You Don't Nomi (Showgirls documentary) - July 21, 2020

[Bumblefeet]

OK I'll bite; is this really such a cult classic that it deserves a standalone docu? Wouldn't it be better to just do a documentary on Verhoeven's entire output or perhaps sex thrillers of the 90s?

At the time Showgirls came out I was too young to see it, but I remember it flopping but also encountered it many times in VHS stores and later DVD bins.
I also remember it being the movie that middle-age married men could get away with renting that wasn't a porno.

With today's access to hardcore porn on the web, it's funny to think back about those pre-internet days where these type of movies got rented because people just wanted to see a pair of boobs.

I own Showgirls on blu-ray and despite the nudity and sex, it's actually a more compelling parabel on Vegas by Verhoeven, and works better that way. But put it next to Basic Instinct and you have one movie that's cinema and another that's exploitation pulp.

To get back to my point, everything seems to be getting a seperate documentary and with many of these documentaries I often question wether they really add much analysis or meaning, and aren't simply an excuse to hear people discuss these movies, often not remembering much about them or getting praised for when they do LOL. Cause I imagine many of the people who worked on it probably wanted to forget they ever did given the reception it got.

It's a shame that most if not all interviews for movies done at that time were press junket prepped answers to sell the movie, with only A-list actors allowed to kavetch about their roles from time to time. But how relevant is a documentary when it's made 20 years after the fact?