This documentary about the reclamation of SHOWGIRLS, that ultimate guilty pleasure carries a certain fun if morbid cachet. It would appear to be the obsession of a lot of white male film critics whose voices predominate the soundtrack here weighing in with theories about its singular fabulous/horrendous affect that range from plausible – one seeing it as the third in a seminal trilogy of over-the-top showbiz and what it can do to a girl’s spirit opuses, joining VALLEY OF THE DOLLS and MOMMIE DEAREST – to far-fetched (like a whole megillah of know-it-all psychology pertaining to camera angles proffered by another dweeb).It focuses heavily on the notorious film’s star, Elizabeth Berkeley, how she was sort of a pawn in her big screen debut, taking her role with a deadly earnest seriousness which rather contributes to the clueless fun of this appalling farrago. She did everything her lecherous auteurs, Paul Verhoeven , director, and Joe Eszterhaus, writer, instructed, and was devastated by the result and its negative reception. It’s nice to note that she has recovered sufficiently to be good sport enough that we see her good-humoredly introduce it at a packed Los Angeles screening, not long ago.
Gina Gershon, who, to me is really what makes the film any kind of watchable diversion, weighs in briefly and she, it seems was in on the joke from the beginning. Her villainous Crystal, a jaded, threatened Margo Channing to Berkeley’s ambitious Eve, is played with lip-curling gusto and laser-directed commitment to a character that is the last descendant of that honorable cliched tradition, the star who gets fucked off so the hopeful can go on in ehr place, stemming back to 42 STREET and, indeed Gershon is like Bebe Daniels with boobs.
The film could have been more fun had its creators focused less on critical opinion and more on the actual making of SHOWGIRLS. I would have much preferred to hear interviews with the costume and production designer choreographer, hell even bit players, than all these snarky, condescending freelancers, one of whom attempts to compare Elizabeth Berkeley’s performance to that of Maria Montez in the camp necessity COBRA WOMAN, wrongly describing Montez once the queen of the Universal lot, as a mere contract player in almost B-movies. Or another cargo shorts-wearing SHOWGIRLS queen, waxing eloquent about the various meanings of the name itself of Nomi – “know me,” or a more egocentric take “No, ME,’ etc., etc.
It would seem that everyone has their own personal relationship with this God-awful but inescapable movie, and I will always be grateful to it for affording me one of the most fun Manhattan nights ever.
When the Blue ray edition of it came out, I was invited to a special screening of it in Chelsea, followed by an after-party at “gentleman’s club,” Scores. Me and about 20 other journos were all seated in a VIP lounge and soon thereafter, the girls came in, gorgeous each and every one of them. After a bit, this one, a stunning Latina said to me, “Can I ask you a personal question, are you gay?”
“Yup,” I responded, “and so is every guy here.”
“Whew, I thought I was losing it or something. No one is tipping!”
And that cleared up, we proceeded to have a great time just chilling, as she described her eternal gratitude to the gay community for improving her love life. Evidently some homo pal of hers had clued her into rimming and “Now my boyfriend never strays. Hell, he doesn’t want to leave the house. Did you know there are [some figure] nerve endings in the anus, alone?”
Noh Way 