‘Fifty Shades' director seeks R rated sweet spot (w/video)

Sam Taylor-Johnson had been working in secrecy for months when she finally got an opportunity to play footage of her new film for a fresh-eyed viewer -—Beyonce.

The London-born director is making one of the most anticipated movies of 2015, an adaptation of E.L. James' bestselling novel 'Fifty Shades of Grey,' the first in a trilogy that ignited a guilty-pleasure publishing phenomenon in 2011 and exposed its mostly female audience of more than 100 million readers to an eyebrow-raising erotic storyline.

Last year, Taylor-Johnson brought scenes from the film to Beyonce's home in Los Angeles so the pop star could see how her music would underpin the steamy drama about a mousy recent college graduate, Anastasia Steele (played by Dakota Johnson), who enters into a sexually submissive relationship with an enigmatic young billionaire, Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan).

'As the scene opened there was no context,' Taylor-Johnson said. 'There wasn't the slow meeting and the interview and the coffee shop, it was just, here's a hardcore sex scene, hey, nice to meet you ... I suddenly felt myself recoil. I suddenly thought, 'This is really explicit, and I don't even know this woman.''

Taylor-Johnson is going to be sharing those scenes with a much larger audience soon, when 'Fifty Shades of Grey' arrives in theaters Feb. 13.

Like 'Star Wars' and countless comic book movies, the film has an ardent and particular audience to please. Originally self-published as a piece of 'Twilight' fan fiction, the book literally sprouted from the world of avid fandom, and, in a sign of how much those fans are hungering for the film, the 'trailer was the most watched of 2014, racking up 93 million YouTube views since its debut in July.

Taylor-Johnson comes to the project with a distinct artistic vision, particularly about the film's sexual politics, and some valuable experience with devotees — her previous feature was the 2009 John Lennon biopic 'Nowhere Boy.' But with just one independent feature under her belt, she isn't the most obvious candidate to helm a big commercial studio film.

'I remember one of the 'Fifty Shades' producers saying to me, 'Can you handle making a movie with such a big fan base?'' she said. 'I reminded him I did make a movie about one of the Beatles. And it was a similar situation as soon as the casting began — everyone pitches in with, you have to do this and you can't do that. So there must be some sense of needing a challenge that I throw upon myself.'

Petite, with a bit of punk-rock pink in her hair, Taylor-Johnson, 47, is soft-spoken but direct. A visual artist before she became a filmmaker, Taylor-Johnson has a knack for capturing men at their most vulnerable. She is perhaps best known as a photographer for 'Crying Men,' a 2004 series of actors weeping.

By contrast, 'Fifty Shades' depicts an almost primitive male-female relationship, with a powerful man seeming to control a young, impressionable woman. Taylor-Johnson's goal was to find the nuances in the relationship.

'The book appealed to me because it was a dark and tragic love story,' she said. 'I had a distinct approach to feeling that she was empowered even though she was in a place where she could be seen as a victim, and even though this relationship is about dominance and submission, to have it be an equal journey. It's pretty complex, and I'm constantly feeling like I'm on a knife's edge.'

To cast Anastasia, somewhat improbably, she had actresses read an intense, four-page monologue from the 1966 Ingmar Bergman film 'Persona' before settling on Johnson, the actress and model who is the daughter of Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith.

'Considering the world in which she grew up, Dakota has a very sweet, naive sensibility, but she has this inner strength and power which exudes on screen,' Taylor-Johnson said of her leading lady. After a previous actor, Charlie Hunnam, fell through, Northern Irish actor Jamie Dornan, known mainly for his television and modeling work, was cast as Christian Grey on the strength of his chemistry with Johnson.

A major challenge was to secure an R-rating from the Motion Picture Assn. of America's ratings board without sacrificing any of the heat that helped make the book a hit.

'We've edited it in a way where I feel proud,' Taylor-Johnson said. 'It's dirty but classy. It feels pretty balanced: a nipple of hers, a butt cheek of his.'