Latest news with #Showgirls
Telegraph
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Men are punching the air at the prospect of a Basic Instinct remake
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.
Daily Tribune
27-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Tribune
Gina Gershon almost broke Tom Cruise's nose
Bang Showbiz | Los Angeles Gina Gershon almost broke Tom Cruise's nose when he tickled her during a love scene. The 63-year-old actress appeared opposite the Top Gun star in 1988 movie Cocktail and she's revealed she accidentally kicked him in the face and left him covered in blood while they were filming a romantic scene in bed together. She told the Guardian newspaper: 'I almost broke his nose. I had never done a love scene before and it was going to be with Tom Cruise. I thought: God, I get paid for this. He was so cute. I had a crush on him immediately. He was very protective and very much a gentleman, saying: 'Let's keep you covered.' He was very concerned ... 'I'd told him I was very ticklish, because he had started to tickle me earlier. I said: 'Just don't do that. I lose control because I was tortured as a child by my brother'. 'Right before the take, he was down there and grabbed my waist in a tickly, sweet manner. I didn't mean to, but I had a kneejerk reaction right into his nose. 'It was full of blood. I thought: I just broke Tom Cruise's nose.' Gershon admits she felt terrible about the accident and feared she'd never work in Hollywood again - but Cruise was very 'kind' and 'sweet'. She added: ' I [thought I] will never work in Hollywood again. I was mortified because I really kicked him good. I didn't mean to. 'He said: 'Nope. My bad. You warned me.' I remember thinking: this guy is a movie star. He deserves everything he gets. 'He was just so kind and so sweet with me in a situation where I was quite vulnerable.' Gershon also starred in 1995 erotic drama Showgirls and she previously admitted she was terrified for her career after the movie bombed at the box office. She told The Independent newspaper: 'I realised I have a lot of PTSD around that movie ... They were like, this is gonna be huge – but I knew it was going to be a disaster.
Perth Now
20-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Perth Now
Gina Gershon almost broke Tom Cruise's nose
Gina Gershon almost broke Tom Cruise's nose when he tickled her during a love scene. The 63-year-old actress appeared opposite the Top Gun star in 1988 movie Cocktail and she's revealed she accidentally kicked him in the face and left him covered in blood while they were filming a romantic scene in bed together. She told the Guardian newspaper: "I almost broke his nose. I had never done a love scene before and it was going to be with Tom Cruise. I thought: God, I get paid for this. He was so cute. I had a crush on him immediately. He was very protective and very much a gentleman, saying: 'Let's keep you covered.' He was very concerned ... "I'd told him I was very ticklish, because he had started to tickle me earlier. I said: 'Just don't do that. I lose control because I was tortured as a child by my brother'. "Right before the take, he was down there and grabbed my waist in a tickly, sweet manner. I didn't mean to, but I had a kneejerk reaction right into his nose. "It was full of blood. I thought: I just broke Tom Cruise's nose." Gershon admits she felt terrible about the accident and feared she'd never work in Hollywood again - but Cruise was very "kind" and "sweet". She added: " I [thought I] will never work in Hollywood again. I was mortified because I really kicked him good. I didn't mean to. "He said: 'Nope. My bad. You warned me.' I remember thinking: this guy is a movie star. He deserves everything he gets. "He was just so kind and so sweet with me in a situation where I was quite vulnerable." Gershon also starred in 1995 erotic drama Showgirls and she previously admitted she was terrified for her career after the movie bombed at the box office. She told The Independent newspaper: "I realised I have a lot of PTSD around that movie ... They were like, this is gonna be huge – but I knew it was going to be a disaster. "I was always happy with my work in it, but I knew that it was not going to be what people thought it would be. And I was scared, so I just told my agents, 'Get me another job before Showgirls comes out. I need to show that I really am an actress'." However, she's pleased the film - which follows a woman who hitchhikes to Las Vegas to pursue her dreams of being a showgirl - is being seen in a new light these days. She added: "Showgirls was shunned, but now it's 30 years later, and screenings of it are selling out, and people love it."
Irish Independent
18-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
Gina Gershon: ‘People like to cast me as a hardcore, motorcycle-riding, lesbian, man-killing demon'
Call it a classic Gina Gershon moment – simultaneously intimidating and ridiculous, and acted with tongue firmly in cheek. This is a skill that she cultivated on the set of Paul Verhoeven's brilliant 1995 mess Showgirls, when she realised that the only way to avoid going down with that particular sinking ship was to recite every line like the drag queens she could sense would eventually embrace it. But Showgirls is just one wild entry in a career full of them: her turn as a hitwoman in Face/Off; as the rich girl who woos Tom Cruise in Cocktail; as the trailer-park depressive terrorised by Matthew McConaughey in the bleak Killer Joe. She played Donatella Versace in a made-for-TV biopic, as well as Larry David's Hasidic dry-cleaner lover on Curb Your Enthusiasm. And looming large above everything else is her breathtaking work in Bound, the cult neo-noir from 1996 in which she and Jennifer Tilly play girlfriends attempting a big, dangerous score. 'I definitely haven't had a typical career,' Gershon says, smiling. 'People don't quite know where to place me, or they tend to see me one way. Like, 'hardcore, motorcycle-riding, lesbian, man-killing demon – let's cast her as that'.' In fairness, she is really good at it. We're speaking over Zoom, Gershon sat in her New York apartment surrounded by art prints and photographs, all of them rammed tightly together across her walls – there's a Jean Cocteau, a Sally Mann, some paintings she's done herself. She's wearing spectacles and a green shawl, her voice as captivatingly smoky as it is in the movies. Banal as it might sound, she just seems cool. There's quite literally every chance she could have been a rock star – she comes from a family of musicians, and tells me there was a period in the 1980s when she had to make a choice between acting and music. (Prince wanted her to star in Purple Rain and become one of his muses – she turned him down.) Acting proved more immediately successful, so she's had to settle for an occasional jazz residency and being friends with Bob Dylan, Joan Jett and Lenny Kravitz. Gershon doesn't tend to mince words, and has historically been reluctant to spend too long on the subject of Showgirls, a film she didn't particularly like making and that nearly derailed her career. But now she admits she's had a change of heart on it. 'I realised I have a lot of PTSD around that movie,' she says. Gershon has been writing scripts in recent years, and it's only now that she feels able to see the film from the perspective of its makers. 'I thought, 'Oh, this is what Paul was trying to do.'' As Cristal Connors, the Machiavellian, dog-food-munching rival to Elizabeth Berkley's inexplicably volatile Vegas dreamgirl Nomi Malone, she made sparkling lemonade out of stupid lemons. She knew she had to come up with a plan B early into production, while being yanked topless up to the rafters above a stage filled with fire bowls and writhing extras. 'I'm there on this rope, thinking, 'I studied the classics',' Gershon says, laughing. ''I wanted to do Chekhov. How did I get here?'.' ADVERTISEMENT Learn more I knew it was going to be a disaster Though it's hard to imagine now, there was an assumption in the months before Showgirls' release that it would emulate the stratospheric success of Verhoeven's previous erotic thriller Basic Instinct – but Gershon was panicked. 'They were like, this is going to be huge – but I knew it was going to be a disaster,' she says. 'I was always happy with my work in it, but I knew that it was not going to be what people thought it would be. And I was scared, so I just told my agents, 'Get me another job before Showgirls comes out. I need to show that I really am an actress.'' Gershon's next project was Bound. But even getting Bound was difficult, with her agents insisting that she would ruin her career if she played a lesbian. 'So I had to leave those agents,' she says. 'I do think my career would have been much easier if I'd had agents that really got me. I've had to go through several different ones, because I just don't want to spend time playing characters I'm not invested in. It would have been nice if we were all on the same page, but at the end of the day, it's my book, and it's my story.' It has provided Gershon with one of those undeniably interesting careers, full of massive hits, cult classics and strange detours. That doesn't mean it hasn't been a tricky one to navigate, though. Potentially her greatest performance was in a 2003 film called Prey for Rock & Roll, in which she plays the gay frontwoman of an all-girl punk band – but the film barely came out, and few people have seen it. When I ask Gershon when she felt as if she'd made it as an actor, she says she's 'still waiting' – it's a joke, I think, but part of me believes her. I adore John Travolta, and I was really eager to work with him again High Rollers came about partly because of Gershon's history with Travolta, the film serving as a reunion between them 28 years after Face/Off. 'I didn't realise at first, but High Rollers is a sequel,' she says – to a 2024 movie called Cash Out – 'and someone else [Sex and the City's Kristin Davis] had played my character, but wasn't coming back.' Travolta put her name forward. 'I adore him, and I was really eager to work with him again.' And she makes the most of what was presumably a thin part on paper, wielding knives with aplomb and sassing out any number of thugs who square up to her. 'That's why they pay me the big bucks,' she jokes. As much as she likes a good action thriller, though, she would like to do more comedy in the future, and mourns a film from South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone that she was due to shoot right before Covid. She describes it as a deepfake comedy that would have satirised the Trump administration, with Gershon playing first lady Melania, someone she'd already impersonated in a series of comedy skits during the 2016 election and the first months of Donald Trump's presidency. 'But then the pandemic showed up and we had to shut down filming. And by the time we were able to film again, I think everyone was so sick of hearing about Trump that they decided to move on,' she says. The Melania skits have also stopped. 'They just started making me feel nauseous,' she says. 'All of a sudden it wasn't fun, because [the Trumps] weren't going away. Like, it was funny, but it's just not funny any more.'
Perth Now
16-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Perth Now
Gina Gershon 'suffered PTSD over Showgirls'
Gina Gershon suffered "a lot of PTSD" following the release of Showgirls. The 63-year-old actress starred alongside Elizabeth Berkley in the 1995 erotic drama film, which centres on a woman who hitchhikes to Las Vegas to pursue her dreams of being a showgirl, but Gina admits that she didn't enjoy making the much-maligned movie. She told The Independent: "I realised I have a lot of PTSD around that movie." The film was a box-office flop and was widely panned by critics. Gina now admits that she "knew it was going to be a disaster". The actress shared: "They were like, this is gonna be huge – but I knew it was going to be a disaster. "I was always happy with my work in it, but I knew that it was not going to be what people thought it would be. And I was scared, so I just told my agents, 'Get me another job before Showgirls comes out. I need to show that I really am an actress.'" Gina has hired and fired lots of different agents over the years, but the actress doesn't have any regrets about her approach. She explained: "I do think my career would have been much easier if I'd had agents that really got me. "I've had to go through several different ones, because I just don't want to spend time playing characters I'm not invested in. It would have been nice if we were all on the same page, but at the end of the day, it's my book, and it's my story." Gina believes that a lot of her projects take years to be fully appreciated, including Showgirls, which has become a cult film in recent times. The veteran actress said: "I remember I was doing Cabaret on Broadway [in 2001] and there was a whole side of a building with my face on it. That was huge! But then, of course, it goes away, and then I'm like, 'Ooh, what if I never work again?' "And my movies always take, like, 20 years to be seen. Critics loved Bound, but people were very, like, 'Let's sweep this under the rug because it's a lesbian movie and no one's gonna want to see it.' And Showgirls was shunned, but now it's 30 years later, and screenings of it are selling out, and people love it."
