'Leave Your Inhibitions At The Door.'
I'm aware that 1995's Showgirls is not a great movie, but it is a flick, that from time to time, does the trick. The trick, is to entertain, something only cult films, and certain films that are 'so bad their good' are able to do. Whenever Showgirls, and other flicks such as Mommie Dearest, Grease 2 and Mamma Mia come on a cable channel, I record them. I don't always watch, but on some nights,,, only a really bad movie will do.
It was probably about the mid-nineties when I really took notice of actor Kyle MacLachlan. I had seen a few episodes of Twin Peaks a few years earlier, but it wasn't that show that drew me to the actor. When I was about 20, I was at a friends house for movie night, and one of the rentals in the pile of boxes from Blockbuster was Blue Velvet.
The next day, I rented my own copy, not to again enjoy the films brilliance, but to again see MacLachlan's nude scene. I re-watched that scene with MacLachlan and Isabella Rossellini again and again... It's funny, the crush was rather short lived. By the time I saw Showgirls a few years later, (again, from a Blockbuster rental) I wasn't quite as drawn to MacLachlan.
Showgirls (1995)
It might have been the time and place, MacLachlan seemed so much older than I remembered him in Blue Velvet, a movie that although made almost a decade before Showgirls, I had just seen a year or two earlier. It's fascinating how time can change reactions. When I caught some of Showgirls on a 90's movie channel last week, I again was lusting after the actor, even while playing Zack Carey, the Stardust's sleazy entertainment director.
'You're gonna be a big star. Your face is gonna be up on billboards. You're gonna make a lot of money for the Stardust.'
Zack Carey:
With his acting resume (current sit-come aside..) MacLachlan survived Showgirls most unscathed. Elizabeth Berkley, who played Nomi, (that name still causes me to giggle... wasn't so lucky. Berkley's acting was a little cringe worthy in many scenes, but you can't deny she gave it her all. This was especially evident in her dance scenes. Normally a lap dance from a female stripper wouldn't do much for me, but Nomi's lap dancing for, and on MacLachlan at Cheetah's strip club was incredibly hot!
Berkley also appeared fierce taking on the required nude scenes, and she was completely naked several times in the film. As far as male nudity, the only real skin was from MacLachlan. There were a few male dancers in g-strings in the Stardust show, but they were never given much screen time, and it was hard to really get a decent view. I'm guessing director Paul Verhoeven thought audiences would be focused on Berkley and Gina Gershon, and he was probably right. I can't be too critical of Verhoeven however, as he did give us a great view of Casper Van Dien's delicious derriere two years later his next film, Starship Troopers.
'Showgirls was a decision that was sort of a tough one to make, but I was enchanted with Paul Verhoeven. Particularly Robocop, which I loved.. It was Verhoeven and [Joe] Eszterhas, and it seemed like it was going to be kind of dark and edgy and disturbing and real. I signed on, and… I think they’d wanted Dylan McDermott and he’d passed, so then they came to me and asked, “Do you want to do this?” And I was like, “Yeah!” Because I was really into that mode. And I worked hard, I came in and did my scenes, but then I wasn’t really involved in anything else until it finally came time to do the press for it.'
'It was about to premiere, I hadn’t seen it yet, and I wanted to. So I went to see it and… I was absolutely gobsmacked. I said, “This is horrible. Horrible!” And it’s a very slow, sinking feeling when you’re watching the movie, and the first scene comes out, and you’re like, “Oh, that’s a really bad scene.” But you say, “Well, that’s okay, the next one’ll be better.” And you somehow try to convince yourself that it’s going to get better… and it just gets worse. So at that point, I distanced myself from the movie. Now, of course, it has a whole other life as a sort of inadvertent… satire. No, “satire” isn’t the right word. But it’s inadvertently funny. So it’s found its place. It provides entertainment, though not in the way I think it was originally intended.'
Kyle MacLachlan
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