Basic Instinct (1992)
After Verhoeven's massive commercial success with SF with the above-mentioned titles, he decided to change things up a bit. Revisiting his earlier exploration of sex in his Dutch work, Verhoeven teamed up with screenwriter Joe Eszterhas for an erotic thriller called Basic Instinct.Eszterhas had a couple hits under his belt as well—Flashdance, Jagged Edge—that also dealt with matters of the loins, and his script for Basic Instinct sold for a then-record $3 million. Verhoeven had the script re-written extensively, then Eszterhas did rewrites of his own so he wouldn't get killed by the LGBT community, then they ended up basically going back to the original script. Then there were casting problems: every actor and actress in Hollywood turned down the male and female leads, which eventually went to Michael Douglas (who, although taking the part, demanded even more rewrites) and old Total Recall hand Sharon Stone.
Basic Instinct was notorious at the time of its release (bi and gay women objected for some odd reason to every woman in the movie except the Mexican maid being a bisexual sociopath), which led to massive commercial success. It's not hard to see why in the finished product: Verhoeven's typically flamboyant blend of dangerous sex and vivid violence, as meticulously crafted and smoothly executed a piece of craft as you'll ever see in Hollywood.
We open with a scene of a man and woman having very athletic sex. The woman's face is obscured, and has the same slender build every major female character we encounter shares, to give an element of mystery as to who she is (spoiler: the actress in the scene is Sharon Stone). At the point of climax, the woman leans way back, grabs an icepick, and goes berserk stabbing the shit out of the guy.
Enter homicide cops Michael Douglas and George Dzundza. The deceased is a retired rock 'n' roll star with political connections, which Distict Attorney's representative Chelcie Ross tensely reminds Michael Douglas, upon Michael Douglas' discovery of cocaine at the scene. Douglas and Dzundza go to interrogate the deceased's girlfriend, Sharon Stone.
They go over to her place (Dzundza: “Ain't that sweet, they got his and hers Picassos.” Michael Douglas: “[Dzundza], I didn't even know you knew who Picasso was.” Dzundza: “Sure, [pointing to signature], it says so right here”) and meet who they think is Sharon Stone, but who turns out to be her similarly slender though slightly less blonde “friend,” Roxy.
Douglas and Dzundza then meet the not-terribly-distraught Sharon Stone at her beach house, whereupon she and Michael Douglas exchange repartee and establish sexual tension. Back at the station, Michael Douglas has a meeting with shrink Jeanne Tripplehorn (with whom he's had an affair, and who though a brunette has a very similar physical build to both Sharon Stone and Roxy). Then, the cops all compare notes and discover that Sharon Stone has, aside from her looks and talents for repartee, a) a genius IQ, b) a double major in psychology and literature, which leads to c) she's a successful writer of psychosexual potboilers, one of which features a retired rock 'n' roll star who gets murdered by his girlfriend.
And so Michael Douglas and George Dzundza go to bring Sharon Stone in for questioning. She “accidentally” leaves an old newspaper about Michael Douglas having killed a couple tourists, and lets Michael Douglas see her naked as she's changing (a very accommodating hostess, it must be said), and they head into the station for the movie's most famous scene, wherein Ms. Stone crosses and uncrosses her legs in such a way that the whole room full of cops interrogating her get to see her chocha. She passes a lie detector test re: her guilt in the murder, though Michael Douglas expresses doubt as to what that proves. He then volunteers to drive her home—leading to more repartee—before joining George Dzundza and his lieutenant at a bar, where Michael Douglas has his first drink in rather a while.
This arouses the interest of smarmy Internal Affairs cop Daniel von Bargen, who attempts to provoke Michael Douglas into some untoward display of violence, which bait Michael Douglas takes before Jeanne Tripplehorn intervenes and gets him out of there. Back at her place, Michael Douglas' demons are let loose, as they have brutal, unpleasant sex. Jeanne Tripplehorn attributes this to Sharon Stone's influence, and it transpires they knew each other in college. She kicks Michael Douglas out.
Michael Douglas gets to know Sharon Stone a little bit more, as it turns out she's basing a character in her newest book on him. He discovers that she has a history of befriending violent, dangerous people, and soon finds that she's manipulating him, and knows things about him that he only told Jeanne Tripplehorn.
Pissed, Michael Douglas confronts Jeanne Tripplehorn, who, terrified, tells Michael Douglas that IA schmuck Daniel von Bargen extorted the file out of her. Redirecting his pissedness, Michael Douglas confronts Daniel Von Bargen and tries to beat the shit out of him in front of the whole IA office before Skinner from the X-Files puts a gun to his head and gets him to leave.
Michael Douglas then goes home (to his apartment with a beautiful view of the Transamerica Pyramid that there is no motherfucking way a San Francisco cop could afford, and if he could, he would deserve to have IA up his ass) and gets drunk. While he does so, someone kills Daniel von Bargen in such a way that it looks like Michael Douglas did it, and he's temporarily relieved of duty pending an investigation.
Seeing that he now has more leisure time, Sharon Stone asks Michael Douglas to meet her at a nightclub. He arrives to find Sharon Stone and Roxy doing what, at that time, was probably the dumbest dance in the history of cinema (until the next movie we're going to talk about). He follows Sharon Stone around the club, almost catches her doing coke in the ladies' room, and eventually dances with her, and they go back to her place.
Cue one very long and involved sex scene (an on-set source insists “They straight up fucked in front of everybody”), after which Michael Douglas has a conversation with Roxy—who was watching—in the bathroom where he declares the night's diversions “the fuck of the century.” Roxy is not pleased, and storms out. The next morning, Sharon Stone warns Michael Douglas that he's in over his head, but he's like, hey, fuck it, I'm Michael Douglas in typical guy-who-just-got-laid swagger.
Roxy, unfortunately, doesn't just let it drop, and attempts to run Michael Douglas over with her car, but he as the hero does some fancy driving and it's Roxy who ends up dive-bombing into a conveniently placed rock quarry and dying. Sharon Stone is devastated, and Michael Douglas fucks her because he's caring and sensitive like that. Cuddling afterwards, Sharon Stone complains about her luck with women--Roxy being only the latest girlfriend with problems--and gives Michael Douglas a roundabout hint that leads to him discovering that she used to date Jeanne Tripplehorn in college. AND THE PLOT THICKENS.
Michael Douglas gets two stories from Jeanne Tripplehorn and Sharon Stone viz a vis the affair: they each say the other one dyed her hair, dressed like her, stalked her. Who to believe? Well, after a bit more detective work, Michael Douglas discovers that Jeanne Tripplehorn's ex-husband was murdered and that Jeanne Tripplehorn—who claimed Sharon Stone was the only woman she ever shtupped—had a girlfriend on the side but there was insufficient evidence linking her to the crime. Then, on top of everything else, Sharon Stone breaks up with him, citing completion of her book.
His mind swirling with possibilities (and a fair amount of whiskey, more than likely), Michael Douglas tags along when George Dzundza gets an anonymous phone call from someone claiming to know all about Sharon Stone/Jeanne Tripplehorn back in the day. However, while waiting for him, Michael Douglas realizes that George Dzundza is walking into a trap, and he tears ass inside to try and stop it, but George Dzundza gets butchered with an icepick by an unseen assailant of slender build. Michael Douglas discovers Jeanne Tripplehorn wandering around. She claims to have been summoned by the same anonymous caller who set up George Dzundza, but Michael Douglas is convinced it's her, and when she refuses to take her hand out of her pocket, he lights her up. As she's dying, he sees that she was going for the weird-looking keychain she kept his key to her apartment on. He's devastated: another mistaken shooting.
But is it? The cops find all kinds of shit all over the place implicating Jeanne Tripplehorn in not only George Dzundza's death, but all the carnage thus far. Huh. His conscience soothed, Michael Douglas goes back to his place, to find Sharon Stone, in classic noir/cop movie fashion, in his apartment without a key, but instead of being suspicious, he buys her tearful “I don't want to lose you” bit and they fuck once more. Afterwards, he romantically inquires if she wants to “fuck like minks, raise rug rats, and live happily ever after.” She demurs, “I hate rugrats,” so Michael Douglas, open-minded progressive that he is, says “Okay, fuck like minks, forget the rug rats, and live happily ever after.” Sharon Stone makes an ominous gesture down behind the bed, but reaches for him, her hand empty, and they reconvene the fucking. Fade to black. But then . . . we fade up, and pan down . . . and see an icepick. WHAT THE FUCK????????
Much like Total Recall, the ambiguous ending is a huge asset here, something to talk about as you leave the theater (or stop the DVD). You could infer that either a) Sharon Stone is just into kinky sex and put the icepick there for a little danger or b) Sharon Stone was the killer all along and set up Jeanne Tripplehorn. Each has ample basis. Sadly, a sequel was made years later when Sharon Stone needed money where it's (apparently, I've never been bored enough to watch it) said, she's the killer, she killed Michael Douglas, ambiguity ruined. Oh, well.
Reasons Basic Instinct kicks ass:
(1) Proof that Paul Verhoeven is a masterful director. The script is the fuckin medal ceremony of the Special Olympics—seriously, it's practically unreadable—but in the hands of an entertainer as skilled as PV, with the energetic acting style he directs his cast to follow, elegant steadicam shots, and peerless pacing, Basic Instinct is a real nail-biter.
(2) The sex, while ridiculous and warrants the always-redundant-in-a-Verhoeven-picture descriptor “over the top,” is nonetheless not gratuitous and reveals character. Granted, there are other ways to reveal character than to have the guy tear the woman's clothes off or have the woman tie the guy up with a silk scarf. But still.
(3) Warrants mention with Total Recall and Casino as the only good performances of Sharon Stone's career (older Sharon Stone afficionados might protest “but she was great in Irreconcilable Differences,” but that argument falls apart when one considers that Irreconcilable Differences sucks).
(4) Every movie where Michael Douglas makes the Michael Douglas Face is a classic and awesome, and he makes it in just about every other scene in this movie. The Michael Douglas Face, if any explanation is indeed necessary, occurs when Michael Douglas is either pissed off, fucked up on drugs or booze, or sexually frustrated. First, his eyes shift, then his face contorts, then his mouth starts shaking, then he usually throws the other actor in the scene as far across the room as he can. The Michael Douglas Face is usually an indication that you should leave. (See also Fatal Attraction, Black Rain, Disclosure, Traffic, etc etc).
(5) James Rebhorn and Stephen Tobolowsky have cameos. Not to mention Mitch (Skinner) Pileggi, kind of a poor man's James Rebhorn if he hadn't been Skinner. Newman shows up. Chelcie Ross, whose connection to The Last Boy Scout confers respect. Actually, back to the top of this point—James Rebhorn's presence in any movie, no matter how stupid, means that movie is at least awesome on one level.
Showgirls (1995)
I'm in slightly shaky territory here, since I've only seen Showgirls twice, and to recap the plot would cause not only every reader of this blog to commit suicide—and I really like all of you for being interested in this blog so that's not a happy thought—but the Internet itself to possibly melt. But, suffice to say, Paul Verhoeven's attempt to recapture the magic of Basic Instinct with screenwriter Joe Eszterhas was unsuccessful.
Well, maybe. It's all a matter of perspective. Sometimes a fun movie experience involves a good movie, with good acting, good writing, good direction, all that kind of thing. Other times, a fun movie experience involves a very bad movie. A few months ago, I was fortunate enough to be hanging out with about a dozen friends after a read-through of a play at a nice, spacious apartment with a large HDTV. My friend whose place it was suggested that we watch The Room. Her boyfriend nodded quietly and got out the bowl and a large-ish bag of weed. I considered the situation; having seen The Room once when straight I could only imagine how amazing it would be high. Things being what they were I decided to let consensus dictate my vote (I'm not pushy), which fortunately was universally “yea” since there were people there who hadn't yet seen it. And so we watched what very well may be the worst movie ever made, while higher than giraffe ass. And it was good.
Since Tommy Wiseau did not direct Showgirls (as far as we know), I'll resist the temptation toward exegesis of The Room at the moment (but if you haven't seen it, see it with a roomful of people who've seen it already, preferably with your mind-altering substance of choice) and segue into the subject at hand by saying that Showgirls is almost as bad as The Room. Even the logline is hilarious: a small-town girl goes to Vegas with dreams of dance stardom. Wow.
I guess the box-office for Basic Instinct must have been impressive ($350 mil worldwide would still be good today but in 1992 it was nuckin' futs), since even the dumbest executive had to realize that with this premise and this writer-director team, who flat-out said even before one word was written that they were delivering it as an NC-17, greenlighting this essentially meant giving two crazy, horny guys $45 million to go get lapdances (at the very least) in Vegas for six months.
Looking at the script that resulted, that very well could have been what a good three-quarters of the budget went toward. Everything in it—even those bizarre sets for the dance productions—looks cheap, which isn't Vegas. The thing about Vegas that's crazy is that everything is gaudy and tacky, but when you look at stuff up close you realize, “wait, that's real gold . . . that's real marble . . . holy shit there's a lot of money in this town.”
It's not like the cast was all that expensive, either. Kyle MacLachlan is probably the most famous person in it—the injustice of Gina Gershon not being the biggest star in the universe is not the issue here, Dude—and even his rate probably wasn't terribly high in the mid-90s. But when you consider the kind of shit this movie had in it, it's no wonder big-ticket movie stars wanted nothing to do with it. Consider the following:
---The lap dance scene where Elizabeth Berkeley basically fucks Kyle MacLachlan through his trousers while Gina Gershon smiles and gets squirmy. Shot and blocked horrendously, kind of like a tweaked-out thirteen year old who'd never seen a girl naked, let alone ever been to a strip club, was directing.
---The swimming pool scene where Elizabeth Berkeley actually fucks Kyle MacLachlan and looking, at the point of orgasm, like Daryl Hannah after she gets shot by Harrison Ford in Blade Runner. Makes Sharon Stone's orgasms from impossible positions in Basic Instinct look like cinema verite.
---The scene when Elizabeth Berkeley expresses her rage by angrily squirting ketchup on her french fries.
---The ridiculous “big time” production numbers, with naked women coming out of volcanoes and all that jazz. Crazy enough real shit happens in Vegas, man, you can see tigers eat homosexuals onstage in Vegas for fuck's sake.
---That really long scene that happens between the opening titles and the closing credits.
Being as I am in a near-constant internal battle between conflicting impulses, polar aesthetic opposites, and the crushing existential questions about the defensibility of the kind of things I find entertaining, Showgirls is an inconstant pleasure for me. It is, variously, a shitty movie I can giggle at while high, a near-fatal blow to the career of one of my favorite directors, and simultaneously a horribly disappointing missed opportunity and a movie that had it not existed would deprive the world of great joy. It's hard for me to fully appreciate it as a cult classic—after flopping in the box office, Showgirls went on to earn very healthily on home video—when one considers that in flopping at the box office, Showgirls singlehandedly destroyed the NC-17 rating as a commercially viable option, thus reinforcing the de facto censorship Hollywood employs by insisting directors bring everything in at the very most an R. They turn around and say “but the NC-17 rating is commercial suicide,” forgetting that only one movie has ever gotten wide release as an NC-17: Showgirls. If Paul Verhoeven and Joe Eszterhas had managed to get their heads out of their asses and spent five to ten minutes a day without hardons during the creative process, maybe there would be a viable nationwide forum for pictures with adult and transgressive themes. Or maybe not. Someone else probably would have fucked it up even if Showgirls actually had been good (as opposed to so bad it's good) and made money in theaters.
Even managing to put dollars and cents aside, there's still the problem of a movie about sex that's 131 minutes long where the sexiest thing in it is a couple lingering shots of Gina Gershon with her lips parted and a twinkle in her eye (which is pretty sexy, but still). I mean, there is porn, fine, I concede. But look: I'm an immature douchebag with an occasionally sophomoric attitude about sex, and when I can say someone's an immature douchebag with a sophomoric attitude about sex, they done fucked up. Shame on you, Paul. Shame on you, Joe.
Well, maybe. It's all a matter of perspective. Sometimes a fun movie experience involves a good movie, with good acting, good writing, good direction, all that kind of thing. Other times, a fun movie experience involves a very bad movie. A few months ago, I was fortunate enough to be hanging out with about a dozen friends after a read-through of a play at a nice, spacious apartment with a large HDTV. My friend whose place it was suggested that we watch The Room. Her boyfriend nodded quietly and got out the bowl and a large-ish bag of weed. I considered the situation; having seen The Room once when straight I could only imagine how amazing it would be high. Things being what they were I decided to let consensus dictate my vote (I'm not pushy), which fortunately was universally “yea” since there were people there who hadn't yet seen it. And so we watched what very well may be the worst movie ever made, while higher than giraffe ass. And it was good.
Since Tommy Wiseau did not direct Showgirls (as far as we know), I'll resist the temptation toward exegesis of The Room at the moment (but if you haven't seen it, see it with a roomful of people who've seen it already, preferably with your mind-altering substance of choice) and segue into the subject at hand by saying that Showgirls is almost as bad as The Room. Even the logline is hilarious: a small-town girl goes to Vegas with dreams of dance stardom. Wow.
I guess the box-office for Basic Instinct must have been impressive ($350 mil worldwide would still be good today but in 1992 it was nuckin' futs), since even the dumbest executive had to realize that with this premise and this writer-director team, who flat-out said even before one word was written that they were delivering it as an NC-17, greenlighting this essentially meant giving two crazy, horny guys $45 million to go get lapdances (at the very least) in Vegas for six months.
Looking at the script that resulted, that very well could have been what a good three-quarters of the budget went toward. Everything in it—even those bizarre sets for the dance productions—looks cheap, which isn't Vegas. The thing about Vegas that's crazy is that everything is gaudy and tacky, but when you look at stuff up close you realize, “wait, that's real gold . . . that's real marble . . . holy shit there's a lot of money in this town.”
It's not like the cast was all that expensive, either. Kyle MacLachlan is probably the most famous person in it—the injustice of Gina Gershon not being the biggest star in the universe is not the issue here, Dude—and even his rate probably wasn't terribly high in the mid-90s. But when you consider the kind of shit this movie had in it, it's no wonder big-ticket movie stars wanted nothing to do with it. Consider the following:
---The lap dance scene where Elizabeth Berkeley basically fucks Kyle MacLachlan through his trousers while Gina Gershon smiles and gets squirmy. Shot and blocked horrendously, kind of like a tweaked-out thirteen year old who'd never seen a girl naked, let alone ever been to a strip club, was directing.
---The swimming pool scene where Elizabeth Berkeley actually fucks Kyle MacLachlan and looking, at the point of orgasm, like Daryl Hannah after she gets shot by Harrison Ford in Blade Runner. Makes Sharon Stone's orgasms from impossible positions in Basic Instinct look like cinema verite.
---The scene when Elizabeth Berkeley expresses her rage by angrily squirting ketchup on her french fries.
---The ridiculous “big time” production numbers, with naked women coming out of volcanoes and all that jazz. Crazy enough real shit happens in Vegas, man, you can see tigers eat homosexuals onstage in Vegas for fuck's sake.
---That really long scene that happens between the opening titles and the closing credits.
Being as I am in a near-constant internal battle between conflicting impulses, polar aesthetic opposites, and the crushing existential questions about the defensibility of the kind of things I find entertaining, Showgirls is an inconstant pleasure for me. It is, variously, a shitty movie I can giggle at while high, a near-fatal blow to the career of one of my favorite directors, and simultaneously a horribly disappointing missed opportunity and a movie that had it not existed would deprive the world of great joy. It's hard for me to fully appreciate it as a cult classic—after flopping in the box office, Showgirls went on to earn very healthily on home video—when one considers that in flopping at the box office, Showgirls singlehandedly destroyed the NC-17 rating as a commercially viable option, thus reinforcing the de facto censorship Hollywood employs by insisting directors bring everything in at the very most an R. They turn around and say “but the NC-17 rating is commercial suicide,” forgetting that only one movie has ever gotten wide release as an NC-17: Showgirls. If Paul Verhoeven and Joe Eszterhas had managed to get their heads out of their asses and spent five to ten minutes a day without hardons during the creative process, maybe there would be a viable nationwide forum for pictures with adult and transgressive themes. Or maybe not. Someone else probably would have fucked it up even if Showgirls actually had been good (as opposed to so bad it's good) and made money in theaters.
Even managing to put dollars and cents aside, there's still the problem of a movie about sex that's 131 minutes long where the sexiest thing in it is a couple lingering shots of Gina Gershon with her lips parted and a twinkle in her eye (which is pretty sexy, but still). I mean, there is porn, fine, I concede. But look: I'm an immature douchebag with an occasionally sophomoric attitude about sex, and when I can say someone's an immature douchebag with a sophomoric attitude about sex, they done fucked up. Shame on you, Paul. Shame on you, Joe.
Fortunately, Joe Eszterhas no longer gets paid so much for his scripts that he forgets to revise . . . actually, he doesn't get paid anything anymore. But listening to him talk is awesome. The man can tell a story, even if he's had his problems writing them. And Paul Verhoeven once again pulled himself up by his wooden shoes (now carved by Gucci) and made a truly awesome comeback in fairly short order . . . for more on that, continue to Part 3 of this ridiculous, unwieldy look at one arbitrarily chosen period in his career!
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