40 fun facts about ‘Purple Rain’ as Prince’s triumph marks its 40th anniversary – The Mercury News

Jon Bream and Chris Riemenschneider | (TNS) Star Tribune

MINNEAPOLIS — Lordy, Lordy, “Purple Rain” is 40, and Prince’s hometown is not going to let you forget it.

This weekend’s Celebration 2024 at Paisley Park is centered on the 40th anniversary of His Royal Purpleness’ landmark album and film (officially released June 25 and July 27, respectively). So are Friday and Saturday’s reunion concerts by his old band the Revolution at First Avenue. So is a hefty new book by Twin Cities music journalist Andrea Swensson, “Prince and Purple Rain 40 Years.”

With all that and lots more happening around the anniversary, we bring you 40 fun facts about “Purple Rain.”

1. Like many things in Prince’s career, “Purple Rain” was a big risk. The movie with a first-time star, first-time director, first-time producer was made for $7 million and grossed $68 million during its theatrical run.

2. “Purple Rain” won an Oscar (for best original song score), led to four Grammys for Prince, and its blockbuster soundtrack spent 24 consecutive weeks at No. 1 with four Top 10 singles.

3. “Purple Rain” was the second movie Prince shot. During his 1982 tour with the Time, a crew helmed by music video pioneer Chuck Statler filmed concert and offstage footage for an unfinished project known as “The Second Coming.” The 16 mm footage remains in Prince’s vault.

4. After the success of the album “1999” in ’82, Prince’s management contract with the L.A.-based firm of Cavallo, Ruffalo & Fargnoli was about to expire. He wouldn’t sign a new deal unless they got him a movie. “‘And it can’t be financed by some drug dealer or jeweler,’” Bob Cavallo remembered Prince saying. “‘It has to be a major studio and my name has to be above the title.’”

5. The film’s producers talked with David Geffen and Richard Pryor about financing the picture. Football hero Jim Brown ran Pryor’s company and wanted to wait until Prince “got more famous.” Said Cavallo: “Prince is not a guy who waits.” So the rookie movie producers invested $1 million of their own money and negotiated a three-picture deal with Warner Bros.

6. Emmy-winning William Blinn, executive producer of TV’s “Fame,” was hired to draft a screenplay based on Prince’s vision. Blinn said Prince “wanted a picture that would shock you.” The tentative title: “Dreams.”

7. Cavallo wanted to hire “Reckless” director James Foley, who was booked up but recommended his film editor, Albert Magnoli, then only 30.

8. The movie’s original female lead Vanity quit two weeks before filming was to start. There was no clear reason why. Co-producer Steve Fargnoli simply said “business reasons.” Director Magnoli said she received a better offer from Martin Scorsese to appear in “The Last Temptation of Christ.”

9. More than 750 young women then auditioned. After her tryout, Patricia Kotero of Santa Monica, California, flew to Minneapolis to meet Prince. “He asked about my experience,” she told the Star Tribune in 1984. “And he looked at me very seriously and said, ‘Do you believe in God?’” She got the part and a new name — Apollonia.

10. The only professional actors in the movie were Clarence Williams III of TV’s “Mod Squad” (who portrayed the Kid’s father) and Olga Karlatos of “Once Upon a Time in America” (the Kid’s mother).

11. Actor Don Amendolia flew in to conduct acting classes for the musicians in a St. Louis Park warehouse. Three days a week for three months, they did improvisational exercises and recited monologues from “The Streets of New York” and “Cloud 9,” the play that had previously brought Amendolia to the Twin Cities at the Cricket Theater.

12. The Minnesota Dance Theatre offered dance lessons to cast members — “six years of training condensed into six months,” MDT’s John Command said. In return, Prince & the Revolution played a benefit concert for the financially strapped troupe at First Avenue on Aug. 3, 1983, raising $23,000.

13. Many of the soundtrack’s songs were debuted and recorded at that Aug. 3 concert. Three of those live recordings were cleaned up and used on the album: the title track, “I Would Die 4 U” and “Baby, I’m a Star.”

14. That concert also was Revolution guitarist Wendy Melvoin’s first public performance with Prince. She was 19.

15. The movie did not have a definite title until Prince played “Purple Rain” that night, new even to director Magnoli. As Magnoli told Rolling Stone: “I asked Prince after, ‘What is that song? He said, ‘I just wrote it with the band.’ I said, ‘That’s the song, the anthem song!’”

16. While the audience noise was mixed out of these songs for the soundtrack, listen closely and you can hear some of it toward the end of the title track on the album, including a fan’s faint “Woo!”

17. The members of the Revolution remember rehearsing those songs so exhaustively in the buildup, bassist Mark Brown, aka BrownMark, says in Swensson’s book, “I mean, ‘Purple Rain,’ I could fall asleep and play it.”

18. Prince’s iconic guitar solo in “Purple Rain” was entirely improvised, and two minutes longer than what wound up on the record. “”I knew what he was doing was taking people to another place,” Revolution drummer Bobby Z says in Swensson’s book.

19. One name that stands out on First Ave’s guest list for that show: R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck, in town recording the future classic “I Will Dare” with his pals the Replacements.