Hit Me With Your Best Shot: Showgirls

The concept of this series is such: I choose a movie. We all choose our favorite shot(s) from said movie. I link up to everyone's choices each Wednesday. It's an eye candy free for all celebrating those single images in movies that we just can't live without. They're either the prettiest, the most telling, personally resonant, quite unexpected or just plain delightful.

Today's episode: Paul Verhoeven's gaudy masterwork SHOWGIRLS (1995). It's loud. It's trashy. It's colorful. It's spectacularly itself. Something all movies should strive to be. So, very briefly, I considered this shot from the opening sequence.


Because the "HUGE" graphic makes me giggle. It can't have been an accident that that's the word that flashes in neon just as Nomi Malone (Elizabeth Berkley) pulls into Las Vegas. "I'm gonna win."

I almost went with anything from Nomi's first performance like these.


I love how distorted and fleshy the first image is (that's the movie, too) and that Nomi is a blur. Isn't she the spazziest (live action) protagonist of all time? She's basically a rampaging toddler and definitely the most inelegant "dancer" ever captured on film. It's not just that famous pool sex scene that's epileptic. This girl seems constantly beset by seizures, whether she's throwing fries, hitting friends, dancing or lapdancing, shoving innocent human resources personnel against walls, eating potato-chips, buying dresses from "ver-sayce" or running out into oncoming traffic (which she does at least twice during the movie). The second image is unexpectedly demure as she prepares to strip. Aren't the pinks and yellows gorgeous? It's not deep focus (shame) but it's wonderfully composed to allow you to see Cristal's (Gina Gershon) volcanic entrance at the same time in the background.

Speaking of backgrounds. There's so much going on in some of the frames, so many characters milling about with their own stories and agendas that I'm not even joking when I say that it occasionally feels like a Robert Altman movie... if the master had constantly snorted cocaine rather than puffed Mary Jane.


Some of the chaotic teeming energy is undoubtedly aided by the use of long takes. Thankfully Verhoeven lets DP Jost Vacano's camera roam around the room in a few key sequences rather than relying on a million edits. We love long takes, yes we do. Way too few filmmakers ever think to use them.

But I finally had to settle on my favorite dance sequence for the best shot. It's the climax of sorts (though Showgirls really doesn't know when to quit -- abbreviate the two major subplots involving a rapist rocker and a womanizing choreographer and the movie is suddenly zippier), which finally brings our two anti-heroines together in costume, though they've rehearsed this number alone before in one of the movie's very best scenes.


To me that just says it all. It's a blue movie (pun intended), the anti-heroines are dressed identically "You and I... we're exactly the same" but their expressions are so different. Cristal is your devious delicious Bitch Goddess (the name of the show within the show), Nomi is the bizarrely innocent whore/plaything.

Come on, slave girl.

Now, this slave girl is about to push her master down those monster stairs but a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do.

You know the best advice I ever got? You're up there on stage, hoping on a spot. Someone gets in your way, step on 'em. If you're the only one left standing there, they hire you.

That's about it. Thank you and good night, ladies and gentlemen. Elvis has left the building.

'...Best Shot' Players
Give it up for these whores dancers! You click the link. You see the post. They show you what you want to see...

• My New Plaid Pants ass + palm trees + vomiting dolphins... "It doesn't suck!"
• Nick's Flick Picks ♪ listen all of y'all this is sabotage!
  
• Antagony & Ecstasy the solar plexus as phallus? Whaaa
• missemmamm honors Nomi's relentless thumbs and (starry) eyes
  
• Stale Popcorn "the creature from Nomi's Lagoon" great writeup
• vg21random believes in the hair & makeup. I agree. (In fact, I 100% believe that this movie deserved a few Oscar nods: makeup and Gina Gershon as Best Supporting Actress being the two most egregious snubs.)
  

 Other Films in This Series

• Angels in America (2003)
• X-Men (2000)
• Bring It On (2000)
• Black Narcissus (1946)
• A Face in the Crowd (1957)
• Pandora's Box (1929)
• Se7en (1995) 
• Requiem for a Dream (2000)

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Naughty Verhoeven and Naked Bacon

A comment from 3rtfull on that Ken Russell The Devils post got me to thinking about Paul Verhoeven. There's another controversial auteur with a somewhat dedicated critical following who seemed to wear out his welcome with the press in general. They're always willing to be manipulated by the provocateurs for a short while but then, they turn their heads away yawning. Beware Von Trier! This fate could well await you next. We'll be discussing Verhoeven's masterpiece Showgirls this evening for the premiere of the new series "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" -- prepare those posts! -- but let's start a little early with Hollow Man (2000), which hits its 10th anniversary today.


When it came out, I illustrated my dismissive review with this cheeky pic. (I had just started the website. I am always embarrassed about those old reviews.)

At the time I was still totally hurt that Elisabeth Shue couldn't get a solid A list career going in the wake of her Leaving Las Vegas brilliance. I haven't seen Hollow Man since but I remember it being grossly misanthropic and, well, dumb.

Yet in the past ten years I've grown slightly fonder of Verhoeven (largely due to Showgirls -- which I've always loved -- and Black Book, which I was briefly obsessed with.) so I don't entirely trust my pre-Aughts feelings about him. I definitely wasn't ready for him when I first started watching movies. My first Verhoeven was The Fourth Man which I think I saw on VHS in the late 80s and it completely nauseated and upset me.

But maybe Hollow Man isn't worth a second look? Until I realized it was the tenth anniversary today, I hadn't thought of the movie since I saw that travelling Bodies exhibit with friends four or five years ago and thought 'This is just like when Kevin Bacon was naked in that movie. Sounds sexy but is not. Not sexy then. Not sexy now.' But in all fairness to Kevin, the only people who would find that kind of naked Bacon sexy are serial killers, so...

Has anyone of you seen Hollow Man recently? If not, do you have any memories of it at all? Paul Verhoeven just turned 72 a couple of weeks ago and though he has a few pictures in development and Total Recall is being remade, he hasn't made a movie since Black Book hit theaters four years ago.

Elisabeth and Kevin wondering what you'll say about them in the comments. Type!
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Linksicle

up
In Contention on Up's "Russell" and his voice actor Jordan Nagai
Wired Science wonders if you really can lift a house with balloons
/Film details inside jokes within Pixar's UP
Pixar the first teaser for Toy Story 3

down... all around
Stale Popcorn I love this "Movies in Movies" series, don't you? Wish I'd thought of it!
Just Jared Nicole Kidman on Rabbit Hole set. Also refuting baby rumors
NY Post French Oscar nominee Betty Blue is getting a rerelease with 65 additional racy minutes of Jean-Hugues Anglade & Beatrice Dalle thrown in. Mon dieu
Rants of a Diva names the 25 best performances of the TV season
My New Plaid Pants somewhat echoes my feelings about the new Verhoeven with Halle Berry (!?) in the starring role
Cinema Blend Lucy Punch replacing Nicole Kidman in the next Woody Allen film. I like Punch so it's good to hear she's catching a break. We still know nothing of the role, though
The Big Picture on the orgasmic (?) Drag Me to Hell poster
Daily Mail and Pop Hangover - Lick Daniel Craig! He's only 100 calories


Just in time for summer!
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