Make Hollywood Horny Again
A week-long celebration of erotic thrillers.
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It had a half-British cast and a half-American cast, and Emma and I became friends.
I, of course, said yes.
In that process, I had been cast inAssaulted Nutsby Risa Bramon.
I did not expect you to say thatBasic Instinctstarted with Emma Thompson.Yeah, its bizarre.
One of the worlds most controversial sex-based films begins with Emma Thompson.
I dont know how the hell that happened.
But I go to meet Verhoeven, and its one of those hotel-suite castings.
I get to the hotel suite, and the door opens and theres a camera attached to Verhoeven.
Im meeting him on-camera from the moment I walk in the door.
Hes directing me to a chair to sit down and asking me questions behind a camera.
Its like having an interview with a voyeur.
That feels appropriate for Paul Verhoeven.Yeah.
So hes watching through the camera and side-coaching me.
We go through the scene, and hes like, Now youre looking, youre looking, youre looking.
I say, Okay, Im looking.
He says, Maybe while you look you do a little lick.
I go, A what?
He says, A lick, like a little lick of your lips.
He says, Maybe another lick.
Maybe you do two licks.
I dolick, lick.Then he stares.
He says, Maybe you try a third lick.
And I do the third lick, and he says, No, thats too many licks.
He had to draw the line somewhere, I guess.From that, I got cast!
So I get cast in this part, and we go to shoot the infamous interrogation scene.
It was a walk-and-talk through the police station into the interrogation room, and then the interrogation.
That was all shot in one day.
We shot my side of it and Sharon Stones side of it.
So you only did one day on the movie?Yeah.
It was one day that, because of the trailer, became a massive thing in terms of me.
My big mug and that look at her uncrossing her legs became part of the trailer.
It became part of the Zeitgeist for the movie, and that movie was incrediblypopularin 92.
What I didnt realize is that perhaps the trailer and maybe the film got me cast inJurassic Park.
At what point did he tell you that?I didnt get a direct statement on that.
I learned it through others.
But I also knew I was perhaps the first person he cast.
Fat people like that might die; you better lock them down!
Sure, I can see where one transfers to the other.Something frightening and dangerous.
But no, I did not.
I didnt know who Sharon Stone was at that point.
But I did notice, when she came into the shoot, that she was shockingly beautiful, anatomically.
There was no bad angle that you could photograph her from.
She was incredible in that sense, and she was very good in the scene.
The camera was so close to me.
Oh, of course.
Youre shooting reaction shots but not really reacting to anything.Right.
This is all in my head.
And what about the reverse of that?
Did he shoot her with you guys on the other side of the room?Yes.
There was the reaction to Are you going to arrest me for smoking?
That scene was played out from the other side because we had to do the master shot.
Its heavily intercut, so youre getting a lot of information in these shots.
And itsJan de Bontwhos shooting it, so its complex and delicate.
I didnt know what their relationship was, but it felt heightened.
It didnt feel like just an actress and a director.
But I have no idea.
Im just a character actor coming into a scene, and this is a star I dont know.
I wasnt like, Hey, how ya doing?
Were just going about our business.
The likelihood of things being accidentally shot is somewhat hard to pull off.
So thats all I know of that.
Im not going to correct Sharon Stone on what she has said because I have no real knowledge.
When youre in the hotel suite auditioning, the direction youre getting is about licking your lips.
How does Verhoeven direct you on the set?You definitely know whats going on.
Is that your assessment or Verhoevens assessment?This is whatI gotfrom what we were doing.
I got the idea that you have a man dying of thirst and he sees an oasis.
Hes trying to be perfunctory and controlled and not doing a very good job of it.
You play kind of a counterpoint.
That whole interrogation scene has such a seductive, noirish quality to it.
It felt intimate because when we were shooting we were all sitting there together for quite a while.
You begin to talk in between shots.
I didnt have a lot of conversations with Michael he was more subdued.
I had more time talking to George Dzundza and Denis Arndt.
Denis was talking about having been a helicopter pilot in Vietnam, and I found that interesting.
You begin to settle in.
Its amazing, though, how significant that period of time was, and it was so short.
People can still say the Sharon Stone scene or theBasic Instinctscene.
Its part of the lexicon.And a lot of people talk about that film who probably didnt see the film.
The room is very hot, and he has a cold drink between his legs.
And I, as Newman, am staring at the cold drink between his legs and licking my lips.
And we did thesecond spitter scene, which was a parody of theJFKsecond shooter scene.
Its like my film career became a source of parody a mere two years later.
And Sharon Stone was parodying it herself.
When she hostedSNL, hermonologuewas a re-creation of that scene.
The whole thing immediately took on a life of its own that has not dwindled in the years since.
But its hard to complain.
That was the nature of it.
The script had been in the works for quite a while.
When people get agitated enough to protest, oftentimes thats based on what youthinkthe material is.
Thats a complicated thread of criticism surrounding this movie.
One involves inclusion, and the other is the opposite.
Verhoevenapparently wantedMichael Douglass character to be bisexual too, and Douglas said no.
I would love to know more about those conversations.Have you seen Verhoevens Dutch films?
The preBasic Instinctstuff is pretty startling at times.
He believes in stark images that upset.
It feels like there isnt much room for a Verhoeven to emerge today.
Oftentimes, they were off-putting and dictatorial.
I dont know that we have room for that right now.
Right now, were trying to be encompassing and calming.
This, too, will not last.
Did you ever seeBasic Instinct 2?
Not many people did.No.
I dont watch sequels to anything that Im not in.
My feeling is,You could have used me.
