Mr. Floppy 03.22.08: Showgirls

Posted by Peter Bielik on 03.22.2008

Well, so much for the Easter theme.

I really tried to find something concerning Easter for this week's article. But there actually aren't that many interesting films made about this particular holiday (excluding the religious ones) so I just decided to go with the next best thing - tits. Lots of tits and some ass thrown into the mix just for good taste.

This week's film is one of the most notoriously known flops and bad movies out there. It has been spoofed many, many times over the years and it received a record setting 7 Razzie awards (with the director Paul Verhoeven being one of the very few in Razzie history who came to accept their award). I don't think I need any more crutches to introduce this historic piece, so without further ado, I give you:



Year of the cock-up: 1995

Budget: $45,000,000

Domestic gross: $20,350,754

Foreign gross: circa $30,000,000 or less

Worldwide gross: circa $50,350,754 or less

Paul Verhoeven is quite the controversial figure. He is well-known for his love of everything explicit. It doesn't matter if we're talking sex, violence or anything else. This may very well be the cause of being born and raised in the ultra-liberal Netherlands. Because of his liberalism, Verhoeven always had trouble pushing for his ideas when he finally broke into Hollywood. Anytime he had a chance, he came up with an idea that made the studio executives' hair turn instantly grey. For example, he wanted to shoot a scene in Basic Instinct involving Michael Douglas and a mighty erection and believe me, Verhoeven had no plans of this shot being subtle in any way whatsoever.
Of course, these kind of crazy ideas went nowhere, but the crazy Dutchman was still able to get away with explicit and violent scenes that weren't exactly the norm when it comes to mainstream American cinema. He was able to do so, because all of his American films were big hits. RoboCop, Total Recall, Basic Instinct--- no matter the controversy surrounding the films, they all were high quality material and the audiences flocked to them like moths to a light bulb.
And if you make three major box office hits in Hollywood, doors that are otherwise unmistakably locked are suddenly starting to open. So Paul Verhoeven decided he wanted to make a film that he wouldn't need to cut down to fit an R rating. What would in majority of other cases been a resounding NO from any studio, suddenly turned to an excited YES and Verhoeven was on his way. On the strength of his previous successes, Vehoeven got pre-approval in his contract with MGM to make an NC-17 movie, thus becoming the first director in Hollywood history to be granted such no-holds-barred freedom by a major Hollywood studio. He just needed a story and a script.

Joe Eszterhas worked with Verhoeven previously on Basic Instinct. The two had a falling out of sorts after the film's premiere, but have settled their differences and began thinking about what their next project could be about. Over a single lunch, the two were discussing the big MGM musicals they both loved. Verhoeven confessed he always wanted to make a musical, just not the traditional kind. Eszterhas suggested they make a film set in contemporary Las Vegas and the idea of a different musical ended up being the volcanic combination stripteases, lap dances, S&M dance numbers now known to the world as Showgirls. They had the story about a young rising star in Vegas, so the search began for a young, rising star that would be up for the part.

Because Basic Instinct worked tremendously well for Sharon Stone (i.e., it turned her into a star basically overnight), the role of Nomi Malone- the lead heroine that builds her reputation first as a stripper, then as an exotic dancer (or showgirl)- was very demanded by many young, unknown actresses. It finally went to Elizabeth Berkley, previously known mainly for her participation in the TV sitcom Saved by the Bell. Berkley, an English literature major, was only 21 years old at the time of her casting and taking on a role like this was a gamble of a lifetime for her, but she still aggressively pursued her part in the film. Before casting even began, she called producer Charles Evans and identified herself on the phone as "Nomi from Showgirls." and later she walked into director Paul Vehoeven's office declaring, "There's no one else who can play this role, so you might as well stop looking." If nothing else, the link between herself and Nomi as potential future stars was not lost on Berkley and may have contributed to the intensity of her performance.
To Berkley's misfortune however, her hopes of becoming a star did not come true and she was subjected to some of the most cruelly negative notices ever suffered by an aspiring actress. Critics described her as having "the non-personality and permanently gaping mouth of an inflatable doll" and that her dances were "absurd epileptic acts that had her moving like a rag doll in a hurricane." Some of the critics even deemed her breasts as better actors than her face. I'm not saying her performance was that of a master thespian, but damn, that's just cold.
The other important main role in the film went to Gina Gershon, who also viewed this as a chance to break out as a star. Eszterhas remembers: "I think she [Gina] did a great job. But she surprised me quite a bit, when she explained to me how much she admires my script and how it's absolutely clear to her that it's based on the antic tale about Zeus and Aphrodite. I wasn't aware of that particular connection…"
The only male character that received any recognizable attention in Showgirls was that of an entertainment manager Zack Carey which went to Kyle MacLachlan.
The script was done, so was the casting, the budget was $45 million and the director had total creative control. It probably should have gone without a single problem, but the shoot was far from easy and the atmosphere on the sets was usually very thick.

Not one of the excited actresses had an idea what's in store for them with Verhoeven. Getting used to nudity in front of the camera (and there was a lot of it) was not as easy as you may think and it took quite some time before the director was satisfied with the actresses' performances.
Some of the other problems were quite bizarre in nature. When shooting the scene with live chimpanzees, several of the girls complained that "the apes are staring at their breasts." If there's one thing you don't want on the set of a major studio film, it's a group of tit-loving chimpanzees. I hope the complaining women didn't carry on with their behaviour and sue the poor animals.

And what would a complicated shoot be without flaming arguments between the director and the actors? On Showgirls, Verhoeven and Gina Gershon in particular had much trouble getting along to the point, where Gershon threw a chair at Verhoeven. To her defense, it was quite understandable. During one scene, Gershon's acting partner was supposed to slap her ass. Verhoeven however found the slapping not "credible" enough and repeated the take over and over again until the make-up guys had to cover visible bruises on Gina Gershon's behind. Gershon remembers: "I cried at home every night. My entire body was aching, my face was burning from the glue they used to stick the little glass crystals to our faces."
Kyle MacLachlan on the other hand was asked to walk into the pool (in that infamous pool sex scene) with an erection, which is probably Verhoeven's obsession and the ultimate filmmaker's dream.
Even though the shoot was far from enjoyable, the actors gutted it out, because they were convinced they're participating in something special. They obviously were, although not in the way they imagined.

Knowing that a $45 million, NC-17-rated movie like Showgirls was a long shot for success, the studio began a massive advertising campaign. The interest of theatre audiences was piqued by a teaser that described "a movie so erotic…so dangerous…so controversial…that we can't show you a thing", followed later by a trailer playing up the fact that this was another steamy film by the Verhoeven-Eszterhas duo that had brought the world Basic Instinct: "Last time they took you to the edge. This time, they're taking you all the way." In addition to poster ads of Elizabeth Berkley's revealing cleavage and long bare leg which were displayed on airplanes, taxis, buses and on billboards over Times Square and along Sunset Boulevard, there were 250 000 copies of a promotional video trailer with sexy scenes from the film distributed to video stores for free rental. On a special Showgirls website, which initially received more than a million hits a day (quite a lot in 1995), visitors could view nude photos and chat with Berkley about the film. Berkley also appeared on David Letterman's talk show to demonstrate the art of lap dancing.
While most of the publicity focused on sex, Eszterhas promoted the film as a morality tale, taking out a full-page ad in Variety to argue that "The movie shows that dancers in Vegas are often victimized, humiliated, used, verbally and physically raped by the men who are at the power center of that world." He also complained that "It's a chauvinistic position to advertise Showgirls on the sports pages, because of its more sensational aspects. I want young women to see this movie because young women will respond to this movie in the same ways that they responded to Flashdance.(which Eszterhas also wrote)" Yes, of course! And here I was thinking it's targeted at men. Silly me. A movie about strippers that is filled from top to bottom with tits and asses, plus it adds a rape as a bonus will surely be LOVED by the female audience. Eszterhas went even further when he encouraged women under 17 to use fake IDs so that they could get in to see his feminist manifest.

This multifaceted marketing push managed to break through the ban on advertising and screening NC-17 films, raising high hopes for big box office returns. Ads ran in most major markets and showings were booked at 1,388 theatres (a wide opening at the time), with only two theatre chains refusing to screen the movie. The gamble seemed to pay off.

Right after the premiere however, it was obvious that Verhoeven went probably too far. The critics were unrelenting in their bashing as Showgirls was voted by many as the worst film of 1995. The sex scene in the pool was ridiculed and called "the most embarrassing erotic scene of all time" and the rape scene was turning stomachs of moviegoers upside down.
To put it simply - theatres were empty and the producers were insane with rage. When the film received 7 Razzie awards, the producers took one last desperate attempt at saving their investment- the poster was given a makeover (I used this alternate version in this article), the movie was shown at midnight and it was advertised as being "so bad it's good". They didn't succeed. The term "Showgirls-bad" has been adopted by film critics and fans to refer to films considered guilty pleasures, or "so-bad-they're-good."

Since its release, the movie has achieved a certain cult status. MGM noticed the video release of the film was performing all right, since "trendy twenty-somethings were throwing Showgirls irony parties, laughing sardonically at the implausibly poor screenplay and shrieking with horror at the aerobic sexual encounters." It is heralded as one of the best "bad movies" of all time, and is somewhat of a camp classic. So even though the film flopped horribly, it has achieved some success over the years and to this day, the DVD release is one of MGM's Top Ten selling DVDs.
And the resurrection of the film goes on as movie critics are suddenly starting to like the film a lot more in recent years- they have even gone on the record defending Showgirls as a serious satire. Also, Quentin Tarantino is publicly praising the film and Joe Eszterhas plans to turn it into a Broadway musical.

This late blooming of Showgirls however doesn't change the fact that from that point on, no major release had a NC-17 rating as no studio is obviously brave enough to pull this kind of stunt a second time.




What went wrong with Showgirls? It's always possible that Vehoeven gave puritan America more sex than it could handle in a mainstream film. People may just have been too ashamed to attend- to be seen in public as the kind of person who would go to such a movie. This argument can be proved by the excellent revenues generated by home-movie rentals of Showgirls.
Another explanation for the film's initial failure might be that it was trying to do two contradictory things. Verhoeven basically says as much when he describes Showgirls as having „a layer of brutal realism on one hand and a layer of fairytale fantasy on the other."

Yet another reason for the failure may be the fact that the film simply stank. All the dissecting about how the movie's exposing the imorality of Las Vegas, entertainment business or whatever, may be just pretentious bullshit. There will always be people around that can find a deep meaning even in the biggest piece of crap and give you logical reasoning to support their viewpoint.

Personally, I enjoy this movie. To me, it is a bad film, but definitely not so bad to get voted as one of the worst ever. It's true that Paul Verhoeven went a bit too far in his quest to pull down all barriers concerning movie sexuality and explicity. While this may actually be an admirable goal, he certainly could have chosen a better story (script) to reach it.
His career thankfully didn't go down with this film and he has provided us with many entertaining films since then, all of them still using explicity as one of their stylistic features.

Since Showgirls was a Paul Verhoeven vehicle, I hereby award him the title Mr. Floppy.


Verhoeven is the one on the left in case som confusion occurs.

While writing this week's edition, I also realized Paul Verhoeven has made a movie that's a serious personal favorite of mine (I also believe it is criminally underrated), while at the same time it flopped at theatres. So next week, you can look forward to a another dose of inorrect material.

As a closing note, I will provide with a little something concerning Easter. A quote from one of the late greats. Enjoy and happy holidays.

"The Australians celebrate Easter the exact same way we do: commemorating the death and resurrection of Jesus by telling our children a giant bunny rabbit … left chocolate eggs in the night. Now, I wonder why we're fucked up as a race. Anybody got any idea? You know, I've read the Bible. I can't find the word "bunny" or "chocolate" anywhere in the fucking book. Where do they come up with this shit? Why not goldfish left Lincoln logs in your sock drawer? As long as you're making shit up, you know, go hog-wild. At least the goldfish with a Lincoln log on its back going across your carpet has some miraculous connotations."

- Peter