Although some might argue that Showgirls doesn’t really need defending, thank you very much, Paul Verhoeven still asserts his utter lack of shame over having directed possibly the most ridiculous sex scene in American cinema in a new profile in The Hollywood Reporter.
Discussing his new film Elle—which comes recommended by The A.V. Club’s Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, who calls it “one of the most corrosive and fruitfully challenging works of art in recent memory”—Verhoeven reminisces on his European comeback after bottoming out in Hollywood in the early 2000s. Of that critically-reviled period, he appears to be of two minds. “I’ve never done a movie that in retrospect I cannot defend,” he says, before adding the somewhat contradictory statement, “I can defend Showgirls, but not Hollow Man.”
Perhaps Kevin Bacon ghost-directed the film in his invisible state? Either way, its heartening to see Verhoeven defend his tacky masterpiece, even if it’s just in comparison to the film our own Keith Phipps described as “wit-deprived, thrill-light bit of science-fiction horror.”