The actress recreated this weekend at an awards ceremony the scene that made her a s*xual icon of the nineties. Although she and the film's director, Paul Verhoeven, have a very different version of what happened that day on the set.
May 1992. Cannes. In the Official Section of the prestigious film festival, a film was screened for the first time that would bring racy thrillers back into fashion. It was Basic Instinct by Paul Verhoeven, known at the time for two blockbusters of the caliber of Robocop and Total Challenge. The lucky ones who saw that first pass inside the Palace of Festivals and Congresses of the French city were immediately captivated by the magnetism of its protagonist, an almost unknown Sharon Stone. And, above all, of that scene in which her character, Catherine Tramell, uncrossed her legs before the attentive gaze of Michael Douglas and several police officers in a fictitious interrogation that marked an entire generation. That day the actress showed the most intimate parts of her on the big screen and went on to become, without a doubt, one of the greatest s*xual icons of the nineties.
Much has happened since then. However, Stone has not yet forgotten either the filming or everything that happened when the film was released worldwide. Proof of this is that this past weekend in Berlin, on the occasion of the award she received for Woman of the Year awarded by GQ magazine, the star spoke about it again. After receiving the award, she sat before the audience and said the following referring to Verhoeven: “A few years ago, before we were allowed to be who we are in our small towns, I was sitting in a studio when my director said to me: 'What? Can you pass me your panties? Because they can be seen on the scene and you shouldn't be wearing them, but nothing will be seen'. And I said, 'Sure.' I didn't know that moment would change my life."
After that, she invited those present to emulate what she did twenty-seven years ago. “Do you feel empowered? Maybe not. Let's do it again », and she repeated the maneuver. “Each and every one of you will have a moment like I had, a moment that will change your lives. They may realize it's happening, or they may not. But I'm telling you, you will have it, if you haven't already, and you're going to be responsible for it. People will ask you very difficult questions, if they haven't already. So the time to decide who they are is now. And the time to decide what you are going to do with the most tender, wild, beautiful, passionate and important part of yourself is now. What are they going to do with her? I tell them what I did with mine: I respected it. And I tell you all of you to do the same because we all have the right to be powerful in whatever form of s*xuality we choose to have. No one has the right to take that right away from us », she confessed before making a clear allusion to the #MeToo movement:“ All this got out of control and it had already gotten out of control before this all started. In my opinion, the only way this will change is by having real written felony and misdemeanor laws, and having social services actually working in our lives."
Her speech, which immediately went viral, ended with “I'll tell you that it was very difficult what I went through after I just did this [plain and simple, uncrossing my legs]. So I want to thank you for choosing me as Woman of the Year because there was a time when I was just a joke."
More than a joke, she perhaps thought it was more of a drag. Legend has it that, minutes after filming, Stone watched the discord sequence on the monitor and saw for herself that she didn't see herself too much. But keep in mind that at that time high definition had not yet arrived. It was not until just before its Cannes premiere that the Dutch director invited the team to see the film in a cinema. There the surprise jumped and the actress, according to her testimony, found out about the betrayal. Conclusion: She got up, slapped Verhoeven in the face and panicked that this was going to be the beginning of the end of her career.
Fortunately, it did not mean the end of Stone's career, but we must not forget that after Basic Instinct, the filmmaker went behind the cameras to record that exercise in kitsch eroticism called Showgirls. Despite its box office failure in 1995, stripper Nomi Malone's story over the years ended up becoming a cult movie. That yes, since then the protagonist of her, Elizabeth Berkley, lives in the greatest ostracism. Hollywood could never assimilate how the young woman who became known in the series Saved by the Bell agreed to play that role. Although Sharon Stone dodged the controversy as best she could, the mecca of cinema always stigmatizes and makes people payThe audacity of those actresses who decide to show their body due to the demands of the script is very expensive. If not, ask Demi Moore, who experienced the samething in her flesh after seeing how her representative's phone stopped ringing from 1996 after her participation in Striptease.
Going back to Basic Instinct, Verhoeven has a radically different version of what happened. In December 2016, taking advantage of a tribute paid to him by the Marrakech Film Festival, he told about Sharon Stone in an interview with the Journal de Montreal that “when I proposed the scene to her while we were having dinner, I saw a demonic gleam in her eyes and she immediately told me Yes, without thinking twice. When we shot the scene I had everyone leave the set, including Michael Douglas. It was just her, me, and Jan de Bont, the director of Speed, who was my cinematographer at the time. He knew very well what we were doing.
then said that she didn't know we were filming her vagin@, but it's false. And besides, just before shooting the scene she gave me her panties, although she always forgets to say that». Was she cheated? Is Verhoeven lying because she is more than aware that years ago, and even more so now, what she did was a scoundrel? Next year he will release Benedetta, a film that will tell the story of Benedetta Carlini, an Italian lesbian nun from the 16th and 17th centuries. The controversy, again, will be served.
