Producer Dawn Steel, who has been involved with such women’s films as “Flashdance” and “Sister Act,” doesn’t find “Indecent Proposal’s” central plot twist preposterous at all.
As a single woman, she had a similar experience.
“In the ‘70s, I was offered a million-dollar (proposition),” she says. “I was stuck at O’Hare Airport in the middle of a blizzard and this schleppy guy kept following me around, offering me a ride into the city. I couldn’t find a cab anywhere, so finally I got so desperate I took him up on it.”
The man had a white Rolls-Royce with a chauffeur, who drove them into the city and deposited them at a fancy hotel.
“He told them to take care of me and suddenly I got a bigger room and all the amenities,” Steel recalls. “We had dinner once. Then he followed me back to New York, took me to dinner again and finally he made his offer--$1 million to sleep with him. He offered me jewels, my own place, anything I wanted.”
Steel says she politely declined. “I have to be honest--he was too greasy. I couldn’t even kiss him. But when I read that Robert Redford was playing that character in ‘Indecent Proposal,’ I had to laugh. If it had been Robert Redford who’d made me the offer, I’d have done it for nothing!”
