curtis’s Perfect Aerobics sequence will go down in history since it’s evident that she hasn’t lost her touch or sense of humor.
Although I won’t say Perfect is a masterpiece of film, I do believe it to be better than its reputation implies. Both Jamie Lee Curtis and John Travolta have always appealed to me, and their performances here have a particular charm. But what shocked me the most was learning Jamie Lee Curtis’s true feelings about those notorious aerobics sequences.
I didn’t know she felt that way about them! It’s amazing how something that was supposed to be seductive and playful turned out to be something she wasn’t entirely at ease with. Although it’s simple to understand how the sequence would have been viewed as enjoyable, her discussion of it makes me question whether or not we should reconsider how we perceive these kinds of moments in vintage films. Perhaps a more nuanced conversation is in order. What are your thoughts?
