How Stallone got Sharon Stone drunk to shoot one of the most awkward love scenes in history
What the viewer and critics defined as "Because I'm tired of getting n@ked." Sharon Stone's justification for refusing to shoot a s-xual scene in The Specialist (Luis Llosa, 1994) was useless. Her co-star, Sylvester Stallone, replied, "Well, refuse to get n@ked in someone else's movie." The producers pressured her and she finally agreed to shoot one of the most uncomfortable and least erotic love scenes in 90s cinema. Stone has gone down in history as the official erotic myth of that decade thanks to characters who used her s-xuality to manipulate others, but behind the cameras she was never in control.
This is how Sylvester Stallone explained the incident: “We get to the set and she decides that she doesn't want to take her robe off. What is the problem? 'That I'm tired of getting n@ked,' she said. I asked her to get fed up of getting n@ked in someone else's movie "
The public image of Sharon Stone (Pennsylvania, USA, 1958) is associated with the cover of Playboy in July 1990. Tired of being ignored by Hollywood (her most important roles at that time had been "pretty girl on the train" in Memories —1980— and a secondary one in Police Academy 4, in 1987), Stone decided to sell herself as a -sc symbol.
She was 32 years old and that cover, along with her villainous role in Total Recall (1990), was her last chance to become a star. “Executives would sit around a huge table, argue about which one of us was fuckable and consider me not,” the actress declared in a May 2019 interview in Vogue. “I wanted to work, so I came up with the strategy of posing half-n@ked for Playboy. Did he fit into that role? Obviously not. Did I use my brain to look fuckable? Of course. I'm sure Marilyn Monroe didn't talk like that in real life, but she learned the game. Personally, I never felt like a s-x symbol."
Two years after that cover in Playboy, her crossing of legs without underwear in Basic Instinct (1992) immediately went down in cinema history, led thousands of teenagers to burn the video tape from rewinding it so much and the film became the highest grossing in history in Spain. Sharon Stone had been promised that nothing would be seen. His pleas, his threats of lawsuits and his slaps at the director (Paul Verhoeven) when he saw his pubes on the big screen were for nothing. male star. It happened 25 years ago in 'The specialist'
When Sharon Stone refused to undress in her next film, Sliver (1993), upon learning that her co-star, William Baldwin, was freed from doing so thanks to a clause in his contract, the film's producer, Robert Evans replied, "No actor has ever become a star by undressing and no actress has ever become a star without doing so." To Stone's reflection that "in Hollywood, the combination of a vagina and an opinion is lethal," Baldwin exclaimed, "And we've already seen too much of both from Sharon."
That's how burned out the actress arrived at the shooting of The Specialist (1994), a blockbuster that mixed the two star genres of the mid-nineties: testosterone action and erotic thriller. And starring her two greatest ambassadors: Sylvester Stallone and Sharon Stone. Even then, the s-xual scene was sold as "the never seen" (at the time, the love scene was a publicity lure: Harassment, The Color of the Night or The Escape, where the studio spread the rumor that Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger engaged in royal intercourse).
“Sharon is a great claim. My character dives so deep into his character's mind that when they finally meet there is an erotic explosion," promised Stallone. "Sharon is already fluent in these types of movies, so I guess she's the right choice," added the actor. The truth is that the scene in question was not yet shot and the producers needed it to sell the film. The happy ending was described at the time by the actor as an anecdote: “At first she didn't want to do that love scene. So I thought the best thing would be to get her drunk. Sharon had a couple of drinks and was like, 'Okay, I'll do it!'
In 2006, Stallone (New York, 1946) went into detail during an online meeting on the Ain't It Cool website. Andrew, from Washington DC, asked him: “Three words: Sharon Stone, shower. How many times did you boycott the shooting of that scene on purpose to retake it?” The actor began by clarifying that he did not want to do the scene because Stone was uncooperative. “We get to the shoot and she decides that she doesn't want to take her gown off. The director asked most of the workers to leave the room, but she still refused to undress. If I had promised her that I wouldn't go too far with her, what was the problem then? 'That I'm tired of getting n@ked,' she said. I asked her to get tired of getting n@ked in someone else's movie. She couldn't see reason, so I went to my trailer and got a bottle of Black Death vodka that Michael Douglas had given me. After half a dozen shots we were soaking in a wild plan”.
Stallone's logic was that since Stone had undressed several times, she had no excuse for refusing to do so now. No one has ever asked Stone for his version of the incident, which might include standard Hollywood practices such as threats of lawsuits from the producer, warnings that his career was in jeopardy if he didn't relent, or suggestions along the lines of "woman, if you end up accepting rather than rejecting.”
“At first she didn't want to do that LOVE scene. So I thought the best thing would be to get her drunk. Sharon had a couple of drinks and was like, 'Okay, I'll do it!'" Stallone said.
The result is three minutes and fifty seconds as sensual as watching two refrigerator magnets curl up. Accompanied by a saxophone soundtrack (inevitable, it's the '90s), Sharon and Sylvester b@rely touch or make eye contact as the camera gloats over his veiny muscles. In the end, she lathers his back, he tries to stroke her head and she dodges him openly.
“The scene is so elaborate that s-x has never seemed so tacky or so uns-xy. A monument to the anticlimax. They are two people disconnected from each other because they are too focused on themselves, ”critic Lisa Schwarzbaum described in Entertainment Weekly. "It looks like an exercise video: the stars offer their bodies to the camera as if they were in a bodybuilding competition," criticized Hal Hinson in the Washington Post. “The strange way Stallone strokes Stone's head, his arm stretched out behind him, his palm ruffling his hair as he stares blankly ahead, is the way a man would stroke his cat while thinking of other things. important”, opined Quentin Curtis in The Independent.
The specialist begins with Stallone looking through binoculars with the face of a vicious voyeur, but what he is looking at is a bridge about to explode. It's the kind of '90s movie where the girl walks into the mobster's house and exclaims, "The next time you kill someone, you should consider murdering your decorator." One of those films conceived to excite the most primal instincts of the public, for which they needed to undress a Sharon Stone who, despite being 50% of the commercial claim, charged 4.5 million euros compared to the 10.5 that Stallone pocketed. "Men grab their balls, they rub their s-xuality at you, they yell at you from the car, they are condescending," the actress said. And she continues: “Women are taught to give in, with behaviors that undermine your self-esteem, your integrity and your femininity. I'm not going to try again to please others or to avoid confrontation."
“The scene is so elaborate that s-x has never seemed so tacky or so uns-xy. They are two people disconnected from each other because they are too focused on themselves, ”wrote the critic of 'Entertainment Weekly'
In her next film, Quick and Dead (1995), Stone worked as a producer and did not undress. She demanded that they hire an unknown Australian who had never worked in Hollywood, Russell Crowe, and gave part of his own salary to Leonardo DiCaprio because she felt the kid deserved more money. But in 2001, Stone suffered a stroke and no one in the industry supported her. Two weeks ago, the 61-year-old actress spoke about the most difficult stage of her life: “People treated me in a brutally unpleasant way, including other women in the industry or the judge who led my fight for the custody of my son [in the end he lost it: they gave it to the ex-husband, the journalist Phil Bronstein]. It took me seven years to recover [from the stroke], I had to mortgage my house, I lost everything. I lost my position in the business. I was the hot movie star, you know? Princess Diana and I were the most famous, then she died and I had a heart attack. And they forgot about us.
Drowning in debt, Stone agreed to star in Basic Instinct 2, Addicted to Risk (2006). One would expect that, as the essential star for this sequel without Michael Douglas, she would control her work this time. However, the director asked him to sit on her lap while he gave her camera directions, and when she refused, he refused to shoot any more scenes with her.
A year and a half ago, in the midst of reflecting on #MeToo, Hollywood wanted to look back and review her own story and that was asking Stone if she had ever felt s-xually assaulted or used. The actress just laughed out loud for several seconds. When the laughter ended, she concluded: "I hope I have answered your question."
