Showgirls
Showgirls is a 1995 erotic drama film directed by Paul Verhoeven from a script written by Joe Eszterhas and starring Elizabeth Berkley, Kyle MacLachlan, Gina Gershon, Glenn Plummer, Robert Davi, Alan Rachins, and Gina Ravera.
This article is about the 1995 film. For female stage performers, see Showgirl. For other uses, see Showgirl (disambiguation).
Produced on a then-sizable budget of around $45 million, significant controversy and hype surrounding the film's amounts of sex and nudity preceded its theatrical release. In the United States, the film was rated NC-17 for "nudity and erotic sexuality throughout, some graphic language, and sexual violence." Showgirls was the first (and to date only) NC-17-rated film to be given a wide release in mainstream theaters.[5] Distributor Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) dispatched several hundred staffers to theaters across North America playing Showgirls to ensure that patrons would not sneak into the theater from other films, and to make sure film-goers were over the age of 17. Audience restriction due to the NC-17 rating, coupled with poor reviews, resulted in the film becoming a box-office bomb, grossing just $37.8 million against a budget of $45 million.
Despite a negative theatrical and critical consensus, Showgirls enjoyed success on the home video market, generating more than $100 million from video rentals, allowing the film to turn a profit[8][9] and became one of MGM's top-20 all-time bestsellers.[10] For its video premiere, Verhoeven prepared an R-rated cut for rental outlets that would not carry NC-17 films. This edited version runs 3 minutes shorter (128 minutes) and deletes some of the more graphic footage. Showgirls was universally panned upon release and is consistently ranked as one of the worst films ever made. Despite this, Showgirls has become regarded as a cult film and has been subject to critical re-evaluation, with some notable directors and critics considering it a serious satire worthy of praise.[11]
Plot[edit]
Young drifter Nomi Malone hitchhikes to Las Vegas hoping to make it as a showgirl. After a driver who picked her up robs her, she meets Molly Abrams, a costume designer who takes her in as a roommate. Molly invites her backstage at Goddess, the Stardust Casino show where she works, to meet Cristal Connors, the diva star of the casino's topless dance revue. When Nomi tells Cristal she dances at Cheetah's Topless Club, Cristal derisively tells her that what she does is akin to prostitution. When Nomi is too upset to go to work that night, Molly takes her dancing at the Crave Club. Nomi is arrested after causing a fight involving James Smith, a bouncer at the club, and pays him little notice when he bails her out of jail.
Cristal and her boyfriend, Zack Carey, the entertainment director at the Stardust, visit Cheetah's and request a lap dance from Nomi. Although the bisexual Cristal is attracted to Nomi, her request is based more on her desire to humiliate Nomi by proving she engages in prostitution. Nomi reluctantly performs the lap dance after Cristal offers her $500. James happens to be at the strip club and sneaks a peek at Nomi's lap dance. He visits Nomi's trailer the next morning and tells Nomi that what she is doing is no different from prostitution. James choreographs a dance routine for Nomi, but gives the role to Penny, a former co-worker of Nomi's, when Nomi refuses to have sex with him.
Cristal arranges for Nomi to audition for the chorus line of Goddess. Tony Moss, the show's director, humiliates Nomi by asking her to put ice on her nipples to harden them. Furious, Nomi abruptly leaves the audition after scattering ice everywhere in a fit. Despite her outburst, Nomi gets the job and quits Cheetah's. Cristal further humiliates her by suggesting she make a "goodwill appearance" at a boat trade show, which turns out to be a thinly disguised prostitution set-up.
Undeterred, Nomi sets out to get revenge against Cristal and claim her mantle. She seduces Zack, who secures an audition for her to be Cristal's understudy. Nomi wins the role, but when Cristal threatens legal action against the Stardust, the offer is rescinded. After Cristal taunts her, Nomi pushes her down a flight of stairs, breaking her hip, and replaces her as the show's lead. Despite having finally secured the fame she sought, she alienates Molly, who realizes she caused Cristal's injury.
Molly later relents and attends Nomi's opening-night celebration at a lavish hotel, where she meets her idol, musician Andrew Carver. Carver lures Molly to a room, where he brutally beats her and leads his two friends, who are security guards, into gang-raping her to the point of hospitalization. Nomi wants to report the assault to the police, but Zack explains that the Stardust will bribe Molly with hush money to protect Carver, their star performer, before then confronting her about her sordid past. He informs her that she was born as Polly Ann Costello in San Francisco, and she became a runaway and prostitute after her parents' murder–suicide in 1989, when she was 15 years old. After escaping from a foster home in nearby Oakland the following year, she changed her name several times and has been arrested several times in several states for various crimes ranging from drug possession to prostitution and assault with a deadly weapon. Zack blackmails her by vowing to conceal her past if she abstains from informing the police about the assault.
Unable to obtain justice for Molly without exposing her own past, Nomi decides to take matters into her own hands. After severely assaulting Carver alone in his hotel room, she then pays two hospital visits, one to inform a semi-conscious Molly that Carver's actions did not go unpunished, and another to Cristal to apologize for injuring her. Because her lawyers have secured her a large cash settlement, Cristal forgives Nomi, admitting she pulled a similar stunt years earlier, and they exchange a reconciliatory kiss. Nomi leaves Las Vegas and hitches a ride to Los Angeles, coincidentally robbing at knifepoint the same driver who stole her possessions when she arrived.
Production[edit]
Writing[edit]
Eszterhas came up with the idea for Showgirls while on vacation at his home in Maui, Hawaii. During lunch in Beverly Hills, Verhoeven told Eszterhas that he had always loved "big MGM musicals", and wanted to make one; Eszterhas suggested the setting of Las Vegas.[12] Based on the idea he scribbled on a napkin, Eszterhas was advanced $2 million to write the script[13] and picked up an additional $1.7 million when the studio produced it into a film. This, along with the scripts for both Verhoeven's previous film Basic Instinct (1992) and Sliver (1993, also an erotic thriller starring Sharon Stone), made Eszterhas the highest-paid screenwriter in Hollywood history.[14] Because of conflicts with the MPAA over the rating of Basic Instinct, which he made cuts to in order to secure an R rating, Verhoeven planned for Showgirls to be rated NC-17.[9][15] Verhoeven deferred 70% of his $6 million director's fee depending on if the film turned a profit.[12]
At the time the script deal was announced, Eszterhas was quoted as saying the story for the film "begins in the world of erotic dancers, lap dancers, table dancers, strippers and sleaze. It moves into the world of big hotel showgirls, billboards and glamor. It examines the sleaze and glamor and asks the audience at the end to make its own moral conclusions."[16]
Eszterhas completed the script in the later half of 1993.[17] He later said, "I wrote Showgirls at the single most turbulent moment of my life,"[18] referring to the dissolution of his first marriage.[17] "The stuff I've done since then has more warmth, more humor, is more upbeat."[18]
Eszterhas and Verhoeven interviewed over 200 Las Vegas strippers and incorporated parts of their stories into the screenplay to show the amount of exploitation of strippers in Vegas.[12][9]
Casting[edit]
Before Elizabeth Berkley was cast as Nomi Malone, a long list of actresses were considered for the role, including Pamela Anderson,[19] Drew Barrymore,[19] Angelina Jolie,[19] Vanessa Marcil,[19] Jenny McCarthy,[19] Denise Richards,[19] and Charlize Theron.[20][21] On the role of Nomi, Verhoeven said, "One of the main concerns, next to acting, was the dancing and nudity — both of those elements being extreme. The actress would have to be able to dance. And she also had to be willing to show full-frontal throughout the film. These elements, especially the nudity, are extremely difficult for American actresses to accept. And Elizabeth Berkley was the only actress that combined all three."[9]
Madonna[22][23] and Sharon Stone[22] were considered for the part of Cristal Connors before Gina Gershon was cast.
Kyle MacLachlan said Dylan McDermott was the first choice for the character of Zack Carey, but he declined and MacLachlan was then cast. MacLachlan recalled: "That was a decision that was sort of a tough one to make, but I was enchanted with Paul Verhoeven. Particularly RoboCop, which I loved ... It was Verhoeven and Eszterhas, and it seemed like it was going to be kind of dark and edgy and disturbing and real."[24]
Filming[edit]
Verhoeven asked Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics to not only compose the film's score, but to also write the music for the big Stardust hotel shows. "The idea was to make the same loud, sleazy, bad music that you hear in those Vegas shows, because that's how it actually is," said Verhoeven.[21]
Gina Ravera said the filming of the rape scene was traumatic. "When you do a scene like that, your body doesn't know it's not real," Ravera said of the sequence, which took over nine hours to film.[25]
Showgirls
September 26, 1995
1994-1995
63:13
Various; for album: Paul Verhoeven (executive producer), Robin Green (music supervisor), Alan Marshall (producer for Vegas Productions)
Marketing[edit]
Though marketing opportunities for NC-17 films are traditionally limited, MGM/UA largely relied on the controversy over the rating itself to generate audience hype and mounted a promotional blitz that capitalized on the film's potentially lurid subject matter.[29] The promotion included billboards in Times Square and Venice Beach, an interactive adults-only website,[30] and circulation of a "sneak preview" videotape at rental stores that purported to feature 8 minutes of explicit footage not shown in theatrical trailers.[29] Ads bore the tagline "leave your inhibitions at the door."[29]
Eszterhas denounced male-targeted marketing that hyped the film's sexual content and took out a full-page advertisement in Variety where he insisted the film was a morality tale.[12] The ad said, "The movie shows that dancers in Vegas are often victimized, humiliated, used, verbally and physically raped by the men who are at the power centers of that world."[12][29] Eszterhas, who believed the film's message to be about the moral costs of the pursuit of stardom, urged teens under the age of 17 to sneak into the theater by using fake IDs, prompting censure from MPAA president Jack Valenti.[29]
The film's stark poster was adapted from a photograph by Tono Stano. The photo had originally been featured on the cover of the 1994 book The Body: Photographs of the Human Form.[31]
Release[edit]
Box office[edit]
The film was released to 1,388 theaters in North America on September 22, 1995.[5][6] Two theater chains in the South, Texas' Cinemark and Georgia's Carmike, declined to screen the film.[32] On its opening weekend, the film made $8,112,627 and opened in the number 2 spot behind Seven.[6][33] In the second week, it slipped to the fifth spot and grosses fell 60%.[33] Its total domestic take was $20,350,754, less than half of its $45 million budget.[6]
While the film's theatrical run was underwhelming and did not recoup its budget, it went on to gross over $100 million in the home-video and rentals markets,[34][9] and as of 2014, the film is still one of MGM's highest-selling movies.[34]
To date, Showgirls is the second highest-grossing NC-17 production (after Last Tango in Paris), earning $20,350,754 at the North American box office.[35]
Home media[edit]
Showgirls performed much better on VHS, DVD, and Blu-ray, becoming one of MGM's top 20 best-sellers, grossing over $100 million in the US home media market alone.[9] Though initially reluctant to edit the film for video release, Verhoeven had agreed to recut Showgirls as an R-rated version, which allowed MGM to recoup its budget through video sales and rentals.[36][37] On January 2, 1996, Showgirls was released on VHS in two versions: A director's R-rated version for rental outlets (including Blockbuster and Hollywood Video), and an NC-17-rated version.[38][37] The NC-17 version was also released on LaserDisc that year.[39]
Showgirls was released on DVD for the first time on April 25, 2000.[40] In 2004, MGM released the "V.I.P. Edition" on DVD in a special boxed set containing two shot glasses, movie cards with drinking games on the back, a deck of playing cards, and a nude poster of Berkley with a pair of suction-cup pasties so viewers can play "pin the pasties on the showgirl".[41] In 2007, MGM re-released the V.I.P. Edition DVD without the physical extras, as the "Fully Exposed Edition".[42]
On June 15, 2010, MGM released a 15th Anniversary "Sinsational Edition" in a two-disc dual-format Blu-ray/DVD edition.[43]
In 2016, Showgirls was restored in 4K from the original negative. The image restoration was carried out by the Technicolor laboratory and the sound restoration by the L.E. Diapason laboratory, under the supervision of Paul Verhoeven and Pathé. The restored version was released on Blu-ray following a theatrical run.[11]
The film was released in Germany on Ultra HD Blu-ray by Capelight Pictures in 2020, based on Pathé's restoration, which was noted for having high noise reduction.[44] It was released on Ultra HD Blu-ray in the United States by Vinegar Syndrome in 2023, which received a stronger review for picture quality by High-Def Digest.[45] Vinegar Syndrome launched a disc replacement program shortly after discovering sync issues in the film's 5.1 audio track.[46]
Legacy[edit]
Sequel[edit]
Verhoeven said a sequel had been in development before Showgirls was released, with the film's final scene of a sign for Los Angeles hinting at a plot where Nomi takes on Hollywood.[20] However, these plans were dropped when the film did poorly at the box office.[20]
A sequel focusing on minor character Penny was released in 2011. Titled Showgirls 2: Penny's from Heaven, it was written, produced, edited, directed by and starred Rena Riffel, who was the only character returning, apart from cameos by Glenn Plummer and Greg Travis.
Musical adaptation[edit]
In 2013, an off-off-Broadway parody called Showgirls! The Musical was mounted by Bob and Tobly McSmith of Medium Face Productions.[110] Originating at the Kraine Theater in New York City,[111] critical and audience response was overwhelmingly positive. It was moved to a 200-seat off-Broadway theater, XL Nightclub.[110] The production continued to be successful; its original run was extended through July 15, 2013. Actress Rena Riffel reprised her role in the film as Penny for one month of the production.[112]
The musical closely mimics the film's plot and often directly incorporates dialog. The original off-Broadway production was critically lauded for April Kidwell's performance as Nomi and for staying true to the source's campy nature.[113] Andy Webster of The New York Times stated: "The coltish April Kidwell, as Nomi, is a wonder. Amid an exhausting onslaught of often obvious ribaldry, she is tireless, fearless, and performing circles around Elizabeth Berkley's portrayal in the movie. Her vibrant physicality and knowing humor are a potent riposte to the story's rabid misogyny."[114]
It takes several characters and condenses them for the stage. The characters of Marty and Gaye have been combined to one character, simply called 'Gay'. The characters of Molly and James are both portrayed by actor Marcus Deison. Zack Carey is simply called Kyle MacLachlan.[114] With sexually explicit language and nudity throughout, the tagline is "Singing. Dancing. Tits".
The original cast featured Kidwell as Nomi, Rori Nogee as Cristal, John E. Elliott as Kyle McLachlan, Marcus Deison as Molly and James, Philip McLeod as Gay and Amanda Nicholas, Natalie Wagner and Israel Vinas as the ensemble.[115]
On June 11, 2013, a cast recording was released with eight tracks.[115]