In Brickman’s cut, the film ends with Joel and Lana out to dinner and having a conversation. Joel asks her about their sexual encounter: “Was that all a setup?” She pauses for a second and then replies, “No.” After another pause, she reads his face. “You don’t believe me, do you?” Joel then tells her to come sit on his lap. He has become as manipulative and cynical as she is. He doesn’t even care about love. He has become a devil. End. 

This is a brilliant and brave telling. It opens the possibility that Joel was just a rich suburban mark for Lana and her criminal friends all along. Decades before the abuses of #MeToo, Risky Business argued that women are capable of being heartless, cunning, dishonest, and greedy. Of course, Hollywood executives insisted on something different. They wanted Joel to get everything he wanted, to get the girl, fix the house, and head to the Ivy League. Producers decided to have the film close out with happy dialogue between Joel and his hooker girlfriend as they walk through the park. “Time of your life, huh, kid?” she says.

Brickman was appalled: “I felt the whole film was compromised by this cheesy happy ending. I came very close to walking off the film.” Brickman was so bitter he did not direct another film until 1990.