Director Paul Verhoeven has a knack for producing blockbusters that thrill audiences even as censors cry foul over their sex and violence. After batting three out of the park-- Basic Instinct, Total Recall and Robocop--can the filmmaker go four for four with Showgirls?
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For the second time, film director Paul Verhoeven is about to make movie history. When he left his native Holland a decade ago to emigrate to L.A., who'd have guessed he'd reign over Tinseltown as his fellow countryman. Peter Stuyvesant, once ruled over New Amsterdam? With three back-to-back monster hits-- Robocop, Total Recall and Basic Instinct-- Verhoeven has become a force to be reckoned with.
In the latter film he made his way into cinema's history books by coaxing the film's star, Sharon Stone, to reveal more than we ever thought possible in a mainstream "Hollywood" flick. It's since become the most famous parting since Moses and the Red Sea. In the three years following Basic Instinct, Verhoeven did not make a film. But now, in his new movie, Showgirls, he seems determined to give us more than just a glimpse of private female body parts. In fact, there's said to be such copious punning to those equatorial regions that the film will be the first big-budget, major studio release to be saddled with an NC-17 rating, The film's distributor. MGM/UA, can do nothing about the rating, because Verhoeven has a final-cut contract. It's a given that there will be a roar of publicity, but in the prevailing political climate, all that din may soon be drowned out by an uproar from the Dole-ites.
"Are you getting any heat from the studio suits about the rating?" I ask.
"Not yet," says Verhoeven, who, on this June evening, is finishing up some looping at Skywalker Sound in Santa Monica. Although he was not fluent in English when he arrived in America in 1985, the 57-year-old filmmaker speaks it beautifully now,
"Doesn't an NC-17 rating mean that newspapers won't run advertisements for your movie?"
"I think that's exaggerated. There may be some newspapers in the middle of the country that won't advertise the film, but I have the feeling that it's more possible than anybody thought. I think we can convince the theater owners that this is a decent movie. It's not for 12-years-olds. But NC-17 is a responsible category. It gives filmmakers a chance to make a movie for adults." In the same breath, however, Verhoeven seems to be bracing for the outrage to come: "If there is a problem with Showgirls, it's really the reality of Las Vegas that's the problem. Why do people accept Vegas for what it is and yet have a problem with a movie that shows a slice of Vegas life? It's hypocritical. If people like [Bob] Dole say there's too much sex and violence in movies, why do the studios keep making sexy and violent movies? It's because the film industry and the sponsors on TV are attuned to the audience. And the audience wants sex and violence. They like it. Give the human mind 50 minutes of quiet in the dark and everyone would be put to sleep."
"So I gather you're not a big fan of Eastern philosophy and meditation?"
"No. I tried it when I was younger, and it didn't satisfy me," Verhoeven replies. "There's not much electricity on the path to truth. In Western society we need conflict and tension and violence [to wake us]."
Showgirls, written by Joe Eszterhas, is the story of a 19-year-old girl who works as a lap dancer in Las Vegas. For those of you unfamiliar with this form of entertainment, I'll let Verhoeven describe the job requirements: "Lap dancing is when a girl sits naked on a guy and rubs her ass against his crotch until he comes." Mmmm. Sorry I missed the auditions. The leading lap dancer-- played by Elizabeth Berkley, whose last major credit was "Saved by the Bell," a TV sitcom for the Clearasil crowd--aspires to escape this demeaning job and get into the more respectable hotel shows where she can at least wear a G-string and dance on a stage. If it all sounds a lot like Flashdance, that's no surprise--Eszterhas wrote that one too, and he's always been among our most ecological of writers.
Showgirls, like Flashdance, numbers among its cast a raft of newcomers and not-quite-household names. I ask Verhoeven whether, after directing Arnold Schwarzenegger in Total Recall and Michael Douglas and Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct, it's been a relief to work with a bunch of youngsters. Verhoeven nods and says, "Stars have a very strong position in town, and they influence the direction of the movie. If there's a conflict between the star and the director, it's hard to see how the director could win. After Total Recall and Basic Instinct, I began to look at moviemaking as overcoming obstacles. Every day there was a mountain to climb.
"Working on Showgirls was not that way at all," Verhoeven remarks. "I was working with people who aren't formed yet and who don't have an image. They aren't thinking about the consequences of doing this or doing that. I was able to mold them. It's more adventurous with young actors because you don't really know if the promise you saw in the screen test will be fulfilled. With Arnold and Michael and Sharon, you know what you're getting. With young actors, you're diving into deep water, and you don't know if you can survive. Once in a while it's good to leave everything behind and see what happens. It's inspiring, and, in a very deep, almost religious way, it's what life is about. Not knowing."
As the leading rote has sexy dances, plus love scenes with a man as well as a woman, I ask, "Did Elizabeth Berkley resist any of your choices?"
"No. She loved it. She's very free. She never had a problem with anything I proposed. Elizabeth likes to express herself sexually. She's much more open about nudity than you'd ever guess by watching 'Saved by the Bell.'" When I confess I never saw a single episode of the long-running, syndicated series, Verhoeven admits he never has either.
Kyle MacLachlan plays the male lead in Showgirls, and the early word from Verhoeven was that audiences would see ail of him. Hype historians may recall rumors prior to the shooting of Basic Instinct that indicated Michael Douglas would do frontal nudity. When I ask for an update on Kyle's willingness to bare all, Verhoeven says that, at the crucial moment of filming, MacLachlan turned out to be just as modest as Douglas, Which is to say, buns, yes--member, no.
"It's not a problem in Holland," he says, "but American actors aren't inclined to do that. There may be a couple actors who would, but I couldn't find them. So, I concentrated on the female nudity, since that's the theme of the movie."
"In making an NC-17 movie, do you feel any obligation to the studio?"
"I feel the obligation to do this movie as best as I can. If people don't like it, then the studio might have failed in judging that this was something that would bring its money back."
"What drew you to the material?"
"My interest was Vegas. And the musical numbers. And the nudity. I love nudity, especially female nudity. I love to look at naked girls. I love tits and ass, Mostly tits." I have to remind myself I'm talking to a man with a PhD in math and physics.
"Did you really have to make this an NC-17? Wouldn't the story still work if the actors wore a few more threads?"
"This is a movie about a girl who takes her clothes off. That's what attracted me. I don't do movies because I think they'll work. I do movies because the subject interests me. I could have done Robocop II and III, but the challenge is not to do that. I've never repeated myself."
"You know, Paul, I can understand why you and I would get turned on watching babes bump and grind and lap dance, but what about the female members of the audience? Are they going to plunk down seven bucks to watch this stuff?"
"I'm a male. I made this movie for myself," he says. "I can't put myself in a position to find out if it would be OK for the females. If females don't like Showgirls, maybe the movie won't succeed, but that shouldn't be a consideration when you do it."
"Maybe not for you, but it has to be a concern of the studio executives who are worried about their $35 million investment."
"Then they shouldn't have done it," Verhoeven replies. "An artist cannot do something he thinks other people might like. I think that's blasphemy in artistic terms." I can't argue with those sentiments, and I certainly admire Verhoeven's passionate defense of art and artists, but the following questions arise. Is a movie about lap dancing art? Is a man who makes a movie about lap dancing an artist? There are, of course, myriad definitions about art, but two of my favorites are Saul Bellow's ("Art has something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos") and Walter Pater's ("Art comes to you proposing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass"). Obviously, Verhoeven is using a different dictionary.
Artist or not, I wonder if this most headstrong of directors tests his movies with preview audiences.
"No," he says. "The test cards are extremely dangerous, because, to a large degree, people don't know what they think or feel when they start to fill in the cards, and they start thinking in conventional terms. That doesn't mean they haven't been touched by something they can't express at all on these cards."
"But what's wrong with the studio executives wanting some idea of the film's chances for success?"
"[Most studio executives] want to be safe. And I'm saying that's corrupt. Because in essence, you don't create for others. Creation is what you fee! inside and then put outside. It might be condemned, but that's the challenge. If you compromise after your first thought, then the compromise is throughout. If they'd had test cards on Basic instinct, the studio would have changed the ending."
"I would have too," I say. "I still don't know what happened at the end."
"The essence of the ending of the movie is that it is unclear," he insists. "That was one big thing about the movie--that was the newness of the movie. It doesn't say it's exactly this or that. There are people walking around who still think Jeanne Tripplehorn did it."
"Did she?" I ask.
"No. Sharon Stone did."
"Did the studio test Basic Instinct? Did you have final cut then?"
Verhoeven smiles and says, "I turned it in so late they couldn't test it."
"Can you take this opportunity to give me the definitive story on the movie's famous crotch shot? You know, Sharon Stone has told some interviewers that you betrayed her."
"Sharon Stone's a fucking liar. Right before the shot, she gave me her panties and said, 'These are a present for you. I don't need them.' Then she shot the scene and afterwards she checked it out on video and said, 'Looks good.' We left and never talked about it until she saw it in the movie. Then she got upset, because we were sitting there with her manager and her agent and everybody was saying, 'What?! What did you do?!' Then she came after me, and the rest is media history."
"Did she know you were going to cut it in such a way so that she'd be flashing a group of men?"
"Yes, of course. She asked me not to shoot it while the men were there, because she didn't want all those guys looking up her crotch, so I delayed that shot until the end of the day. Now she says I betrayed her. I mean, that's how she is. She knows it's not true."
"You made Sharon Stone a star, and, thus far, you're the director who has elicited her best performance. What's your secret?"
"I knew that there was this talent there which nobody had seen, and I felt this talent had to be brought out by my directing her and not just saying, 'OK, we paid you all this money... do it.' So on Basic Instinct I got inside her and in our cooperation, things came out that would not so easily come out. Of course my enormous attention to Sharon didn't help Michael feel supported by me, and there was tension because of the time I was spending with her, but Michael did his job. One take, two takes, it was there. But with Sharon, I had to get this thing out. It was deep inside, and it had to be brought out like a demon. You bring out the demon by pushing and nurturing and letting her know the demon is there. It's not a thing that can be easily controlled. I'm talking a bit mystically here, but this whole thing [between Sharon and me] was pretty strange. It's an extremely intimate process between a director and an actress, and I loved her for doing what she did. It made me happy when she could bring [the demon] out. Of course I hated her behavior sometimes, but that's because this demon can take over in real life."
"So you weren't surprised that on her next film, Sliver, one of the producers broke up his marriage when he fell in love with her?"
"No. Sharon suggests that she's there for you, and people fall for that. Ultimately, you find out you're not that important to her. I was afraid of that happening to me. If I had given in, she would have swallowed me and spit me out. I would have been her victim. If I'd gotten involved with her I'd have lost my control over her. I never would have been able to bring out what I did. I loved her, but I kept a distance. It was an intense fight, loving her and hating her at the same time. Everything I felt and everything she felt for me is in the movie. It was not consumed in bed. We got it on the screen. That's the victory. It was translated to art. That's why the film is so fucking strong. That's why there's this strange evil thing there. We didn't abuse it personal-"
"What did your wife think about all this? You've been married to the same woman for 27 years."
"Marline knew there was some very strong interference between me and Sharon. You can't hide that. I think she felt it was handled in the best way. Marline and I have a very strong relationship in an extremely seductive industry. You have to be tolerant and accept that things can be dangerous."
"Will you and Sharon Stone team up again?"
"I have a plan to work with her on a project about the Marquis de Sade. Walon Green has done a first draft."
"What role would Sharon play?"
"De Sade's mother-in-law who was in love with him and who pursued him until the end of his life even though he was more interested in her daughter. I think that would be a good role for Sharon. Maybe Elizabeth Berkley could play the daughter." Verhoevcn chuckles, then adds, "Sharon and I. with all our problems, we really had a strong relationship, and it's still there, I think. It's not something that disappears. But other than that project I haven't found a book or script where she would fit."
Although Showgirls is Verhoeven's first film since Basic Instinct, he hasn't had all that much time to seek out new projects--with or without Stone--because for much of that time, he was developing only two other films. Mistress of the Seas with Geena Davis and Crusade with Arnold Schwarzenegger. In the end, neither was made. What happened?
'The budget on Mistress of the Seas was around $75 million, and the Columbia executives felt that a movie with that high a budget could not be built around a female star," explains the director. "They wanted me to change the script and add a male star, but that wasn't what I wanted, and I told them that with Geena Davis in the lead it could have been a very successful movie, I told them they were making the wrong decision, but I couldn't convince them.
"Crusade was originally budgeted at $85 million, but the more we worked on it, the more we realized it couldn't be done for that price. I don't think anybody could make Crusade for less than $120 million." Verhoeven, who, after all, has a PhD in math, concedes that he has strong feelings about movie economics. "I've lost movies because I say this is the price," he says, "and it's the only way to do it. It's important for me to start a movie with a budget that I believe in. Because then I'll fight to make it at that price. In Europe you had to stick to the budget, because there were no studios--it was people's personal money. In Europe, you learn to be accurate."
It was also in Europe, some 50 years ago, that Verhoeven learned, first-hand, about violence. "It's not that I like violence--it's that I'm fascinated by it," he explains. "When I was five, living in The Hague, we were occupied by the Germans and there was continuous fighting. You'd be sitting there and boom!--the windows would blow up in your face because they were bombing. One block away the Germans were shooting rockets over to England. Planes crashed close to my house. You'd walk out in the morning and see dead people on the street. That was my childhood--surrounded by these incredible visual effects. When the bombs hit, we'd say, 'Great, school's out!' I think I have been so influenced by those scenes that my tolerance for violence and destruction is much higher than for a normal individual."
One last question. Does having a PhD in math mean that Verhoeven doesn't get screwed on his deals? "I got profits after Robocop even though Orion went bankrupt," he says with a big smile.
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Jeffrey Lantos profiled Joel Schumacher for the June Movieline.