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Moments like my daughter telling

1:02

me a new joke mean a lot to me. But after

1:04

being diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer,

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or MBC, which is breast cancer that is spread

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to other parts of the body, they mean even more.

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NBC as the first hormonal-based

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and visit Ibrant's.com. Ibrant's

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may cause low white blood cell counts that may lead

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to serious infections. Ibrant's may

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cause severe inflammation of the lungs. Both of

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these can lead to death. Tell your doctor right

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away if you have new or worsening symptoms, including

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trouble breathing, shortness of breath, cough,

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or chest pain. Before taking Ibrant's,

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tell your doctor if you have fever, chills, or other

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signs of infection, liver or kidney problems,

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are or plan to become pregnant, or are

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low red blood cell and low platelet counts, infections,

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tiredness, nausea, sore mouth, abnormalities

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in liver blood tests, diarrhea, hair thinning

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or loss, vomiting, rash, and loss of appetite.

2:00

Welcome

2:09

to another episode

2:11

of the You

2:30

Must Remember This, the

2:32

podcast dedicated to exploring

2:35

the secrets and or forgotten

2:37

histories of Hollywood's

2:40

first century. I'm

2:42

your host, Karina Longworth, and

2:45

this is another installment

2:47

of our ongoing series,

2:50

erotic 90s.

3:16

So we can show the sex act

3:18

all over the place. I

3:24

have seen one or two things in my

3:26

life, but never, never

3:29

anything like this.

3:34

This episode is about a movie that came

3:36

out in the summer of 1993. But

3:39

the story starts in the fall of 1991 with

3:43

the annual movie line magazine,

3:46

Sex Issue.

3:48

Patrick Swayze was on the cover promoting

3:50

Point Break with the pull quote,

3:53

I hate being a sex

3:55

symbol.

3:56

What can I tell you? Being on the cover of a sex issue

3:59

protesting that you hated being a sex symbol

4:01

was very 90s. As

4:04

was a whiplash-inducing editorial

4:07

on page 20 of the magazine by

4:09

William Stadium, headlined,

4:13

Sex is Back. Quote,

4:17

with the advent of AIDS, the

4:19

sexual revolution that had raged

4:22

into the disco inferno of the 70s petered

4:25

out into a state of non-affairs that

4:28

was known far and wide as

4:30

the new celibacy. People

4:33

stopped doing it. After

4:35

a decade, however, the failure

4:38

of AIDS to explode into the heterosexual

4:41

community has somehow

4:43

signaled the passage of a sexual statute

4:45

of limitations. Today,

4:48

people in Hollywood are doing

4:51

it again, on-screen and

4:53

off, and talking about it as well,

4:56

with a gusto reminiscent of that attendant

4:59

to the repeal of prohibition almost 60

5:01

years ago.

5:02

Stadium cites

5:04

the recent successes of Pretty Woman

5:07

and Ghost as proof that

5:09

Sex is Back, and then

5:11

looks ahead to another film that

5:14

was about six months away from release.

5:18

It's notable that the most expensive

5:20

script of all time is Basic Instinct,

5:23

a major kinky sex fest starring

5:25

Michael Douglas, which, at

5:28

least in script form, chaddisened

5:30

the latex coyness of Julia

5:32

Roberts,

5:33

offering a Whitman sampler of

5:35

condoms to her prince charming and pretty

5:38

woman. Sex, once

5:40

again, is Out of the Closet.

5:42

It's

5:45

interesting to use the phrase

5:47

Out of the Closet when what you're really

5:49

talking about is movies about straight men

5:51

who we don't see using condoms, but

5:54

whatever, the stadium's real proof

5:57

that Hollywood had returned to pre-Aids

5:59

levels of sexual recklessness came

6:02

in this antidote about his social life.

6:05

The girls of the endless summer

6:08

were out in force, dressed

6:10

to the nines, some might say

6:12

69s, at

6:14

a recent Gatsby-esque lawn

6:16

party that was the perfect symbol of

6:19

Hollywood's return to the Boudoir. The

6:22

host was Robert Evans. Evans,

6:25

the quintessential Hollywood bon vivant

6:28

playboy legend, had disappeared,

6:32

gone the way of all flesh. But

6:34

now here was Evans,

6:35

resurrected with a multiple

6:38

packed at Paramount, and

6:40

here was the flesh, enough dazzling

6:43

starlets to raise the ghost of Harry Cone.

6:46

It was genuine cause for celebration.

6:49

Robert Evans was back, sex

6:51

was back.

6:54

Robert Evans was an icon

6:57

of the late 60s and early 70s, the peak years

6:59

of the sexual revolution, who

7:02

had flamed out in the late 70s.

7:05

Maybe not coincidentally, around

7:08

the time his friend and Chinatown

7:10

collaborator Roman Polanski fled the country

7:12

to avoid

7:13

imprisonment for rape.

7:18

Evans was convicted of cocaine trafficking

7:20

in 1980, and three

7:23

years later, a woman he had dated

7:25

was implicated in the death of Roy

7:27

Raden, a money guy who

7:29

wanted to be credited as a producer on

7:31

The Cotton Club, which at one

7:33

point, Evans had hoped to direct himself.

7:37

Evans said that The Cotton Club murder scandal

7:39

had brought him so low,

7:41

both emotionally and financially,

7:43

that he checked himself into a hospital in

7:45

order to stop himself from committing suicide.

7:49

That was in 1989,

7:51

when Evans had inked his five-year deal

7:53

to make movies for Paramount two years later.

7:56

He admitted to Variety, I've

7:59

been waiting for this for a long time. this from more than a decade.

8:02

This feels like coming home. This

8:06

issue of Movie Line describing Evans'

8:08

Welcome Back Party

8:10

would have been printed before November 1991,

8:13

when Magic Johnson announced his HIV

8:16

diagnosis,

8:17

temporarily shocking some

8:19

straight people into a renewed

8:21

fear of sex, which we've already

8:24

discussed this season.

8:26

But just like how years into

8:28

our current pandemic,

8:30

there is both a constant drumbeat

8:32

of fear over new outbreaks and variants,

8:35

and at the same time a lot of COVID

8:38

fatigue and a desire amongst

8:40

some to live life like it can't happen to

8:42

them.

8:43

The alarm sounded by Johnson's diagnosis

8:46

led to seemingly contradictory

8:49

aftershocks.

8:50

On the one hand, it created

8:52

the perfect climate for films tying

8:55

sex to danger or death,

8:57

from The Hand That Rocks the Cradle

8:59

to Single White Female

9:01

to, yes, Basic Instinct.

9:04

These films were all influenced by

9:06

Vio-porn,

9:08

the genre coined to describe Brian

9:10

De Palma's body double,

9:12

which was more or less concurrent with

9:14

the mainstreaming of AIDS.

9:16

And yet AIDS itself was never

9:19

mentioned in these movies.

9:21

The wink-wink sublimation worked for

9:23

a while.

9:24

But like every Hollywood trend,

9:26

this one eventually led to fatigue.

9:29

We've talked about the diminishing returns of

9:31

films like Consenting Adults and

9:34

The Temp. As Stadium

9:36

indicates, there was also fatigue

9:38

amongst straits about AIDS and

9:41

a fashionable rejection of safe

9:43

sex culture

9:45

as sexual terrorism.

9:47

I found that phrase in Spin

9:50

Magazine, generally the Bible

9:52

of mainstream, quote unquote, alternative

9:55

in the grunge era,

9:57

which literally announced itself

9:59

as such with its

9:59

April 1993 issue,

10:02

which was centered around a glossary

10:04

of the A to Z of alternative culture.

10:08

A was for AIDS, and

10:10

the entry downplayed the threat

10:12

it posed to spin readers.

10:15

Quote,

10:16

don't believe the hype.

10:18

No one knows what causes AIDS.

10:20

We

10:22

did know what caused AIDS in 1993, but

10:26

spin editor Celia Farber

10:28

was to that health crisis. What

10:30

someone who is just asking questions

10:33

today is to COVID. That

10:36

same magazine included two Farber

10:38

pieces, putting forth AIDS

10:41

skepticism,

10:42

one in the letter from the editor slot,

10:44

and the other a reported piece

10:47

on the AIDS crisis in Africa.

10:49

At a time when MTV and magazines

10:52

like Spin were platforming

10:54

so called alt culture,

10:56

alt

10:57

included just as much dangerous

10:59

conspiracy theory then as it does

11:02

today. But

11:04

back to Movieline. In running

11:07

this essay in their 1991 sex

11:09

issue and tying the attempted

11:12

comeback of Robert Evans to

11:14

the idea that the 70s were back,

11:16

sexually speaking, Movieline

11:19

was ahead of the curve in

11:21

predicting that basic instinct would

11:23

strike a chord. But

11:26

as we've discussed already, basic

11:28

instinct was impossible to replicate.

11:32

That would become clear from the first film

11:34

of Robert Evans' 90s comeback.

11:37

Sliver reunited the

11:39

star of basic instinct, Sharon

11:42

Stone, with the film's screenwriter,

11:45

Joe Esterhaus. Evans

11:47

brought the project to Paramount,

11:50

where Philip Noyce, who was hot off

11:52

of that studio's Patriot Games,

11:55

was hired to direct. But

11:57

despite being about sex and murder

11:59

and including some of the same personnel,

12:03

Sliver was a very different movie than

12:05

Basic Instinct. It was almost

12:07

the opposite movie, at least

12:10

in terms of its gender dynamics.

12:12

And though the re-teaming of Stone

12:15

and Esther Haas would prove to be

12:17

once again combustible, this

12:20

time the things that combusted were

12:22

two marriages. And

12:25

to some extent, the commercial

12:28

viability of the mainstream studio

12:30

film about an adult woman's sex

12:33

life. Join

12:35

us, won't you,

12:36

for part 12 of

12:39

our Rogic 90s. What

12:44

you watch depends on what kind of

12:46

mood you're in. Sometimes you're craving comedies

12:48

like Friends or South Park and sometimes

12:50

you're more into dramas like HBO's Succession

12:53

and House of the Dragon. There's also cooking shows

12:55

like Chopped and Beat Bobby Flay and even movies

12:57

like The Lord of the Rings and Shazam! Fury

12:59

of the Gods. Well, Max is the

13:02

streaming destination that has the

13:04

best of entertainment for whatever mood you're

13:06

in anytime. And plans start at as little

13:08

as $9.99 a month. Max,

13:10

the one to watch. Subscription required,

13:13

visit max.com.

13:17

Basic Instinct may

13:19

have been unreplicable, but before

13:22

there was hard box office data on

13:24

that,

13:25

no one could stop talking about its impact.

13:29

A full year after the movie opened in theaters,

13:32

People Magazine put Sharon Stone

13:34

on their cover

13:35

as the face of a trend of female

13:37

stars like Shannen Doherty, Sean

13:40

Young, and Madonna, who

13:42

the tabloid insisted were united

13:45

by their abject refusal

13:47

to play by the old rules.

13:51

Or as Stone was quoted in the story,

13:54

if you have a vagina and a point of

13:56

view, that's a deadly combination.

13:59

Something is happening in Hollywood, observed

14:02

people.

14:04

The studios still may not be making

14:06

movies with great women's roles.

14:09

But lately, a gang

14:11

of bright and beautiful actresses

14:13

have adopted a take-no-prisoners'

14:15

stance on life, love, and career.

14:18

And they are emerging as Hollywood's

14:21

latest breed of badass.

14:24

Women with heaps of attitude and

14:27

absolutely no regrets.

14:30

That

14:30

same exact week,

14:32

Time magazine ran a piece by Richard

14:35

Corliss called, A Few Good

14:37

Women, in which several

14:39

women in Hollywood argued that the answer

14:42

to that lack of roles should

14:44

not be celebrating bad girls,

14:47

which the women quoted in the story seem

14:49

to think was bad for women

14:51

in general.

14:53

The harshest words came from Kelly

14:56

Curry, who had won an Oscar

14:58

for writing Thelma and Louise just

15:00

days after Basic Instinct's

15:03

smash opening weekend.

15:06

Hollywood is trying to re-sexualize

15:08

its women back into submission,

15:10

Curry began. The whole idea

15:12

that women are powerful because they're sexy

15:14

is a crock. Sex isn't power.

15:17

Money is power. But

15:20

the women who do the best in this society

15:22

are the ones who are the most complacent in

15:24

the role of women as sexual commodity.

15:27

Be it Madonna, Julia Roberts,

15:30

or Sharon Stone.

15:31

If Stone hadn't spread her

15:34

legs, would Basic Instinct

15:36

have done as well as it did? We

15:39

don't know if Curry was aware at

15:42

this point that Stone had

15:44

said she had not consented to exposing

15:46

her vagina when she spread

15:49

her legs in Basic Instinct. Certainly

15:52

that had been reported already. Whether

15:55

she was aware of it or not, it

15:57

was not uncommon at this point in

15:59

history.

15:59

history for some women who considered

16:02

themselves feminists to attack

16:04

other women as traitors to the cause,

16:07

which could lead those who felt attacked

16:10

to, understandably, become

16:13

defensive.

16:15

Sharon Stone dealt with hostility from

16:17

feminists by serving up her

16:19

own version of feminism.

16:21

Premier magazine, which called

16:24

her the first post-Madonna

16:26

cinema sex goddess of the 90s, observed

16:30

that Stone, quote, "'perclaims'

16:32

her feminist ideals

16:35

even as she waxes seductive, in

16:37

a most charming and tongue-in-cheek

16:39

way, mind you, to smooth

16:42

ordinary business encounters."

16:45

So this was a moment in which it was still

16:48

considered contradictory to call oneself

16:50

a feminist or celebrate some

16:52

feminist ideals,

16:54

while also using one's beauty and

16:56

sexuality to make life a little

16:59

easier. Stone's

17:02

media blitz incurred backlash

17:04

from both sides.

17:06

Feminists who were not named Camille

17:09

Paglia saw Stone as colluding

17:11

with the enemy, selling out the

17:13

male gaze and allowing herself to

17:16

be exploited for a dollar.

17:19

Other critics and publications who would

17:21

not have identified as feminists—in

17:23

fact, who saw feminism

17:25

as a dirty word—complained

17:27

that she was shameless,

17:30

aggressive, not feminine,

17:33

and of course,

17:35

crazy.

17:37

When she was on the cover of Esquire

17:39

in March 1995, the story

17:41

would be headlined,

17:43

"'Is Sharon Stone Scaring You

17:45

Yet?' "'Men fear

17:48

her,' wrote Belzheim, and

17:51

justifiably so.

17:53

She is feral and forthright,

17:55

quick and cunning.

17:57

Often, she appears simply nuts."

17:59

I told her that Hollywood executives

18:02

now call her Sharon Stones.

18:05

Because I have the biggest balls in Hollywood,

18:08

she surmised correctly.

18:10

That's good. The longer they

18:12

stay scared, the longer I

18:15

have a job.

18:16

That profile would acknowledge on

18:18

its first page

18:20

that Stone is the only

18:22

female movie star left who knows how

18:24

to be a movie star. But

18:27

only after a long paragraph of

18:29

gibberish about how she is known

18:32

for her ability to have sex, or

18:35

at least portray a naked

18:38

woman having sex while filmed

18:40

by a camera

18:41

crew.

18:43

In an interview that appeared in Us Magazine

18:45

two months after Curry attacked

18:48

her for spreading her legs

18:50

in basic instinct,

18:52

Stone recontextualized

18:54

the interrogation scene

18:56

as a subversion of what Curry had

18:58

referred to

19:00

as women as sexual commodity.

19:03

Quote,

19:04

in that scene, I was mirroring

19:06

male behavior.

19:08

You know how men are always forever grabbing

19:10

their crotches? At a baseball

19:12

game, a man can grab his crotch 42,000 times

19:15

and nobody

19:17

gives a shit. But when I owned

19:19

my sexuality on screen, as

19:21

opposed to prancing across the screen

19:24

in the nude and being a sex object or being

19:26

slashed to bits as a victim,

19:28

the world stood still.

19:30

I think that requires greater thought than

19:33

whether or not doing it made me some kind

19:35

of pop icon.

19:37

I think what we need to address here is why

19:39

is it so controversial for a woman to own

19:42

her own sexuality?

19:45

These statements about owning her sexuality

19:47

might seem in conflict with Stone's insistence

19:49

from the beginning that Verhoeven had tricked

19:55

her into exposing herself in basic

19:57

instinct.

19:59

supposed to react when, though

20:02

she had put the onus for that scene on Verhoeven,

20:05

the culture, and individual

20:07

critics like Curry, persisted

20:10

in shifting the responsibility away from

20:12

the male director and on

20:14

to the female performer.

20:17

Stone was consistent

20:19

in saying that she thought the kind of sex

20:21

she simulated in Basic Instinct was

20:24

ludicrous, a male fantasy

20:26

that had no applicability to real

20:28

life. She said it while promoting

20:31

the movie, and she kept saying

20:34

it.

20:35

I have to straighten out my karma, she

20:37

told Premiere Magazine in 1993.

20:40

I've become a sex symbol, which is

20:42

an absurd thing for me,

20:45

particularly since I symbolize a

20:47

kind of sex I don't believe in.

20:50

Stone may not have looked like the perfect

20:53

feminist ally to a critic like Curry,

20:55

but she showed commitment to talking about

20:58

these ideas in venues her sexual

21:00

persona gave her access to,

21:02

venues where she had a captive audience

21:05

of men.

21:06

Playboy put her on the cover of their December

21:09

Sex Stars of 1992 issue

21:12

and ran an extensive interview inside,

21:15

in which David Sheff introduced

21:17

Stone as,

21:18

the proprietor of the most

21:21

famous pubis, Orius,

21:23

on the planets.

21:25

It had been 17 months since her

21:28

last Playboy cover,

21:30

not quite Bo Derek's 1980

21:32

run of two covers five months apart,

21:35

but for the sexually chaotic

21:38

90s. This was still a certain sign

21:40

of the sex symbol status that

21:43

Stone said she didn't believe in.

21:45

Playboy's Sheff asked Stone

21:48

how playing Catherine Tramiel had

21:50

changed her personality. I'll

21:53

tell you how it changed me, she responded.

21:56

I received a fan letter from a woman who said,

21:58

thank you

21:59

for your performance.

21:59

I will

22:02

never be a victim again. It did that for

22:04

me too. Women

22:06

are taught to acquiesce in ways that

22:08

chip away at our self-esteem, our

22:11

integrity, and our femininity. I

22:14

won't give that away so easily anymore. If

22:17

you think I should, you better give me

22:19

a damn good reason why. If

22:21

I make such a choice in my life now, it'll

22:24

be my choice. I won't bend

22:26

now just to get someone to like me or

22:28

to avoid confrontation.

22:32

This quote feels important for two

22:34

reasons. For one thing, it's

22:36

indicative of what became Stone's public

22:38

persona post-basic instinct,

22:41

which was confrontational

22:43

and was, in many ways, a projection

22:46

of strength that seemed to say that

22:48

women didn't have to be vulnerable to

22:50

shitty men

22:52

if they chose not to be.

22:54

At the same time, the acquiescence

22:56

she speaks to,

22:58

the ways women are expected to make themselves

23:00

smaller to make themselves more likable,

23:03

this is super relevant to the character

23:05

she plays in Sliver,

23:07

in a way that makes that film make sense,

23:10

not as a follow-up to Basic Instinct,

23:14

but as a kind of prequel to it.

23:16

If Stone had had her

23:18

way, Sliver wouldn't have even been

23:21

her follow-up to Basic Instinct.

23:23

Stone had wanted to star opposite

23:26

Mike Myers in So I Married

23:28

an Axe Murderer, his

23:30

post-Wayne's world lark in which he

23:32

played both a San Francisco beat

23:34

poet

23:35

and, in heavy prosthetics,

23:38

the poet's Scottish dad.

23:41

Stone also wanted to play a dual role,

23:43

Myers' love interest

23:45

as well as her psychotic sister.

23:48

But the studio wouldn't go for it, preferring

23:51

to cast two other actresses

23:53

rather than have Stone play both.

23:56

Then Stone turned down the wife

23:58

role in In the Line of Fire.

24:00

and the girlfriend part in Wolf

24:03

after that script was rewritten,

24:05

and she felt it lost its source of humor.

24:09

The months that elapsed after the success

24:11

of Basic Instinct only increased

24:14

her perceived value.

24:16

At this moment, Stone's name is the one

24:19

most dropped on the film executive's cellular

24:21

telephone network, one reporter claimed.

24:24

But she needed to make something,

24:27

though she had fired her agents and traded

24:29

up after Basic Instinct.

24:31

She had nothing in the can awaiting release,

24:34

nor did she have a nest egg.

24:36

I didn't have a job and I couldn't make my

24:38

house payments, she later said.

24:41

Stone initially turned down

24:43

Sliver, thinking it was too much

24:45

like Basic Instinct. Compared

24:48

to so I married an axe murderer, maybe

24:51

that's true. But Robert Evans

24:53

kept needling her. He

24:55

claimed that she finally said yes,

24:58

only when he told her Gina Davis

25:00

was interested.

25:02

Evans later admitted that Gina Davis

25:05

hadn't even been in the running.

25:08

When Stone finally signed on to Sliver

25:10

after months of debating her next move,

25:13

her patience paid off.

25:15

She would be paid $2.5 million plus a cut of the gross,

25:21

more than eight times what she had made for

25:23

Basic Instinct. Joe

25:25

Esterhaus wrote in his book that Stone

25:28

had agreed to do the film on one condition.

25:31

Here is an excerpt from the Hollywood

25:33

Animal audiobook read by

25:36

Eric Bagosian. Sharon's

25:38

condition was simple, flat and non-negotiable.

25:41

Evans could not go to the set of his own

25:44

movie when Sharon Stone was filming. She

25:47

did not want to be around Robert Evans. Sharon

25:50

did not want to cast her eyes on Robert

25:52

Evans. And since the biggest stars

25:54

in the world always get what they want, Paramount

25:57

had happily agreed to Sharon's condition.

26:00

The problem was a girl in a dog collar.

26:03

According to Sharon, a friend of hers from her modeling days

26:05

wound up as one of Bob's house bimbos.

26:08

According to Sharon, Bob supposedly kept the young

26:10

woman naked and in a dog collar for

26:12

weeks at a time. Sharon

26:15

said their friend needed psychiatric care for months

26:17

after leaving the Evans house. According

26:20

to Evans, Sharon's story was whole cloth fiction.

26:23

He was enraged. "'You talk to any

26:25

girl who's ever been in this house,' Bob said.

26:28

"'There are no dog collars here. This

26:30

isn't that kind of a house.'"

26:32

I felt he had a point.

26:34

The girls that I had met in Bob's house all seemed

26:36

very fond of him, treating him like a classic

26:39

Hollywood daddy. "'She can't

26:41

kick me off my own set,' Evans raged.

26:43

"'Who the fuck does she think she is? A

26:46

dog collar?'

26:47

The name is Evans. Robert Evans,

26:49

not the Marquis de Sade."

26:52

Evans, however, was adamant and unyielding,

26:54

and as the shoot began, Evans was

26:56

not allowed to go within 100 yards of his own set.

27:01

Evans seemed determined to produce Stone

27:04

even if he couldn't step foot on set.

27:07

The actress and Billy Baldwin

27:09

did not get along.

27:11

"'I mean, Billy's 29

27:13

and seems so young,' Stone

27:16

later commented. "'I come from

27:18

Pennsylvania, where guys are just sort

27:20

of regular. No bullshit. They're

27:23

the guy, you're the girl. He plays

27:25

a character that was very weird. But

27:28

I never got up to speed on his deal,

27:30

like whether he was, I'm in character

27:33

or I'm out of character.'" There

27:36

is a story of a meeting, Evans

27:39

requested with Stone to talk about this, that

27:41

appears in a book about Cherry Lansing.

27:44

Stone tells the same story in her own

27:47

book,

27:47

but omits the names.

27:50

Here is the story from Stone's audiobook.

27:52

"'I had a producer bring me

27:54

to his office where he had malted

27:56

milk balls in a little milk carton-type

27:59

container. under his arm with the

28:01

spout open. He walked

28:04

back and forth in his office with

28:06

the balls falling out of the spout

28:08

and rolling all over the wood floor.

28:12

As he explained to me

28:14

why I should fuck my

28:16

co-star so that we could

28:18

have on-screen chemistry. Why

28:22

in his day, he made

28:24

love to Ava Gardner on screen

28:26

and it was so sensational.

28:30

Now, just the creepy

28:33

thought of him in the same room with

28:35

Ava Gardner gave me pause.

28:39

Then I realized that she

28:42

also had to put up with him

28:44

and pretend that he was in any way interesting.

28:50

I watched the chocolate balls rolling

28:52

around thinking, you

28:54

guys insisted on this actor

28:57

when he couldn't get one whole scene out

28:59

in a test. Now,

29:02

you think if I fuck

29:05

him, he will become a fine

29:08

actor?

29:10

Nobody's that good in bed. I

29:12

felt they could have just hired a co-star

29:15

with talent. Someone

29:17

who could deliver a scene and

29:20

remember his lines. I

29:22

also felt they could fuck

29:25

him themselves and leave me out

29:27

of it. It was my

29:29

job to act and

29:32

I said so. This

29:37

was not a popular response. I

29:40

was and am

29:43

considered difficult. Naturally,

29:46

I didn't, you know what my co-star, he

29:49

was baffled enough without me confusing

29:51

him some more. But he

29:54

did make a few haphazard passes

29:56

at me in the upcoming weeks, I'm

29:59

sure. spurred on by this genius.

30:04

Maybe it was due to a change in perspective

30:06

about the material,

30:08

or to changes she inspired

30:10

or requested once she signed on,

30:13

or maybe it was just bullshit. But

30:16

by the time she had to do press for

30:18

Sliver, Stone was quite capable

30:20

of explaining how she thought the movie would

30:23

straighten out her sex symbol

30:25

karma.

30:27

In one interview, Stone

30:29

said that if Basic Instinct appealed

30:32

to male fantasies, quote,

30:34

Sliver will maybe be more for women.

30:37

In Sliver, I play this regular girl.

30:40

I gained 15 pounds. I didn't have

30:42

to be an anorexic size six in some

30:44

fabulous outfits.

30:46

And when it came time to do the sex scenes,

30:49

it was important to me that they be addressed in a

30:51

way that women actually feel about sex.

30:54

A sense of comfort and affinity instead

30:57

of objectification and anger.

31:00

I figured that as long as I've gotten labeled as

31:02

this sex symbol, which seems a sort of

31:04

peculiar label to begin with,

31:07

that I'd like to speak about a sexuality that seemed

31:09

more compassionate and real to me. Because,

31:12

you know, it's my turn. In

31:15

another interview, she said, I

31:18

suppose something so sexually direct

31:20

yet so non-exhibitionistic is

31:23

going to unsettle people. But you

31:25

know how it is with sexuality. My

31:27

mom said it best when she said that the shocking

31:29

thing about Basic Instinct was

31:31

that people were more concerned whether

31:33

or not I was homosexual than

31:35

whether or not I was a psychotic killer.

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33:03

In the first scene of Sliver, a

33:05

woman who looks like Sharon Stone,

33:08

but is not Sharon Stone,

33:10

comes home to her luxury high-rise

33:12

apartment.

33:14

A shadowy figure wearing gloves

33:16

enters her apartment with a key.

33:18

She greets him like she knows him.

33:21

He then throws her over the balcony and

33:23

she falls many stories to her death, crashing

33:26

through a greenhouse roof.

33:28

This opening announces director

33:31

Philip Noyce's two primary influences,

33:34

Hitchcock,

33:35

but also the Hand That Rocks the Cradle.

33:38

Hitchcock is what the film aspires

33:41

to creatively, but

33:42

everyone involved would have been thrilled

33:45

if Sliver had had Hand That Rocks the Cradle

33:48

commercial success and cultural impact.

33:52

Surely everyone was also thinking

33:54

of Rosemary's Baby, one

33:56

of producer Evans' signature hits,

33:59

which like Sliver, had been based

34:01

on an Ira Levin novel and was

34:03

about a cursed Manhattan apartment

34:05

building. But Sliver

34:08

feels less like Rosemary's baby

34:11

than like if Ghostbusters

34:14

was centered on the Sigourney Weaver character

34:17

and her neighbor was not Rick

34:20

Moranis, but Billy Baldwin

34:22

at the peak of physical perfection.

34:26

For me, these are reasons to kind

34:28

of love it

34:29

while still acknowledging the ways in which it doesn't

34:31

work, even if I think it's ultimately

34:34

more silly than problematic.

34:38

Sharon Stone's Carly is a 35-year-old

34:41

book editor who leaves an unhappy

34:43

marriage and moves into an apartment

34:46

in a sliver building,

34:47

a Manhattan skyscraper that very

34:50

unsubtly looks like a phallus

34:52

piercing the sky.

34:55

Her new neighbors keep telling her she looks

34:57

just like the woman who used to live in her unit,

34:59

who everyone thinks jumped

35:02

off the balcony and died. Carly

35:05

is emotionally fragile.

35:07

We don't hear much about what happened in her

35:09

marriage

35:10

other than that she feels like she's wasted

35:12

her adult life up to this point.

35:15

She apparently has a very weird relationship

35:18

with her boss, played by Martin

35:20

Landau, who takes her out

35:22

to lunch and instead of talking

35:24

about the raise she asked for,

35:27

tries to set her up with a bad boy

35:30

crime novelist, played by Tom

35:32

Berenger.

35:32

He's an attractive

35:34

man, isn't he? Alex, I

35:37

ask you for a raise, and you take me out to

35:39

lunch and try to set me up. Jack

35:41

Lansford, Shred of Evidence,

35:44

Flesh and Blood, police procedurals. He

35:47

hasn't written anything in five or six years, but he made

35:49

so much off of Flesh and Blood he doesn't have to. He's

35:52

got a ranch in Montana. And

35:54

speak of the devil. Hello, Alex.

35:57

All right. I'm

35:59

the devil.

35:59

Carlonaris.

36:02

Hello. You

36:06

look familiar to me. Maybe

36:08

that's because I live in your building. Oh,

36:12

oh, yeah. Jack, Carley is a big

36:14

fan of yours. She just loves flesh

36:16

and blood. Hey. I

36:18

haven't read it. I'm

36:21

sorry. Here you

36:23

are, sir. She hasn't read me. Alex,

36:28

why is it she hasn't read me?

36:29

Everybody's read me. I'm

36:32

easy to read. Well, I haven't. She has

36:34

better taste than I thought. She'll

36:40

read me, though.

36:41

What if she doesn't like what she reads? Hi,

36:43

Jack. You'll read me. I

36:48

know you'll read me. Because

36:51

you have good taste. You've

36:54

lost her now, Jack. She likes being in control.

36:58

So do I. See

37:01

you around a neighborhood. Yeah. Alex?

37:11

I spent seven years in a bad marriage, and you

37:13

say I like being in control. But

37:16

you ended it, didn't you? As

37:20

if she's never spent a single night alone

37:22

in an apartment that was all her own. She

37:24

spends the first part of her first night

37:26

after moving in,

37:28

putting golf balls into a coffee

37:30

cup while wearing a button-down

37:33

shirt over panties.

37:35

As if this is what a bachelor would

37:37

do. And then she takes a bath.

37:41

And here we realize that Carly is not

37:43

actually alone.

37:45

Noyce cuts back and forth between his

37:47

camera

37:48

and the view from the surveillance

37:50

camera embedded in the

37:52

bathroom mirror

37:54

as Carly masturbates.

37:57

Then the director cuts to a command

37:59

center.

38:00

A weird, curved room

38:02

with dozens of monitors, where

38:04

Carly's neighbor Zeke, played

38:06

by Baldwin, is watching tapes

38:09

of all of Carly's interactions since

38:12

she first entered the building.

38:14

Everywhere Carly goes, men follow

38:17

her,

38:18

primarily two men, her neighbors

38:20

Zeke and Jake. The

38:23

novelist harasses her while jogging,

38:25

while Zeke calms her into going

38:28

to the gym with him. Jake

38:30

is a type Carly has clearly encountered

38:33

before, older,

38:35

pickled, openly chauvinistic,

38:38

and she can see that he's bad news,

38:41

or at least a headache.

38:43

But she can't see Zeke's red

38:45

flags, because he is a type

38:48

she's unfamiliar with. He's

38:50

maybe 10 years her junior,

38:52

a proto-tech bro into anime

38:54

and techno.

38:56

And I guess you could also say he's

38:58

into extreme sports? This

39:01

is an exchange between Zeke and Carly

39:03

from her first visit to his apartment,

39:06

when she asks about a glass sculpture

39:09

he has on his coffee table. What's

39:13

that? A volcano?

39:17

I've always loved them. I'd

39:21

like to fly into one sometime. Why?

39:28

I don't know, it sounds like fun. Don't

39:33

you think? I

39:36

have to go.

39:39

The sculpture doesn't actually look much like a volcano,

39:42

it looks more like a bunch of icicles welded

39:45

together.

39:46

Anyway, she's flattered by his attention,

39:49

and a little scared of him, but in

39:52

a way that makes her more attracted to

39:54

him.

39:55

When they first have sex, he's

39:57

seated and she's on top,

39:59

and though, you can't see his penis

40:01

for a few seconds, you

40:04

do see the glass volcano

40:06

in the background between them.

40:10

Jill Esterhaus kind of wrote the

40:12

same movie over and over again,

40:14

with basic instinct, notably

40:17

flipping genders. Here,

40:19

the screenwriter recycles the trope from

40:22

jagged edge of a divorced

40:24

career woman losing her mind a little

40:26

bit. When a super hot younger

40:28

guy blows her mind in bed.

40:32

But in this film, the deteriorated

40:34

faculties feel more credible because

40:36

the sex feels more overwhelming.

40:40

Sharon Stone performs an orgasm

40:42

here that feels both

40:45

extremely convincing out of context

40:48

and narratively appropriate in

40:50

the context of her characters

40:53

combined fear of getting involved

40:56

and her compulsive desire to be loved

40:58

and protected by men. Noyce

41:02

conjures a vibe of catalog

41:04

slick fear sex, which owes

41:07

somewhat to Sliver's blockbuster

41:09

soundtrack. But I think

41:11

most of the credit should go to Stone, who

41:14

is giving a real performance here

41:16

and an incredibly vulnerable one.

41:20

Viewers who came to this looking for Catherine

41:22

Tramiel too would have been not just disappointed,

41:26

but confused. Because

41:28

for most of this movie, Stone

41:30

has a completely different kind

41:32

of physicality. She

41:34

hides in big coats. She's

41:37

nervous about mundane interactions.

41:40

As Stone put it, Catherine

41:42

kept the men in line, but

41:45

Carly is so fragile that

41:47

it's easy for her to get stomped on and

41:49

discarded.

41:51

There

41:51

is an inverse of the basic

41:54

instinct interrogation scene

41:57

in which at a fancy restaurant,

42:00

Zeke coerces Carly into proving

42:02

that she's wearing a bra and panty set

42:04

he gave her. Instead

42:07

of using her panty-less-ness

42:09

to confront a room full of men,

42:12

a man goads her into exposing

42:14

herself in a room full of strangers.

42:18

Carly is both terrified and

42:20

excited. She seems to like

42:22

feeling powerless, seems to be consenting

42:25

to submissive humiliation.

42:28

And in her performance in this scene,

42:30

Sharon Stone is truly unrecognizable

42:33

as the same actress who we last

42:36

saw with an ice pick under her bed. It's

42:40

become knee-jerk to say that movies

42:42

of this era couldn't

42:43

be made today. But

42:46

I weirdly think Sliver is actually

42:48

in line with a lot of today's attitudes

42:51

that supposedly scare filmmakers

42:53

away from exploring sexuality on

42:55

screen.

42:57

In the same manner that Basic Instinct was

42:59

a 90s update of Vertigo vis-a-vis

43:02

the icy San Francisco blonde symbol

43:04

of castration anxiety,

43:06

Sliver is basically a 90s update

43:09

of gaslight.

43:12

In Sliver, like in George Kukor's 1944

43:14

film, there is a haunted

43:16

house. There are two men who are

43:18

interested in a living woman who looks like

43:21

a dead woman who is scared

43:23

because her past has scarred her. She

43:25

wants to submit to a domineering man

43:27

for what she thinks is comfort and safety,

43:30

but in both films, all he does

43:32

is lie and manipulate her.

43:35

There's even a common line of dialogue.

43:38

In Gaslight, Ingrid Bergman

43:40

goes to Lake Como to get away from

43:42

Charles Boyer so she can think

43:44

about his proposal. And he

43:47

suddenly shows up uninvited

43:49

when she's getting off the train and says,

43:52

In

43:55

Sliver,

44:00

When Stone finds out Baldwin owns

44:02

the apartment building and expedited

44:05

her application, he says,

44:06

I just

44:09

thought we would like each other. You're

44:12

not angry with me, are you?

44:16

You can hear by Bergman's response

44:18

the way that women were conditioned to see

44:20

this kind of thing as flattering, a sign

44:23

of love.

44:24

It's actually a sign of love bombing.

44:27

In Sliver, Stone's character

44:30

simply doesn't answer. Noice

44:32

cuts from Stone's face, conveying

44:35

confusion as to whether she should be angry

44:37

or not, to her

44:39

returning to her apartment and luxuriating

44:42

in the memory of her night of hot sex

44:45

with her potentially creepy neighbor. Which

44:49

brings us to the ways in which Sliver handles

44:51

voyeurism and consent. In

44:53

their interactions, Zeke

44:56

outwardly respects Carly's consent.

44:59

But of course, as a secret voyeur,

45:01

he's violating the whole building's consent.

45:05

When he finally reveals his surveillance

45:07

lair to Carly,

45:09

it's under the guise of keeping her safe

45:12

from creep novelist Jake.

45:15

Carly is at first repelled

45:18

by Zeke's video voyeurism and

45:20

leaves. But then

45:22

she comes back, and soon

45:25

she's addicted to watching the monitors herself.

45:28

When she and Zeke have sex in

45:31

the command center, it's druggy

45:33

and weird. Sliver

45:35

is in dialogue with Body Double.

45:38

Both are films in which the fetishistic

45:40

desire to watch something you're not supposed

45:42

to be seeing

45:43

dovetails with crimes that need

45:46

to be solved.

45:47

The technology is updated for the

45:50

90s,

45:50

and so is the morality.

45:53

Zeke's monitors show a schoolgirl

45:56

confessing to her mom that her stepdad

45:58

is molesting her. and the

46:00

mom disbelieving her.

46:02

So Zeke intervenes, calling

46:05

the stepdad and threatening him.

46:08

He does this to make the case to Carly

46:11

that in watching live video streams

46:13

of all of their neighbors through hidden cameras,

46:16

they're not doing anything wrong.

46:18

And in fact, they could

46:20

do some good. But

46:23

Carly decides she isn't satisfied

46:25

having hot sex under the narcotic

46:28

influence of Zeke's panopticon.

46:31

It's like playing God. We'll

46:33

only do good things. I don't want to do this.

46:37

I want my privacy. I want

46:39

my own experiences.

46:43

Zeke, I want to have a real relationship.

46:46

Carly, I love you. You can have anything you want.

46:50

I want my tape. If

46:54

I have you, I don't need them, right?

46:57

The big difference between gaslight and sliver

47:00

is that gaslight, said in the late 1800s,

47:04

made in Hollywood in the 1940s in

47:06

the midst of a production code

47:08

that generally believed that a beautiful unmarried

47:10

woman is a menace to society,

47:13

can't imagine a world in which a woman

47:15

could really stand on her own.

47:18

Ingrid Bergman can't even recognize

47:20

what Charles Boyer is doing

47:22

until Joseph Cotton comes along and

47:24

explains it to her and helps her

47:26

get rid of him.

47:28

The final frame of that movie suggests

47:30

Ingrid is basically swapping a bad

47:32

man

47:33

for a supposedly nice one.

47:36

But in Sliver, all men

47:39

are bad to one degree or another.

47:41

And once Carly recognizes that Zeke

47:44

is a creep, she has to get out of this

47:46

situation on her own.

47:49

She finds his gun and his secret tapes,

47:51

which prove that Jake was the killer,

47:54

but also prove that Zeke not only had

47:57

sex with a dead lady that looked just like her,

47:59

It also fed her and another

48:02

now dead neighbor the

48:04

exact same lines

48:06

about love and roses.

48:08

Yes, literally roses.

48:13

In what might be the most

48:16

90s ending to any movie of the decade,

48:18

Carly shoots out Zeke's precious

48:21

monitors and then turns

48:23

to him, pointing not the gun,

48:26

but the remote control.

48:29

And in the last shot of

48:31

the movie, with her finger on the trigger

48:33

of the off button, she says,

48:37

Get alive.

48:38

This

48:45

is not how Sliver was supposed

48:48

to end. Remember

48:50

Zeke's phallic glass volcano?

48:53

Funny story about volcanoes. In

48:55

the film's original scripted ending,

48:58

Carly finds out that Zeke has killed a

49:00

bunch of women from the apartment building, basically

49:03

says she doesn't care, and then

49:05

they fly a helicopter

49:07

into a volcano together. This

49:10

ending was cursed.

49:12

When two cameramen were flown in

49:15

an actual helicopter into

49:17

an actual volcano to shoot

49:19

footage that Stone and Baldwin would be green-screened

49:22

into, the

49:23

helicopter crashed, and

49:26

the three men were lost for two

49:28

full days. They

49:31

still managed to get the footage

49:33

Nois needed, but test

49:35

audiences hated the volcano ending,

49:38

deeming it nihilistic and

49:40

Stone's character immoral.

49:44

This was something of a shock given

49:46

how much audiences seemed to love Sharon

49:48

Stone as the killer in Basic Instinct.

49:50

But

49:52

Esterhoff said the test scores made

49:54

it clear that he had gone

49:56

too far this time.

49:59

So he wrote

49:59

He claimed 47

50:01

pages in 24

50:04

hours, encompassing three

50:06

different possible endings. And

50:09

just a few weeks before Slivers set

50:11

in stone release date,

50:14

Noyce had to get the actors back for

50:16

reshoots. Knowing

50:18

these production details, critics

50:21

and even gossip columnists pounced

50:24

on Slivers' new conclusion.

50:26

Liz Smith called it, quote,

50:29

one of the most ludicrous and

50:31

insulting film finales ever

50:34

to be foisted on the paying customer.

50:37

Carly's change from bleary-eyed

50:40

zombie to double-fisting a

50:42

gun and a remote

50:44

feels abrupt, for sure. But

50:46

Bergman snaps out of it pretty fast in gaslight,

50:49

too. I wish I could

50:51

see the volcano ending, but

50:54

this one is pretty good.

50:57

Especially when you think of Sliver as Sharon Stone

50:59

apparently did,

51:00

as an opportunity to take back control

51:03

of her image as a sex symbol.

51:05

Here she's getting revenge not just

51:07

for the way her body was filmed without consent

51:10

and basic instinct,

51:12

but

51:12

revenge on behalf of every woman

51:15

who ever got suckered into having

51:17

hot sex with a guy

51:19

who they later realized was a gaslighting

51:21

perv.

51:23

I've always liked Sliver, and

51:25

watching it for the first time in a while recently,

51:27

I

51:28

still liked it. There

51:30

is some silly stuff in it. I

51:33

can't believe the glass volcano,

51:36

which is so much more glaring and tasteless

51:38

when you know about the helicopter accidents. And

51:41

there are so many double entendres involving

51:43

the word come, that

51:45

you would think the script was punched up by

51:47

Samantha from Sex and the City.

51:50

But this is also a movie which centers

51:52

a nearly middle-aged, single, working

51:55

woman

51:56

without feeling like it's judging her for

51:58

being any of those things. Of

52:01

all the movies we've talked about connecting

52:03

sex with danger, I

52:06

think Sliver is the sexiest and

52:09

possibly

52:09

the least sexist.

52:12

I say all this knowing that the

52:14

Sliver that we can see is

52:17

not the Sliver that anyone thought

52:19

they were making. After

52:21

the break, the Frankenstein

52:24

version of this film stumbled

52:26

into theaters under several different clouds

52:28

of bad press.

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Sliver began production in October, 1992

53:13

and was set for release the weekend before

53:15

Memorial Day as the

53:17

unofficial kickoff to the 1993 summer movie season.

53:23

Three months earlier on Valentine's

53:25

Day, the LA Times

53:28

ran a report written by Ryan Murphy,

53:31

most likely the future TV producer

53:33

who was writing entertainment journalism at the time,

53:36

announcing that Sliver planned to

53:39

distinguish itself from the summer 1993

53:41

pack by

53:43

showing lots of full

53:45

frontal male nudity.

53:48

This was controversial. Murphy

53:51

quoted one anonymous studio exec

53:53

as telling him, I don't

53:56

know of one studio head

53:58

who would green light a film.

53:59

that called for male frontal nudity.

54:03

Another unnamed source said,

54:05

"'Billy Baldwin does things in this movie

54:08

"'that most male stars would never

54:11

dream of doing.'" Without

54:13

question, it's the sexiest

54:15

leading man role ever written

54:18

for the screen.

54:19

When asked about it, Director

54:22

Noyce confirmed, quote,

54:24

"'If you counted the square inches of flesh

54:27

"'that are bared in the film, "'you could

54:29

say that there are more male than female.'"

54:32

I have never understood why in Hollywood male

54:34

screen sexuality is taboo,

54:36

but female sexuality is not. At

54:39

its core, it has something to do with the fact that

54:41

men are in control. They're

54:43

controlling the images of themselves and of women.

54:46

And that's why we only see the women. Well,

54:49

I didn't want to do that. This is a woman's

54:51

story. Sliver

54:54

may be Carly's story, but

54:57

Carly is not in control of anything.

55:00

In order to play a character that

55:02

vulnerable, Stone used

55:04

her newfound power to

55:07

take charge.

55:09

Before, she had submitted to

55:11

Verhoeven's choreography and storyboards.

55:14

Now, she pushed back against

55:17

things Noyce or Esther Haas wanted her

55:19

to do that she felt were

55:21

unrealistic. During

55:24

the bath masturbation scene, Stone

55:26

remembered that the male filmmakers wanted

55:28

her to be looking at a Calvin Klein

55:30

cologne ad for erotic

55:33

inspiration, to

55:35

which she told them, "'Women

55:37

aren't like this.'"

55:39

She also consulted

55:41

with other women on set when she was

55:43

shooting sex scenes,

55:45

asking them to come look at the monitor.

55:48

Sometimes reviewing it with some of the women gives

55:50

me a little bit greater perspective, sometimes

55:53

less by what they say than

55:56

what I see in their faces when they

55:58

watch it.

55:59

Post-Furhoven,

56:01

she added, I have a rider

56:04

in my contract that every

56:06

frame of anything that's nude or

56:08

sexual in any way, I get

56:10

to see and approve, or it can't go

56:13

into the picture.

56:15

We don't know if Billy Baldwin had

56:17

the same contractual stipulation.

56:21

But exactly a month after

56:23

Ryan Murphy's story, a different

56:26

LA Times reporter, Jane Galbraith,

56:28

offered an update.

56:31

The amount of male frontal nudity

56:33

in Sliver is shrinking. Nois'

56:36

most recent cut, according to a source who saw

56:38

the film at a research screening last Sunday on

56:40

the Paramount lot,

56:42

offers zero frontal nudity

56:44

of Baldwin,

56:45

although a male extra who is in the buff does

56:48

walk toward the camera at one point.

56:51

What happened in that intervening month

56:54

is that Paramount presented Sliver

56:56

to the MPAA Sliver rating,

56:58

and they not only gave the movie

57:01

an NC-17,

57:03

but provided Nois with a list

57:05

of 110 changes they

57:07

recommended if

57:08

he wanted the R rating,

57:11

which he was contractually obligated to

57:13

deliver.

57:15

Robert Evans didn't care about

57:17

Nois' contract, and he

57:19

saw an opportunity to shake up the

57:21

industry by refusing to make

57:23

the changes.

57:25

In a meeting at Paramount, Evans said,

57:28

fuck him, let's just go for the NC-17.

57:31

At the end of that meeting,

57:33

Evans collapsed on the Paramount

57:35

lot and was hospitalized

57:38

for a massive anxiety attack.

57:41

They did not go for the NC-17.

57:44

Nois ultimately made 15 cuts

57:47

to get an R rating. Evans

57:50

had recovered by two weeks before the release

57:53

when he told the LA Times that it

57:55

wasn't full frontal nudity that

57:57

the MPAA had objected to.

58:01

There are four scenes in the film that are totally

58:03

original, Evan said,

58:06

that originality may

58:08

have taken the MPAA a back

58:11

a little.

58:12

Another source told the paper, in

58:15

one of the first lovemaking sequences,

58:18

you don't see two people in the missionary

58:20

position in bed like you do in a daytime

58:22

soap opera.

58:24

It is done in a manner that the MPAA

58:28

perceives as unconventional.

58:32

At the sliver premiere, when asked

58:34

why Baldwin's nudity was cut and

58:37

hers remained,

58:38

Stone said, it's

58:40

a man's world. There was never

58:42

anything unacceptable in the first place. All

58:45

the fuss over the rating was more of a publicity

58:47

gambit than anything else.

58:50

Reporters had to take Stone's word

58:52

for it,

58:53

because Nois, Barringer, and

58:55

Baldwin were all absent

58:57

from the premiere.

58:59

Sources say that Baldwin pulled

59:01

out of attending at the 11th hour,

59:04

the LA Times reported, adding,

59:06

no

59:07

one even bothered to pretend

59:09

that he and Stone got along during

59:11

filming. With

59:13

the reshoots and the MPAA

59:16

mandated changes, Nois

59:18

and his post team were working down

59:20

to the wire.

59:22

We shot the new ending about a week and a half before

59:24

the movie came out, Nois said.

59:26

We started making prints of the film on a Tuesday,

59:28

and they had to be on all the cinemas on the Friday.

59:32

It was because of this crunch, Paramount

59:34

said,

59:35

that they weren't able to screen sliver

59:37

for critics until the day before

59:39

it opened. The LA Times

59:42

suggested they were hiding the film from

59:44

critics. When

59:47

that occurs, it usually

59:49

means filmmakers are worried that negative

59:52

reviews could diminish box

59:54

office returns on the crucial first weekend.

59:57

Let

59:58

me tell you some something about film

1:00:01

critics, which I know from having

1:00:03

been a film critic, and

1:00:05

also from having spent the last 30-plus

1:00:08

years obsessively reading film criticism.

1:00:11

If a studio has a film that they suspect

1:00:14

critics won't like, and they screen

1:00:16

it for them anyway weeks in advance,

1:00:18

sometimes they can be in for a surprise.

1:00:22

But if the studio screens the same film

1:00:25

too late for newspaper critics to

1:00:27

meet their deadline for a Friday review,

1:00:30

then the studio can pretty much

1:00:32

guarantee that the reviews will be negative

1:00:34

because critics go in expecting

1:00:37

a stinker.

1:00:39

Slivers' reviews were scathing

1:00:42

because of the rush factor, but also

1:00:44

because it was extremely fashionable

1:00:47

in that moment to at

1:00:49

best condescend to Sharon

1:00:51

Stone, and at worst vilify

1:00:54

her for her, shall

1:00:56

we say, naked ambition.

1:01:00

Citing another recent sexually

1:01:03

explicit film which critics rolled their eyes

1:01:05

at, in the LA Weekly, John

1:01:08

Powers wrote,

1:01:09

Sliver is damage without

1:01:12

the inadvertent hilarity. If

1:01:14

Sharon Stone's career ended today,

1:01:16

the epitaph would read, Almost

1:01:20

a star, she simulated more

1:01:22

orgasms than Marla Maples.

1:01:24

At that moment,

1:01:26

Marla Maples was best

1:01:29

known for having claimed that Donald

1:01:31

Trump had given her the

1:01:33

best sex she ever had.

1:01:37

The meanest review I came across

1:01:40

was printed in the Wall Street Journal.

1:01:43

Sharon Stone, who had been kicking

1:01:46

around Hollywood for years, became

1:01:48

a superstar with basic instinct.

1:01:52

As far as I can tell, the tour

1:01:54

de force that made her the cover girl

1:01:56

of the year was that astounding

1:01:58

bit of method acting.

1:01:59

her willingness to

1:02:02

allow the camera to peek

1:02:04

up her skirt and find no panties.

1:02:09

Having declared Miss Stone a superstar,

1:02:12

the media may now feel compelled

1:02:14

to destroy her.

1:02:16

Though she really isn't what's

1:02:18

wrong with Sliver. She

1:02:21

does her best. She

1:02:23

allows a breast to peek out.

1:02:26

She lets us watch her make love

1:02:28

to herself

1:02:30

in the bath.

1:02:32

Generally, critics ignored the

1:02:34

fact that Stone gives an incredibly

1:02:36

different performance in Sliver than in

1:02:39

Basic Instinct. The fact

1:02:41

that she appeared nude in both

1:02:43

films was enough to flatten

1:02:45

out any difference between the two films.

1:02:48

In Entertainment Weekly, Owen Gleiberman

1:02:50

wrote, Sliver makes

1:02:52

you wonder, can Sharon Stone have

1:02:55

an impact outside of mediocre sex

1:02:57

thrillers?

1:02:58

And can Hollywood remember how to make anything

1:03:01

else?

1:03:02

Sliver opened at number one for

1:03:04

its weekend with $12 million. That

1:03:08

was $3 million less than Basic Instinct had

1:03:10

opened to just over a year before,

1:03:12

and

1:03:13

$6 million less than the opening

1:03:15

of Indecent Proposal seven weeks earlier.

1:03:18

That movie was

1:03:20

still in the box office top 10 when

1:03:22

Sliver opened, ranking sixth with

1:03:25

$3 million. Sliver's

1:03:27

release was set long before anyone

1:03:30

knew what kind of staying power Indecent

1:03:32

Proposal would have. But

1:03:35

both films were rushed through post-production

1:03:38

to make their opening

1:03:38

dates. And judging by

1:03:40

the reviews and comments made by its

1:03:43

producers, Sliver obviously

1:03:46

could have used more time in the kitchen.

1:03:49

As Evans later put it, Paramount,

1:03:51

quote, weren't interested in making

1:03:54

Sliver good. They were only interested

1:03:56

in making it for Memorial Day.

1:04:00

One explanation for why the release dates

1:04:02

were set so close to one another and

1:04:05

not adjusted once it was clear that Sliver

1:04:07

needed more time to cook is

1:04:09

that Sherry Lansing was under enormous

1:04:12

pressure to reverse Paramount's fortunes

1:04:15

and fast.

1:04:16

Another explanation

1:04:19

was an ongoing tabloid story

1:04:21

that threatened to prove more entertaining

1:04:25

than the movie itself.

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1:05:27

There was a lot of bravado to

1:05:29

Stone's persona, Circus Sliver.

1:05:32

In a movie line cover profile pegged

1:05:34

to the release, she makes a lot

1:05:36

of body jokes about her sex life

1:05:39

and the common perception that she was,

1:05:42

as it would have been phrased in the 1990s,

1:05:46

a man in a woman's

1:05:48

body.

1:05:50

Of the polo lounge, she says,

1:05:53

there's nowhere else to go in good conscience

1:05:55

to look at hookers. When the

1:05:57

reporter says they should talk about women's

1:05:59

issues. She responds, like,

1:06:03

what kind of tampons I use? The

1:06:06

story ends with this quote. My

1:06:09

life is actually quite like Valley of the Dolls, except

1:06:11

that I have better clothes than hairdos. I

1:06:15

don't know what I'll call my expose about Hollywood, but

1:06:18

I already have my opening sentence. The

1:06:20

sex change operation wasn't nearly as painful

1:06:23

as I had anticipated.

1:06:25

For the record, that is not the opening sentence

1:06:29

of Sharon Stone's actual memoir.

1:06:32

But the idea that she lived her life

1:06:34

the way a man would was

1:06:37

one way that tabloids viewed Stone's role in

1:06:39

the messy marriage scandal that

1:06:42

began on the set of Sliver

1:06:44

and bled into the press cycles

1:06:47

of the next two years worth of

1:06:49

Hollywood erotic dramas.

1:06:52

In an April 1993 cover story, People

1:06:56

magazine reported that the quote-unquote

1:06:59

shameless 35-year-old Basic

1:07:01

Instinct star

1:07:03

was engaged to marry Bill

1:07:06

McDonald, executive

1:07:08

producer of Sliver.

1:07:10

Quote, of course, a few

1:07:12

complications need to be worked out before

1:07:14

the pair finalize their nuptials.

1:07:17

McDonald moved in with Stone

1:07:20

this year. Just months

1:07:23

after marrying his live-in love

1:07:25

of eight years, to

1:07:27

whom he is still legally

1:07:30

wed. Joe

1:07:32

Esterhaus would later say that the trouble

1:07:35

started when Sharon Stone's

1:07:37

psychic told her she and McDonald

1:07:40

had been together in a past life.

1:07:43

According to Esterhaus, Stone

1:07:46

teased the producer with this information,

1:07:49

but wouldn't sleep with

1:07:51

him while he was still living with

1:07:53

his wife Naomi.

1:07:55

Esterhaus claimed he told McDonald,

1:07:58

he

1:07:58

can't fucking do this. Don't blow

1:08:00

your marriage over this." But

1:08:03

a few weeks later, McDonald had

1:08:05

left his wife and proposed

1:08:07

to Stone. When

1:08:11

Sliver was still in production, the

1:08:13

tabloid press started filling

1:08:15

with stories fed to them by Naomi

1:08:17

McDonald, accusing Stone

1:08:19

of breaking up her marriage.

1:08:22

Naomi even went on the tabloid TV

1:08:24

show A Current Affair.

1:08:27

But by the time the movie was released,

1:08:30

Naomi had moved on

1:08:32

to Joe Esterhaus.

1:08:35

This seems to date back to Easter 1993.

1:08:39

Esterhaus, wanting to throw

1:08:42

a bone to the woman McDonald had thrown

1:08:44

over for Sharon Stone,

1:08:46

invited Naomi to join he and

1:08:48

his family on vacation in Maui.

1:08:52

On that vacation, Joe

1:08:54

and Naomi fell in love. While

1:08:57

they were still in Hawaii, according

1:09:00

to People Magazine, quote, He

1:09:02

spoke to his wife and then to his children.

1:09:05

I've fallen in love with Naomi, he

1:09:07

said.

1:09:08

He left them, stunned and

1:09:10

barely able to speak,

1:09:12

and walked into Naomi's adjoining

1:09:14

room at the Four Seasons Hotel.

1:09:17

I love you, he announced. We're

1:09:20

leaving. His agent then

1:09:22

issued a press release announcing

1:09:24

the separation of the Esterhases, including

1:09:27

three words attributed to the highest

1:09:30

paid writer in Hollywood.

1:09:32

Quote, life is

1:09:35

strange. I've

1:09:38

seen this referred to as a love quadrangle

1:09:41

in some reports.

1:09:42

But if you include Esterhases 52

1:09:45

year old wife, Jerry, to whom

1:09:47

he was married for 24 years,

1:09:50

I guess it's a love pentagram.

1:09:53

If you add the guy stone eventually left Bill

1:09:55

McDonald for an assistant

1:09:57

director on the quick and the dead.

1:10:00

Does that make it a hexagon?

1:10:02

When Maureen Dowd went to Robert

1:10:05

Evans' house to interview Esterhoss

1:10:07

a few weeks before the sliver release,

1:10:09

she found Naomi sitting next to

1:10:11

him wearing matching black leather.

1:10:15

Esterhoss freely admitted to Dowd,

1:10:17

it's certainly the most tangled

1:10:20

situation that I've ever heard

1:10:22

or read about. It

1:10:24

seemed like they were still in the midst of untangling

1:10:27

it in front of Dowd.

1:10:29

As Naomi explained,

1:10:31

you're hurt, you're devastated, and

1:10:34

then you do something that hurts someone else in such

1:10:36

a short period of time. To

1:10:39

quote Dowd, Mr. Esterhoss

1:10:42

interrupts to reassure her. What

1:10:44

I'm trying to say to you, and it's really

1:10:47

true, is that you didn't cause

1:10:49

the problems in my marriage. She

1:10:51

replies, but it

1:10:54

still hurts. In

1:10:57

his book, Hollywood Animal, Esterhoss

1:11:00

described this tangled web as

1:11:02

a sort of gift to him from Robert

1:11:05

Evans, slash his karma for writing

1:11:07

Basic Instinct.

1:11:09

Here is a clip from the audiobook.

1:11:12

I have no doubt that writing Basic Instinct helped

1:11:14

speed up the end of my marriage to Jerry Esterhoss.

1:11:18

Most young women I found had seen the movie. Some

1:11:21

liked it, others disliked it. But

1:11:23

almost all of them were fascinated by

1:11:26

and on some sexual level drawn

1:11:28

to the man who wrote it.

1:11:30

If I was a cheating husband before I wrote

1:11:32

Basic, I became a kind of sexual

1:11:35

stuntman after it was released in the

1:11:37

theaters.

1:11:38

It all led finally to what Evans considered

1:11:41

his ultimate compliment. I

1:11:43

saw the movie and thought, damn it, this cocksucker

1:11:45

knows more about pussy than I do. I don't.

1:11:49

No one will ever know as much as Evans. My

1:11:53

advice to screenwriters, be

1:11:55

careful what you write, because

1:11:57

what you write can come back and... rewrite

1:12:00

you. Esther

1:12:03

Haas writes extensively

1:12:07

about the end of his marriage to Jerry

1:12:10

and the beginning of his relationship with Naomi,

1:12:13

to whom he is still married today.

1:12:16

He also writes extensively about McDonald

1:12:19

and his relationship with Stone.

1:12:22

He even excerpts many pages

1:12:24

from Naomi's diaries. Sharon

1:12:27

Stone does not write about any

1:12:30

of this in her memoir. Three

1:12:33

names that do not come up ever

1:12:36

at all in Sharon

1:12:38

Stone's book are McDonald,

1:12:41

Sliver, and Esther Haas.

1:12:45

But she did talk about this stuff in

1:12:47

the 90s. She was interviewed

1:12:49

for the cover of Esquire magazine in 1995

1:12:53

when she was in Las Vegas making Casino.

1:12:56

With her engagement to McDonald

1:12:58

long since broken, she denied

1:13:00

that she had been a tornado that had destroyed

1:13:03

two marriages. In fact,

1:13:05

between her and Bill McDonald, she said,

1:13:08

it

1:13:08

was the other way around. Quote,

1:13:12

I didn't know him at all when I got involved with

1:13:14

him. About six weeks in, I

1:13:16

knew I was in serious hot water and

1:13:18

told him so.

1:13:20

I recognized how dangerous he was,

1:13:22

like a whirling dervish of destruction.

1:13:25

I explained to him that it was just going to have

1:13:27

to stop. And it was about

1:13:30

that time we got engaged, which was

1:13:32

his attempt to be legitimate and make

1:13:34

me legitimate. He was constantly

1:13:37

working on me psychologically to make

1:13:39

me feel like I was always in danger and

1:13:42

weak and that without him constantly

1:13:44

there, I was vulnerable.

1:13:48

This is fascinating to read because

1:13:51

the relationship she's describing is

1:13:53

pretty much exactly the one her character

1:13:56

has with Billy Baldwin's character in

1:13:58

Sliver. Just as

1:14:00

few seemed to be able to see Indecent Proposal

1:14:02

as a film about toxic masculinity

1:14:05

because they were too distracted by whether or

1:14:07

not the movie would encourage young women to have

1:14:09

transactional sex, Sliver's

1:14:12

depiction of 2023 hot

1:14:15

topics like gaslighting and love bombing

1:14:18

was ignored while the media

1:14:20

went nuts over the anomaly of its

1:14:23

actress' willingness to show

1:14:25

her body.

1:14:26

In response to their coverage of Sliver's

1:14:29

battle to get an R rating and the

1:14:31

removal of the film's male nudity,

1:14:33

the LA Times ran an editorial by

1:14:36

Sam Frank,

1:14:37

the author of a 1986 book

1:14:39

called Sex and the Movies.

1:14:42

In his editorial, Frank called

1:14:45

for the abolishment of the rating system

1:14:47

on the grounds that it was corrupt

1:14:50

as long as it was pay for play and

1:14:52

made arbitrary determinations about

1:14:55

sex scenes

1:14:56

based on a nebulous concept of what

1:14:58

was normal or conventional.

1:15:01

Who are they to say what's unconventional?

1:15:04

Frank wrote, These are 10

1:15:06

anonymous men and women, all parents

1:15:09

or grandparents, who are paid to sit

1:15:11

in visual judgment to determine

1:15:13

if a given movie is suitable entertainment for

1:15:15

children.

1:15:16

They are not paid to censor

1:15:18

content

1:15:19

or pass moral judgment for

1:15:21

an intended adult audience

1:15:24

or keep visual content in

1:15:26

lockstep conformity.

1:15:28

And yet, they do.

1:15:30

Frank continued, I have

1:15:32

a simple, if radical, solution

1:15:35

to these problems. Disband

1:15:37

the rating board, let sexual content

1:15:39

be unfettered, and compel the

1:15:41

studios by law to self-rate

1:15:43

movie ads for sex, violence,

1:15:46

and language. We would thus make

1:15:48

the studios responsible for information

1:15:50

on the one hand. While making

1:15:52

parents and adult guardians responsible

1:15:55

for what their children see on the other.

1:15:58

That would save the studios money.

1:15:59

and finally give us the right

1:16:02

to see what movie makers want to put

1:16:04

on the screen.

1:16:05

It sounds like a reasonable proposal,

1:16:08

but

1:16:08

what movie makers wanted

1:16:11

to put on the screen

1:16:12

was too often at odds

1:16:15

with what the studios wanted.

1:16:17

And this would increasingly be the case

1:16:19

going forward.

1:16:23

Sliver had led Us Magazine's 1993

1:16:25

summer movie issue,

1:16:28

which had wrongly predicted that Sliver

1:16:30

would tear off a big chunk

1:16:32

of the box office.

1:16:35

The magazine made a more accurate prediction

1:16:38

in a sidebar headline,

1:16:40

Soft Focus.

1:16:42

Quote,

1:16:43

warm and fuzzy has suddenly

1:16:46

replaced sex and violence

1:16:48

as the buzzwords at Hollywood pitch meetings.

1:16:52

This vibe shift was

1:16:54

attributed to the success of films like Dave

1:16:57

and Sleepless in Seattle.

1:17:00

The kicker was a quote from Columbia

1:17:03

exec Mark Canton. A

1:17:05

movie rated PG is

1:17:07

almost three times more likely

1:17:10

to reach $100 million than a film rated R.

1:17:14

Any smart business person can see

1:17:16

what we must do. That same year,

1:17:19

that same executive made a dispiriting comment

1:17:21

in Time

1:17:25

Magazine

1:17:26

that suggested there would be no equality

1:17:29

for equality's sake in Hollywood.

1:17:31

Quote, it's

1:17:34

been a long time since women

1:17:36

have had any reliable

1:17:38

impact on big box office.

1:17:42

What this meant

1:17:43

was that there were anomalous hits

1:17:45

like Basic Instinct or Sister

1:17:49

Act or A League of Their Own or Pretty

1:17:51

Woman. But even Julia

1:17:54

Roberts had yet to prove to

1:17:56

male execs like Canton

1:17:58

that she was worth banking.

1:17:59

on in the long run.

1:18:02

Before Sliver came out, Premiere

1:18:05

magazine had set the stakes for

1:18:07

Sharon Stone.

1:18:09

This is her first shot at carrying

1:18:11

a movie,

1:18:12

and the pressure is intense.

1:18:14

Like it or not, she will be held

1:18:17

responsible for the success, or

1:18:19

failure, of Sliver.

1:18:23

In the end, Sliver was not a success

1:18:25

in the US, but its significant

1:18:28

overseas box office kept

1:18:30

it from being too bad of a failure.

1:18:34

Stone still had arguably her

1:18:36

greatest performance, in Casino,

1:18:39

ahead of her.

1:18:41

But she was a woman out of time, her

1:18:44

stardom delivered by the most explicit

1:18:46

R-rated film of its era, nearing

1:18:49

the end of the R-rated blockbuster

1:18:52

era. Next

1:18:54

week, we will talk about two films

1:18:57

centering female villains that

1:18:59

represented the flip side of Stone's

1:19:01

image. Instead of blonde

1:19:04

bombshells, these were

1:19:06

killer brunettes.

1:19:09

Join us then, won't you?

1:19:17

Thanks for listening to You Must Remember This.

1:19:20

The show is written, produced, and

1:19:23

narrated by Karina

1:19:25

Longworth. That's me.

1:19:28

This season is edited and mixed

1:19:31

by Evan Viola. Our

1:19:33

research and production assistant

1:19:35

is Lindsay D. Schoenholz.

1:19:39

Our social media assistant is Brendan

1:19:41

Whelan. And our logo was

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We'll be back next week with

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an all new tale from the secret

1:21:07

and or forgotten histories of

1:21:10

Hollywood's first century.

1:21:13

Join us then, won't you? Good

1:21:16

night. Good night. Good night. Good

1:21:19

night.

1:21:19

Good night. Good night. Good

1:21:21

night. Good night. Good night. Good

1:21:23

night.