One of the most dramatic scenes in the film turned into a behind-the-scenes debacle, consisting of a long monologue with the Ralph Garcy character (Barry Miller) in which he recalls the horrific and nearly fatal child abuse that his 5-year-old sister suffered at the hands of his violent ex-con father. When it became time to film the scene, Alan Parker and Barry Miller began to get into a heated creative conflict about how the scene should be played (Miller eliciting a quietly intimate, soft-spoken, and gradually tearful memory of the events, whereas a suddenly insistent and unyielding Parker began driving him relentlessly towards portraying a more intense emotional breakdown) resulting in an escalating power struggle between director and actor that caused filming to unexpectedly drag on for over two nights and many multiple takes without ever completing the sequence to Parker's satisfaction, much to the shock of the other actors, the crew, and the studio. Eventually, things got so out of hand that Miller used the increasingly explosive situation between them to give Parker the results he wanted, creating one of the most unsettling and powerful moments in the film, essentially playing out in a parallel reality the screenplay's fictional portrait of a monstrous father and his victimized son locked into a venomously hateful and dangerous relationship with one another. Almost thirty years later, Parker gave an interview in which he admitted his guilt and personal irresponsibility in terms of wanting to push Miller beyond his limits and into "the deepest and most painfully exposed levels of what I knew to be his abilities as an actor", claiming that he was one of the most extraordinary talents that he had ever worked with over the entire course of his career.

Film

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