If you’re ever going to see ‘Showgirls,’ do it now, plus the best films to see in L.A.
Hello! I’m Mark Olsen. Welcome to another edition of your regular field guide to a world of Only Good Movies.
When last week’s newsletter came out, I was on my way to Austin, Texas, for the South by Southwest Film & TV Festival. As this week’s newsletter comes out, I will be making my way back to Los Angeles after a very busy week of movies.
There were buzzy premieres: “Road House” with Jake Gyllenhaal; “Babes,” starring and co-written by Ilana Glazer; Dev Patel’s “Monkey Man”; and Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt in “The Fall Guy.”
I also published an interview with Sydney Sweeney and director Michael Mohan: Their latest collaboration, “Immaculate,” premiered at SXSW on Tuesday night.
The film is Sweeney’s second project as a producer, following the smash rom-com “Anyone But You.” Of her new off-camera role, Sweeney said, “I am a very hands-on collaborator. I like being able to give ideas, be a part of it, help come up with solutions. It just changes the whole process. It’s so hard for me now to be on a set and not be able to help in any type of way and be able to take action. And being able to actually have a voice and have a valued opinion — it means so much.”
‘Showgirls’ screening with star Elizabeth Berkley
Last week, “Love Lies Bleeding” filmmaker Rose Glass mentioned “Showgirls” as an influence on Kristen Stewart’s performance in the film. As luck would have it, the capacious Academy Museum of Motion Pictures is now showing the 1995 movie — directed by Paul Verhoeven from a script by his “Basic Instinct” collaborator Joe Eszterhas — in 35mm with an introduction from the film’s star Elizabeth Berkley.
I admit that I’m in a full-on debate with myself about whether I am going to this screening or not. Part of me is like, Do I really want to see “Showgirls” now? while fully recognizing that if I am ever going to watch the film again, this is the optimal way to do it.
The movie has gone through its ups and downs over the years, generating controversy when it was released, first for its NC-17 rating and racy storytelling, then for its box-office failure. Then it went through a long period of cultural reclamation. A recent book on the film by critic Adam Nayman was titled, “It Doesn’t Suck.”
The movie is, in many ways, a classic show-business tale of ambition, one that follows a young woman, Nomi Malone (Berkley), who hitchhikes to Las Vegas with dreams of success. She rises from strip clubs to dancing in casino showrooms but finds that everything comes with a price.
French filmmaker Jacques Rivette became a notorious proponent of the movie, declaring in a 1998 interview that it was “one of the great American films of the last few years. It’s Verhoeven’s best American film and his most personal. … Like every Verhoeven film, it’s very unpleasant: it’s about surviving in a world populated by a—holes, and that’s his philosophy.”
Writing about the film in 2010, Dennis Lim noted, “The movie’s fans are by no means of one mind about its strengths and weaknesses, nor do they even agree whether it is to be regarded with admiration or horrified awe. All of this raises the question: Is there a correct way to appreciate ‘Showgirls’?”
In his original 1995 review, Kenneth Turan wrote, “Given the subject matter, it’s inevitable that ‘Showgirls’ indulges heavily in partial and complete female nudity, all of it to negligible erotic effect. In fact none of the film’s sexual antics, including a surly lap dance by Nomi, is any kind of improvement over the nudie-cutie antics of skin flick auteurs of decades past like Russ Meyer and Radley Metzger, who must be wondering why no one ever gave them $35-million budgets to work with. … Of all the opportunities ‘Showgirls’ missed, the saddest one is the inability to make good use of its NC-17 rating by turning out a genuine piece of erotica or even good hearty trash. Instead Verhoeven and Eszterhas have combined to make a film of thunderous oafishness that gives adult subject matter the kind of bad name it does not need or deserve.”
Or, as John Waters wrote, “‘Showgirls’ is funny, stupid, dirty and filled with cinematic clichés; in other words, perfect.”
Oscar winners at the Academy
As you know, the Oscars happened Sunday — a ceremony that received surprisingly good reviews.
On the one hand, it seems kind of obvious, but on the other, it feels like such a smart idea to show some of this year’s Oscar winners at the Academy Museum’s David Geffen Theater, one of the best venues in the city.
On Saturday (March 16), there will be a screening of Jonathan Glazer’s “The Zone of Interest,” which won for international feature and sound. On Sunday (March 17), there will be a screening of Hayao Miyazaki’s “The Boy an the Heron,” which won animated feature. And that evening, ”Oppenheimer,” winner of best picture, director, lead actor for Cillian Murphy, supporting actor for Robert Downey Jr., cinematography, original score and editing, will play in 70mm.
Following that, there will be a screening of original screenplay winner “Anatomy of a Fall” on March 24 and visual effects winner “Godzilla Minus One” on March 31.
Other points of interest
Claude Sautet at the Cinematheque
The American Cinematheque is paying tribute to French filmmaker Claude Sautet, who died in 2000 at age 76, with a six-film series already underway. The highlight is a new 4-K restoration of the 1960 movie “Classe Tous Risques,” a moody gangster drama starring Lino Ventura and Jean-Paul Belmondo — one admired by the likes of Jean-Pierre Melville and John Woo.
As Turan once wrote of the film, “To come across ‘Classe Tous Risques’ is like discovering a bottle of marvelous French wine you didn’t remember you had, opening it and finding it every bit as delicious as its reputation promised. That’s how good this classic fatalistic French gangster film is.”
Also in the series are “Cesar and Rosalie” and “Max and the Junkmen,” both starring the smoldering Romy Schneider, as well as “Vincent, François, Paul and the Others,” with Yves Montand and Michel Piccoli.
Robert Altman’s ‘Short Cuts’ in 35mm
Among the many things that makes filmmaker Robert Altman such an ongoing source of inspiration is the way in which you could never count him out. Following the comeback success of 1992’s “The Player,” the very next year he made “Short Cuts,” adapted from the writings of Raymond Carver, which told the stories of an intersecting group of characters living in Los Angeles.
The movie will be playing at Brain Dead Studios on Sunday (March 17) in 35mm. To name the film’s cast sounds like you’re just writing a list of great actors: Robert Downey Jr., Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tim Robbins, Frances McDormand, Julianne Moore, Annie Ross, Matthew Modine, Tom Waits, Buck Henry, Fred Ward, Chris Penn, Jack Lemmon, Andie McDowell, Lily Tomlin and others.
In his original review, Turan called the movie “a rich, unnerving film, as comic as it is astringent, that in its own quiet way works up a considerable emotional charge.” Turan also noted, “Altman is 68 now, a survivor of successes like ‘M*A*S*H,’ ‘Nashville,’ ‘McCabe and Mrs. Miller’ and last year’s ‘The Player’ as well as failures best not mentioned. Yet he still wants it all, still pushes his vision of film as a medium capable of supplying the widest psychological canvas on which to illustrate the way we live now.”
At the time, Kristine McKenna wrote a feature on the making of the film, talking with Altman, Henry and members of the cast, including Robbins, Leigh and Lemmon.
“I’m not telling stories — I’m handing over a tray full of stuff,” said Altman. “What appeals to me is the idea of lifting up the roof of a house and watching the behavior going on inside. The idea of relating a story in A-B-C terms has never interested me at all.”
Also in the news
Oscar parties Something I have grown to look forward to every year is my colleague Amy Kaufman’s report from the Vanity Fair post-Oscars party. She always captures all the glamour and absurdity of the event, and this year was no exception.
I think my favorite moment is actor Barry Keoghan approaching Larry David to profess that he is a big fan of the comedian’s work. When David doesn’t express much interest, Keoghan says, “Anyway, I’ll let you be.”
There is also a report from Jessica Gelt and Matt Brennan, who attended the motion picture academy’s official Governors Ball party. As they noted, “Servers cut cramped zigzags across the packed ballroom wielding trays of bubbling hot mac ’n’ cheese, truffle pizza and petite cheeseburgers with tiny paper cones full of crisp fries while winners waited with their handlers to see their statues marked with their wins. As always, chef Wolfgang Puck’s tiny gold chocolate Oscars were piled high on the dessert table.”
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