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You. Don’t. Nomi.
The weekends are for movies, baby! And we continue w/ the work of one of the CD directors to ever live, Paul Verhoeven, and his 1995 film Showgirls. Even if Showgirls didn’t have actual cocaine use in it (which it does, complete with an acrylic nail as the scoop), it would be CD.
Let’s start with a breakdown of the CD elements: first, the entire city of Las Vegas is obviously CD. Neon is CD. Then there’s the gold, the sparkles, the mirrors, the shine.
The imagery + aesthetic of this film are iconic. Costume Designer Ellen Mirojnick noted that one can pause the movie at any point + it has a painting-like quality: “like a David LaChapelle photograph or something, in the way it has this extremeness others might be afraid to use.”
She goes on to say in this interview (link below): “Showgirls...is a piece of art with a lot of cultural texture. It embodies that time + place + I think it feels authentic + original...I actually think it went over a lot of people’s heads.” https://www.dazeddigital.com/fashion/article/49733/1/las-vegas-showgirls-paul-verhoeven-nomi-cult-90s-fashion-ellen-mirojnick">https://www.dazeddigital.com/fashion/a...
Some more CD aspects (there are so, so many): first, Verhoeven did the film as a favor to writer friend Joe Esztherhas, wanted to make an NC-17 movie + signed a contract to receive total control over the final cut, which was unheard of at the time: https://screenrant.com/showgirls-paul-verhoeven-behind-scenes-facts/">https://screenrant.com/showgirls...
Allan Cameron did production design for the film, and did not appear to suffer the blows to his career that say, Elizabeth Berkley did. He went on to do Tomorrow Never Dies, The Mummy, and The Da Vinci Code, to name a few. He passed in 2017. https://m.imdb.com/name/nm0131482/ ">https://m.imdb.com/name/nm01...
The most universal reason for why Showgirls is CD is that it is both good, and bad, at the same time. It is argued to be hugely misogynist and deeply feminist simultaneously. The world of Showgirls is glamorous and yet, uninhabitable. The high cannot be sustained.
