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On “ A Second Look At Basic Instinct 2 And The Greatness Of Sharon Stone.”

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This entry was posted on 6/18/2007 9:13 AM and is filed under Pop Culture, So Damn Bad It's Great, Humor.

To say that Sharon Stone’s creation of Catherine Tramell in the original “Basic Instinct” defined the modern femme fatale is to entirely understate her work in that twisted, trashy masterpiece. Stone-as-Catherine is the prototype for basically every brilliant, beautiful and psychotic bad-girl since, from Kim Basinger’s truly horrible (and deeply, unintentionally funny) turn in “Final Analysis,” to Sarah Michelle Gellar’s great twist on the vixen in “Cruel Intentions.”

What made Catherine Tramell click with electric energy had less to do with the way in which Sharon Stone looked (not that it hurt, being gorgeous enough to turn a queen straight,) but in how she conveyed her intellect, her superiority. There was never a doubt which of the leads wore the figurative, if not the literal, pants in “Basic Instinct.”

This is, again, a test to Stone’s formidable chops as a film artist. As an actor. Saddled with some truly dippy dialogue and surrounded by manly men doing manly things (in the gay man haven of San Francisco, there’s not a single gay man around….riiiight), Stone managed to create an iconic feminist character AND an iconic gay character while still retaining the horn-dog appeal for the hicks jacking off at the back of the drive-in. Can Meg Ryan make that claim?

(Some of this credit needs to go to Paul Verhoeven, the director, whose career is marked by equal opportunity: gender doesn’t matter to him…all people are evil, should be naked and then quickly impaled in his apparent world-view. Wait ‘till I write about his truly remarkable “Starship Troopers.”)

“Basic Instinct” both made and destroyed Stone’s career. The part vaulted Sharon Stone to the heights of stardom. Indeed, the role that Stone is still best known for is Tramell, the picture most remembered is “Basic Instinct.” Not even her Oscar-nominated, utterly brilliant work in “Casino” has broken through to the masses as much as her naughty nether-region-flash paired to wicked wit in “Basic Instinct.” For better or worse, we, the people, can’t see Sharon Stone in another role and not think “Oh, that’s the hot chick from ‘Basic Instinct.’”

To be fair, a lot of this is Stone’s fault. For every interesting, nuanced project that she’s attempted, there’s at least one “Catwoman” that she’s dropped like guano on the masses. We can’t like your new shit, Sharon…if it’s just…well, shit!

To spread the blame around, this is also Hollywood’s fault. Sharon just doesn’t fill the mold of ‘dependent mother’ or ‘woman in distress.’ A lot of Stone's turkeys are the result of studio heads dropping her into parts that are just unsuitable, such as the helpless wife terrorized in "Cold Comfort Farm," or the truly insane "Sliver," where she plays a writer who feels she's getting old and losing her looks. One of the most absurd scenes in "Sliver" (and there are many,) involves our gal Sharon looking into the bathroom mirror, rubbing and pinching her utterly flat stomach, and looking forlorn. (Seriously. Kathy Bates could play this...but Sharon Stone at 35? C'mon!)

The roles that fit Sharon Stone best are the roles that nobody but she could play: a female cowboy in “The Quick And The Dead,” the steely decay of Ginger in “Casino,” the warm and wacky hippie mother in “Broken Flowers.” Even her fierce, megalomaniacal turn in the otherwise derivative “Alpha Dog” is owned: lock, stock and barrel by Sharon Stone.

That’s a pretty remarkable accomplishment. Very few actors can lay claim to that: inhabiting roles so completely that an audience can’t recast them in their minds. Let me put it another way: I’m sure you could imagine Stone playing the Jennifer Tilly part in “Bound.” But can you imagine Tilly in “Basic Instinct?” And I’ve often thought that Sharon would have been brilliant as the hooker cut to look like Veronica Lake in “L.A. Confidential.” But would weak-as-a-willow Kim Basinger have been able to summon the power and fury along with the vulnerability to play with DeNiro in “Casino?”

I think not.

And even in the bad films, you have to wonder…does Sharon ‘get’ something that the rest of the crew is missing? In her mind's eye, does she see potential avenues for successful exploration, for unique takes on tawdry material that could elevate it? I think she does, and that it's part of her underrated genius. Take the aforementioned “Catwoman,” where everybody involved seems to think that they’re entering a pro-woman comic-book movie franchise into the pantheon.

Except Stone.

Halle Berry plays the lead entirely without irony, finding female empowerment by walking the streets in her bra, torn leather pants and a whip. Frances Conroy, the wonderful mother from “Six Feet Under,” details an entire history of women who have done this throughout the ages, no less! This is a movie where nobody seems to get that a tagline like ‘time to accessorize’ doesn’t exactly jive with Betty Freidan, and where nobody seems to find it amusing that a woman named ‘Catwoman’ could have easily been called ‘Pussy Girl.’

Except Stone.

To say that Sharon Stone is great in ‘Catwoman’ entirely misses the point. This movie wasn’t supposed to be great. It was supposed to be great trash. It could have been a camp classic…it’s certainly scripted and plotted like ‘John Water’s Superhero Movie!’ Nobody else involved in the movie ‘gets’ this.

Except Stone.

Dressed like a seventies Euro-trash porn star, Sharon waltzes into the mess and saves every scene she’s in. She plays the wife of a cosmetics magnate, who used to be the face of 'Hedare,' but is now being replaced by a younger model. The catch is that Stone' villian has been using Hedare's secret beauty cream, which causes deformation and death if you stop using it, and skin as hard and sleek as marble if you don't. Unaging skin...as strong as Stone.

Sharon clearly seizes on the meta-opportunity present. Stone's role becomes a comment on her own looks, and the attention they still get (from men, women, tabloids, Perez Hilton.) Moreover, when it's revealed that Stone is behind the entire Bad Guy plot to Rule The World, the script almost seems to demand surprise that a woman could possibly be behind this! Sharon refuses to go along with the written word; she plays the reveal with indignance...how could it be anybody else but her? (Indeed, she's surrounded by idiots throughout.)  By far, the best line in the movie belongs to Stone, musing, “I'm a woman, I'm used to doing things I don't want to do.” Now, mind you, any other actor in the film would have delivered this with earnest candor. Like Steinem on the soapbox. Everyone…

Except Stone.

Sharon mixes sadness with sarcasm here. Anger with the knowledge of a woman who has been underestimated, time and time again. It’s a single line…maybe eight seconds of the movie, total…and she nails it. Owns it.  And she does this throughout the film. It’s as if she’s making an entirely different, entirely better movie than the rest of the cast. The movie we wanted to see. The great and trashy “Mommie Dearest’s Catwoman.”

This is true in many of Stone’s ‘bad’ movies. She practically channels Joan Crawford in ‘Diabolique’ and nearly saves it from its own serious stupidity. (Nearly.) She’s the only thing worth watching in “The Specialist,” although Eric Roberts at least tries to be interesting. And like the others 'bad' movies, she ‘gets’ “Basic Instinct 2” like nobody else does. If only that creative team had followed her lead, it would have been the campy sex fiesta it should have been. If only…

I originally saw “Basic Instinct 2” in it’s entirely on opening night. I do not recommend this viewing treatment to anybody sane (or wishing to remain that way,) because the movie becomes dreadfully and unforgivably boring the second Stone vanishes from the screen. There are many things that a "Basic Instinct" movie can be and get away with it: convoluted, nonsensical, highly unrealistic...but boring? The original had a plot with holes like swiss cheese, introduced the world to lesbian/bisexual car chases (indeed, it seemed that half of the movie was spent in one automobile or another,) and had the following howler of a line, "...she got that magna cum laude pussy on her that done fried up your brain!"

But it was never, ever boring.

The sequel is, except for Stone. It seems that the director, his crew, and the other actors are convinced that BI2 is a prestige picture, of all things. Like Helen Mirren is the star. Or Emma Thompson. Catherine Tramell-who? Oh…right. Just the iconic sex-bomb character played by our star, Sharon Stone, who says things like this:

CATHERINE: Of course I am, I'm traumatized. Who knows if I'll ever cum again.

This ain’t “Suspect” on PBS, people! Or a Merchant-Ivory production! Let me break it down for you: if the opening scene of your movie features Sharon Stone getting finger-fucked by an athlete while driving an exotic sports car at 100 miles per hour, you don’t go from there to C-SPAN!

I’m sorry. I’m calm now.

That’s probably the most egregious fault in BI2…this bizarre, almost religious denial that they are making a sequel to “Basic Instinct” by everyone involved…

Except Stone.

Sharon totally ‘gets’ it again, which is why you should Tivo™ this puppy and fast-forward right to her scenes. It’s almost eerie. Every time she makes an appearance (far too few, in my opinion,) we, the people, are treated to the movie we want to see: a lurid, ridiculous romp with a psychopathic, charismatic vamp. She knows this role, inside and out. She knows that it’s a trashy piece of fluff, inside and out. She knows that it doesn't have to make sense, to win awards, or to be politically correct. And everybody (outside of her costumer, and whomever is responsible for her appearance) fails her. Collectively, they let entire movie down.

Heck, the entire franchise.

Here’s why this is tragic. It's not really the end of the world to have a sequel not live up the the heights of the original. How often has Hollywood milked the cow to powder in the pursuit of that last drop of cash? And it would be one thing if Sharon Stone, at nearly 50, played her signature role badly…or looked ‘wrong’ or ‘old’ doing it. Then, we, the people, could collectively blame everyone here…and just write off Stone as a washed-up has-been. But there’s a catch:

Stone is great in BI2. Not just good or adequate. She’s fucking brilliant.

Had the rest of the film joined her in sex-toy-humor-Candyland, this movie would have been a hit…or, at the very least, wouldn’t have been such a huge, dull flop. We, the people, could have said, "well, it wasn't as good as the first one, but it was fun, and Sharon Stone was really awesome!"

It’s almost absurd: Sharon Stone is fiercely, ferociously, rip-roaringly brilliant in BI2. It’s ironic that a movie I would advise nobody to see…features a performance so damn good that everybody should see it. She looks the part, walks the part and inhabits the part as only a true pro can. In fact, I can’t remember the last time this has ever happened to me: where the movie sucks but the lead is spot-on…better than most performances I’ve seen in years. (Maybe Faye Dunaway in “Supergirl” would be a good comparison.)

Thank goodness for the flu and a fast-forward button, because I got to experience the only 45 minutes or so of BI2 that are worth it. And those precious moments belong only to Sharon Stone.

Honey, don't listen to your critics. You’ve still got it.

Now go find a group of creative people who ‘get’ that you ‘get’ it.

Go find a group of people that ‘get’ you.

 

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