Seventeen years ago, producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer set off a box-office bonfire with Flashdance, the saga of a shapely welder in a Pittsburgh steel mill who dreams of being a ballerina but makes a buck by bumping and grinding her nights away in a sleazy blue-collar bar.
______________________________________
The duo went on to mine a more macho vein with movies from Top Gun to The Rock until Simpson's life was snuffed out by bad habits in 1996. Now, in a return to his roots, Bruckheimer is about to unleash Coyote Ugly, a faux-feminist flick that insiders have dubbed "daughter of Flashdance." Directed by David McNally and inspired by a 1997 GQ article, it's the story of an aspiring songwriter who worked in the famously rowdy Coyote Ugly Saloon in New York's East Village, where the all-female bartenders give the customers plenty of lip along with their Bud Lights. Violet, as the lead character is named, spends her evenings serving double shots and double entendres to the horny patrons, and, predictably enough, she dances on top of the bar. Less predictably, the role is played by Piper Perabo, a petite, porcelain-skinned blonde with only two other movies under her belt--1999's Whiteboyz and this summer's The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle. "Like Violet, I'm a girl from Jersey who moved to the city, lived in awful places and briefly worked in a bar," says the 22-year-old from Toms River, New Jersey. Word is that Perabo's earthy sexiness and ability to carry a tune won her the role over such other interested parties as songbirds Britney Spears and Jewel--as well as the thousands of aspiring thesps who showed up at open-call auditions in 15 cities. "I lied and said I had experience, but I was a terrible waitress and a worse barkeep," she confides. "Doing my research for this movie, I met some great women, but they all had a hard exterior. They told me about psyching up before work so they could be right-on in their cutting remarks. It's a very fine line--to keep a rowdy crowd of men at bay but also keep them coming back to the bar," Especially if you've been matching the men shot for shot, as the plucky working gals at Coyote Ugly are said to do. "I don't want to give away secrets, but I watched the girls at Coyote Ugly," says Perabo, "and a lot of what they do is tricks. When you chase a shot of Jack Daniel's with beer, what you realty do is spit the shot into the beer bottle."
______________________________________
Guy Flatley