Rosanna Arquette On Desire To Reunite With Madonna On ‘Desperately Seeking Susan’ Sequel: “It Would Be So Great To Make That Movie”
Susan Seidelman’s enduring breakout hit Desperately Seeking Susan turns 40 next year, and Rosanna Arquette, one of the film’s stars, has said she still has hypothetical dreams of revisiting the pic in a sequel.
Speaking on film critic and journalist Anna Smith’s popular Girls On Film Podcast, Arquette said the thought of returning to the feature popped into her mind because sequels are now frequently being produced.
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“I always had a fantasy about what happened to them?” she said of the character she plays in the pic alongside Madonna, who made her acting debut in the film. “Who are they now? It would be so great to make that movie. And see where everybody ends up. Do Dez [Aidan Quinn’s character] and her stay together? What happens to them?”
Directed by Seidelman from a screenplay by Leora Barish, Desperately Seeking Susan tells the story of Roberta (Arquette), a bored suburban housewife who becomes obsessed with a free-spirited woman called Susan (Madonna), whose partner Jim (Robert Joy) leaves her messages in the personal ads section of the newspaper. Roberta starts following Susan, dressing like her and is eventually mistaken for Susan, at which point chaos ensues.
Desperately Seeking Susan was Seidelman’s second feature after 1982’s Smithereens. Discussing her directing style, Arquette said there had been some small “moments of tension” on the set with Seidelman communicating information to her actors.
“I remember specifically her saying ‘That Sucked.’ It was harmful to me at that time because I didn’t know where it was coming from,” Arquette said of Seidelman’s directing style.
“But it was just her inexperience and my hyper-sensitivity. I had just come off from working with Martin Scorsese on After Hours. He was the ultimate director of life and loved his actors and would nurture them… you don’t talk to actors that way because you can get more out of them if you don’t do that.”
Arquette added: “She [Seidelman] didn’t know that at the time. Since then, I have understood her and I think she understands me. And that’s growing up in life.”
Smith also interviewed Seidelman during the pod episode. The pair discussed the process of producing the comedy, working with Madonna, and the pic’s lasting legacy. You can check out the full podcast episode here.
Girls On Film drops weekly episodes on cinema placed in the context of feminism and women’s empowerment. The pod recently teamed with Paul Ridd’s revamped Edinburgh Film Festival and will present the screening of the festival’s closing film Since Yesterday: The Untold Story Of Scotland’s Girl Bands.
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