Purple Rain (1984) on Netflix
The Kid leads the Revolution at a Minneapolis club and stays away from his abusive home. Morris, a rival bandleader, wants the Kid's slot and the singer Apollonia.
- Netflix3.5/5
- IMDb6.5/1026,821 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes70%
Trailer
Plot summary
The Kid and his band the Revolution hold one of the house slots at the First Avenue club in Minneapolis, and he performs there at night to keep away from an abusive home. His guitarist Wendy and his keyboardist Lisa are frustrated that he will not play the songs they write. Morris, who leads the rival band the Time, asks Billy Sparks, who owns the club, to hand the Revolution's spot to a girl group he is putting together, and he wants Apollonia, an aspiring singer new to Minneapolis, to lead it.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Purple Rain (1984)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- At an early meeting with Warner Bros., studio executives reportedly asked producer Robert Cavallo whether John Travolta could replace Prince as the film's lead.
- Prince originally wanted Vanity, leader of the group Vanity 6, for the female lead; after she left before filming, the part went first to Jennifer Beals, who turned it down to focus on college, and then to the then-unknown Apollonia Kotero.
- During production, director Albert Magnoli asked Prince to write one more song touching on the film's themes, and by the very next day Prince had already fully produced "When Doves Cry."
- A deleted scene of Prince and Apollonia having sex in a barn was the concept behind his 1985 song “Raspberry Beret”.
- The production paid Minneapolis's First Avenue nightclub $100,000 to use it as a filming location and closed the venue for 25 days.
- Warner Bros. initially considered the film "outrageous," and it was released only after an internal debate, with music publicist Howard Bloom lobbying that "killing Purple Rain would be a sin against art."
- Although both of Prince's real parents were Black, the film cast a white actress as his mother, and Prince's own mother was reportedly upset by that casting choice.
- Lorraine Bracco was at one point considered for the role, but the producers found out that she couldn't sing, so they rejected her.
