Showgirls
Paul Verhoeven’s work of genius tells the story of Nomi
Malone. A woman who pulls a switchblade
on a guy and so he offers her a free ride to Vegas and
gives her some money to gamble. She
vomits on a car in a parking lot and the owner of the car runs out and
immediately offers to be roommates. She
kicks a guy in the balls and costs him his job and he posts her bail and
choreographs dance routines for her. She
prettymuch gets a job or a promotion every time she
tells somebody to fuck off or go fuck themselves. I would say this is a portrait of taking the
unconventional road to success and popularity but I’m not successful or popular
so maybe this is just how it’s done.
The film is a
journey into Nomi’s identity. She says
her name is Nomi because her mother was Italian. We later find out that she actually renamed
herself Nomi, so I guess Italian mothers don’t teach their daughters how to
spell Naomi. Too busy teaching them how
to operate a switchblade I guess. Nomi
gets asked a lot of questions throughout the film that force her to reconsider
who she is. Such as:
“I’m erect, why
aren’t you erect?”
and
“It must be weird, not having anybody
cum on you?”
and
“Back when you
were a hooker how much did you charge?”
Paul Verhoeven broke his working relationship with Arnold
Schwarzenegger to cast Elizabeth Berkley in the lead role. And I think it was good move. Berkley brings
an unrestrained ferociousness to the character of Nomi as she tries to confront
her inner demons through dance. You can
see it on her face because she looks furious and whips her body around like
she’s fighting a goat. I guess most
dance numbers are like five minutes, which is a long time for Nomi to go
without telling somebody to ‘go fuck yourself’ so she gets a little pent
up. But then when the dance numbers end
she gets to kick her fellow dancers down the stairs for a nice fulfilling
release.
This film has a
unique achievement of every male character seeming like it was written for
James Woods yet James Woods does not appear in this film. I’ll give Robert Davi,
Kyle MacLachlan, and Alan Rachins
credit for stepping up and filling all six of James Woods’s rightful shoes in
this picture. They do a great job of
bringing shameless sleaziness to the screen, but I would’ve appreciated The
Grandmaster himself.
There comes a
point in every hair gel-abusing actor’s career where they have to show
audiences they can act without it and give a performance that shines through
their bangs. Aaron Eckhart did it in The
Dark Knight, and Kyle MacLachlan does it
here. The scene where he literally jizzes in his pants just wouldn’t have been the same
without those bangs flopping in his eyes.
There’s only room for one sticky paste on screen at a time.
MacLachlan lives in a
mansion like Scarface and clearly has some weird aquatic life fetish because he
loves getting blowjobs while a fountain shaped like a dolphin spews water onto
his head. I would’ve liked it if MacLachlan had let out a dolphin cry of glee, but the sheer
explicitness of all the onscreen tittylicking between
two television actors was more than satisfactory.
Robert Davi does a good job playing the strip club owner where
Nomi starts her rise to fame. His club
is better lit than most actual strip clubs, but it’s not like your typical
movie strip club where the dancers wear bikinis and have actual choreographed
routines like whatever the fuck Flashdance
thought it was representing. At Davi’s strip club there is a probationary period of a week,
after which you have to give him a blowjob and I guess that’s when you start
getting your employee discount and benefits or whatever. But the probationary strippers don’t have to
wear little tags that say ‘In Training’ like cashiers do in department
stores. This is more of a sink-or-swim
professional environment.
The third James
Woods character (played by Alan Rachins) is the
director of the big show at the Stardust casino. His spectacle is criticized as being the most
fantastical high-budget way to display tits ‘n ass possible, making it prettymuch like the movie in which it is contained. So this film swallows its own tail, or blows
itself depending on how you look at it.
I like this
film’s frank attitude to show business: that there are more people out there
with adequate talent and so blowjobs and beatdowns
function as the tiebreakers. In fact,
these people are so talented that they can dance even while strung out of their
minds on cocaine and with little to no rehearsal. But real life doesn’t hold tryouts, there are
no rehearsals, and it’s better on cocaine with somebody licking your tits.
Instead of
rehearsals, Nomi goes for drinks with the show’s star, Crystal (played by Gina Gershon, although, yet again, James Woods would’ve been
nice). I don’t knowif
Gershon is actually gay or just typecast in these
types of roles. They talk about what it’s
like to have nice tits and eat dog food.
Possibly unrelated statements or a subtle plug from
the dog food industry to try and influence young female viewers of this film to
try eating dog food in hopes of improving their figures.
The film also
deals with the transient nature of our existence. The film asks the question of whether Nomi
ever really existed at all. She replaces
a star who was thought to be irreplaceable and in the
end, she too shall be replaced. The man
she kicked in the balls still goes on to father children. The guy who gave her a ride at the beginning
(who she pulled a switchblade on) is still giving rides out at the end of the
movie. Nothing is changed. She is a replaceable part in an immortal
machine. Her tits represent the temporary,
that which futilely struggles to maintain its form against the passage of time,
and the many tongues that lick her tits onscreen throughout this film represent
eternity.
The film ends
with a climactic fight scene. At first I
thought she was just dancing for this guy since she lets him lick her tits
first and throughout the movie she always makes angry faces when she
dances. But then I realized she was
beating the dude. I should’ve clued in
sooner because she put war paint on her nipples, but then again, maybe he
should’ve too. I think it’s also a setup
for a possible sequel where she could become a cagefighter. If this movie was a pornofied
remake of All About Eve, I’d love the sequel to
be a pornofied Gladiator. Maybe they could finally get James Woods in
on that.
I understand
that recently Steve Soderburgh has made a film called
The Girlfriend Experience in which he gets a porn star to act in the
main role in an actual serious movie about an escort with limited nudity, but I
doubt that will impress me more than what Paul Verhoeven
has accomplished here in convincing established actors to behave like porn
stars. This film is ball-kicking,
telling people to fuck off, and tittylicking all
piled into whatever epic can be constructed out of those elements and it
obviously wins my unabashed recommendation.
I’m glad my mother bought me the gift set of this film that includes
special shot glasses and a party mask.
She obviously knew what kind of movie I would enjoy. I think this one will go on annual rotation
viewing for me and is clearly a classic of its time.
P.S.
There are
monkeys in this film.
If you enjoyed
this, check out these other related articles:
Jonathan Demme’s 1974 tale of penal woe.
A Robostripper
Lindsay Lohan Production
These streets are savage
and from 1984, although they are not streets of fire.