My two cents, from a profile on Verhoeven for Senses of Cinema
I remember going to the old Lido show at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas with my Dad in the late ’70s. The show had an air of unreality about it, and was surprisingly unerotic for an extravaganza that featured two dozen women over six feet tall with their breasts hanging out for all to see. It is perhaps because Showgirls so perfectly captures the Vegas milieu that it was such a bomb. Its tepid Dionysianism was unarousing (save for a brief Elizabeth Berkeley dance on birthday boy Kyle MacLachlan’s lap), and its borrowings from All About Eve (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1950) were only to the detriment of the imitator. After three smash hits in a row, a Paul Verhoeven movie lost a great deal of money, due in no small part to writer Joe Eszterhas’ inflated fee, and the extravagant production numbers that featured Berkeley and (the far more luscious) Gina Gershon.
Professor Daniel Shaw
Chair, Philosophy Department
Lock Haven University (570) 484-2052
Managing Editor, Film and Philosophy
"...woe to the man whose heart has not learned while young
to hope, to love---and to put trust in life"
Joseph Conrad's Victory
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