PAUL VERHOEVEN: THE HOLLYWOOD YEARS (PART 1)

I've done a couple director profiles thus far, both of which looked at the subject's whole career. This time I thought I'd do things a little differently, not out of laziness (well, not entirely), but because there's one specific period in Paul Verhoeven's career that interests me the most, the decade from 1987 to 1997.

This is not to dismiss his Dutch movies. Soldier of Orange, Spetters, and The Fourth Man are all really good, and apparently Turkish Delight, Katie Tippel, and Black Book all are too. While not completely different from his American movies, they're nonetheless a little more low-key, and less overtly tin-foil hat crazy. And tin-foil hat crazy is what makes Paul Verhoeven Paul Verhoeven (to me, at any rate).

Paul Verhoeven was born in Amsterdam in 1938 and raised in the Dutch village of Sikkerveer. Most of his earliest memories were of World War II and marauding Nazis; he would later compare his experiences with the protagonist of John Boorman's Hope and Glory (one of my favorite movies of all time, closing the circle). He would go on to take a degree in both mathematics and physics at the University of Leiden, and began his filmmaking career making documentaries while in the Navy.

Here is where I, as an historian of such talent that I was bribed with a passing grade to never take a history class again in college, gloss over about thirty years of my subject's life and skip ahead to where Hollywood came knocking at Verhoeven's door in the mid-80s after the international success of his sexy, intense Dutch pictures (featuring repeated collaborations with the sexy, intense Rutger Hauer and Renee Soutendijk). Flesh + Blood (1985) served as a bit of a dry run; it's not very good even though Rutger Hauer is in it, and even though Rutger Hauer rules very, very hard. Undaunted, our cracked auteur hero picks himself up by his wooden shoes (?) and starts anew.

Robocop (1987)

Established the tone for Verhoeven's Hollywood career by having to be submitted about 30 times to get its X rating—for violence . . . yeah, you do not get an X rating for violence by fucking around—before the ratings board finally got tired of Paul storming in and screaming at them to “git dair fockeeng heads ut uff dair esses ent grow a perr uff fockeenk bulls” (hey, I'm not making this up, he really talks like that; watching an interview with him is almost as awesome as watching one of his movies) and gave him his R.

All violence aside, Robocop is very good SF. Set in a near-future Detroit where crime runs rampant and an extremely sinister private corporation called OCP (Omni Consumer Products, a great name for a sinister corporation) owns the police, the story follows one idealistic cop (Peter Weller, looking for a hit after Buckaroo Banzai) who gets transferred to a particularly rough precinct and promptly gets the motherfucking shit shot out of him by Kurtwood Smith, Ray Wise, Paul McCrane, the gay black guy, and the taciturn Vietnamese guy (his only line in the movie is “Man, fuck you,” which is also the movie's central philosophy). So there's our protagonist, dead at the 20 minute mark. But lo, out in the cold darkness comes ambitious yuppie Miguel Ferrer, an OCP executive looking to get one up on reptilian VP Ronny Cox, whose robot law enforcement unit, ED-209, has a habit of spacing out and machine gunning executives in board meetings.

So Miguel Ferrer and his R&D nerds turn Peter Weller into a pretty bad motherfucker—armor covering his whole body, lazer-sharp targeting, a digestive system that runs on baby food—and they turn him loose on old Detroit, little realizing that some personality quirks remain from Peter Weller's brain.

At first it doesn't matter, as Robocop foils a convenience store robbery while ironically probably putting the mom & pop who run the place out of business by destroying everything, puts the kibosh on a rape by shooting one of the rapists in the dick, and concluding one hell of a productive shift by defusing a hostage situation involving a disgruntled city councilman who's just lost an election:

“I want something that goes really fast, has reclining leather bucket seats, and gets really shitty gas mileage!”
--City Councilman Ron Miller, asking for a new car as part of his list of demands, about a minute before being defenestrated by Robocop

(The above quote, aside from being the best movie line ever, perfectly sums up a Paul Verhoeven movie during his 87-97 period: something that's an almost supernatural amount of fun but that makes sensitive people upset)

Robocop soon encounters an existential crisis when he interrupts Paul McCrane robbing a gas station, freaking Paul McCrane the fuck out: “You're dead. We killed you!” Robocop then develops an intense interest in his own barely-remembered past and in punishing the fuckos who killed him. Inconveniently, he discovers when interrogating a bloody Kurtwood Smith that Ronny Cox was behind the hit, and when he attempts to arrest Ronny Cox, he shuts down, courtesy of a bit of code Ronny Cox had put in his OS preventing him from arresting an OCP official. (This doesn't explain why Robocop can't just tell one of the human cops, “Hey, bust this guy, he killed me,” but enough shit starts blowing up that this question has to be put aside for a sec). Robocop gets fucked up pretty badly by first an ED-209, and then the entire Detroit police department. The loyal cops, who've been threatening to go on strike for the whole movie, finally do, and all hell REALLY breaks loose.

Paul McCrane (having just blown up a car with a rocket launcher): I . . . like it!

Eventually, with the help of his tomboy partner (Nancy Allen, who actually is the daughter of a cop, lending verisimilitude), Robocop recovers to the extent that he melts Paul McCrane with toxic waste, and although briefly crippled by Ray Wise dropping a couple tons of rusty girders on him (after which Nancy Allen blows up Ray Wise with a rocket launcher) he still manages to rip Kurtwood Smith's throat out.

In the final showdown at OCP when Robocop goes to arrest Ronny Cox and presents some evidence to the board of directors (a DVD recording of Ronny Cox admitting to having Miguel Ferrer killed, which Kurtwood Smith rather impolitely did a while ago, interrupting the poor man's coke and hookers evening like the brutish villain he is) but confessing that he is unable to arrest Ronny Cox. Dan O'Herlihy, as The Old Man who runs OCP, thinks quick and fires Ronny Cox. Robocop, being a nice young man, says “Thank you” and shoots Ronny Cox about 12 times, launching him out the 100th floor window to his death.

The main reasons why Robocop is awesome:

(1) The blisteringly cynical vision of the dystopian future, reinforced by all the great fake TV newscasts and advertisements. The most popular show on TV features a sleazy man with a mustache who always seems to have three blondes' fake tits in his face as he says “I'LL BUY THAT FOR A DOLLAR!” which in a way is a pretty articulate (though negative) expression of the American dream.
(2) Top-notch action. The words “over-the-top violence” and “Paul Verhoeven” have been inextricably linked forever, partly because of this movie. I mean, sure, people waste a lot of bullets in this movie. But try this theory on for size: the more baroque and unrealistic cinematic violence is, the more the Verfremdungseffekt is reinforced, reinforcing to the audience that what they're seeing isn't actually real. Thus, the more violent a movie is, the better. You're welcome.
(3) Who knew Ronny Cox would be such a good villain? Lieutenant Bogomil from Beverly Hills Cop went bad.
(4) This is going to sound weird, but the background acting in Paul Verhoeven movies is always amazing, grounding the comic-book foreground in an almost perceptibly real-seeming world.
(5) Aside from a couple awkward-looking rear-projection shots, the special effects still hold up today. ED-209 even has personality.

Total Recall (1990)

Hmm, let's see. How do we improve on Robocop . . .? Let's keep a couple things the same, like the intelligent, well-written science fiction . . . the shitloads of violence worked last time, let's do that again . . . HOLY SHIT LET'S GET ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER!

Oh, Arnold. Arnold Arnold Arnold. Since I'm sure Verhoeven got annoyed by everyone making fun of his goofy accent on Robocop, he decided, you know what, let me cast a leading man with a goofy accent who can kick everyone on set's ass, maybe then they'll leave me alone. But in so doing he managed to land his generation's greatest movie star (it's true, so shut up), who also happened to be an underrated actor (seriously, shut the fuck up, do not argue with me about Arnold) capable of carrying a movie of ideas just as effectively as a movie of bullets (goddammit, kids, I WILL TURN THIS BLOG AROUND AND HEAD RIGHT HOME IF YOU CAN'T BE QUIET).

Originally adapted from Philip K. Dick's story “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale” by Dan O'Bannon right around when he did Alien, the script kicked around for years, getting re-written by a bunch of other people for a bunch of other actors (among them Matthew Broderick and Patrick Swayze) before Paul Verhoeven got his hands on it and said, “Fock Matthew Brodereek, thees ees un Arnolt Schvarseenayger mooffie, get dat mudderfucker on de phone.” Like a lot of Phil Dick it has to do with memory and identity, specifically in this case an ordinary guy named Doug Quaid who wants to have extraordinary memories.

Well . . . as ordinary as a guy played by Arnold Schwarzenegger and married to Sharon Stone can be. First red flag. This guy thinks he leads an ordinary existence? Okay, keep watching. Arnold wants, for some inexplicable reason, to take a vacation on Mars, even though his wife reminds him Saturn is a much better vacation spot and there are “long space cruises . . . the kind with nothing to do,” except, as her tone implies, have sex with Sharon Stone. A normal man would say “I'll get the tickets, you pack,” but Arnold just goes to work. Red flag two: is he gay? Shut it, he's Arnold. Keep watching.

Arnold eventually decides to go to Rekall, a place he saw an ad for on TV on the subway (it's the few-cha, baby!) “vair dey sail doze fake memories,” but his co-worker on the construction site cautions him against it, as a buddy of his “tried one of their special offers . . . nearly got himself lobotomized . . . don't fuck with your brain, pal, it ain't worth it!” Arnold, however, goes anyway.

An awesomely sleazy salesman talks Arnold into “the latest thing in travel, we call it the ego trip.” So Arnold gets strapped into the implant chair, where they prepare to give him the memory of being a secret agent on Mars. The techie looks at the program and says, “That's a new one . . . blue sky on Mars . . .” Arnold specifies that the chick he wants to remember fucking looks like Rachel Ticotin (who's already popped up in a dream sequence). But then:

“It looks like we've got another schizoid embolism.”
--Dr. Lull

Oh shit. Arnold flips out (“My name is not Quaid!”), and it takes everyone in the place to hold him down and knock him out. Apparently, he really is a secret agent, and from what Michael Ironside says later after chasing Arnold through the subway (a chase many civilians pay for with their lives), he used to work on Mars.

Turns out nothing's what Arnold thought it was. Sharon Stone was a plant by The Agency to make sure Arnold's memory erasure worked. She's fucking Michael Ironside, who it turns out is the head enforcer for none other than . . . Ronny Cox, Mars Administrator Vilos Cohaagen (nifty touch, having a Dutch bad guy). Arnold left a whole bunch of money and toys for himself, as previous self Hauser, along with a message explaining everything.

Arnold/Hauser: “You are not you. You are me.”
Arnold/Quaid: “No shit . . .”

Since the message ends with the firm entreaty “Git yo ass to Maahhhz,” Arnold gets his ass to Mars, where in short order he befriends a chatty cabbie and meets up with the Resistance, run by a possibly mythical figure named Kuato. (“they think he's fucking George Washington.”), but more concretely represented by Arnold's ex-girlfriend, hooker Melina, played by Rachel Ticotin, the literal woman of his dreams. And a whole bunch of mutants (courtesy of radiation that Ronny Cox was too cheap to do anything about). In fact, Rachel Ticotin is the only non-mutant local Arnold meets on Mars.

So Arnold's chilling in his hotel room, when a doctor from Rekall knocks on his door, to tell him that all that has transpired thus far is part of the “delightful vacation” Arnold bought. The doctor brings out Sharon Stone, who urges Arnold to listen to the doctor and take the pill he gives Arnold. Alas, Arnold sees a bead of sweat roll down the doctor's face, and so Arnold shoots him. Sharon Stone then brings in a bunch of guys with guns, kicks Arnold in the balls, and has him dragged along the hotel corridor unconscious until Rachel Ticotin shows up, shoots Sharon Stone's dudes, and then the two of them have a fuckin hawt chick fight, which ends with Arnold, after Sharon Stone, temporarily disarmed but reaching for her second gun, says, “But, we're married.” Arnold shoots her.

“Consider that a divorce.”

Arnold meets Kuato, who like all the mutants on Mars is psychic, and discovers that the Big Secret Ronny Cox is hiding, and part of the reason he wants Arnold dead, is that they found “some alien shit” deep inside a mine, and said alien shit is capable of—through some very fictional science-fiction science—melting Mars' ice core (look, I just said it was bullshit, simmer down) and providing Mars with a breathable atmosphere. Sounds great, right? No, no, no. Silly rabbit, Ronny Cox's whole power structure is built on charging Martians for air. Now that's a villain, baby, making people pay for air.

In the middle of this, Michael Ironside and a bunch of henchmen smash into the Resistance headquarters, and Arnold, Kuato, Rachel Ticotin, and the cabbie all escape . . . or they do until the cabbie reveals himself to be a collaborator and machine guns Kuato to death. Ronny Cox can't resist the temptation to gloat. He reveals to Arnold that his current identity—Quaid—was a plot cooked up by Ronny Cox and Arnold's previous identity—Hauser—so that the psychic mutants wouldn't know he was a plant. To really twist the knife, he shows Arnold a video of Hauser telling Quaid “sorry for all that shit I put us through, but hey, what are friends for?” and “That's my body you've gut theya. And I wonnit back.” And so they drag Arnold and Rachel Ticotin to be mind-wiped and reprogrammed.

Of course it doesn't work, because Arnold and Rachel Ticotin kill all the scientists and escape, whereupon they kill Michael Ironside (memorably) and all his henchmen and head to the alien atmosphere gadget to turn it on, only Ronny Cox interrupts them. They end up getting sucked into the inhospitable Martian outdoors, although Arnold does turn the alien atmosphere gadget on, and although Ronny Cox asphyxiates, Arnold and Rachel Ticotin are fine, as are what few non-machine-gunned Martians left, free to appreciate Mars' new blue sky.

Rachel Ticotin: It's like a dream.
Arnold: I just hadda terrible thought . . . vut if dis is a dreeeeeam?
Rachel Ticotin: Then kiss me quick before you wake up.

And the movie, as movies should, ends with the hero kissing the girl as the music swells, but Paul Verhoeven, tricky motherfucker that he is, fades to white, leaving us to ask the question . . . was it a dream? Having the balls to end a mega-budget action movie on an ambiguous note earns you a lot of style points around these parts, and Paul Verhoeven is nothing if not ballsy.

Reasons Total Recall kicks ass:

(1-5) See reasons Robocop kicks ass.
(6) Unless you've seen it before, the plot twists are genuinely surprising. The script is really, really good, which is a pleasant surprise considering about five guys get writing credits.
(7) Young Sharon Stone = hell yeah. See part two for further expansion on this idea.

Because this is running a little long, we will rejoin Mr. Verhoeven's career in Part Two: The 90s!