Ruse et Culpabilité
In France, Basic Instinct could have been called Guile and Guilt instead of literally Basic Instinct. In the April 1992 issue (#38) of a French magazine called Impact, there was an article about the film that enabled Sharon Stone to be a lead star in her own right. Jeanne Tripplehorn talked about sexual appetite: “The erotic scenes work on screen because we shot them with great spontaneity. We played them with all the emotion and intensity necessary. It must also be said that Michael Douglas was very kind, very professional. In one scene, he was supposed to bite my neck. I told him to go for it. He told me that he had already been biting me for seven takes. I was so into it that I didn't feel anything. Nothing. The next day, the makeup artists had to make bruises on my neck disappear.”
The above actress, Leilani Sarelle, has a passing resemblance to Jeanne but she also vaguely resembles a French actress who Jackie Chan was photographed with in Paris circa 1981 i.e. Cyrielle Clair. Back to Basic Instinct, director Paul Verhoeven had his reservations about reuniting with Sharon Stone after Total Recall (1990): “I thought, "Good idea, Catherine Tramell. It's Sharon without the murders." On the set of Total Recall, we had a strange love/hate relationship. Talking to her is like walking on eggshells.”
The shoe was on the other foot in terms of who was dictating what to who, as Sharon instructed him: “The sex sequences have to be realistic. I don't want actors' bodies sprayed with Evian water bombs, tight shots of anatomical details, or subdued blue lighting.”
Michael Douglas observed: “Paul Verhoeven presents the lesbian relationship between Catherine and Roxy as the purest, the noblest in Basic Instinct. This is the only real love story in the film, because all the others turn out to be rather weird. I don't think we should obsess over the themes of homosexuality or bisexuality. The sexual orientations of the different characters are part of the normal development of the plot. I want the spectators to leave the theater with the conviction that any sexual choice, whatever it may be, is natural.”
The son of Kirk Douglas also said: “Basic Instinct is a good film - sexy and violent. It's a film that had to be made. Everything is too restrictive these days. We live in the generation of NO. You can't do anything, eat anything even. It's forbidden to smoke, to have a little drink. You have to abstain. I like slightly dangerous films. I'm very proud of the choices made by Basic Instinct. I know that we live in an era hungry for pure and blameless heroes, but what attracts me, in individuals, is precisely their ambiguities, their dark areas. There are in each of us elements of violence and sexuality that life in society teaches us to sublimate. Basic Instinct shows how, at certain moments, we can be drawn into destructive behavior, or on the contrary led to redeem ourselves.”
Since Michael Douglas had been wanting John Woo to direct Face/Off before he did Hard Target in late 1992, he could have hired Woo for Basic Instinct. By comparison, Face/Off would have cost more money. Basic Instinct would have been pulled off a lot easier for a first-timer to the Hollywood studio system. Gosh, Sharon Stone even wanted Woo to direct her in a Sci-Fi movie of her own (Pin Cushion). In comparison to Woo’s most ambitious H.K. films and even Hard Target, Basic Instinct would have been a cake-walk. Like Douglas, Woo also believes in morally ambivalent characters. Not everything is black and white with him.
Back to the Impact magazine, journalist Cyrille Giraud found an interesting quote from an American film critic who unknowingly foreshadowed Glenn Close going from starring in an ‘80s erotic thriller to co-starring in a ‘90s Disney remake: “In comparison, Fatal Attraction is really 101 Dalmatians.”
In the October 1991 issue (Vol. 4, No. 5) of a British magazine called Martial Arts Illustrated, Cynthia Rothrock told Bey Logan that she was considered for the role of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s secret agent wife in Paul Verhoeven’s Total Recall instead of Sharon Stone. Had Cynthia been cast then Paul may have considered her for Basic Instinct, at least as the leather-clad girlfriend of Sharon’s character. The role of “Roxy” Hardy was ultimately played by Leilani Sarelle. In fact, Sharon only got the lead role after many other actresses had turned it down. She didn’t have marquee value whereas Cynth had an actual cult following.
Heck, Leilani only got the role of Roxanne because Paul Verhoeven had directed her boyfriend-cum-husband, Miguel Ferrer, in RoboCop (1987). Had Miss Rothrock played Lori Quaid in Total Recall, director William Friedkin (who had already wanted to work with her) may have volunteered to direct Basic Instinct. He later directed an erotic thriller starring Linda Fiorentino i.e. Jade (1995). Hell, Paul wasn’t even the first choice to direct Basic Instinct. Originally, Miloš Forman was set to direct because Michael Douglas had produced One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975). Forman liked the script but the Carolco company, who produced Total Recall, wanted a big-time director who could justify their decision to spend a few million dollars on purchasing the rights to the screenplay.
Michael Douglas had almost worked with Paul Verhoeven on the Japan-themed Black Rain (1989) but Paul turned it down to direct Arnold in Total Recall. Arnold’s desire to cast Cynthia Rothrock in that film most likely had something to do with the fact that Sylvester Stallone had wanted her to play his sidekick in The Executioner (a film that never got made). Michael Douglas is a big fan of Hong Kong movies (he produced a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie in H.K. before producing a John Woo movie years later), so he would already have heard of Cynthia Rothrock.
When Sly Stallone was making The Specialist in 1994, he could have cast Cynthia instead of Miss Stone. Back to Verhoeven’s Total Recall, Bey Logan stated that Sharon was cast because it was better to teach an established actress some martial arts instead of casting a woman who is primarily a martial artist but with not much of an acting career. Personally, I think that it was about credits. Credits being the operative word instead of credentials (as in actual talent) since Stone could be advertised with parentheses e.g. “…featuring Sharon Stone (Police Academy 4, Above the Law, Remington Steele, T.J. Hooker and Magnum P.I.) as Arnie’s wife.”
Before you come to the defense of the sexpot, even Paul Verhoeven had said: “If you look at Basic Instinct, you see Sharon Stone’s excellent performance, but few people realize that has a lot to do with the support and even confrontational attitude Michael used to get Sharon to the point where she was in the movie. He challenged Sharon to reach the highest possibilities of her talent. A lot of actors don’t think that far but Michael, being a producer, realizes that the performance of the other actor is as important as his own and he can only excel when the other person is good.”
It’s only after this movie that Jackie Chan realized that there was nothing wrong in playing a detective who sees a psychiatrist (i.e. Crime Story). The significance is twofold - Michael Douglas wanted Jackie to play the villain in Ridley Scott’s Black Rain whereas Jackie wanted Cynthia Rothrock to play the main fighting adversary in Armour of God (1986). Cynthia has often claimed that she turned down Jackie’s movie to be the co-star of Yuen Biao for Righting Wrongs, so it wouldn’t have made sense for her to have accepted the role of Lori Quaid in Total Recall while waiting in the wings to team up with Sly in The Executioner (for which she was supposed to be contracted to).
On the other hand, playing Stallone’s sidekick would have been more profitable than being a leading lady with limited commercial value (i.e. in the B movie realm). It’s like Bruce Lee agreeing to play James Bond’s sidekick in The Man with the Golden Gun so as to desperately increase his net-worth since he wanted to be the owner of ten million dollars by 1980. Also, he would have wanted to erase the stigma (i.e. eradicate the ridicule) of having appeared in a poor man’s version (Enter the Dragon) of a 007 movie (Dr. No). In stark contrast, working for the poor man’s Warner Brothers (i.e. Shaw Brothers) was still a preferable prospect to working for Golden Harvest. If Michelle Yeoh can agree to play 007’s sidekick then so can Bruce Lee. Michelle had rejected the chance to star in Clarence Fok’s 1992 remake of Basic Instinct.
It’s because of Naked Killer, written and produced by Wong Jing, that Clarence Fok was invited to direct Basic Instinct 2. Anita Mui starred in Jing’s Basic Instinct parody titled Fight Back to School III (1993). This is why, in late September 2000, producer Mario Kassar had approached her for a role in Basic Instinct 2. Had she accepted, more people would have known of Wong Jing. With all the people outside of France who tried to remake La Femme Nikita, the closest that France got to remaking Basic Instinct was L’Ange Noir (1994). It starred Tcheky Karyo, and was also reminiscent of Madonna’s Body of Evidence (1993). As was the case with Basic Instinct, Body of Evidence is an erotic thriller about a suspicious blonde woman versus a sincere brunette woman who is dating a man that the blonde woman wants to seduce. Body of Evidence missed out on exploiting Julianne Moore’s lesbian potential when you consider the future projects that she acted in.
What would be really interesting is a remake of Basic Instinct where the detective is a woman instead of a man as was almost the case with Naked Killer (whose title was meant to be a homophone of Nikita). Wong Jing was inspired by how Tsui Hark had originally wanted his 1986 remake of The Story of a Discharged Prisoner (1967) to be female-driven. Adding to the intrigue, a remake of Basic Instinct could have Catherine’s female squeeze (Roxy) stay in the picture longer so as to play with the dynamics i.e. making the most of the duos that can come from a trio. This can mean experimenting with compatible and conflicting duos. The essence of drama is conflict, and the ensuing result should be like people who alternate partners in a waltz or some other kind of dance.
When it became trendy to remake French films in the nineties, someone should have got Paul Verhoeven to remake Luc Besson’s Subway in New York with Jean-Claude Van Damme replacing Christopher Lambert, and Linda Fiorentino replacing Isabelle Adjani. Luc Besson’s Taxi (1998) was remade as a U.S. film that took place in New York. It was released in 2004. It didn’t have JCVD in it, but Luc could have cast him in the original or maybe in The Transporter (2002) as a sort of comeback vehicle (pardon the pun). Back to credentials, JC didn’t realize that it was important to go to acting school because it’s a seal of approval where each school has a reputation for famous actors having attended.
In the July 1992 issue (#78) of a French magazine called Mad Movies, Didier Allouch reviewed the Basic Instinct soundtrack composed by Jerry Goldsmith: “In composing the music for Paul Verhoeven's sexy and bloody thriller, Goldsmith wrote both a tribute and a snub to the "Herrmann-ian" style, which is heavily imitated these days. A tribute because Goldsmith creates an atmosphere very close to that which Bernard Herrmann installed in Hitchcock's films, using the same breaks in rhythm and the same sudden crescendos to underline a staging effect. A snub because Goldsmith uses all sorts of instruments where Herrmann was content with violins, because he does not respect any "Herrman-esque" rules in terms of the length of the pieces, extending at will titles that would have been cut long ago by the master and vice versa. The music of Basic Instinct is fortunately not just an excellent exercise in style. It has its own existence and is immediately among Jerry Goldsmith's very best compositions.”