Extreme Close-Up began as an unusually frank experiment in low-budget exploitation filmmaking. Producer Paul Lazarus III, encouraged by the success of I Am Curious (Yellow), approached Michael Crichton after their work together on Westworld (1973) and proposed a film that could include explicit nudity within the framework of a thriller. Crichton wrote a deliberately uncomfortable, X-rated story about John Norman, a television reporter who rents surveillance equipment, spies on his neighbors, and becomes increasingly entangled in voyeurism. Lazarus sold the project to financier Ted Mann for just $209,000, largely on the strength of Crichton’s reputation, while Jeannot Szwarc was hired to direct because, as Lazarus later put it, the producers assumed his French background meant he would understand how to handle the material.
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AI concept artworkArchive Record · 1970s
Michael Crichton’s X-Rated Voyeurism Film Was Softened, Retitled, and Disowned
Extreme Close-Up / 1970s
Extreme Close-Up began as an unusually frank experiment in low-budget exploitation filmmaking. Producer Paul Lazarus III, encouraged by the success of I Am Curious (Yellow), approached Michael Crichton after their work together on Westworld (1973) and proposed a film that could include explicit nudity within the framework of a thriller. Crichton wrote a deliberately uncomfortable, X-rated story about John Norman, a television reporter who rents surveillance equipment, spies on his neighbors, and becomes increasingly entangled in voyeurism. Lazarus sold the project to financier Ted Mann for just $209,000, largely on the strength of Crichton’s reputation, while Jeannot Szwarc was hired to direct because, as Lazarus later put it, the producers assumed his French background meant he would understand how to handle the material.
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