There is a certain amount of pornography that exists throughout Purple Rain, but the appeal is obvious. You can really pick that picture apart and see where "A" fits into "B" and so on. It was very wisely done.

America now has more and better dancers than they have ever had in the history of the country, but that won't account for the public wants to see.

I wanted to do new things with dance, adapt it to the motion picture medium.

The only thing is that ordinarily when I do dance with [women] they think I am suddenly going to throw them over a table or twist them all around. All I want to do is one-two, one-two-three - a simple fox trot. But they're shaking with anticipation at the thought that I'm about to whip them around and then toss them on the roof.

You dance love, and you dance joy, and you dance dreams.

Fred Astaire represented the aristocracy, I represented the proletariat.

The way I look at a musical, you are commenting on the human condition no matter what you do. A musical may be light and frivolous, but by its very nature, it makes some kind of social comment.