Gus Van Sant, the director of Good Will Hunting and a shot-for-shot remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho might not seem like the sort who would be interested in directing a movie like Fifty Shades of Grey, but that was one directing job he was very interested in. He wanted the job so much that he decided to just go ahead and film a sex scene and use that as an audition piece, thinking that was the way to get attention.
As ideas go, it’s not the worst. Van Sant tells THR that he thought filming a sex scene would show how committed he was to the project, while also giving the studio and the book’s all-important author a real idea of what his version of the movie would look like. At least one of the actors was all for it, as Alex Pettyfer was interested in playing Christian Grey, and supported this approach. Van Sant said…
