Release

Striptease was distributed by Sony and was finally released in the United States on June 28, 1996, after a June 23 premiere in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

. It opened in Australia, France and Germany in August, and Argentina

Argentina

Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...

, Italy, Bolivia

Bolivia

Bolivia officially known as Plurinational State of Bolivia , is a landlocked country in central South America. It is the poorest country in South America...

, South Africa, the United Kingdom, Brazil

Brazil

Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

 and Japan in September.

Nudity

Nudity in film

Nudity in film is any presentation in motion pictures of people while naked or wearing less clothing than contemporary norms consider modest. Many actors and actresses have appeared nude, or exposing parts of their bodies or dressed in ways considered provocative by contemporary standards at some...

 was heavily emphasized in advertisements. The Motion Picture Association of America

Motion Picture Association of America

The Motion Picture Association of America, Inc. , originally the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America , was founded in 1922 and is designed to advance the business interests of its members...

 raised concerns regarding a posters which it felt revealed too much of Moore's naked body. A Castle Rock employee argued: "There are racier perfume ads."

The previous year's film about nude dancers, Showgirls

Showgirls

Showgirls is a 1995 American drama film directed by Paul Verhoeven and starring former teen actress Elizabeth Berkley, Kyle MacLachlan, and Gina Gershon...

, was generally disliked, so filmmakers feared audiences would pre-judge Striptease on this basis. To avoid any association, advertisements were designed to make Striptease look more comedic than Showgirls, which was a drama. Besides the subject matter, Striptease and Showgirls did have two notable connections. The choreography

Choreography

Choreography is the art of designing sequences of movements in which motion, form, or both are specified. Choreography may also refer to the design itself, which is sometimes expressed by means of dance notation. The word choreography literally means "dance-writing" from the Greek words "χορεία" ...

 in these films was by the same person, Marguerite Derricks

Marguerite Derricks

Marguerite Pomerhn-Derricks, professionally known as Marguerite Derricks, is a multi award-winning choreographer, ballerina and actress born in Buffalo, New York in 1961....

. Both also featured performances by Rena Riffel

Rena Riffel

Rena Riffel is an American actress, singer, dancer, model, writer, producer, and director. She is best known for her supporting roles in films such as Showgirls, Striptease, and Mulholland Drive.-Childhood and early career:...

, who plays a dancer in each. To promote the film, Moore appeared on Late Night with David Letterman

Late Night with David Letterman

Late Night with David Letterman is a nightly hour-long comedy talk show on NBC that was created and hosted by David Letterman. It premiered in 1982 as the first incarnation of the Late Night franchise and went off the air in 1993, after Letterman left NBC and moved to Late Show on CBS. Late Night...

and a Barbara Walters

Barbara Walters

Barbara Jill Walters is an American broadcast journalist, author, and television personality. She has hosted morning television shows , the television newsmagazine , former co-anchor of the ABC Evening News, and current contributor to ABC News.Walters was first known as a popular TV morning news...

 special. In both cases, she danced or otherwise exhibited her body.

Critical response

Film critics panned the film. Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert

Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...

 complimented some of the characters, but ultimately concluded the film failed because "all of the characters are hilarious except for Demi Moore's." He felt the drama surrounding the main character "throws a wetblanket over the rest of the party." Ebert also found the nudity not too sexy. Leonard Maltin

Leonard Maltin

Leonard Maltin is an American film and animated film critic and historian, author of several mainstream books on cinema, focusing on nostalgic, celebratory narratives.-Personal life:...

 was harsher, writing in his book that the film was too depressing, and "Not funny enough, or dramatic enough, or sexy enough, or bad enough, to qualify as entertainment in any category." Another critic concurred with Ebert that Moore's character was written too dramatically, compared to other characters. This critic claimed the film was predictable and would appeal mostly to "post-pubescent schoolboys or closet voyeurs." However, she also claimed Reynolds had "his best role in years," and that Rhames was "worth the price of admission." One critic, who thought Moore's acting was terrible, predicted that despite Moore's financial success, her career depended on the success of this film and the film was "tacky, pretentious-and boring." This critic described Striptease as displaying Moore's vanity. Newsweek

Newsweek

Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...

, sharing Ebert's view on Moore's character, also claimed Striptease failed as a drama because it had no mystery

Mystery fiction

Mystery fiction is a loosely-defined term.1.It is often used as a synonym for detective fiction or crime fiction— in other words a novel or short story in which a detective investigates and solves a crime mystery. Sometimes mystery books are nonfiction...

, revealing the identity of its villains early. Moreover, the "damsel-in-distress

Damsel in distress

The subject of the damsel in distress, or persecuted maiden, is a classic theme in world literature, art, and film. She is usually a beautiful young woman placed in a dire predicament by a villain or monster and who requires a hero to achieve her rescue. She has become a stock character of fiction,...

 angle generates zero tension." Striptease currently holds a 12% rating on Rotten Tomatoes

Rotten Tomatoes

Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...

.

Accolades

The film received seven Golden Raspberry

1996 Golden Raspberry Awards

The 17th Golden Raspberry Awards were held on March 23, 1997 at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel to recognise the worst the movie industry had to offer in 1996...

 nominations and won six, namely for Worst Picture, Worst Director, Worst Screenplay, Worst Actress, Worst Original Song ("(Pussy Pussy Pussy) Whose Kitty Cat Are You?"), and Worst Screen Couple. The only category the film lost was Worst Supporting Actor for Burt Reynolds, which went to Marlon Brando

Marlon Brando

Marlon Brando, Jr. was an American movie star and political activist. "Unchallenged as the most important actor in modern American Cinema" according to the St...

 for The Island of Dr. Moreau

The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996 film)

The Island of Dr. Moreau is a 1996 science fiction horror film, the third major movie version of the H. G. Wells novel The Island of Doctor Moreau about a scientist who attempts to convert animals into people...

In winning the Worst Picture Razzie, Striptease defeated The Island of Dr. Moreau, Barb Wire

Barb Wire (film)

-Cast:* Pamela Anderson Lee as Barbara "Barb Wire" Kopetski* Temuera Morrison as Axel Hood* Victoria Rowell as Dr. Corrina "Cora D" Devonshire* Jack Noseworthy as Charlie Kopetski* Xander Berkeley as Alexander Willis* Udo Kier as Curly...

, The Stupids

The Stupids (film)

The Stupids is a 1996 American comedy/adventure film directed by John Landis. The film is based on The Stupids, characters from a series of books written by Harry Allard and illustrated by James Marshall....

, and Ed

Ed (film)

Ed is a 1996 comedy film starring Matt LeBlanc. LeBlanc plays Jack "Deuce" Cooper, a talented baseball pitcher. Deuce also finds a friend in a talented ball-playing chimpanzee, who was originally his team's mascot.-Reception:...

. Moore won for Worst Actress while Moore and Reynolds shared for Worst Screen Couple.

Box office

Striptease made $12,322,069 in its first weekend, falling behind The Nutty Professor

The Nutty Professor (1996 film)

The Nutty Professor is a 1996 science fiction-romantic comedy film starring Eddie Murphy. It is a remake of the 1963 film of the same name, starring Jerry Lewis. The original music score was composed by David Newman. The film won an Academy Award for Makeup.Murphy plays benevolent university...

with Eddie Murphy

Eddie Murphy

Edward Regan "Eddie" Murphy is an American stand-up comedian, actor, writer, singer, director, and musician....

, Eraser

Eraser (film)

Eraser is a 1996 American action film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, James Caan and Vanessa L. Williams. It was directed by Chuck Russell. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Sound Effects Editing in 1996.-Plot:...

starring Arnold Schwarzenegger

Arnold Schwarzenegger

Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger is an Austrian-American former professional bodybuilder, actor, businessman, investor, and politician. Schwarzenegger served as the 38th Governor of California from 2003 until 2011....

, and Disney

The Walt Disney Company

The Walt Disney Company is the largest media conglomerate in the world in terms of revenue. Founded on October 16, 1923, by Walt and Roy Disney as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, Walt Disney Productions established itself as a leader in the American animation industry before diversifying into...

's The Hunchback of Notre Dame

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996 film)

The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a 1996 American animated drama film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released to theaters on June 21, 1996 by Walt Disney Pictures. The thirty-fourth animated feature in the Disney animated features canon, the film is inspired by Victor Hugo's novel of...

, in which Demi Moore voiced one of the main characters. Ultimately, Striptease made $33,109,743 in the United States, and domestically it was only the forty-seventh highest grossing film of 1996. It made $113,309,743 internationally, having grossed £2,104,480 in the UK and ¥102,419,500 in Japan.

Legacy

In 1997, Striptease made news again when it was shown in a fourth-grade class in Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

, Illinois

Illinois

Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...

. The teacher claimed the students chose the film, but he drew criticism since the film was risqué. (The violent 1996 film Scream

Scream (film)

Scream is a 1996 American slasher film written by Kevin Williamson and directed by Wes Craven. The film stars Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, Drew Barrymore, and David Arquette...

was shown in the same school on the same day, causing further controversy.) In 2000 in Ireland, some viewers criticized the Radio Telefís Éireann for running Striptease. These viewers questioned the film's appropriateness and some considered it demeaning to women. However, the station felt it was not pornography

Pornography

Pornography or porn is the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction.Pornography may use any of a variety of media, ranging from books, magazines, postcards, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video,...

 and it was aired at night.

In 2003, Radioactive Films used a scene from Striptease featuring Moore nude in a video called Hollywood's Hottest. This raised a dispute as to whether use of the scene qualified as fair use

Fair use

Fair use is a limitation and exception to the exclusive right granted by copyright law to the author of a creative work. In United States copyright law, fair use is a doctrine that permits limited use of copyrighted material without acquiring permission from the rights holders...

. A lawsuit was launched as a consequence.

External links