This week, 30 years ago, various feminist associations and those in defense of LGTBI rights demonstrated at the doors of American theaters with the aim of boycotting the premiere of 'Basic Instinct'. As reflected in the newspaper library of the time, they denounced that Paul Verhoeven's erotic thriller portrayed women in general, and bis-xuals and lesbians in particular, as unscrupulous psychopaths.
The controversy did not deter the public. Overall, the film grossed $352 million and became the fourth highest-grossing film of 1992, behind "Aladdin," "The Bodyguard" and the second installment of "Home Alone." To tell the truth, the vast majority went to see it for a simple and morbid reason: the uncrossing of Catherine Tramell's legs, the character played by a then semi-unknown Sharon Stone.
Humiliated on Screen
Initially, the actress filmed the scene in her underwear. However, Verhoeven asked her to remove it from her because she, being white, reflected light into the camera. The filmmaker, with whom he had previously worked on Total Challenge, swore to him that nothing delicate would be seen in the final cut. Months later, in a private screening, Stone discovered that she had been the victim of a lewd hoax.
"I went to the projection booth, I slapped Paul in the face, I left and I called my lawyer, Marty Singer. Marty told me that he could not release it as it was, that he could get a court order," she recalls in her memoir, 'The Beauty of Living Twice', published last year. "After the screening, I told Paul about the options that Marty had presented to me. Of course, he vehemently denied that I had a chance. I was just an actress, just a woman. What options could I have? But I did. So I thought about it and chose to allow that scene in the movie. Why? Because it was right for both the movie and the character. After all, I did it."
Verhoeven continues to maintain a very different version of events. In an interview he gave to 'Le Journal de Montreal', in 2016, he assured that "when I proposed the scene to him, while we were having dinner, I saw a demonic gleam in his eyes and he immediately accepted, without thinking twice. Then he said he was not aware that we were filming her vagina, but it's false. She even pointed out that "just before shooting it she gave me her panties, although she always forgets to say that."
Misogynistic Hostility
The American may have taken time to confess the ins and outs of that filming that catapulted her to fame. Now, since the Me Too movement brought out the shame of the mecca of cinema, she has not hesitated to share this and many other experiences. Without going any further, when asked by CBS journalist Lee Cowan in 2018 if, at any point in her career, she had felt uncomfortable in Hollywood, she replied: "I've been in the industry for 40 years, Lee. Can you imagine how I was? I ended up in this business? As you see me now, from a remote place in Pennsylvania? I had no protection whatsoever when I arrived. I've seen it all."
The details, without a doubt, she kept for the aforementioned memories of her. In addition to mentioning that a producer suggested that she sleep with her male co-star so that they would have "chemistry on screen", as well as that they considered her "difficult" for not agreeing to those propositions, she revealed that director Michael Caton-Jones, the responsible for the unsuccessful sequel to Basic Instinct, he did not want to direct it for several days because he refused to sit "in his lap". "The studio didn't say or do anything," he remarked.
Listening Request
"Most of the films are written, directed and made by men who do not take into account, at all, how women are, think and feel. That is why many of my characters are drunk, drug addicts or crazy", denounced in the Portuguese edition of Vogue in 2019. "This generation, like governments, need to listen to all of us," he demanded. Thankfully, thanks to testimonials like yours, things are changing.
