# Verhoeven Reconsidered
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/verhoeven-reconsidered/212470
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [November 10, 2003, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/verhoeven-reconsidered/212470 "2003-11-10T20:46:07Z")
**Posts on this page:** 18
**Page:** 4
### Author:  [@RikWriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RikWriter)
#### Post date: [November 12, 2003, 3:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/verhoeven-reconsidered/212470/61 "2003-11-12T03:14:26Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by lissener \*
> \*\*That sounds like a great movie, Rik; why don’t you go make it?
> \*\*
Because unlike Verhoeven, I realize my limitations and know I am not a movie director?
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### Author:  [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)
#### Post date: [November 12, 2003, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/verhoeven-reconsidered/212470/62 "2003-11-12T03:21:19Z")
I find the pleas for the people who didn’t like ST or Showgirls to shut up and leave you alone to be bizarre.
You want to have a discussion where no one can disagree with you? This is a public message board. If you’d like a private discussion where dissenting voices are not welcome, try email.
For what it’s worth I agree with your point that Verhoeven meant ST and Showgirls to be double-reverse satires, tricking the audience into identifying with vapid ciphers pretending to be heroes. But I still don’t like it. Verhoeven has contempt for the audience, he despises and toys with his actors, and he makes mean-spirited nasty movies pretending to be satires pretending to be action movies. It’s like Oliver Stone claiming that “Natural Born Killers” was an anti-violence movie. Bullshit.
Verhoeven wants to hold a mirror up to the audience and secretly show them their own ugly faces looking back? He may mean to do that, but they are also looking at HIS ugly face leering out at them. Triple-reverse satire, the director playing a joke on the audience and by his hatred revealing his own degeneracy, his own joke rebounding on himself.
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### Author:  [@carrot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carrot)
#### Post date: [November 12, 2003, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/verhoeven-reconsidered/212470/63 "2003-11-12T04:07:09Z")
**Lemur866** , I want to thank you for adding the phrase “triple-reverse degeneracy satire” to my vocabulary. I don’t know how I ever lived without it.
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### Author:  [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)
#### Post date: [November 12, 2003, 5:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/verhoeven-reconsidered/212470/64 "2003-11-12T05:23:59Z")
I can forgive a lot of things. I can forgive poor acting, I can forgive poor writing, I can forgive a poor score, and I can forgive poor directing. Which means I can enjoy movies like Hell Comes to Frog Town, The Toxic Avenger, and even Attack of the Clones.
More then anything else Verhoeven’s movies bore me. (I can’t comment on Showgirls as I haven’t seen it.) I don’t find them to be particularly witty nor do I find them to be scathing comments on society at large. He doesn’t make me angry he just bores me and as far as I’m concerned that’s the biggest sin a director can commit. I don’t care if he makes bad movies on purpose. It doesn’t make them any more enjoyable or good.
Marc
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### Author:  [@Tygr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tygr)
#### Post date: [November 12, 2003, 7:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/verhoeven-reconsidered/212470/65 "2003-11-12T07:16:31Z")
Is a strongly-held opinion relevant if you can’t express it in a clear and unambiguous way?
If, as you maintain, Verhoven was saying “we’re the ones whose ridiculous nationalism and jingoistic patriotism and worship of hollow idols are the breeding ground for a future such as the one envisioned in ST”, why didn’t he make this statement in a less obfuscated manner?
You make an excellent point about what the director may have been trying to communicate at the lowest, most obscure level of subtext, but so what? If he was trying to get people to understand a broader point, he failed. If YOU understand the point and are having such difficulties trying to get people here to see it, then Verhoven did a _bad_ job.
If you make art that is trying to communicate a point and no one understands the point, it doesn’t make you a great artist.
If you tell a joke and then have to explain it, you’re not funny.
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### Author:  [@Tygr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tygr)
#### Post date: [November 12, 2003, 7:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/verhoeven-reconsidered/212470/66 "2003-11-12T07:36:32Z")
Incidentally, I think I’m liking Verhoven’s stuff less since I read somewhere that he deliberately puts extreme amounts of gore and/or sleaze in his movies for tangentially-similar reasons to the philosophy your ascribing to him, **lissener**.
In essence, (according to someone - again, I’m not sure who) V. is saying, “Americans, you like your sex and violence, well, I’m going to show you all the sex and violence I possibly can. I’m going to force-feed you an excess of what you seem to have a craving appetite for.”
As I say, this may be more of his subtextual lecturing. But if so, everyone’s missing the point and assuming he’s doing it for mere shock & titillation value. Again, if no one’s getting what you’re really trying to say, perhaps it’s not our hearing that’s screwed up, perhaps it’s how you’re talking.
At any rate, whatever his reasons, I’m not soon going to forgive him for making my wife nearly puke in the movie theater during _Troopers_.
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### Author:  [@Yookeroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yookeroo)
#### Post date: [November 12, 2003, 8:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/verhoeven-reconsidered/212470/67 "2003-11-12T08:38:47Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Cervaise \*
> \*\*The standard storytelling form of these “wishing for fame” movies gives us a heroine (or, very rarely, a hero) who is faced with the choice of compromising her ideals to achieve her goals. The big question toward which the story builds is whether or not the heroine will sell her soul, betraying her family or her best friend or her faith or whatever in order to win the leading Broadway role or the record contract or the Hollywood mansion. The ending always follows one of two paths, in which either the heroine refuses to compromise and gives up her dream, returning to a simpler but “more rewarding” life, or she sticks to her guns and those around her are so impressed by her integrity that she gets the fame and fortune and everything else without having to sell out and lose her soul. They’re both bullshit, obviously, but they’re _reassuring_ bullshit.
>
> What _Showgirls_ does is trick us into thinking we’re watching that kind of movie, except that the lead character _never has a soul at all._ She’s barely human, a single-minded creature of need and desire whose mask allows her to move among humanity, taking what she wants without regard to the consequences for others. She’s something between a machine and a vampire, really, though I’m sure Verhoeven didn’t tell Elizabeth Berkeley that. I’ll bet all he said to her was that “this character is really, really determined,” and let Berkeley’s inadequacy as an actress do the rest. The giveaway that this is completely intentional? The character’s very _name_, ferchrissakes. Nomi. As in, “no me.” Do I have to spell it out for you?
> \*\*
Wouldn’t the name (which could also be “know me”) have come from the screenwriter (Joe Eszterhas)?
It’s an intersesting theory, but I think it’s possible to make the movie you describe and actually make it entertaining.
And if it’s trye that “Showgirls takes one of our most treasured myths, inverts it so all the spiky bits are on the outside, and then shoves it up our ass”, then I have to agree with whoever said Verhoven me be clever here, but all he’s doing is trolling (and in this case, not very well…no-one was angry about Showgirls). Sorry, I’m not buying that this is some underrated work of genius.
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### Author:  [@Coldfire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Coldfire)
#### Post date: [November 12, 2003, 9:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/verhoeven-reconsidered/212470/68 "2003-11-12T09:12:05Z")
**lissener** quit trying to direct (heh) the topic. A thread started on the SDMB isn’t “yours”: other are allowed to have differing opinions here. If someone is inclined to start a separate thread about the Heinlein/Verhoeven, that’s fine. If someone wants to roast Verhoeven in the Pit, that’s fine, too. But you can’t expect people to talk about _exactly_ what you think is allowed.
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### Author:  [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)
#### Post date: [November 12, 2003, 11:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/verhoeven-reconsidered/212470/69 "2003-11-12T11:27:00Z")
Joe Eszterhas was indeed responsible for the name Nomi. It’s a slight variation of his wife’s name (Naomi):
[http://us.imdb.com/name/nm0000390/bio](http://us.imdb.com/name/nm0000390/bio)
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### Author:  [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)
#### Post date: [November 12, 2003, 12:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/verhoeven-reconsidered/212470/70 "2003-11-12T12:18:09Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Tygr \*
> \*\*
> At any rate, whatever his reasons, I’m not soon going to forgive him for making my wife nearly puke in the movie theater during _Troopers_. \*\*
It didn’t strike me as being all that bad compared to many other movies. In fact I found the violence to be so cartoonish and over the top that it just didn’t bother me. Maybe I’ve just grown numb to media violence. Just last night someone showed me the first 15 minutes of a Japanese movie called “Dead or Alive” telling me how violent and terrible it was. Wel, it was violent but in such a cartoonish way that it didn’t bother me.
Marc
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### Author:  [@Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tapioca_Dextrin)
#### Post date: [November 12, 2003, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/verhoeven-reconsidered/212470/71 "2003-11-12T17:25:23Z")
I love both the book and the film of **ST**. The book is full of… stuff. The film is full of … different stuff. I judged each one seperately.
Why do people make a big fuss about this? It was obvious to me when I first saw the film that it was a dark comedy (or a documentary made by Earth Alliance if you will). It was obvious that the humans weren’t the good guys, but they were too dumb to realise it. It was obvious that the only way the humans were going to win was by becoming more like the bugs.
**RoboCop** was similar in that the ostensible good guys and bad guys were the same people. It was a lot more obvious (ie corporate bosses shown taking drugs), and the midless drone becomes the hero by becoming human.
In **Total Recall** , agian, we have nothing left of the original story, but who should we be cheering for? Arnold or Arnold? Is he a bad guy gone good or a good guy gone bad gome good? It’s an attempt (not a very good one IMHO) to ask a difficult question. A question wrapped around car chases and explosions, but, hey, it’s Hollywood.
In **Hollow Man** - well, that was just a pile of…
Never seen **Showgirls** , so I won’t comment.
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### Author:  [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)
#### Post date: [January 3, 2004, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/verhoeven-reconsidered/212470/72 "2004-01-03T20:05:58Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Cervaise \*
> \*\*Basically, _Showgirls_ takes one of our most treasured myths, inverts it so all the spiky bits are on the outside, and then shoves it up our ass. No wonder people hated it.Less than a week before Spielberg locked picture on _Minority Report_ and sent the film off for duplication and distribution, he was agonizing about the ending. As it is in the finished film, we helicopter back from the island where the three pre-cogs have taken refuge (in a shot that cannot be an accidental reference to Tarkovsky’s _Solaris_), while voice-over tells us the project is being shut down. (It’s there, but it’s quick.) The thing Spielberg was waffling about including, and ultimately decided to cut: A final sentence of the postscript in which we are told that after the project was cancelled, “The next year, there were a hundred and fifty-six murders in Washington D.C.,” or something like that. In other words, it’s very much an “and yet…” ending, where we’re asked to recognize that all of this is six-of-one, half-dozen-of-the-other, where the system isn’t perfect and can be manipulated but the alternative isn’t great either. It’s a thinking ending, and it says a lot about Spielberg’s opinion of his audience that he cut it. \*\*
I’m sorry to bump this thread after so long but I DISTINCTLY remember the murder rate post script to Minority Report. Someone please tell me I’m not crazy…
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### Author:  [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)
#### Post date: [January 3, 2004, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/verhoeven-reconsidered/212470/73 "2004-01-03T20:21:27Z")
It was not present in the theatrical release. I knew in advance that Spielberg had tinkered with the ending so I was paying close attention. (Well, I always pay close attention anyway. That’s what makes me a movie geek.)
I don’t have the DVD so I don’t know if it was added back in for the video release. I guess it’s possible, but it’s uncharacteristic for Spielberg.
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### Author:  [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)
#### Post date: [January 3, 2004, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/verhoeven-reconsidered/212470/74 "2004-01-03T20:41:30Z")
It was there when I saw it too, though I can’t remember how big a screen I saw it on.
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### Author:  [@Ilsa\_Lund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ilsa_Lund)
#### Post date: [January 3, 2004, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/verhoeven-reconsidered/212470/75 "2004-01-03T20:57:28Z")
I believe that it was on the DVD. I remember it too.
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### Author:  [@gum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gum)
#### Post date: [January 3, 2004, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/verhoeven-reconsidered/212470/76 "2004-01-03T21:01:46Z")
\*wooshhhhhhhh \*
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### Author:  [@Ilsa\_Lund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ilsa_Lund)
#### Post date: [January 3, 2004, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/verhoeven-reconsidered/212470/77 "2004-01-03T21:02:21Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by gum \*
> \*\*\*wooshhhhhhhh \* \*\*
😕
It is there.
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### Author:  [@gum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gum)
#### Post date: [January 3, 2004, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/verhoeven-reconsidered/212470/78 "2004-01-03T21:11:25Z")
Okay. I know. I thought you were wooshing this thread. [being that old - and about Verhoeven, of all people _:: doing the roll eyes thing ::_]
Excuse me, **Ilsa\_Lund** 🙂
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