Talk:Pretty Woman

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References to use[edit]

Please add to the list references that can be used for the film article.
  • Radner, Hilary (2010). "Pretty Woman (1990) and the Girly Film: Defining the Format". Neo-Feminist Cinema: Girly Films, Chick Flicks, and Consumer Culture. Routledge. ISBN 0415877733.

Visit to the Opera[edit]

If this article is to have some credence, shouldn't it include the name of the opera that the two main characters see during the middle of the film? It may be just a light weight romantic comedy but "Viviens" response to the opera is heart felt and genuine. It also marks a deepening involvement between the two leads. What does life hold for a hooker or a ruthless businessman? Culture may not answer the question, but at least the film attempts to ask it. Ern Malleyscrub (talk) 11:32, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Red Hot Chili Peppers[edit]

Why isn't Red Hot Chili Peppers listed in the music section of this article?

Body double[edit]

regarding the body double discussions, there's actually an entry on the wikipedia page for actress Andrea Parker, that it was in fact her who doubled J Roberts in Pretty Woman

Apparently Shelley Michelle was the body double, according to the article above. -- 109.77.194.199 (talk) 01:43, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The Story[edit]

--Can it be verified as the highest grossing romantic comedy?

"To Hell with you, bitch!"[edit]

There's a section in this article that says:

Instead of saying "To Hell with you, bitch!" like any normal man would, Edward agrees to pay her $20 for her to guide him to the Hotel

.

To me, this doesn't look like it should be in an encyclopedia (something about NPOV), I was gonna ask permission or something, but I'm just gonna change it to:

Instead, Edward agrees to pay her $20 for her to guide him to the Hotel

.

If anyone has any problems... I don't know, I can't be bothered with any of these "edit wars" I've read about. And I don't know how to sign comments on here.

It's just a way of saying how ridiculous their meeting was. I mean, what would you say if you asked a woman for directions and she tried to charge you for them? Jienum 20:36, 21 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
True, but was it encyclopedic/wikipedic(?) to have that on an article? Personally, I think it was against the rules of Wikipedia... this isn't about what you or I would say in that situation, that doesn't matter, the article should be about the film and events in the film, that's all, and Richard Gere never said "To Hell with you, bitch" in the film (BTW it was me who made the initial comment and edit to the page, but before I became a registered user, so I don't know if I should sign it now).--PigManDan 21:27, 24 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Most of us aren't multimillionare corporate raiders so what we would do is somewhat irrelevant. Nowadays of course such a person will just us their GPS or mobile or call someone. I think the bigger issue is whether or not he's actually trust her and may be afraid of the implications of paying some random prostitute. Of course this is complete OR. Nil Einne (talk) 19:31, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

No criticisms included?[edit]

I came to the article expecting a paragraph on common criticisms of the film, and didn't see any. This seems surprising, considering that while many love it, others detest it ... and not just, as the article's author(s) seem to imply, because they are prudes who consider it inappropriate to make any prostitute seem to be a decent human being. There have been many published critiques over the years; here's one I found with just a quick Google Advanced Search:

Pretty Woman (Washington Post review), March 1990: "You could sit through Touchstone Pictures' "Pretty Woman" and just enjoy it as a slick, instantly and entertainingly digestible Cinderella fable in which sweet little hooker Julia Roberts falls for lonely-at-the-top corporate raider Richard Gere. But that would be ignoring the movie's capitalistically lurid aspects, its unconsciously corrupt, anything-but-uplifting message about success. It's a movie at odds with its feel-good purposes and it doesn't seem to realize it."

I think that's one reason we're having to deal with POV edits and people writing all over the Talk page about how they hate the movie, even though both behaviors fail to improve the article. I don't have time to do it right now (as I was supposed to be elsewhere half an hour ago), but what the article needs is an NPOV section summarizing the critiques. It also could note that the movie is not "groundbreaking" (as the article at one point claims) in showing a prostitute as a decent human being — in fact, elsewhere in the article, it links to an article on the idea that the "hooker with a heart of gold" is a stock character. Less than 10 years before Pretty Woman, you have Ron Howard's 1981 Night Shift, with Shelley Long as the HWaHoG and Henry Winkler as the mild-mannered guy who becomes a pimp in order to assure the women a more equitable share of the profits and better treatment. That was a helluva lot more groundbreaking in my opinion, but unless we find a published source that makes the comparison, it would just be original research on my part and not permissible in the article. --Lawikitejana 18:48, 29 October 2006 (UTC) P.S. FYI, Here's my Google Advanced Search, which was designed to rule out or reduce (a) reviews of the DVD quality and (b) reviews from the angle of whether prostitutes can ever be decent people; I wanted to prove those aren't the only reviews that had a problem with the content of the film. (http://www.google.com/search?as_q=%22Julia+Roberts%22&num=30&hl=en&btnG=Google+Search&as_epq=pretty+woman&as_oq=criticism&as_eq=Christian+decent+DVD+purchase+buy+order+Brockovich&lr=&as_ft=i&as_filetype=&as_qdr=all&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&as_occt=any&as_dt=i&as_sitesearch=&as_rights=&safe=images)[reply]

Is there an error?[edit]

This articles says: "The company supplied a Silver 1989.5 Esprit SE, which was later sold." I believe there must be an error here. Should it be "Silver 1989 Esprit SE"? I do not understand what that ".5" means.

ICE77 --81.104.129.226 23:14, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe the car came out half-way through 1989? --PigManDan 23:52, 12 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Chappelle (sp?) Show Parody[edit]

I noticed the Chappelle Show was credited with a parody of Pretty Woman. I am not sure this is correct. I believe it was "In Living Color" that did the parody. Or maybe both. Anybody have any comments on this?--Remark knights (talk) 00:35, 2 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Controversy Section[edit]

The entire section, which I just removed, is spurious and basically original research, obviously by someone who disapproves of the movie's content. It was challenged in March and no citations or references were added. It's removal was warranted. CouplandForever (talk) 01:43, 14 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Here's the diff from when the Controversy and reaction section was removed. It was unsourced and the removal was appropriate. It deserved to be deleted just for using the word "Possibly" because badly written speculation like that doesn't belong in an encyclopaedia.
If I can find a critic that mentioned the hooker with the heart of gold trope it might be merit a mention in critical response section, but a separate section was clearly someone with PoV and an axe to grind. -- 109.77.194.199 (talk) 01:43, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Theatrical poster body double[edit]

I can hardly believe this is not included in the article. See http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0675/is_n4_v10/ai_12448376/

This is pretty much common knowledge, there are reliable sources, and it's relevant to the public perception of the film. --87.79.53.129 (talk) 07:06, 6 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is that the so-called controversy arose out of the (I believe false) assumption that the use of a double for the poster was a) unique to this film, and therefore a devious deception, and b) some sort of slight about Julia Robert’s looks (or rather, that the double asserted that she was used because she had a better figure than Roberts). The cold fact of the matter is that the practice is/was common when you couldn’t get an actor into the studio, as they were occupied elsewhere or otherwise unavailable, or you didn’t want to pay them for the modeling session. An example of this is the 1994 movie “The Paper” where *none* of the people apparently shown posing as a group on the various posters is actually the actor who played the part, and the faces were all substituted with previously obtained photos. Similarly the wide-screen video release of “The Blues Brothers” in the U.K. used two double and the faces of the actors to produce promo shots of Jake and Elwood holding the tape. I’d say the matter is a non-event, and if it is included, it should point out that the story was blown way out of proportion by the press. Jock123 (talk) 08:31, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Business dinner[edit]

Is [1] correct? I didn't watch so I have no idea. Nil Einne (talk) 19:26, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Missing song in music section[edit]

Tracks from the movie's soundtrack and background music is listed, but one song in particular is missing from this section. "Songbird" by Kenny G, is playing when Edward arrives back to his room to find Vivienne waiting for him with dinner and a tie. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:81:100:7450:39F3:DC71:B499:31ED (talk) 05:26, 9 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Another title[edit]

> The film bears striking resemblances to Pygmalion myths: particularly George Bernard Shaw's play of the same name, which also formed the basis for the Broadway musical My Fair Lady. It was Walt Disney Studios then-president Jeffrey Katzenberg who insisted the film be re-written as a modern-day fairy tale and love story, as opposed to the original dark drama. It was pitched to Touchstone Pictures and re-written as a romantic comedy. [5] However, this title was changed because Disney executives thought it sounded like a title for a science fiction film.

I don't get it. Which title did sound like a science fiction film? Pygmalion? Hellerick (talk) 16:03, 17 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Musical confusion[edit]

The article states "The piano piece Gere's character plays in the hotel lobby was actually composed and performed by him. Entitled "He Sleeps/Love Theme", this piano composition is inspired by Bruce Springsteen's "Racing in the Street".

I think this conflates two facts. The piece played by Gere is supposedly composed and performed by him, but it's pretty clearly not "He Sleeps/Love Theme" which is a piano piece likely by James Newton Howard and which has a section that mirrors the intro of Racing in the Street. That is a separate piece of music that plays in the background of a number of scenes.

Orphaned references in Pretty Woman[edit]

I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Pretty Woman's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "riaa":

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT 22:25, 2 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]