Men are punching the air at the prospect of a Basic Instinct remake

Telegraph

2 days ago

I wouldn't claim Basic Instinct made me who I am, but Joe Eszterhas exerted such powerful sway over Gen X movie-goers that a part of me will always long to be Sharon Stone circa 1992: glacially blonde, provocative and 10 steps ahead of Michael Douglas's impulsive detective.
The screenplay writer rebooted the erotic noir genre, which had first been popularised by seminal films like The Maltese Falcon and Double Indemnity, with Basic Instinct going on to gross $400 million worldwide. There may be no scene more infamous in cinema than the police interrogation where Stone's crime novelist, Catherine Tramell, recrosses her sleek, bare legs to make it clear she's ditched her knickers.
Eszterhas then went full throttle with kitsch sex extravaganza Showgirls, or what I think of as 42 nd Street without clothes. The latter proved a box office flop and tanked Elizabeth Berkley's acting career, but went on to make millions via home video rentals and is now viewed as a cult classic.
These films were as key to the spirit of the wayward 1990s as grunge, waif chic, warehouse raves and the Young British Artists. Basic Instinct, in particular, was feted for its labyrinthian plotting of sexual intrigue. Tramell, who is bisexual, is suspected of murder after an icepick is used to stab her rockstar lover – although he's just one in a queue of many.
In their wake came more sophisticated film noirs such as The Last Seduction, LA Confidential and Mulholland Drive, but it was Eszterhas and Stone who set the tone for the era, with Dutch-born Paul Verhoeven in the director's chair. Somehow, nothing since has quite hit that cinematic G-spot.
This is almost certainly due to a prolonged backlash against the sexual free-for-all of that age, which birthed the Harvey Weinstein scandal and culminated in the MeToo movement in 2017. With them came woke warriors across Hollywood reigning in writers' and directors' lewder impulses.
But we may be about to witness a dramatic shift in what's deemed acceptable on our screens. It's just been announced that the octogenarian Eszterhas has signed a $2million deal with Amazon MGM to reboot Basic Instinct with a new script (he will double his fee if the movie gets made).
Judging from Eszterhas's public statement, he feels like he's ingested a giant dose of creative Viagra: 'To those who question what an 80-year-old man is doing writing a sexy, erotic thriller: the rumours of my cinematic impotence are exaggerated and ageist'. In red-blooded mode he continued, 'I call my writing partner the TWISTED LITTLE MAN and he lives somewhere deep inside me. He was born 29 and he will die 29 and he tells me his is 'sky high up' to write this piece and provide viewers with a wild and orgasmic ride. That makes me very happy.'
It's a pronouncement that has led to frenzied speculation about what the reboot will involve. William Hill have already named British actress Florence Pugh as favourite to replace Stone in the lead role, with Margot Robbie just behind. But would a 'twisted little man' plot anything so obvious, when he can toy with the modern obsession with gender identity?
Wouldn't it be more fun to make Douglas's detective a gay or bisexual woman (maybe even trans) who feels drawn against her principles to male swagger and danger? I've noted that recent literary offerings, such as Lilian Fishman's novel Acts of Service and Gillian Anderson's compilation of women's desires Want, involve gay women desiring unrepentantly heterosexual men as a sexual fantasy.
The scenario also represents the ultimate breach of modern taboos: what do women want? Straight blokes, as it turns out. Or perhaps the twistiest part of it would be no character declaring themselves bisexual, or ADHD. Perhaps Stone could star once more, giving lie to the idea that older women aren't desirable.
I have to report that several male writer friends confessed they punched the air when they read Eszterhas's statement. One told me he's on a male authors' WhatsApp group where there was jubilation at the idea men might be allowed to explore libido again. In the 1980s and 90s our artistic culture seemed dominated by straight men's exploration of sexual desire: Philip Roth, Nicholson Baker and Bret Easton Ellis let each of their twisted little men roam free, while Martin Amis's femme fatales, like Nicola Six, towered over the UK literary landscape.
But then lads' mags with their escalating objectification of women, and advertising campaigns like 1994's Wonderbra 'hello boys' billboards featuring a pneumatic Eva Herzigova, led to a feminist push-back. It's worth noting that the first two series of Game of Thrones (2011-12) were praised as drama, but slated for often violent, coercive or just gratuitous sex-scenes. There was a growing 'back in your box!' mentality amongst commissioning editors and producers, many of whom were women.
As a result, for the last two decades it's often seemed that only female writers and artists are licensed to explore their sexual imaginations in our great cultural spaces. Yet outside policed arts spaces, ever more extreme online pornography and rampant misogynist influencers – including Andrew Tate – flourish unabated.
Which begs the question: can an old hand like Eszterhas make compelling, original drama from these contradictions? On paper he has undeniable form as both a storyteller and shock-jock. However, he hasn't written a solo-authored, box office smash since Basic Instinct; you wonder if the Amazon execs have looked closely at the plot and dire reviews for Burn Hollywood Burn (his satire on the movie business, starring Eric Idle).
My experience of using ageing rogues to write on sex for the Erotic Review in the late 1990s wouldn't necessarily fill anyone with confidence. The co-producer of Beyond the Fringe, Willie Donaldson, wrote about living with a brothel madam on the Fulham Road, while the novelist and screenplay writer Simon Raven (author of Alms for Oblivion) – who in his day could have given bad-boy Eszterhas a run for his money – kept submitting short stories that focussed on intergenerational incest. I'm very broad-minded, but it's long felt to me that male erotic fantasies often have a shorter shelf-life than female ones. This helps explain why Anais Nin is still a feted writer, while Henry Miller isn't.
I can't help fretting that Eszterhas's twisted little man (some would say 'perv') may not be as fresh and youthful as he fancies. Only time and a script will tell. Meanwhile, it's worth reflecting that – for me at least – the worst-taste aspect of Basic Instinct is Michael Douglas wearing a grey v-neck sweater with nothing underneath it.