Hiro11

I read Brian Orndorf's DVD review of Showgirls - 15th Anniversary Sinsational Edition at http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=43232 and...
Have you considered that this film might be a satire? I think that everything you find repugnant about the film and about the lead actress is there deliberatly to be mocked. It's Starship Troopers for the Vegas set.

The O

Could very well be, but there's not enough evidence in the film to support an extended satire explanation. "Troopers" had little more of a wink to it, and less graphic gang rapes.

Josh Z

The casting of a lead actress who's neither attractive nor talented, but who happens to have been the star of a wholesome kiddie TV series, doesn't count? Because I'm telling you, that ain't a coincidence.

Paul Mavis

The whole "it was all a joke" defense started about 12 hours after the reviews and the b.o. numbers came in . Everything I've read on the film, from all the parties involved, stated they were dead serious about it right from the beginning.

If they had deliberately set out to make a spoof, it would never have come off that funny. That kind of funny only comes from straight-faced, spectacular miscalculation.

I saw it in the theatres, opening weekend...it's one of my most treasured memories.

Chas Speed

I also think the funny thing about the movie is that most of it isn't supposed to be funny. I don't agree with people who blame Elizabeth Berkley for the movie being a bomb. Ask yourself if this would have been a great movie if Meryl Streep had been given the lead role. She has had a decent career after the film and generally comes off ok in her post-Showgirls roles.

Josh Z

Look at every single one of Paul Verhoeven's other movies. Is there even one that isn't laced through and through with satire and irony? No, there isn't.

I have no doubt that Joe Eszterhas thought he was writing a serious script. But I can't look at any of the sex scenes in the movie or the "Goddess" stage numbers and honestly reconcile them with a director taking them seriously. There's a complete disconnect there.

Paul Mavis

Here's an interesting quote for Verhoven on Showgirls, by way of an interview from The Independent:

"Showgirls loses perspective. It becomes what it's trying to attack. 'Yeah, I know. It balances very narrowly on that line. Perhaps I didn't get anything of what I wanted. It's about exploitation, but perhaps it is really exploitative. It's possible that ultimately it went in that direction. Not all the time. I may have been seduced myself.'

If you're talking about Verhoeven seriously trying to make a statement in Showgirls about exploitation by being exploitive in an ironic fashion, that's a little convenient...particularly when he admits himself he really doesn't know what he achieved, or where his feelings and aesthetics were once he indulged in the excess during the shoot.

And in Joe Eszterhas' case, I don't think you can so easily separate him from the end result of the film by saying he was serious and Verhoeven came along and made the film something...more. Joe Eszterhas, at that point in his career, and in his working relationship with the director, didn't just hand in a script and hit the beach.

Boba Fett

I always thought the proof it was intended to be serious was the infamous Kyle Maclachlan story, where after the movie ended at the premiere he was visibly upset and was heard bemoaning, "I thought this was supposed to be an art film?"

Josh Z

Oh, come on. He may say that to distance himself from the movie after-the-fact, but there's no way anyone who participated in the lap dance or pool scenes could have honestly believed he was making an art film. Certainly not with that douchey haircut they gave him.

Josh Z

Again, look at every other Verhoeven movie. Do you think it's an unintentional coincidence that they all rely so heavily on satire and irony? What makes you think he would have approached this project any differently?

About what Verhoeven "admits"... the man was reeling from a huge flop. Of course, that's going to make anyone question himself and what he was trying to do. That's only natural. I have no doubt that he still has very conflicted feelings about the movie, and may prefer not to think about it at all anymore. But that doesn't mean that the movie's camp was unintentional when he made it.

I'm not saying that Showgirls is a "good" movie. It's clearly not. It's terrible. But it's a hugely entertaining terrible movie.

Look at Basic Instinct, their previous collaboration. That movie has an atrocious script written with the most vile misogyny, and a mystery plot that makes absolutely no sense at all. (Seriously, do the police not have DNA evidence in the bizarro alternate universe where this story is set?)

That movie works entirely because Verhoeven turns all the themes of the script on their ear. He makes the psycho killer into the hero of the piece, and turns the movie into the story of her triumph over a male-dominated society. All the men are ineffectual, weak-willed morons. The movie has a happy ending where the serial killer gets away with all her murders!

That is not what Joe Eszterhas had in mind when he wrote the script (as much as he may like to claim so in the wake of the movie's success). Certainly not based on all the other misogynistic trash he's ever written.

Josh Z

Oh, and I must also ask you to consider the "Andrew Carver" character in Showgirls -- the scumbag musician who assaults and rapes Nomi's friend. He's ultimately the biggest villain in the piece, and the symbol of all the movie's themes about fame and power corrupting. Nomi's greatest moment of triumph is the scene where she kicks the living shit out of him.

The actor that Verhoeven cast for this role looks just like Joe Eszterhas!



Coincidence? Really?

Paul Mavis

Your argument still seems to want to "rescue" Verhoeven from a terrible movie, bolstered, ironically, by you admitting the movie fails at it original intentions...whatever they may be: by identifying Verhoeven's intentions (or more correctly, your belief in what his intentions were), and claiming they're somehow elevated by a "higher" purpose -- irony or satire, two very different things, by the way -- somehow, something can be salvaged from the experience, as well as Verhoeven. And let's face it: it elevates the person who puts forth the theory, too ("I see something here no one else sees in this dreck."). Now, I'm not knocking you for doing that, Josh (I still miss you around here, buddy!) We all do that as reviewers and movie lovers (I could make a case for the original 1967 Doctor Dolittle that would make you weep...but I also realize nobody else is going to buy it for a second).

I don't think that's really necessary here with Showgirls. It's an argument that makes excuses for the film's excesses by trying to retrofit an artistic and aesthetic skew to the director's motives -- motives that are meaningless, essentially, in the face of the movie's effect on the viewer. You say he was striving for irony and satire...fine. I don't think so. But none of that matters when you actually watch that glorious disaster. Whatever worth or enjoyment the film has now, is totally dependent on its own ripe awfulness...not any supposed "higher intentions" of the director.

Josh Z

I'm never going to argue that Showgirls is a good movie. And I'm not even going to argue that the movie succeeds at whatever it was that Verhoeven thought he was doing. But I will argue that the film's excesses are (to me) clearly part & parcel with the director's known cinematic style and vocabulary, which he has used time and again in all of his other movies for the same satirical purposes.

Is Showgirls a successful satire? Not at all. The problem with it is that the "revelation" Nomi is supposed to have about the topless Vegas revue being no better than the strip club she came from isn't a revelation at all. It's just Nomi being a total dumbass.

But can you honestly look at those "Goddess" stage numbers and tell me that you think Verhoeven didn't realize he was going over the top with them? Taking into consideration the way we know he's operated in all of his other movies?

If this same movie were cranked out by some normally sedate journeyman director like a Jon Turtletaub or a Joe Johnston or what have you, for which something like this would be way out of character, you'd certainly have a point. But Paul Verhoeven has a clearly defined cinematic voice and style. Whether it succeeds or not (and it obviously doesn't), Showgirls follows a clear path from his previous movies like Katie Tippel, The Fourth Man and Basic Instinct -- all of which used wild excess and/or over-the-top degredation to take satirical pot-shots at society's sexual mores. It also derives from the same root impulse as the broad political satire in RoboCop, Total Recall, and (later) Starship Troopers.

Showgirls may be one of Verhoeven's least successful movies (artistically as well as financially), but in many respects it's very much of a piece with his others.