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Mlotek: To put it very simply to start,
I think we're still talking about "showgirls"
because we're not done with it.
Man: What're you going to Vegas for? You gonna win?
Mlotek: I don't think we're done with it
because I don't think we've figured out what "showgirls"
means as a film.
Karlman: Cristal Connors defines what Las Vegas is all about!
But the way in which we can like something
that we know is so flawed or so strange
isn't finished yet.
And one movie wears its no-17 label proudly,
and that's about all it's wearing...
A sizzling story about strippers.
Man ♪2: Many people say Hollywood is going hard-core.
Mlotek: And not only that, but the critical response to it,
we're not done really understanding that either.
The buildup for this film was long and steady,
but it didn't take long for the critics to tear it down.
“Showgirls” crossed the line which conscience
and responsible filmmaking should respect.
Mlotek: It was, like, reviled and rejected
by the arbiters of taste, as well as audiences.
Lousy movie. Very lousy acting.
I hated it.
It's kind of raw, kind of raunchy.
She can't act. Nice body, though.
She belongs on "saved by the bell."
Too much real life. Raw.
Mlotek: And it wasn't until it was embraced as something bad
or, like, silly...
Without further ado, I give you "showgirls"!
Mlotek: Or a joke...
I used to love doggy chow.
Mlotek: That it found its base,
and in finding people who were willing to mock it,
it found people who were willing to take it seriously.
So when I went back and started watching
all of Paul verhoeven's other films,
I realized how much I had missed but sort of picked up on.
All of those movies provided a framework.
Karlman: Nomi Malone is what Las Vegas is all about!
It is now 16 minutes before the hour.
There's a movie that's creating quite a buzz
in Hollywood these days,
not only because of its racy content
but also because its director is hoping
it will receive the very rating
that usually means box-office death... no-17.
Ultimately, I think this movie is about values.
It's about moral values and spiritual choices
as a young 19-year-old woman makes them.
It's about innocence and corruption.
It's about the choice not to be corrupted.
This is a role that does not come around that often,
even for, let's say, established film actresses.
You know, they always complain
that there aren't enough strong women in films,
and this so happens to be a woman so filled with passion,
so filled with strength and power and sexuality
and all these wonderful things
that I wanted to explore her on film.
People are much more inclined to think
that it is bad to portray sex,
that it's nearly criminal to portray sex,
and, of course, I think that's wrong, you know?
I think sexuality is part of our life,
and we should not be afraid of it.
Schmader: "Showgirls" is about two men
who maybe did a lot of cocaine
and found themselves drunk with power in Hollywood
after making a shitty movie about a lesbian ice-pick killer
that was a huge hit,
and they chose to deploy all that power
and Hollywood cachet on what was supposed to be a drama
about a young girl's rise to fame in Las Vegas
but ended up being kind of its own documentary
about its making.
"What?
This is what they really wanted to do?"
Mlotek: When "showgirls" was released,
I was way too young to really know anything
except what I was gleaning from reading the newspapers
or the magazines, and so I had the sensibility
that there were a lot of movies in theaters about sex
and why it was bad or dangerous.
At the same time, I was seeing
the same things play out in real life.
Schmader: I think 1995 was a pretty fraught moment
for a movie like this.
Woman: Paul verhoeven and Joe eszterhas teamed up again,
and this time they've made the most expensive no-17 film ever.
Man: "'Showgirls' is sleazy and forgettable,
a story about a hyperactive eyeliner junkie
out to rule the world."
Schmader: "Showgirls" is the type of bad movie
that inspires bad reviews
that become kind of comic set pieces of their own
because they just inspire critics to this flourish
of explaining exactly what's terrible.
Woman: "The filmmaker's incessant talk about vision,
artistry, and honest self-expression
lead one to expect a sexually explicit biopic
about the Dalai Lama.”
Man: "We don't blame verhoeven,
the director of two sleek, inventive Hollywood fantasies,
'robocop' and "total recall, ' for making this movie.
The real culprit is eszterhas, swami of the high concept."
Woman: "Elizabeth berkley, once a sitcom kid
on TV's 'saved by the bell, ' plays nomi Malone,
a tarty blonde with the brains of an appliance bulb."
Man: "When she's not being nude, unpleasant or both,
berkley tries hard to act soft and kind,
but she's about as convincing as Joan Crawford.”
Siskel.: It's not sexy at all, and she's not sexy.
She's hard around the face.
I didn't think she was particularly appealing.
I thought the other woman was more attractive.
- Gina gershon, yeah. - Yeah, more attractive.
So I don't think they have an attractive star.
They don't do anything original in the screenplay at all.
I didn't care for the film.
Woman: "If verhoeven hadn't proven that he was once capable
of making great movies, this piece of masturbation
probably wouldn't be so hard to take.”
Woman ♪2: "When a group of chimps get loose
in the showgirls' dressing room and all they do is defecate,
the film enjoys a rare moment of good taste."
Let me guess. Worst movie... "Showgirls."
- "Showgirls,” you got it. - Good guess.
- That was kind of a no-brainer. - You've been watching, huh?
Woman: "Showgirls" was also awarded
worst actress, screenplay, director and even worst song.
"Showgirls"!
Worst picture of the decade is "showgirls"!
Mlotek: Ouch.
Schmader: The first time I saw "showgirls" was in 1999,
and it was late because at the time of its release in '95,
it was just this garbage-y, misogynist movie
I would never go see.
And in 1999, my best friend mindy called,
and mindy is, like, the key art recommender of my life.
She was the one in high school who was like,
"listen to the velvet underground.
Read Margaret atwood."
And in 1999, she called and said
that she had just seen "showgirls"
and it was crucial that I rent it and watch it immediately.
It opens with nomi, who is hitchhiking
with a very, very large suitcase and rebellious leather jacket.
And even the way she holds her thumb
is like a martian came to earth
and looked up "hitchhiking" in a dictionary
and then tried to do it.
Within, like, the first six minutes,
I had so many questions.
You could sit a little bit closer if you want.
It was a bad idea.
Chill, okay?
I'm chill.
Schmader: This is the first of nomi
having kind of bizarre responses
to people who are just trying to give her a hand.
Back off, motherfucker!
Hey. Fuck off!
Whoa, sorry.
Where are you from?
Different places.
Schmader: Like, nothing can be small or boring.
Like, why touch something you can kick?
Hey! Be nice.
Get your hands off me!
Listen. You're getting $1,000 for this.
Yeah, for this. This!
I'll just pull on over.
Schmader: Why delicately pull to the side of the road
when you can actually maybe cause a entire freeway pileup?
All right?
Fuck! The fucker left!
That's my car!
I said that's my car! Stop it.
I want my fucking suitcase!
Get the fuck off my car!
Here's the stomach.
Schmader: You can't look away from "showgirls."
You'll miss something huge, like a car crash or a vomit.
Hey. Leave me alone!
Hey!
Schmader: Molly saves her life in a split second
from being crushed by a car.
The love theme comes in,
and you can't fucking believe they're trying to sell us this,
of, like, "this is the movie?
They're spiritual friends now?"
The first six minutes made mindy's point clear.
Okay, yes, it's a failed movie.
It's misogynist. It's sexist.
It's really embarrassing and terribly written.
But it adds up to something,
a type of comedy I don't think you can make on purpose
which makes it very rare and valuable.
Must be weird not having anybody come on you.
Schmader: Yeah, and I immediately wanted
to watch it with other people.
That was the thing, was the kind of,
"what the fuck?" Moments, where you're like,
"did I really hear that? Did I really see that?"
If you knew the backstory, a little bit of the dreams
for what it was meant to be,
it just made it the most poignant comedy.
I don't know how good you are, darling,
and I don't know what it is you're good at,
but if it's at the cheetah, it's not dancing.
I know that much.
You don't know shit!
I don't think it's funny.
I don't think it's funny!
Schmader: When I first screened it for friends,
none of them had seen it before.
They'd all heard about it.
And one of them was on the board
of northwest film forum,
which is our independent cinema here
and pitched me doing a hosted screening there.
And I did one night, and it worked.
Like, the audience got into it,
and they booked me for another night,
and then there was a line around the block.
And that's how the first public
making-fun-of-"showgirls™ screening happened.
Moss: Line them up.
Okay, show me your tits.
I got a topless show, for Christ sakes!
Let me see your tits.
Nayman: I mean, it was an easy target, and, you know,
I'm always really wary of critics
that think that they're shooting bull's-eyes
when the target is that big.
The angles that people tried to hit it from
were pretty safe and pretty lazy.
Very nice.
Nayman: "Showgirls" is also signaling
to fans of Paul verhoeven,
you know, that it's like his other films,
that it takes that same perspective.
My first viewing of “showgirls”
was, on one level, pretty typical
which is that I was a 14-year-old boy
when it came out, so I wanted to see it.
But I think what was atypical about that
is I was mostly interested that it had gotten zero stars
in the globe and mail,
and I did remember reading that, you know,
Friday morning newspaper
at the breakfast table with my parents.
The critics at the time who panned it,
I think, on one level it's understandable
because there are aspects of the story
and the characters and the dialogue
and just the dramaturgy of it that are outrageous
or that are excessive or that are sort of silly.
I never had a dress like that.
It'll look great on me.
Won't it?
Yeah.
Nayman: Where I think the initial reviews
reveal themselves to be pretty disingenuous
and where I start to get mad is when you read people say,
"well, and top of all this, god, it's so badly made.
Who edited this thing, you know?
Why is the film so ugly? Where's verhoeven's craft gone?"
And it's like, "well, demonstrably,
you're a fucking moron."
- Ooh, what do you think? - Oh, my goodness.
Mm-hmm.
Nayman: It is gorgeous wide-screen movie.
There's wit not just in the choreography,
but in even just the different backdrops
of the production numbers, the way that it moves from like...
At the stardust, it moves from, like,
a biblical spectacular, so it's like Cecil b. Demille,
into the biker stuff, you know, into busby Berkeley.
It's like a history of musicals and a history of exploitation.
It has these wonderfully expressionist images,
like the death's head sitting over Gina gershon's shoulder...
Miss Connors, how did you feel about the show tonight?
I think it's the best show I've ever been in.
I only hope I can do it justice.
Nayman: Or Kyle maclachlan having that evil cellphone call
against, like, this volcano with this,
you know, lava spewing in the background.
Phil, you dumb fuck. Get back up here, would you?
I know. 1 know.
Nayman: This stuff is very accomplished
and very clever and very intentional.
In terms of the three claims in my book,
you would probably put the "piece of shit” claim first
'cause that's been the order of reception,
the film that is a piece of shit
that sort of gets reclaimed as a stealth masterpiece,
not the masterpiece that over time reveals itself
to be a piece of shit like "Forrest Gump"
or "American beauty" or other really terrible movies
that, you know, it takes some time for people
to catch up to how evil and insidious they are.
You know, "showgirls" is the reverse.
You got something wrong with your nipples?
- No. - They're not sticking up.
Stick them up. What?
Play with them a little bit.
Nayman: It is tremendously and unapologetically tacky...
Pinch them a little.
You want me to do it for you? I'll do it.
Nayman: And maybe on some level bad.
Here, put some ice on them.
Nayman: But it is also, in ways that don't cancel that out,
they don't negate it, it's also very good
and clearly the work of somebody who,
at least the director, knows what he's doing,
and what he's doing is interesting.
Hey. What are you doing here?
I just did an audition.
Nayman: The "masterpiece of shit"
is that idea that it really is both at once.
And I would even go so far as to say
that the ways that they didn't get it
or bounces off of the stuff that's good on purpose
and makes the film completely singular, like nothing else.
The number of scenes
that involve mirrors in the background,
mirrors as part of the production design,
I mean, there's just a lot of visual possibilities there,
and this is a movie that's about characters
whose appearance matters.
There's a certain amount of narcissism.
You know, I think that the cheetah and the stardust,
to some extent, are mirror images of each other
or distorted mirror images of each other.
The opening scene and the closing scene mirror each other.
I mean, there's a lot of really kind of deep-core
structuring devices in the film.
There's also, of course,
the doubling of different characters,
particularly, you know, nomi and cristal.
Miss Malone, how did you feel about the show tonight?
I just hope that I can be as good as the show.
Nayman: Whether nomi is the next cristal
or cristal used to be nomi
or the two of them, you know, spend a lot of the film kind of,
you know, face-to-face, measuring each other up,
you know, nomi copying cristal.
But I also think that the mirror works in "showgirls,"
if you believe verhoeven's intent,
to hold a mirror up to society and to reflect it.
I don't think that mgm thought they were gonna fill
3,000 theaters of people going to see "showgirls"
to have reality reflected back at them.
It's sort of supposed to be an escape,
or rather you can't escape from the reality that it's about.
Shulgasser-Parker: Really? Mirrors?
Is that the big greatness of this?
You know, mirrors? Really?
Are the mirrors here better,
or is the camera spinning around 360,
is that better than "the lady from shanghai” with mirrors?
In all the years that I've been a critic,
every time I see a bad movie,
I try to give it the benefit of the doubt.
And I always wondered, you know,
"how do you sometimes get a movie with a great director,
great cast, an okay writer,
and they come up with something terrible?"
It's not on my list of worst movies ever
for exactly that reason, that it is so watchable,
but it's up there with my list of the most pathetic
in that the filmmakers themselves seem to view it now,
based on recent interviews I've read, as misunderstood
or full of overlooked virtue or value.
Truth is, "showgirls" is...
It's drearily pedestrian and mainstream.
It's an insipid kind of failure.
It pretends that the open display of body parts and sex
makes it somehow daring,
when at its shallow little heart,
it's nothing more than a cliché-ridden remake.
In its basic structure, it's as formulaic
as the usual kind of low-grade movies
that's what you've got.
But, you know, then you have
this amazing director, verhoeven,
who really knows how to make a film.
Nayman: Paul verhoeven basically invented the idea
of a Dutch commercial art cinema.
You know, his biography is really fascinating
in that he almost ended up an academic based on his studies,
and then he almost ended up a deeply religious guy
based on this early flirtation he had with the church,
and that ended.
And so verhoeven, who, you know, came out of the box
with these two very sort of bohemian sex comedies,
"business is business" and then "turkish delight,"
he was sort of a breath of fresh air
and also a bit scary, I think.
You know, the Netherlands, in my research, is not...
It's not that it's necessarily a hostile or a repressive place,
but there's a veneer of kind of grudging tolerance
to a lot of their art and to a lot of their culture,
and I think verhoeven pushed that standard for tolerance.
A film like "turkish delight” is not gonna pass unnoticed,
and it didn't.
I mean, it got an Oscar nomination,
and it only lost because francois truffaut
made "day for night" that year.
"Spetters,” which is about three young men
who want to be motorcycle-racing stars,
which is the movie that essentially got him
kicked out of the Netherlands because people found
the violence and the homophobia
and the disgust of it overwhelming,
partially because they didn't like
the picture of the country that it was painting...
Not a film that is itself homophobic,
but a film that is about homophobia.
Verhoeven's Dutch films are the work of somebody
who's really working
in a free, liberated, very European way,
and then eventually he pushes that as far as it can go...
And gets kind of exiled to Hollywood.
It's funny that for a lot of European filmmakers,
America is where you're working to end up.
In verhoeven's case, it's semi where he kind of got sent to
or where they sort of kicked him out to.
And then you have this whole second cycle,
American movies that become influential
in a whole bunch of other ways,
which is that if you're writing a history
of American blockbuster films,
okay, yes, Steven Spielberg gets his own chapter,
and James Cameron gets his own chapter,
but the more fun chapter is the verhoeven chapter.
Sconce: Even in the mid-'90s,
to see a film that was just sort of that out there
and unlike anything else
that the studios were putting money into
was really kind of nice, really kind of shocking, right?
And the same thing was said about "starship troopers."
During the making of the film, somebody congratulated him
on making a $120 million art film, right?
This is a narrative that Hollywood historians
and film buffs love, which is the story of the heroic director
who finds a way to make the film they really want to make
and fools cretinous, tasteless producers
who have no interest in the art form whatsoever,
versus the directors who are these great auteurs
who want to make movies,
and that's another thing that makes "starship troopers"
and "showgirls" so special, I think,
is you do almost feel like a prank was pulled
on the studios that released those.
They got these very European avant-garde takes
on American culture through sex and through war
that were probably not what they were counting on.
Enroll in the federal service for not less than two years
and as much longer as may be required
by the needs of the federation.
Mlotek: His motivation when it comes to depicting America
and American cultures is always explicitly clear.
Announcer: Nukem! Get them before they get you.
I'd buy that for a dollar!
And it is explicitly negative.
The enforcement droid, series 209,
is a self-sufficient law-enforcement robot.
209 is currently programmed for urban pacification,
but that is only the beginning.
Mlotek: When you look at his movies as a whole,
especially when you look at "robocop"
which is very overtly critical about policing in America
and only gets more relevant with age...
I think you'd better do what he says, Mr. Kinney.
Ed-209: You now have five seconds to comply.
Help me! Help! Four, three...
- Two, one. - Help me!
I am now authorized to use physical force.
Mlotek: Or you look at "basic instinct”
which says a lot about the way American men
of lesser intelligence like to think about themselves
as the hero of their own stories,
which is my favorite part of it...
Honey, I thought I'd seen everything before.
Did you really think it was so special?
I've told her. I thought it was the fuck of the century.
Well, what do you think?
Mlotek: And then you get to "showgirls,"
which is like, "oh, Las Vegas sucks.
Like, you think it's this den of responsible hedonism,
but actually it's just, like, as gross and base
as every other part of your culture."
But it is funny when you look at the critical response
and you see, like, coming off "basic instinct,"
which is again, like, Paul verhoeven
literally trying to do Hitchcock.
He's trying to, like, best somebody we consider
to be one of the most, like, unimpeachable directors
of contemporary cinema, and everyone is like, "cool."
Nayman: I've just always thought it's interesting
that verhoeven was widely understood in America
as a satirist and as a social commentator
as long as the primary texture of his films was violence...
And sex was sort of just in the background
as a cheap thing, like the hookers in "robocop"
or the three-breasted stripper in "total recall.”
- Whoo! - 0oh!
Nayman: You know, the coed showers in "starship troopers."
I'm not putting any of those things down, by the way.
I like all of those things.
Whenever he moves that stuff to the foreground
and makes a movie that has a texture
that's more overtly sexual, like "basic instinct,”
which is still enough of a thriller
that people could watch it,
where "showgirls," all of a sudden people didn't think
he was a satirist or a commentator
or that he was being funny or that he was being sly.
People just sort of said, "what a pervert."
As if perverts can't be funny.
In 1992, Paul verhoeven and Joe eszterhas
collaborated on "basic instinct,”
and this is how they chose to follow it up.
They were really doubling down
on the idea that they could get away with anything.
I am a provocative person.
I like to provoke. There's no doubt about it.
So if it's by using sexuality or nudity or whatever,
if I can provoke, 1 will do it
because I am a child, a little bit.
I like to... I think it's funny to provoke.
I thought, you know, we could do a musical
that's not superficial, that's not glib,
that has different layers
and that really challenges the country,
challenges moviegoers.
There is no one better at that as a director
than Paul verhoeven,
and I don't think there's anyone better at that
as a writer than I am, and it's a nice combination.
Nayman: Joe eszterhas for a while
held the designation of being, you know,
the highest-paid single scriptwriter in Hollywood.
He's a guy who began his career as a journalist
and, you know, always had this sort of sensationalism
and hysteria, but also very smart.
He has a real kind of...
Hustler-trashy-pulpy side to him.
Hey! Oh!
You like phone booths?
Phone booths?
You probably just like doing it in bed, right?
Nayman: Something like "flashdance,"
which eszterhas also wrote, which was sort of the last word
in the early '80s in high concept...
You know, a welder by day, stripper by night...
I mean, that's the kind of storyteller he is.
And I think it's not a surprise
that he and Paul verhoeven got along,
and it's also not a surprise that they fell out.
You know, if you read the production history
of "basic instinct,”
they had real arguments with each other.
Man: Gay activists tried to disrupt the filming
of "basic instinct,” claiming the script was homophobic,
and then eszterhas, the man who wrote it,
very publicly took their side.
Nayman: You can see how they had a falling out after "showgirls"
because even if they were on the same page when they made it,
the kind of failure that that movie had
doesn't exactly strengthen the bonds between collaborators.
Schmader: Some of my favorite horrors of Joe eszterhas
is he has this love of little totems
that are supposed to represent an entire world.
The recurring motifs that show up in "showgirls"...
I got to go to work.
Schmader: A big one is women women talking about
chips and nails.
Molly: What are you gonna do, watch TV and eat chips?
Yeah. Where are the chips?
Mm-mm-mm.
Check it out!
Wow.
Schmader: The nails in "showgirls" are crazy.
Your friend has nice nails.
She does them herself.
Maybe she can do mine sometime.
Schmader: Maybe Joe eszterhas had a girlfriend once
who talked about her nails,
and now all women in the world
talk about their nails.
I didn't even know about the audition until afterwards.
Do you like my nails?
Schmader: Out of the blue, women just discussing their nails.
It's almost like it's a cue they send each other of, like,
"hello. You have nails. Now we can talk.”
Not as nice as yours.
Maybe I'll help you with yours sometime.
Schmader: Seems like maybe he was, like,
met one dancer and was like,
"what's the life of a dancer like?"
And this one dancer said,
"well, I went to some classes,
and I ate a lot of brown rice and vegetables."
What kind of classes have you had?
Schmader: And that becomes a code for him.
You do eat brown rice and vegetables, don't you?
Sure.
Jack. Jack: Yeah.
- What do you want? - Um, burger, fries, and soda.
Get her some brown rice, vegetables,
and a bottle of evian.
Uh-oh! Look what I found.
Schmader: The chips, I think, was to show
that nomi was a wild stallion
who wouldn't just eat brown rice and vegetables.
She's gonna eat a burger on the hood of a car.
J listen to the drummer, come and listen to the bass j
you like that burger? Uh-huh!
Where you from?
Different places.
Schmader: A major motif also
is the baffling charisma of nomi Malone,
because no one who crosses her path can resist falling in love
and immediately placing her at the center of their lives.
You can stay with me if you need a place to crash.
It's not much.
Until you get a job?
Schmader: Also this movie has some race problems
where black people exist
only to help nomi achieve her dreams.
Hey!
Schmader: They're only there to love and worship
and believe in nomi in ways she cannot believe in herself.
James: Just listen.
You got more natural talent when you dance
than anybody I've ever seen.
Schmader: Another big one is it's not enough to be naked.
You have to talk about being naked
while you're naked to remind people that you're naked.
Nomi, do my boobs look any bigger to you?
Woman: Come on, baby!
Schmader: This kind of really klutzy,
not much interest in actual humanity,
just this kind of sex cartoon that he wanted to write.
I'm on my period.
Yeah, right. Check.
Schmader: It really seems like it was written by a 13-year-old
imagining what adults do at night.
See?
Mlotek: Gender and sexism as it relates to the film itself
matters both in the subject matter and the way it was made.
Like, Paul verhoeven has established himself
as a director who does not respect his actresses
or his female characters.
Like, very famously he deceived Sharon stone
into filming that famous scene that everybody loves
because he knew better.
Like, that's always his thing. He knows best.
It's nice.
The marking and the elements to penny and cristal.
Mlotek: If the person on set
who has structurally the most power in every sense of the word
in that he is the director of the film, what he says goes,
and also he is, like, a white, straight man
who has established himself as a moneymaker
in an extremely powerful industry,
and so he is just going to force a woman
to do what he wants to do whether she likes it or not,
that is misogyny replicating itself.
Verhoeven: When you come up, go to right there somewhere, yeah?
Yeah.
And then just straight to the pole.
Verhoeven: Right.
And I love nudity. I think it's great.
Male or female, I think it looks beautiful.
The female body, for me, is great and is attractive.
It's sexual. It's beautiful.
This aesthetic is everything.
Shulgasser-Parker: Women are striving to have
real impact in society...
To get to the supreme court, to be president,
to run corporations that make policies that affect all of us.
Those are important goals.
Moss: I don't care whether you live or die.
I want to see you dance, and I want to see you smile.
Shulgasser-Parker: To present us with a striver
whose biggest goal is to dance, you know, a striptease...
Slap it on one.
Shulgasser-Parker: It's so oblivious to what is important
to, "a," society, and, "b,"” women
that it's laughable.
Gay: Slam it! Bah-bah!
Woman: What a contrast between "saved by the bell"
and your new role.
Yeah, it just seemed, you know, the natural progression.
As an actress, I want to portray as many different characters,
so, you know, it's just a really wonderful time
to take risks and do new things.
J when I wake up in the morning j»
j and the alarm gives out a warning j
mlotek: Because of my age, I grew up with Jessie spano
on "saved by the bell."
A beauty pageant?
What a stupid, sexist waste of time!
Mlotek: Yeah, I kind of dreamed of being someone
who could take all my, like, burgeoning feminist principles
and use them to scream
at all the dumb boys in my class the way she did.
This is sexist pigism of the worst kind.
We were discussing the obvious benefits of a female president.
She's long overdue.
Yep, just like a woman. Always late.
Mlotek: Jessie spano was somebody who was, like,
as a character, very present in my mind,
and as such I did always associate
Elizabeth berkley with her.
I think it would have been part of this,
like, great tradition of very young women
knowing that the only way they were going to make the leap
from child star to grown actress
is to do something that is probably
a bit more provocative...
Hi.
Mlotek: Than is necessary,
I want to say, to, like, skip a step of maturity
by going straight to, "I do sex all the time."
Although I guess you could
make the argument that on "saved by the bell"
she was always argumentative and loud.
Sometimes, to get elected,
you have to do things you swore you never would.
She was willing to say or do anything and was also a dancer,
so it seemed maybe there was, like, a chance for a second
that she could have turned that into,
I don't know, a way to make it a real career,
but instead it's just become, like, a collection of scenes
in which she's always, like,
operating at this very high frequency of emotions.
Bitch!
Mlotek: I mean, nothing is fair in life,
but it seems like that film
was some sort of, like, definitive judgment
on what her skills really were,
when really I think now we're more willing to say
that it was a greater indicator of Paul verhoeven's directing.
In the middle of a fight, it was just like boom, boom, boom.
Mlotek: But at the time it was just like,
"ugh, she's too intense.”
Like, "don't hire her."
J I'm afraid of the animals j
oh!
J I'm afraid of the world j
nomi!
Hey, you! Hold her!
What the fuck are you doing?!
- She started it! - Fuck you!
- Fuck you, asshole! - Party's over!
Nayman: Elizabeth berkley's career had been that very odd,
presentational laugh track, "saved by the bell" world
which is such a distinct type of acting.
There you have it, America.
Judge for yourself.
Nayman: To give a young actor, like, a role like nomi,
it felt like a James Dean role or a young Robert De Niro role.
It's a huge role.
If it was done in a real movie,
that would have been a star-making role.
Berkley: I've been preparing for this role
my whole life, basically,
twelve years, two to three hours a day dancing.
So I can't exist, like nomi, without dance in my life.
I'm fortunate that I found something that gives me such joy
and gives me such life, because I know a lot of people
don't ever find that one thing.
So, what could be better?
Nayman: It hurt her acting career.
It kind of robbed this other
great pleasure of her life from her.
I really feel terrible for her.
She got a great opportunity. She said yes.
It was nothing but pain for her
to even be reminded of "showgirls."
Man: So, you got a name?
Nomi.
Molly: Hey! Nomi!
I'm nomi Malone.
Nayman: Well, I would be, you know,
one of many critics to point out the pun in nomi,
in that it's a polyvalent pun, you know?
Woman: This is my friend nomi. She's a dancer, too.
Nayman: Nomi meaning, "do you want to get to 'know me'?"
Nomi meaning, “I have 'no me.' I have no self."
Or, "no! Me!" You know, "I want to be first."
Nomi: You don't know anything about me.
Nayman: I'm not sure Joe eszterhas really sat down
and mapped that out, but it works, and I think that,
you know, the idea that nomi is a stage name for someone
who is really a Polly Ann or a pollyanna...
Polly Ann costello!
Your father killed your mother then killed himself.
See ya, pollyanna!
Nayman: Pollyanna being someone who's a bit of a naif...
One day, she looks like pollyanna.
Nayman: Someone who's naive,
doesn't know what she's getting into...
Nice dress.
Thanks. I bought it at "versayce."
Nayman: I mean, that's sort of nomi's narrative, you know?
Polly Ann costello becomes nomi Malone.
Sconce: There's a famous article by Jack Smith,
the director and film critic.
He has a great essay he wrote about a 1944 universal b film
called "cobra woman."
He talks about Maria montez, who was a stock player at universal.
She was usually brought in to play vaguely ethnic roles.
He makes a very passionate argument about how
it is the single greatest performance
in the history of cinema.
- Who are you? - I am your sister.
Sconce: He's not being ironic.
He's not being sarcastic.
King cobra!
Sconce: He loves it because in this moment,
when she's playing the queen of the cobras,
she's so into it that it just takes it to a whole other level.
Emcee: Ladies and gentlemen,
the stardust proudly presents miss nomi Malone.
Sconce: And in many respects,
Elizabeth berkley's performance in that film is that way for me.
You know, she is the center of it,
and it really sort of depends on her
maintaining this kind of hysterical energy
all the way through from the first minute to the last minute.
Just makes you think about a whole other kind of acting
that we just don't get in the cinema anymore.
Emcee: "Midnight mass" proud to present miss peaches Christ.
Peaches Christ: You don't get much better of a climax
than exploding out of a volcano, right,
so that's pretty much how our shows always open.
Sometimes I come out of the volcano, and I'm cristal.
Sometimes I come out, and I'm nomi.
It just depends.
There's always someone younger and hungrier
coming down the stairs after you.
And then there's some sort of centerpiece
that has varied over the years,
and through the years having done the show so much,
that center scene probably has changed enough times
that we've done the whole movie.
We both want to ride the "ma-nomi pony"
in a private dance room.
How much is it, darling? A dollar?
It's just perfection.
- Nope, sorry. - Okay.
Uh, why don't you just make Zack here come in his pants
while I grind my pussy on this filthy chair?
You either get it, or you don't, but for those of us that get it,
it can become our religion.
Well, after I moved to San Francisco,
I began performing at a local drag nightclub
called trannyshack that was brand-new here in San Francisco,
and after a few years of performing,
we decided to create this other show called "midnight mass,"
which was going to celebrate my love for midnight movies.
And so, at the time,
landmark theatres had some midnight-movie programs,
and the programming was kind of what you would describe
as classically midnight,
college fare like "taxi driver"...
You got to be kidding.
- What? - This is a dirty movie.
Peaches Christ: "A clockwork orange"...
Stop it! Stop it! Please, I beg you!
Peaches Christ: Maybe a John waters film
if you were really lucky.
And the next package you bring me
is getting shoved right up your little ass.
Can you comprehend that?
Peaches Christ: And so when I came back and said,
"I'd like to book this film, 'showgirls,
I remember the booker saying, "that movie with Demi Moore?"
And I was like, "no."
Girl: Mama!
Baby. Oh!
Peaches Christ: "No!
That is striptease, '
and I have no interest in 'striptease.'
did you guys like our freak show?
We've had to get really experimental
after doing 19 shows.
All right, ladies and gentlemen.
And then we, you know, tear down that fourth wall,
which really was never there to begin with
and introduce our lap dancers.
Let's see your large popcorns. Hold them up high.
We advertised free lap dances with every large popcorn.
Here we go! Lap dancing!
And they were, like, filthy, disgusting, boogery,
horrifying drag queens.
In San Francisco, a drag queen can be...
Really anyone can do drag... Men, women, whatever.
They come up, and they have shit on their panties.
My prerequisite was that
you should frighten the audience, you know?
Whuh!
Ha ha!
Peaches Christ: I think it definitely fits into
the classic tropes that go along with
something that becomes a cult movie.
Pull your dress up!
Honey, you could never handle me
with all these wrinkles of fat.
Ohh! Ohh!
Why, you'd never even find the thing.
Peaches Christ: It was misunderstood...
I'd have to piss on you to give you a clue.
Peaches Christ: When it came out.
I think often films like "the rocky horror picture show,"
"showgirls," "mommie dearest,"
they tend to go too far for a mainstream audience.
Why are you doing that?! Tell me!
You sit still now!
Peaches Christ: And so it takes a little bit longer
for the cult to kind of,
to build and find it and say, "hey, you know what?
Like, we love Faye dunaway's performance
in "mommie dearest."
You expect me to ignore my fans?
They're life and death to me, baby.
Peaches Christ: Not only does it have tremendous value,
I want to watch this thing over and over and over again,
and I want to memorize all of the lines.
No wire hangers!
What's wire hangers doing in this closet when I told you
- no wire hangers ever?! - Crowd: No wire hangers ever?!
Peaches Christ: So somehow you can take
a great, you know, a movie like that
and then say, "no, this isn't for you.
This is for us."
It's really Elizabeth that audiences over the years
have shown up again and again to watch repeatedly
because it's such an extraordinary
and bizarre performance.
Woman: Excuse me.
- Wait, you cannot go in there! - What's going on?
What the fuck do you mean, "what's going on?"
So there I was dancing butt naked for five minutes.
Peaches Christ: Gina gershon is brilliant.
She says that she played the film as a drag queen
and kind of understood or knew...
You think you could do my nails now?
Conway: She just has a bit of a flair of knowing
that she's in a stylish piece of garbage.
Gershon: If you know that myth at all, and it's, you know,
"here's Aphrodite, the big, you know, queen-bee goddess,"
and all of a sudden, some little, you know,
chick comes along who wants to be,
you know, a goddess, or everyone is, like,
saying that's what she is, and she says, "well, okay, honey,"
you know, "I'll make you a goddess
if you pass a couple of tests...
Which I know, by the way, you won't,"
and she gives her these tests, "pass these tests,"
and she keeps passing them, passing them,
and basically at the end of it, you know, she's made immortal.
Conway: I would say two minutes into it, I just, like,
my blood started to pulse through my body,
and I got so excited because, 1 don't know.
There's just something that just screams "bad"
the moment you see nomi's face,
and she kind of licks her lips a little bit on the highway,
and I was literally jumping up and down on the bed.
The trilogy of camp was complete...
The trilogy being the 1967 film "valley of the dolls"...
I wouldn't pay any attention to that.
You know how bitchy fags can be.
Conway: The film "mommie dearest,"
and now this beautiful "showgirls."
It felt like it was part of that same genre,
meaning sort of these female characters
who climb their way towards the top.
But all three of them are just so impossibly bad
and so thrilling at the same time.
Woman: Who the hell are you?
Oh!
Conway: There's this really hard-wrought seriousness
the actors are trying to portray...
Why can't you treat me like I would be treated
by any stranger on the street?
Because I am not one of your fans!
Aaaah!
You never loved me!
Conway: That the films themselves,
the stories are trying to establish
that just so completely fail that make them hilarious
and sort of immortal.
Higher!
Not that high!
Stay in sync!
One, two, three, turn!
Thrust it! Thrust it!
Come on! Thrust it!
Bah! Okay.
That's enough. Thank you, ladies.
Conway: I just felt that, you know,
like a triple crown, it was done.
Civilization had done its job.
J one, two, three, bend j
j one, two, three, stretch j
Conway: It depends on probably your age
how much the biography of Elizabeth berkley,
like, impacts your experience of the film.
J strong whenever you're around j
j I walk on air, I barely touch the ground j
Conway: So for me, I had to buy
the "saved by the bell" series on DVD because I wanted...
I had read descriptions of the episode
where she gets addicted to the caffeine pills.
What really resonated for me was this notion that this character,
Jessie spano, was somehow morphing into Patty Duke...
Just one, and one more.
Conway: Playing neely O'Hara in "valley of the dolls,"
who goes way over the top when she gets high on pills,
which in the movie they refer to as "dolls."
God!
I need a doll!
Don't leave me here!
Jessie, give me those!
I need them, Zack! I have to sing!
Jessie! You can't sing tonight.
Yes, I can!
J I'm so excited j
I'm so scared!
Conway: It was like these invisible threads
that started, like, stitching together
nomi in the movie
to Elizabeth berkley as Jessie spano
in this TV show,
neely O'Hara... Patty Duke... aka Judy garland.
They were all sort of morphing
into this supersonic generic character.
So after years of watching "showgirls" hundreds of times,
one night in my little studio apartment in New York,
I had just finished watching the film yet again,
and I thought to myself,
"am I just gonna watch this movie until I die?"
Something just came to me.
I should write a whole book of sestinas about "showgirls."
It's a love of the film and of course my love of poetry,
and I kind of put the two together,
and it started happening that very night.
You got me the audition, didn't you?
Cristal: Mm-hmm.
Nomi: Why?
Wloszcyna: I gave it 2 1/2 stars out of four,
and, you know, I was fine with that,
and I think some people were surprised.
But some of my, you know, coworkers who trusted my taste,
they actually went to see it based on my review,
and I think with the frame of reference
I had in my review of how to approach it
and the way to view it
that they understood what was going on here.
I hate you.
I know.
Wloszcyna: Well, I knew it was campy.
It was something else,
and it had this attitude that I kind of appreciated,
and so I took it from, you know, judging it...
"Was I entertained?” yes,
but not maybe in the way that some people,
especially men...
You know, most critics, as how, were males,
and maybe they didn't quite get it,
but to me one thing I like about Paul verhoeven's movies
is that he gets women.
He doesn't see them as being these fragile creatures
who need saving.
I got him, Clarence! I got him!
You want to walk down to spago, get something to eat?
- Where is it? - Just down from "versayce."
Schmader: The spago scene is, for a lot of us,
it's the crown Jewel of "showgirls,"
and it's nomi and cristal going out for lunch.
They were supposed to have rehearsal,
but cristal is feeling a little turned inside out today,
so they're going to go to a schmancy lunch.
What I love about this scene is it seems like it was written
by a brain-dead Harold pinter, where the subtext is stunning
until you realize there is no subtext.
Don't they have brown rice and vegetables?
Do you like brown rice and vegetables?
Yeah.
You do?
Sort of.
Schmader: This is "showgirls" golden moment.
It's worse than dog food.
«jt is.
I've had dog food.
Schmader: It's this surreal discussion of
the aforementioned brown-rice-and-vegetable diet
of the dancer, and it steers into both women
communing over their love of doggy chow, wistfully.
I used to love doggy chow.
I used to love doggy chow too.
Schmader: There's a moment where Gina gershon
looks into the distance, and her eyes kind of mist up,
and she talks about how she used to eat doggy chow
- a long time ago. - A long time ago.
What do you think of the richer flavor
we put into new purina dog chow?
Schmader: Like, what are they really talking about?
What are they talking about?
Dog: This is dog food's finest hour.
Schmader: They're talking about eating dog food.
And at the end of it, they toast with their chips,
bringing several "showgirls" motifs full circle.
Hey!
Nayman: So they're sitting down at the table,
and we're getting pretty conventional
shot/reverse-shot cutting.
I mean, any scene is put together this way.
Gina gershon is frame left, and berkley is frame right,
and it proceeds that way for a while
as they go through their absurd dialog.
I used to love doggy chow too.
Nayman: At a certain point after they pour this toast,
gershon is on the other side of the screen.
It's sort of a really interesting bit
of visual trickery by verhoeven
where he violates the 180-degree axis.
You have great tits.
Nayman: And now, even though they haven't
switched position in reality,
for the film, nomi is now suddenly on frame left.
Thank you.
Nayman: And it's a really interesting reversal
and the violation of basic screen continuity.
I like having nice tits.
You like to show 'em off.
Nayman: And it just sort of seems like a really eloquent,
and in this case sort of subtle
because we're all distracted by what they're talking about,
way to suggest visually
that these women are somewhat equivalent.
Made me feel like a hooker.
You are a whore, darling.
No, I'm not.
We all are.
We take the cash. We cash the check.
We show them what they want to see.
Sconce: You never know what's going to become a cult film,
and people are always saying, you know,
"maybe cult films will cease to exist
because that whole notion of camp and cult,
for so long, was based
on that old idea from Susan sontag
about failed seriousness.
Not the bees! Aah!
Sconce: A film can't know if it's camp to really be camp.
You know, I guess sort of the classic example
would be something like "plan 9 from outer space"
where, you know, it's so bad, it's good.
He's close enough! Turn off your electrode gun! No!
I can't get it! It's jammed!
Stop him, you fool!
Drop the gun to the floor, tanna!
The metal will break contact.
Sconce: The ones I'm less happy about are, you know,
can you still have cult films in a era
where you have things like "sharknado," right?
Where you kind of have this intentional camp aesthetic.
God bless America.
Sconce: Camp is failed seriousness
except when it's, you know, performative camp
where they know that they're exaggerating.
The question of how intention relates to camp
is really complicated.
A sexual... sexual...
- Rhythmic and a very... - Modern jazz.
And a very edgy... poetic.
Edgy with very sharp movements and stuff like that.
So you're always using a whip, you know, so it's really sexy.
Sconce: What matters is what's there.
You can never really trust writers
or directors about their intent
because sometimes they don't even know
what they're trying to do, necessarily,
or things come out differently,
then they change their story.
Verhoeven: It's the first time that I did a musical.
When I was kid, when there were these American musicals
coming to Europe immediately after the war,
I was always fascinated by that.
Schmader: Paul verhoeven wrote a companion book,
a picture book that goes along with the film,
called "showgirls: Portrait of a film."
I have to say that it kind of mirrors
the experience of watching the film.
It's a book that's beautifully produced.
However, it's this utter and complete pretentious seriousness
about what this film is going to do.
Nayman: It's written as if this movie
is about to be a great success,
and this is going to be a chronicle of its success.
In my book I describe it as like reading a brochure
for the Titanic.
Schmader: And it's gotten more valuable
because he's since made some moves to kind of recast it as,
it was supposed to be bad, it was supposed to be a joke,
all of that was on purpose.
But the essays are,
it's all about what a meaningful erotic drama it is,
the kind of spiritual warfare between cristal and nomi.
It's invaluable for all those times
that you're watching "showgirls,"
and your brain says, "what the fuck was he thinking?
What the fuck was he thinking?" And this dossier is the closest
we will ever get to the answer.
Woman: We're the razzies.
We don't have rules...
Except, of course, that the movies really, uh, suck!
"Showgirls"!
Schmader: Paul verhoeven accepted his worst film,
worst director award at the razzies
and was the first in history to show up to accept it.
The worst thing happened to me today.
I got seven of the worst awards,
and I'm very happy because it was much better,
much more fun than reading the reviews in September.
Thank you so much.
If you make a movie that everybody considers as bad,
and it disappears into no-man's-land immediately,
that's much worse, I think,
than being glorified for the worst movie of the year.
I thank you very, very much! Thank you!
Schmader: At the time, it seemed really healthy,
and it made sense to me,
but with the defenses that have come out lately,
it seems a little more confusing.
I used a style
that probably is not so well known in general, I would say.
The best comparison would be to look at,
let's say, German paintings of the '20s and '30s,
which is called the expressionism.
That was perhaps difficult, at that time,
to recognize that as a possibility of filmmaking.
I mean, that's another theory.
You laugh. You don't believe me.
Well, I invented it yesterday.
I can't believe I bought it!
We'll celebrate. I'll buy you a burrito.
I'll even buy you some fajitas.
Oh, fajita!
Nayman: Even in trying to write about the relationship
between nomi and Molly
and the relationship between nomi and cristal...
I got to go.
Aren't you gonna come here and give me a big kiss?
Nayman: There's a queer line that runs through the movie
and that runs through a lot of reception to the movie
and that runs through a lot of fandom.
Baume: The parallels between "showgirls"
and the gay experience are that nomi sets out
on her own to reinvent herself, to set out into the world
and find the big city and chase her dreams.
That is something that a lot of queer people do.
They leave the small town.
They leave whatever unfortunate circumstances are behind,
and they completely reinvent themselves with a new name,
with a new identity, with new dreams,
and so I think nomi's arrival in Las Vegas
is something that a lot of us have felt
when we arrive in Las Vegas or New York
or Seattle or Chicago or wherever we go.
Another reason that nomi resonates is because
she is not afraid to use her sexuality.
I liked it when you came.
Baume: She is starving for sexual attention,
and she is unafraid of using her sex as a tool.
That's something that we very rarely see
with female characters.
Often they're victims, or they don't realize their power,
or they're so innocent.
For nomi, sex is a means to an end.
I'm not saying that it's a good thing,
and I'm not saying that that's a healthy attitude to have,
but once again that's something that is familiar
to gay men in their interactions with each other
that I don't think straight men or straight women
have experienced in the same way.
Hey, stay with me.
Baume: Nomi has a chosen family that she builds and looks after.
I'm not gonna say that it's a healthy chosen family.
They all seem very fixated on unhealthy sexual attention
with each other, but she's got that chosen family,
and they look out for each other.
That's one of the other reasons that I think "showgirls"
resonates with gay men.
When one of her friends is bashed, she bashes back.
And so that's a revenge fantasy
that a lot of queer people have experienced,
that we've been victimized by straight white men
who are in charge, who are running the world,
and to realize that we have power
and that we can derive power from our sexuality as nomi does
is a very empowering message.
Schmader: I'd been doing the screenings
and touring a bit and finally came...
I was working at the stranger newspaper,
and I came to work one day,
and there was a voicemail message there
from somebody at mgm saying I needed to call them back.
And I was absolutely sure
it was gonna be the cease-and-desist order
that I'd been waiting for.
But it wasn't.
They were excited about what I was doing,
and they invited me to record the commentary
for the special edition "showgirls" DVD.
And after that, everything changed
because once I had their vote of confidence,
they were happy with me touring.
Once they had a product that they could sell
in this new framing of "showgirls"
as not a hard-hitting, sexy "raging bull"
like they tried with the first launch.
So that was a shock.
I was ready for a cease and desist,
and my "showgirls" thing would have been six months of my life
instead of 20 years.
Sconce: In 2003, I was asked to contribute to a special forum
on "showgirls" in film quarterly,
and I was glad to do so at that time
because by then my opinion of the film had really changed.
I'll admit the first time I saw it,
I thought that it was kind of
just a really confusing, out-of-control film
that didn't make much sense.
But I think it's easy just to sort of see it as a failed film.
What are you looking at, bitch?
All right, you guys. Let's go. Let's move it.
Come on. Go, go, go, go.
J nanananalj
j ahh-ahh ahh-ahhh j
j nanananalj
sconce: But again, I think that's because most people
come to the movies now with this idea
that films have to be realistic or naturalistic.
If you see it a second time, you start to realize
that some of the scenes are being performed and shot
in a way that is antirealist, right, that they really...
There's something going on there beyond kind of failed realism.
Once I kind of made the jump, you know, the leap of faith
into the world that was being created by that film,
I've just loved it ever since, and not in a, you know,
camp sort of "it's so bad it's good" way,
but as a really interesting hyperstylized bit of filmmaking
you just don't see much in modern Hollywood.
All right. Where are we headed? You have to give me directions.
To your place.
Sconce: The scene that really sort of made me realize
there's something else going on in this film
that's much more interesting than the film
I'd seen in my mind before
was the whole seduction scene
between Kyle maclachlan and Elizabeth berkley...
The swimming pool scene.
And, you know, if you watch this scene with an audience,
people just start laughing.
And I think it's obviously... It's meant to be funny
because it is just... Just crazy.
There is a certain cynicism, I think,
in a lot of verhoeven's work,
in the kind of way everybody in that scenario
it just using each other and performing
these different roles to each other
and overperforming them, how they're all essentially
just these kind of two-dimensional
avatars of greed or avarice or whatever.
Is this meant to be a portrayal of sex,
or is this meant to be a portrayal of acting?
Seeing as this is all being staged in her attempts
to advance her career,
it's kind of the ultimate, you know,
"was that real? Was that not real?”
Kind of performance.
Nayman: The choreography in that dolphin-fountain sex scene
so mirrors nomi's lap dance,
you know, for Kyle maclachlan's character at the cheetah.
There it was, "look, don't touch."
Now it's actual sort of sex.
There's an idea of a barrier between them
that's kind of been broken.
You know, she's kind of in his house now.
He was in her establishment earlier,
and the sort of warm-up,
like, the sex that she had faked with him before
has kind of become real, but this isn't making love.
I mean, this is a transaction as much as anything else.
This is so she can be in the show
and sort of replace cristal and shore up her place
within that hierarchy in the stardust.
The film's view of the world
is someone is always on their way up,
and someone is kind of always on their way down.
You guys, let me through!
Oh, my god.
Schmader: After the pool scene, I stopped and asked
how many straight men are in the audience,
and how many lesbians,
and if anyone is even close to being turned on,
and the answer is always no.
A great question about "showgirls"
is how it wound up being the least sexy movie ever made.
This is another motif.
There's a point when cristal Connors
pulls down nomi's shirt, and her boobs are out again.
And they try to play it like a big reveal,
and it's like, "hello, old friends."
We've been... Like, you cannot...
Her boobs have been out for an hour and a half by then.
You cannot play it for a big reveal
that she is now showing her boobs.
Kidwell: I think Paul verhoeven, with his history,
the way that he directs actresses,
it's more scary than actually sexy.
Woman: Six, seven, eight...
It's all stereotypes.
All the characters are stereotypes.
And the white males are fucking creeps,
or they're gay.
- Nice dress. - Thanks, it's a "versayce."
- Woman: It's a what? - "Versayce."
- A what? - "Versayce," bitch.
Kidwell: Absolutely you can be both a feminist
and a fan of "showgirls."
We had such a magical time making "showgirls! The musical!"
And it was a hit, and we played at three different homes.
Hello, Las Vegas! I'm nomi Malone!
Kidwell: We were so incredibly well received in New York,
but in San Francisco, it was...
We got full standing ovations I think almost every night.
What I do in "showgirls," taking my top off,
performing on stage wearing a thong,
it's the most empowering thing.
Getting up in people's faces with my boobs,
it's empowering, and it's, like, I'm on stage,
and I'm the bravest person in this room
because I'm the one who's naked up here
and singing and dancing and having fun,
and I feel like I'm, you know, a part of a sisterhood
and supporting, you know,
Elizabeth berkley's choices in "showgirls," the film,
by getting up and saying, "hey, I'm gonna do it, too.
What do y'all got to say?"
Molly: Got any family you can call?
I don't have any family.
Any friends?
I don't have any friends.
So where are you from?
Different places!
Kidwell: Nomi's introduction to Vegas is what I would imagine
would be pretty standard for most...
For a lot of people of that age, you know,
but she's also a special case because she's the kind of broad
who walks around with a chip on her shoulder,
and she's a magnet to trouble.
That was not my case, being a 16-year-old mormon girl
just coming to Vegas so...
Nearest family members?
Kidwell: I don't have a good relationship with my parents.
You know, I'm legally disowned and...
- Deceased? Kidwell: Felt like a...
Yes.
Kidwell.: A street rat for a while.
I love this film.
I love it for strange, unexpected reasons.
It's kind of a hero's journey
in the most unlikely of protagonists.
It's like, "oh, god!" It's like a lamp goes up, yeah?
Kidwell: Paul verhoeven had his own vision of the film.
It makes for juicy, dramatic storytelling,
but when you're actually living it,
it's a nauseating feeling.
In 2011, I ended up in New York,
bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and ready to become a star.
And so I was working for a while as a karaoke dj and just,
you know, New York story, barely scraping by, but happy.
When I was working as a karaoke dj,
I got drugged by a lone patron, the last patron of the night,
and he took me home, and he raped me.
And destroyed my world,
and I had crippling PTSD,
and I didn't have the services to support myself.
I was living off of savings that were draining.
I eventually got evicted.
I was not able to work. I couldn't function.
I had stopped speaking for a few months.
After that happened, I lost, like, 10 pounds in a week.
It was horrifying, and I couldn't afford
the medication that I needed, and it was bad.
And so then I had a boyfriend at that time
who was so benevolent and such an angel,
and he saw a post for "bayside! The musical!"
The audition for it, and he...
I remember him holding my hand and telling me,
"I would be really proud of you if you went to this audition."
So I did.
And I sang a song about molestation that I made up,
and everybody laughed, and I got it.
I got Jessie spano.
J bayside high j
because my character, Jessie spano,
was addicted to caffeine pills
and having panic attacks on stage,
my whole role was just, like, a meltdown... crazy-time.
It's about Jessie.
I think that she's been taking drugs.
Zack: Drugs? Are you crazy?
Kidwell: It was miraculously a very cathartic
artistic experience for me.
I was able to channel my panic attacks
I was having in my personal life,
dealing with living with PTSD...
Jessie!
J I'm so excited! J
I'm so scared.
Kidwell: And channel that on stage
and just let it go and work it out
'cause I couldn't afford a therapist at the time.
I did three years without therapy,
so doing "bayside!"
Was my first step with therapy.
Schmader: Shifting tones
is a big distinct fact of "showgirls,"
where you think you're watching a comedy,
and then you're watching a weird drama,
and then you're watching something sexy,
and you're watching something gross...
Um, Molly is one of your biggest fans.
Well, then, let me get you a drink.
Schmader: And with the rape scene,
the tone shifts really abruptly
to hard-core, second-to-second depiction of a sexual assault,
like the way that "the accused” had,
but "the accused” spent 90 boring minutes
setting up the foundation to earn that scene,
and in "showgirls" it just doesn't seem earned at all.
What's going on?
Schmader: I tell the audience what happens, like,
"in this scene, for some reason, Molly Abrams,
the only decent human in the film,
is brutally beaten and gang-raped with no motivation,
and we're going to skip it."
Mlotek: "Showgirls" never misses an opportunity
to crucify a woman when it can, and it's sort of like,
watching it, "what's the point? What are you trying to say?
What are you trying to tell us?"
And with Paul verhoeven especially,
when you look at a movie like "showgirls,"
where he's like,
"oh, you guys are so titillated by sexual violence.
I'm going to show you real sexual violence.
Then you'll know how bad it is.”
It's like, "who are you talking to?"
Because you're certainly not talking to the women
who are watching this movie, because we know.
You're talking as a man who is both convinced
that you have never been a perpetrator of sexual violence
or that you know any perpetrators of sexual violence,
which is misogyny at its worst,
this insidious belief that bad men hide in the shadows
and comprise less than 1% of the population,
that you'll never really meet them,
and so you need a film like "showgirls"
to show you what evil can actually look like.
Schmader: The worst violence in the movie happens to her,
and it's like her brutalization
becomes nomi's opportunity to redeem herself.
Is she okay?
She's okay.
Schmader: What you can see
is a kind of interracial solidarity...
I love you.
Schmader: Or even a kind of class solidarity
or feminist solidarity,
or it's just the rankest kind of exploitation.
Sconce: Paul verhoeven seems to obsessed
with violent sexual scenes or rape scenes
because they appear in many of his films.
Aaah!
Mlotek: Look, there's no other way to say this,
but the one place I think that succeeds...
Ew, I'm sorry... Is in "robocop,"
where it is played for such a straightforward laugh
in that the most obvious form of justice
for an attempted rape is a literal castration.
Aah!
Mlotek: Yes, that's how a robot who had the brain
of a former Detroit police officer would think of it.
Aah!
I like you better topless.
Wait till you see me bottomless.
Mlotek: I think a lot about the scene at the end of the movie
where nomi somehow gets revenge by beating up Andrew carver,
and that's presented as though it's empowering,
and I find that to be, like, the most cynical thing...
Next time, I'll fucking kill you.
Mlotek: That a woman would find real justice
in handing out more pain...
Because she knows that there are
no structures of justice available to her.
That's not misogyny itself.
That's just a depiction of the way misogyny works.
But it is extremely cynical that we are supposed to see that
as triumph in some sense, for either character,
for nomi or for Molly.
Fuck off!
J it's a fine line j
j between a whore and a warrior j
kidwell: What makes up for the rape scene in the film
is nomi's revenge.
J nobody knows me j
kidwell.: It's my favorite scene in the musical.
The song is called "whorrior!"
A whore and a warrior combined.
J the whorrior j
it's like a whore and a warrior combined!
J 'cause I'm... I'm a whorrior j
kidwell: Every Lyric, every note,
every roundhouse kick
is therapeutic, cathartic, just joy...
Nomi: Fucker! Fuck off!
Kidwell: And that is my song.
J whorrior j
kidwell: I carry it with me.
J that's like a whore and a warrior combined j
kidwell.: It's positive and powerful and weird
having that protagonist
as actually a character that's so cathartic
and helped me move to my best self
and my new life that's actually really happy
and joyous and healthy and positive and supportive
and all the good things people want in life.
Nayman: We all of us have this relationship
to artists we admire.
As a critic, you have to be careful
because you're not writing for them,
and you need to remain objective.
You know, I didn't write this book so the director of the film
I'm writing about could sort of like it.
The fact that he did, and that we had some pretty interesting,
serious, long conversations about that film
and other things and... It's really nice.
That he went out of his way to be in touch
because the film is described in the book as being good.
I mean, I don't think in retrospect
he finds all of this to be
like a fascinating learning experience
about changing tastes and stuff.
He made "starship troopers” after because the machinery
had already been moving to make a big special effects film,
and he made "hollow man," and that's it, you know?
"Black book" and "tricked" and "Elle"
are all made in Europe.
Schmader: I did an interview with Kyle maclachlan.
I was film editor for the stranger,
and he was here for being honored
at Seattle international film festival for his body of work,
and I did an interview with him, and I wasn't gonna be the jerk
who brought up "showgirls," but he did.
I don't think he knows about this,
about what we have going on here,
but he was ready to talk about "showgirls" on his own,
and he held forth on, "no, we were making a drama.
We were directed to huge, outsized emotions
while trying to make this drama, and we just followed it."
And he wanted me to take away the moral of, like,
"do not believe that any of us on that crew or cast
thought we were making anything except a hard-hitting drama."
Conway: So in an effort to answer my...
One of my own question about
what was Elizabeth berkley's experience in real life like,
having to deal with the aftermath
of what I call the critical devastation that she was handed
after the release of "showgirls,"
I started to go onto the Internet
and do searches for her appearances,
and the first one I found
was an appearance on "handmade modern"...
- Oldham: Come on out, Elizabeth. - Hi, Todd.
- Yay! - How are you?
Conway: In 2005.
That was an hgtv show hosted by Todd oldham.
You just see him salivating.
You just know he's dying to go there, and finally he does.
I've never done string art.
I know you've had a couple of costumes about this big, but...
Yeah, about that big. That's about it.
It's funny because that movie, yeah,
it definitely was met with a lot of controversy
when it initially came out, and then, funny enough,
it has found this interesting little life,
like this either cult kind of favorite, you know?
Because again, like, if something doesn't do well,
it can just die on some video shelf,
you never hear about it.
It strangely found this interesting...
Interesting life after that, so...
Conway: So there's some recognition there that it was,
in fact, a bomb, but almost a little sweet that,
you know, people are still talking about it.
Of course, she doesn't really go on about
how they're talking about it,
but at least it's being talked about.
In 2008, she appeared with Chelsea handler
on her talk show...
Let's move on to "showgirls," though,
because I know that that was, like,
one hot mess of a movie, okay?
It was.
Conway: And it seems like
the first time that I could find that,
on TV, somebody sort of crosses the line and points out
that the movie was actually a mess in front of her.
And then Elizabeth pieces together
this alternate reading of the film,
which I think is brilliant.
It's this kind of just over-the-top, fun movie,
which is what it was intended to be,
and now people have really found the fun in it.
Conway: It was intended as a fun, over-the-top movie.
I just thought that was brilliant,
to start retelling the story of what this film is,
has been to so many people, so, good for her.
You got a lot of heat for that movie.
Berkley: It was hard.
It was hard when it first came out,
and I had to really deal with it on my own
because no one really came to my defense,
which was really painful at a really young age.
Conway: At the end of "showgirls,"
when nomi heads to Los Angeles,
maybe nomi marries the nephew of one of the richest designers
who was ever on this planet
and has a child and lives in Beverly Hills
and becomes a vegetarian.
I don't know.
Zack: Hey, babe. You ready to drive?
Jessie: Yeah, uh-huh. What is that?
- They're drive pills. - Drive pills?
J I'm so excited j
baume: I know that Elizabeth berkley
recently made fun of her "saved by the bell"
"I'm so excited, I'm so excited, I'm so scared,”
on "dancing with the stars."
J I'm so excited j
j and I just can't hide it j
j no, no, no, no j
I would love to see her enjoying all the love and attention
that she's gotten from camp audiences for "showgirls."
Wyatt: In the 20-year history of the film "showgirls,"
there has never, ever been
so large an assemblage of people to see this film.
I think we should have someone who worked on the film
say a few words.
Schmader: I love that she showed up
for that Hollywood forever screening in L.A.
And introduced the film.
I understand she got a standing ovation.
Can I do your nails sometime?
Man: Yes, mama!
Schmader: I'm so glad that she can plug into this second life.
This is such a special night. You don't even know.
This is 20 years in the making.
I can't believe I'm here with you.
4,000 people.
Tonight is like this magical full-circle moment
where I actually didn't get to experience
the sweetness of a screening with a crowd that embraced it.
I'm gonna send you off to enjoy this amazing night,
but I'm gonna just do one thing for you.
Woman: Uh-oh! Man: Yes!
Let the show begin.
Schmader: There's a sense of, like,
who's right about "showgirls"...
The people who think it's a terrible joke,
or the people who think it's a misunderstood masterpiece?
And it's, like, we're all right. It's a dream.
Nayman: It's been redeemed commercially.
It's been reclaimed artistically.
It's been sort of reconciled by the person who made it
with some of the people he made it with,
and I think that "showgirls"
is a film that you cannot give it its due
by simply praising it or by simply condemning it.
You give it its due by allowing
that both of these things are possible at once,
and that's the respect that it deserves,