The night Paul Verhoeven made awards season history: “Nobody will expect it”
Many films have faced delayed reactions over the years, initially being met with a lukewarm response or backlash and later being considered masterpieces. Whether it be the horrendous failure of Babylon or the backlash against Shelley Duvall‘s masterful performance in The Shining, the general movie-going public has been bafflingly wrong in their interpretation of a film or performance that everyone has loved in years to come.
In some cases, these artists were simply ahead of their time and operating on a level that was not yet perceptible to mass audiences, leading everyone to react with fury in their inability to understand something. However, there was one director whose vision was perhaps most misunderstood, with his movie being slammed by critics and heralded as one of the worst films of all time.
Paul Verhoeven has always been controversial, directing films such as Total Recall and Basic Instinct that were designed to provoke audiences and revel in the explicitly violent/sexual nature of the exploitation genre. His movies have generally touched on a public nerve through their satirical qualities and critical undertone, often drawing our gaze to the insidious aspects of consumerism and capitalism through his extremist subject matter.
In recent years, his work has been resurging in popularity, with people revisiting the widely misinterpreted genius of his 1995 film Showgirls. The movie was met so badly that it was considered the lowest point of his career and ruined Elizabeth Berkeley’s reputation in Hollywood.
The film follows Nomi Malone as she moves to Las Vegas and takes a job as an exotic dancer, becoming wrapped up in a new world and doing everything she can to climb to the top. The movie is incredibly self-aware and nuanced despite the fact that this went over audiences’ heads. People instead expressed outrage at the nudity and sexual content in the film, even though this was in service of a much larger story and message.
After the movie’s release, Verhoeven was completely slammed by critics. He shared his surprisingly enlightening experience of sweeping the Razzie awards and winning for ‘Worst Director’ and ‘Worst Film’, surprising everyone by showing up in person to collect the award.
When describing this experience, Verhoeven said, “I remember thinking, ‘Nobody will expect it, and it’ll probably be unpleasant to do, but why not, let’s go and see what happens!’ Nobody knew I was there at first, and they kept playing scenes from the movie. Everybody was laughing, but when they started to give out the prizes, to their amazement, I stood up to collect them! I had to walk up there seven times that night. I got ‘Worst Director’, ‘Worst Movie‘, ‘Worst Music’, ‘Worst Acting’ and it just went on…it was absolutely fantastic because, by the end of the evening, people were screaming and laughing and clapping, it was a really great experience for me.”
While some might find this intensely humiliating and discouraging, it shows that Verhoeven was confident enough in his vision that the outrage of American audiences didn’t perturb him because he knew it wasn’t a reflection of the film but more of their discomfort.
He expanded on the catharsis of this evening, concluding, “On this occasion, I think attending the Razzies and ‘turning the other cheek’ was absolutely the right thing to do because it was like a catharsis for me and felt like the end of the whole negative spiral like it had all been wiped away. As soon as I came out of that room, I felt purified in some way.”
