attached to strippers and dancers.

I remember asking one of them,

kind of a provocative question, like,

"Do you ever go home with people that you meet in the club?

"You know, does that ever happen?"

Just kinda thinking of the romance, and what--

Yeah. What could happen at the end

and she's like, "I'm a dancer,

"I'm not like, I'm not an escort."

I was like, "Oh, I'm sorry, no, I didn't mean

"to insinuate you were."

(upbeat music)

Hi I'm Jennifer Lopez, I'm one of the stars,

and producers of the movie Hustlers.

And I'm Lorene Scarafia,

I'm the writer-director of Hustlers.

- [Both] And this is our scene breakdown.

(upbeat music)

- [Ramona] Front hook, ankle hook.

Now you learned all of these moves for this,

this is-- Yes.

Yes, this was choreographed by Johanna Sapakie.

(gentle piano music)

Hook, meat hook, hold on with that knee.

- [Destiny] Okay.

From here you can do the carousel.

Put your head back, come down.

Destiny and Ramona have just become friends,

and Ramona is showing Destiny how to conquer the pole,

and Ramona is kind of the top money-maker of the club.

- [Jennifer] She's got it all figured out.

Yeah, she knows all of the moves,

and she knows how to get away with doing a lot less.

(laughs)

It's like robbing a bank, except you get the keys.

Are you in? That's the key,

that's what everybody wants to know.

How do I make the most money

doing the less amount of work there is?

That's right, that's the American dream.

(laughing)

- [Destiny] Jesus Christ.

(laughs) Then you can go into a

fairy sit, (moans) stag.

I want to have my heels on all the time.

Can I wear my heels in this scene?

Because now you feel short instead of long and beautiful,

you're like short and chunky.

They're called pleasers for a reason.

Yeah, when you first put them on,

it's kind of like you're a baby deer.

You're walking around and you're fine,

and all of a sudden your legs give out,

and you're like, "What happened?

"I know how to walk in heels."

Then it becomes like, they're ballet slippers.

Then you can't do the dance without them.

We shot in Show Palace in Long Island city.

This really well-run strip club that had

you know, so much space for us to work in.

I know people said not to shoot in a real strip club--

What? But I don't think we

could have had it any other way.

Oh my God it was so perfect. I know, I know.

It was really incredible, and Jane Muskie,

our production designer, added all these incredible lights,

and extended the stage, and the owner of the club

liked it so much, he kept everything. (laughs)

Did he really? Yes, he did.

Oh, I love that.

Reverse stag. That's pretty, too.

Scissor sit. Was this hard?

It was very hard. Table top.

I can't do that.

- [Ramona] You can do that, you're gonna do that.

(Destiny blows raspberry)

A climb. (gentle piano music)

We tried to treat it like a stunt in a way,

you know, and have as many cameras going at one.

The pole gets sweaty, it gets, you know,

you're holding it, you're touching and you're

wrapping your body, and you start sweating.

The alcohol kind of cleans off the pole so you can grip it,

or else you'll slip right off and break your face.

Yeah.

What if you don't have muscles to do that?

- [Ramona] You have muscles to do this.

I don't have any.

- [Ramona] Every girl has muscles to do this.

The most important thing about the scene,

and what we wanted to get was the friendship between them,

that she became like a big sister to her.

She was just like starting out,

and taking her under her wing,

and kind of teaching her the ropes, or the pole, perse.

I wanted to make sure that Constance, Destiny,

was on stage with her, because I felt like

there was this scene before where Ramona was on stage

and kind of separate from Destiny,

and now Destiny's a part of this journey.

I just wanted them to play with it and keep it open.

They have such a great chemistry together,

they have such a great rapport,

and really have this big sister, little sister relationship.

This was a beautiful scene to kind of play that out,

play out that dynamic.

Their friendship is unique.

And I love that this Chopin piece is playing over this

to show-- You always had that.

That was from the very first script, that was in there.

Yes, yeah.

I remember saying, "What music is that?

"What music is that?" Yeah.

It just shows the grace and the elegance of the moves,

what it takes. Yeah, that is actually

really difficult to do these things, and it takes skill.

It's not like any person can just jump up here--

No. And do this.

No, they're athletes, the strength that's required

for them to do these moves,

I mean you're a dancer, of course.

I had a lot of bruises and things.

Yeah. (upbeat music)

In my own dance, in her solo kind of performance,

where she goes upside down, the more really like

spinny stuff was harder, climbing, things like that.

We've seen a scene in a strip club

in every single movie and TV show ever,

and so few have been told from the dancer's perspective,

so I just wanted to be in their story.

So being in their story naturally sort of lent itself to the

gaze, there's a theme of control that runs through it.

Ramona sometimes decides what the camera's gonna do.

I like to think she was always in total control.

(laughs) She was.

The best part of my night was to sit a man

in a bar stool and watch Jennifer and Constance

and Kiki and Lilly sort of surround him,

and turn him into a puddle, that was a real joy.

Honestly when you bring that talented

group of women like that together,

everybody's kind of so full of light and creative,

and happy to be there.

You know that you're in good company with cool people,

and you're like, this is kind of hot.

This is gonna be a fun ride,

this is gonna be something fun for people to watch.

♪ Hot damn ♪

- [Ramona] We're family now.

♪ Hot damn ♪

A family with money! (ladies yelling)

From the first time I spoke to Cardi about

doing the movie, I called her and I told her, I said,

"You would know more about this stuff than I do."

I said, "I would love to pick your brain on what

"it's really like to live in this world, because that's

"what we're trying to capture in this movie."

And she definitely gave insight into the psyche

of what goes on in an exotic dancer's mind,

why they do it and things like that,

so it was really helpful.

The martini. The martini.

It really does look like a martini.

(laughing)

That's it, it's nothing too dramatic.

Thanks for checking out our scene breakdown.

Be sure to get your tickets for Hustlers,

in theaters September 13th.

You can get your tickets on Fandango.