Pop Culture Happy Hour - Showgirls

Episode Date: September 25, 2025

Showgirls stars Elizabeth Berkley as a Vegas dancer trying to move up from a seedy club to a glamorous hotel show. Paul Verhoeven’s NC-17 movie was a notorious flop, but it is now considered a camp classic and a window into a moment of moral panic. Showgirls turns 30 this year, so today we’re revisiting our conversation about the film.Follow Pop Culture Happy Hour on Letterboxd at letterboxd.com/nprpopcultureSee pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

This episode contains mentions of sexual assault. Critics howled and self-appointed guardians of good taste were horrified at the release of Showgirls. Directed by Paul Verhoeven with a screenplay by Joe Estherhaus, the film is an NC-17 story of a Vegas dancer who wants to move up from a seedy club to a glamorous hotel show. The movie was a notorious flop at the time, but is now considered a camp classic and a window into a moment of Moro Panic. Showgirls turns 30 this year, so we thought it was the perfect time to revisit our conversation about the movie. I'm Aisha Harris. And I'm Linda Holmes.

And today on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour, we're talking about showgirls. Joining us today is writer Chris Clemick. Hey, Chris. I burn when I dance, Linda. And also joining us is senior editor for NPR's investigations team, Barry Hardiman. Hey, Barry. Hi, I don't burn at all. We are all very excited.

to talk about this movie. So as we said, showgirls came out 30 years ago. It has Elizabeth Berkeley, who you might know from Saved by the Bell in particular. She plays Nomi. She's this kind of tough girl who hitchhikes into Vegas and decides she's going to become a glamorous dancer. She meets a young woman who invites her to move in with her. So all of a sudden, she's got a roommate. She meets Gina Gershon, who is a dancer named Crystal, who's kind of the big star, who she kind of dreams of being just like Kyle McLaughlin is there as a gross dude who wants to promise to make her a star. You sort of follow her through several different phases of her career as she kind of works her way up. It has a lot of echoes of like the star and the woman in the wings like waiting to take over for her.

Aisha, because this came out in 1995, this was kind of, you know, my generation of films. I was like 24 when this came out. I would have assumed that it wasn't for you because you were a bit younger than me. but you do have an attachment to this film. So tell me about you and showgirls. Well, I definitely was way too young to have seen this movie when it first came out. And honestly, I think I've only seen it for the first time, probably within the last decade or so. And I don't really remember how I saw it or why or what the context was.

I'm pretty sure I watched it by myself, which to me, this is the type of movie that, like many so bad, it's kind of good movies. It really benefits from having an audience with you or at least a couple of other people. to laugh about it with you. Funny enough, this year, I've now watched it twice. I introduced it to my partner during the early days of quarantine. And I realize that this is exactly the type of movie that I want to watch over and over again for the rest of my life probably. So I just think it's really, really fun.

And it's terrible. But I think part of what makes it so good and what has made it become the Cam Classic that it is, is the fact that, like, everyone is so committed. to this movie. And the commitment is right there in the way that Elizabeth Berkeley, as Nomi, thrashes around, responds very, very over-aggressively and over-enthusiastically about everything. When people ask her where she's from, she's just like, different places. And she says it a couple times. And it's just wild the way in which she channels this anger and aggression and this, like, underlying trauma that they don't really explore with her character, but you kind of sense is there.

So, yeah, just the commitment to this movie. and the execution of it are, I think, what has made this such a lasting movie. Well, and the other thing I think is so interesting about everything being extreme in this film is, like, there's only one thing, I think, that I would really call a sex scene in this movie. But everything else is at this incredibly exaggerated level of, like, her entire approach to acting is that she looks like she's going to make out with everyone all the movie. the time in every situation. And so everything about it is so cranked up. Barry, tell me about you and

showgirls. Well, that's a lot. No. So the movie shows girls. I was too young when it came out to see it and would never have been allowed. But I eventually saw it later on when I was living in New York. And I had a bunch of gay roommates and it was introduced to me as this camp classic, which it has now become. So I think seeing it first in that context where everybody knew every line, where there was just raucous whooping and hollering. And, you know, it felt like watching Rocky Horror. And, you know, I'm a kind of over the top dame. You know, I love a Busby Berkeley kind of, you know, so all the sequins and the dances and the fires and the not, all of that really does appeal to me. I will say I watched this movie again for this conversation and I watched it by myself.

which is not ideal, I think. And I came out of it feeling a little bit more horrified than I did. I can't tell if it's just that I'm an old lady now. Like, well, I don't know what, but I was sort of like, I couldn't catch the fun vibe because I used to watch it all the time with my roommates. And it was so much fun. And I couldn't catch that wave. Yeah. This time around. I couldn't get it. Yeah. You know, one of the things I noticed when I watched it through again, it has a very brutal assault sequence that I think has often not. been part of that sort of it's a camp classic approach to it yeah and in fact isn't part of that usually that cut when they show it you know they they usually excise it and either it had been excised when i had watched it as a younger person or i had blocked it out but it is not only quite a brutal sexual assault it is such a terrible way to treat the only character of color so my rediscovering of this movie you know now has been less fun i'm turns out maybe i'm I might be less fun.

No, I think you're right that when that happens, it's a very big tonal shift because up until then, a lot of what's going on does feel sort of harmless and silly. And when that happens, it's this thing of like, oh, no, wait. Chris, one of the reasons why we wanted to make sure that we had you on hand for this conversation is that you're a Paul Verhoeven guy from Robocop and Total Recall and some of the big sort of blockbusters he had made in addition to his earlier sort of more autori kind of films. How do you see this as kind of part of his canon and career? I think it's important in his filmography because this is the big flop that basically cancels his blank check in Hollywood. He is coming off of three big hits, Robocop, Total Recall and Basic Instinct, which were commercial, but also had an edge of scandal and slees and satire to them.

But we're all critically pretty well regarded. And even though I was very young when those films came out and I had to sneak Robocop and basic instinct, somehow I got to see Total Recall in the theater. I guess I convinced my dad to buy it. it. Those films are all framing their critique of America through violence. And we are much more accepting of over-the-top cartoony, you know, explodey, squibby violence than we are when he tries to apply that same frame to sex, which I think why Showgirls was so resoundingly rejected at the time, you know, and we can even talk about the way that that sexual assault, that I think the fact

that it can be so easily removed from the movie without really altering the narrative just speaks to how unnecessary the fact that that whole assault and the aftermath occupies maybe 90 seconds of screen time in a movie that's two hours and 15 minutes long really harms the entire thing for me. I mean, I'm basically prepared to defend this movie until that happens in the final 10 minutes. And then the movie does not deal with it in any other way except to make it the sort of engine for the revenge narrative that we usually get with a male character, right?

Like the spouse is killed or whatever and the man has to go kill a bunch of people in response. I have the perhaps unique credential of having seen this movie upon its release in 1995 on a date. Oh my God. Oh my God. We parted amicably and immediately. Mid film or? No, no, no. They're after. I mean, I actually remember the screening being sort of, you know, we've all heard that this American life fiasco episode where the audience starts to rebel as it's happening and it ends up being a pretty good time. I mean, I

definitely knew who Paul Verhoeven was. I was a fan. The pre-release publicity about how scandalous and shocking this movie was going to be and the fact that it was showing in the very conservative town where I went to college all contributed to making it an event. So we certainly thought we were being a little rebellious and, you know, doing something risque and forbidden and it was more than just going to a movie. But it was

it was not a relationship starter. Yeah, I went back and read some of the reviews that came out at the time that it was released. One of the things I thought was interesting was not only was everybody talking much more about it has so much nudity and it has so much language. One was obsessed with how much language there was in it. But also, they were kind of scandalized by the whole idea of a story about a woman who had, who had done sex work, who was trying to sort of have some kind of dignity about herself and her life. There's a lot of mockery in some of those reviews about sex work in general. And instead of talking about things like, look, you know, I can defend a lot of things in this movie.

To me, that central Elizabeth Berkeley performance is hard to understand as anything other than a very strange, clearly intentional, but ultimately for me, not successful series of high-key choices. But if your angle on this movie is, and for a lot of these people, it was, essentially you can't have a story that's sort of all about Eve with strippers because who cares about strippers. That's kind of what the attitude was. And to his credit, I will encourage you, if you look up the Roger Ebert one, it's way more interesting and thoughtful, which is not surprising because, of course, he worked on. Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, and he had a fondness for these kind of pulpy things that a lot of critics didn't share. But it is so interesting to me and go back and be like, why can't you just

talk about how silly the dialogue is? And they do to some degree. But why are you focused on whether or not you can have a sympathetic story about women who dance topless? Because that, I don't think, is really the point at all. The film itself has like a weird relationship. between this idea of sex work and how it should feel about the Elizabeth Berkeley's character. I mean, aside from the rape and the way in which the rape of a black woman is Nomi's way of coming up and getting revenge and having this successful moment, that aside is creepy and gross in some ways kind of racist, that part is. There's also like a lot of moments where Nomi says like, oh, I'm not a whore. someone might call her a whore.

There's the infamous scene between Nomi and Crystal where they're at Spago and they're talking about Doggy Chow at one point. But then she says, you know, I'm not a whore. And Crystal is like, well, we're all whores. We all take the money. We give what they got. And I don't know. It's like Nomi is at once supposed to be a character that we admire just because she's able to get

by on both her aggressiveness, but also her, like, ability to. just bring people in. One of my notes while watching this movie, again, was just like, why is everyone drawn to her? I don't understand. Like, you know, Molly saves her, Jane Rivera's character, saves her from getting hit by a car. They don't know each other. And within second, she's like, you can come stay with me. And then obviously, there's Glenn Plummer as James, who's like a wannabe dancer, I guess, who like wants dance with Alvin Ailey, who's just like, you have more talent than I've ever seen anyone else. It's a very bizarre tone that the movie doesn't quite strike, which I think is another reason why it's so fascinating to watch. For sure, for sure. I actually want to stick up for

Elizabeth Berkley. Now, I have no prior or subsequent exposure to her as an actor. I never saw saved by the bell until I saw those clips that are in the documentary about the afterlife of this movie. You don't know me. So all I know about her comes from showgirls. But Paul Verhoeven has said that he directed her to play every scene at 11 to give that super aggressive, you know, over-amped response to absolutely everything. I feel. badly for her because, you know, by all account she had the time of her life making this movie. She worked so hard. She loved

dancing. After this, you know, her agent drops her, like, after the weekend, this movie is released. She stops dancing for a while because she's so depressed about its failure. And this kind of strident character to this performance, it's the kind of thing that we never punish when, say, Tom Cruise does it, or Christian Bale does

it, or, you know, we just accept it. And I'm not saying her performance is good, but I don't think the fact that it's bad is necessarily her fault. Verhoven was talking about how he and Joe Esther House set out to, like, update the classic MGM musical. And I think he gave the direction only to her to play like she was in one of those movies. Now, why Gina Rivera is then, you know, opposite her just doing a perfectly credible impersonation of an emotionally stable, ordinary human being. I think that's bad direction.

Right. But I just, I feel bad for Elizabeth Berkeley. You should. And I think one of the things that really did leave this taste in my mouth upon a second exposure to this film is that she needs. never got to have a second act, whereas Paul Verhoeven goes on to have multiple movies, gets to sort of work out how he feels about women. There's this kind of utcher, and you'll notice that the names that I'm about to say are all men, of like Michael Henneke and Gisparnaway and, you know, Peter Greenaway, you know,

these men who make movies in which, you know, I think in the last movie that I saw by Verhoven, a woman is literally covered in feces at one point, her body. So upon looking back at this and the performance and all of that, I find myself really kind of mad about how much he's able to be like, well, it's camp. And she never got to do that. And this is one of these things where it's like the, you know, basic instinct is, I think, a perfectly serviceable thriller. It's totally fine. But, you know, Sharon Stone kind of like had to fight back from that too. Like all of these actresses are treated so badly. So I'm, I just no fun at all, but I really like this, a rewatch of this really, really left a yucky taste in my mouth.

I mean, I think that as much as I do love this movie, I agree completely with both what you Barry and Chris said. It reminds me of, I remember, you know, I was like 12 or 13 when Christina Aguilera decided to go dirty. And, you know, I think it's a common thing we see where young actresses who were like child stars. I mean, Elizabeth Berkeley wasn't quite a child on, say, by the bell, but she was a kid. She was a younger, younger child. And the fact that she thought that this was going to be the way for her to become a star in itself is part of the problem with the industry, because that's the only way young female actors tend to be able to jump into bigger roles is that they have to, like, go all the way to the extreme of being super sexual. It really is sort of this tale as little as time within Hollywood. And I think this is probably one of the more prominent.

examples of that happening. I find myself able to have fun with this movie when I have completely divorced it from any context whatsoever, which it means the whole point of it being like, oh, it was a satire on purpose goes away. You know what I mean? So like I can only have fun with it when I'm enjoying the terribleness of the dialogue, the ridiculousness of the headpieces, and not thinking about the context of all of these things of this child star who's, you know, has to do this and then is completely left in the dirt of the Paul Verhovens of the world, of the Joe Esterhouses of the world. You know, at this age, I find myself having to again divorce it from all context,

which makes it hard to appreciate it as satire. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. And I think, you know, it's not just that Verhoven and Esterhaus weren't followed around by this movie forever, which in a negative way, which I agree with in which you can point to a million examples of that. Well, I mean, Esther House's career is pretty much over after this. I mean, Esther House doesn't have another big, you know, this is pretty much the end of him as a big shot screenwriter. But I don't think if you talk about his.

him that he's as defined by this alone as she is, as Berkeley is. Oh, certainly. But also think about like Kyle McLaughlin. Kyle McLaughlin was able to go on and be a respected, prestigious actor in all kinds of different projects, despite the fact that if I'm going to say I think her choices in that performance are weird, he's the closest to making choices that are just as weird as hers in terms of how kind of exaggerated they are and how silly the sex scene between the two of them is. Like, that's because of both of them, not just because of her.

And I think if you chalk that performance, hers or his, up to ineptitude, that's obviously wrong, right? They are choices. And the question is, who made those choices? And I think, as Chris said, there's good documentary evidence that Verhoeven made those choices and directed those choices because that's what a director does and is for. And Chris mentioned the documentary, you don't know me, an OMI, of course, which, you know, you. may be able to find sort of streaming or keep an eye out for it. And it really goes back and looks at a lot of these things, what this film meant for some of these actors and for some of the crew, but also the legacy that it has had as a part of like drag shows and beloved, like

Barry said, these kind of rocky horror-esque kind of things, because it does have a weirdly interesting legacy. Well, we want to know what you think about showgirls. You can find us at Facebook.com slash PCHH and on Letterbox. at letterbox.com slash NPR pop culture. We'll have a link in our episode description. That brings us to the end of our show. Thanks to all of you for being here. Thanks.

Thank you. Thanks. This episode is produced by Mike Katzif and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy. And hello, come in, provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Linda Holmes, and we'll see you all next time.