Pop Culture Happy Hour: "Showgirls" at Twenty-Five

Gina Gershon and Elizabeth Berkley in Showgirls. Gershon’s career survived. (MGM)

I was surprised when I heard from erstwhile Pop Culture Happy Hour producer Jess Reedy that the show had opted to cover Showgirls, Paul Verhoeven’s notorious 1995 riff on A Star Is Born set in the world of Las Vegas dancers. The movie got a lot of attention at the time, because Verhoeven and screenwriter Joe Eszterhas were both coming off of Basic Instinct — controversial, but also a huge hit — and because Verhoeven had promised their new $40-million plus movie would carry an NC-17 rating due to its realistic treatment of the sex trade.

But realism isn’t Verhoeven’s Versace (pronounced Vehrr-SAYce) bag. Showgirls tanked, all but ending the career of former Saved by the Bell star Elizabeth Berkley, whose bizarre performance is one of the features that got the movie pilloried by critics 25 years ago, and is also one of the elements that has driven the movie’s latter-day reclamation as a Rocky Horror Picture Show-style campfest. (That reclamation is the subject of a good documentary called You Don’t Nomi, which in part inspired PCHH’s Showgirls episode. I recommend the doc.)

I was very happy to join in the Showgirls discourse with the brilliant panel of Linda Holmes, Aisha Harris, and Barrie Hardymon a couple of months back. That episode has now posted, just when we need it most. One thing I wish I’d found a place to point out is how Showgirls’ failure (though the movie by most accounts become profitable on home video) sent Verhoeven back to the R-rated sci-fi satire genre for 1997’s Starship Troopers — another movie that underperformed and got lousy reviews at the time (though not from me!) but has, over time, been rightfully recognized as a sort of masterpiece.

FURTHER READING: Seven long years ago I made 1987’s RoboCop — the movie that made Dutch auteur Verhoeven into a bankable Hollywood filmmaker for about a decade — the subject of the first and ,sadly, only installment in a proposed series of posts for what was then called NPR’s Monkey See blog on the subject of remakes. The column didn’t happen, but I certainly didn’t abandon the approach, as my review of 2016’s instantly forgotten Ben-Hur remake shall demonstrate. Maybe I’ll get to revive it if the long-threatened remake of Starship Troopers sever happens.

The Retouchables: RoboCop

Peter Weller in RoboCop '87: I will call you "Murphy," and Murphy when you call me you can call me "Al."

Today! Right now! Right here! The first installment of The Retouchables, an irregular but recurring feature I'll be writing for NPR Monkey See about reboots and remakes and re-remakes and, just maybe, bootmakers. IN THIS EPISODE: RoboCop!

 José Padilha's remake opened at number four with a bullet last weekend, so the time just felt right. This'll be all on RoboCop for a while, I promise.

Podcast: Young RoboCop, Old RoboCop

RoboCop '14 & RoboCop '87. The original has more gestural flair, and so does the movie he's in.

Thanks to Village Voice film editor Alan Scherstuhl and L.A. Weekly film critic Amy Nicholson for having me on the Voice Film Club podcast this week to talk RoboCop, and to listen in rapt mostly-silence while they discuss Vampire Academy. I've not seen the latter but I certainly will, based on the impression HAHAHAHAHAHAjokes it made on Amy and Alan.

You can hear the episode here. I can't believe I forgot to plug the good RoboCop remake.

The Big Engine That Couldn't: Why RoboCop's Hopeless ED-209 is One of the All-Time Great Movie Robots

Phil Tippett and ED-209. (RoboCop Archive)

Director Paul Verhoeven gives ED-209 his motivation. 1986. (RoboCop Archive)

Smaller in real life, but still pretty damn big. (RoboCop Archive)

You have 20 seconds to comply, and then I will shoot you anyway. (RoboCop Archive)

I saw José Padilha's new remake of Paul Verhoeven's classic sci-fi satire RoboCop the other night. It reminded me of what it feels like when someone with a pleasantly melodic voice covers a song by Leonard Cohen or Bob Dylan: It's technically "better" in all the ways that don't matter, and worse in all the ways that count.

I'll be discussing the picture later this week in the first of a series of posts I'm going to be writing for the my pal Linda Holmes over at NPR's Monkey See about... remakes! But first, this little ditty for my man Alan Scherstuhl at the Village Voice, about how the brilliant animator and visual effects artist Phil Tippett created my favorite performance in the 1987 RoboCop: the dysfunctional robot ED-209.

UPDATE: A reader located and sent me a link to the Starlog magazine photo I reference in the piece. And that reader turned out to be Rolling Stone senior writer Brian Hiatt, whose stuff I've been reading for years. "Pretty neat," as patrolman Alex Murphy might say.