Exposed (1983 film)

Plot

A college girl from Wisconsin whose professor has romantic designs on, Elizabeth Carlson packs up and moves to New York City, finding a job as a waitress while she attempts to launch a career as a fashion model.

As her career takes off, she meets Daniel Jelline, a violinist, who aggressively stalks Elizabeth until they begin an affair. When work takes her to Paris, however, Elizabeth encounters a terrorist named Rivas and her life is placed in considerable danger.

Cast

Production

James Toback claims he tried for a number of years to get the film financed but was unsuccessful. He says he won $2 million gambling in Las Vegas and spent a portion of this to bribe David Begelman, then head of MGM, to get him to authorise MGM to finance the film. MGM provided a budget of $18 million of which Toback's fee was $500,000. Filming took 80 days.

Toback says he based the script on a romance he had with an airline stewardess.

"I've changed roughly 80% of the script I showed MGM," he said later, "and I write and rewrite every night."

Reception

"The movie is unlike anything being released by major studios today," said Toback at the time of the film's release, "and so its confusing to people who market movies". Toback was allowed to be involved in the promotion of the film. "I'm being treated a lot better than most studios would treat me," he said. "I'm not getting much money but I'm being treated a lot better than most studios treat me... I figure now I have a remote chance of putting across a movie that only got made by a miracle anyway."

Toback says the film had a "mixed" reception.