Directing HOLLOW MAN: Paul Verhoeven

The director of ROBOCOP on invisiblity, ratings, and Disney's DINOSAUR.

By Steve Biodrowski     June 05, 2000

One thing you would never call Paul Verhoeven as a director is 'subtle.' Even his early European films like THE FOURTH MAN contained their share of graphic imagery gouged eyeballs, to site one example) meant to shock you out of the complacency often produced by high-tone art house offerings. Since moving to American, he has made numerous films loaded with violence (ROBOCOP, TOTAL RECALL, STARSHIP TROOPERS), sex (SHOWGIRLS), or both (BASIC INSTINCT). Consequently, he has had his share of run-ins with the MPAA (except for SHOWGIRLS, which went out with an NC-17, all his English language films have been recut to get an R-rating), and he is no stranger to controversy.

His latest film, HOLLOW MAN, takes the traditional invisible man concept and gives it a modern interpretation, emphasizing the potential for voyeurism and sexual stalking. In it, Kevin Bacon plays a scientist who manages to render himself invisible. Isolated from his colleagues by his condition, he soon finds himself unable to resist the temptations it provides. Advance word from people who have read early drafts of the script, coupled with comments from Bacon himself (who calls his character, half jokingly, 'Horny Man') have led some to wonder whether the film would be an over-the-top exercise in misogyny.

That seems unlikely in light of the Motion Picture Association of America having bestowed an R on the film, without demanding any recuts, and Verhoeven insists the rating is mostly because of the title character's sometimes semi-visible appearance, replete with working internal organs, muscle tissue, and blood veins clearly visible . Still, the director does seem to specialize in films that contain elements that once would have been limited to low-budget exploitation movies, rather than big-budget studio effortsa question he addressed at a recent press conference to promote his latest film.

Paul Verhoeven: The most normal movie I did was BASIC INSTINCT, wasn't it? In fact, the most realist was SHOW GIRLS. I've done only one realistic movie in this country, which is SHOWGIRLS.

IN STARSHIP TROOPERS, THE AUDIENCE DIDN'T GET THE JOKE.
No, they didn't. But they get it better now than when it came out. The way people look at STARSHIP TROOPERS has improved. There seems to be more interest and understanding for what they did. I mean, that movie would never have been made if there was a normal studio system operating at this studio [Columbia/TriStar]. It was because every six months the main guy left, until we got a steady regime now; but before that, four or five were in and out of the studio, and nobody really had time to look at STARSHIP TROOPERS. That movie, with the darkness and the cynical, non-Hollywood narrative where the best people die and the worst people surviveto a certain degreewhere there is an intense criticism of Fascist society, be it European or even American, if you want to use that word, or Imperialism or whatever you want to call itwith all those levels that are there, that would not have been possible for the price that it cost if people had even looked at the movie more precisely. (If you'd have done it for $30-million, that would have been different, but that was not the price, of course.) We got the movie done, and it's a really unique movie, for being so expensive. It's not unique that it got made, but for so much money.

PEOPLE THOUGHT IT WAS A JOHN MILIUS MOVIE, NOT A PAUL VERHOEVEN MOVIE.
It was very ironic. It was basically saying, 'Come on. Let's do a great job for the Fatherlandand die!'

THE VIOLENCE IN STARSHIP TROOPERS DREW A LOT OF CRITICISM, YET IT WAS ONLY A SHORT WHILE LATER THAT ANOTHER WAR FILM, SET IN THE PAST, WAS AT LEAST AS VIOLENT, AND DIDN'T DRAW THE SAME CRITICISM. OF COURSE, SAVING PRIVATE RYAN DIDN'T GET THAT REACTION AT ALL. DO YOU HAVE AN OPINION ABOUT WHY CRITICS WOULD OBJECT TO THE VIOLENCE IN YOUR FILM AS BEING OFFENSIVE AND YET SEE THAT IN THE SPIELBERG FILM AS BEING AN ARTIST STATEMENT?
[laugher all around]
You'd have to ask the MPAA how that film got through the way it was, and we had all the problems getting it [TROOPERS] through. But I think basically the rhetoric behind it is that STARSHIP TROOPERS is not true, and D-Day is true. So you can say, okay, so many people died, and basically nobody went to Planet P or whatever and died there. So if it's not true, you cannot basically show someone dying gruesomely. If it's true, then perhaps you can go much further, because you can say 'These are all people dying for the Fatherland.'

DO YOU EXPECT SIMILAR CRITICISM WITH HOLLOW MAN?
No. I got a straight R. I gave the movie to the MPAA and got an R. It's the first time in my life. All my movies have been called X or NC-17. It was X when I started here: FLESH AND BLOOD, ROBOCOP, and TOTAL RECALL all got an X. Then BASIC INSTINCT, SHOWGIRLS, and STARSHIP TROOPERS got NC-17. It's still an R; it's not a PG-13, and I couldn't make it a PG-13. The muscular body, and the way he is sometimes expressed in certain forms, is too scary for a PG-13. He is sometimes seen in layered form, and certainly during the transformation he is mostly of course layered, in between. Later, he is seen in layered forms or muscular form. So it's disturbing.

WHY DID YOU WANT TO USE JERRY GOLDSMITH FOR THIS MOVIE, AS OPPOSED TO BASIL POLEDOURIS?
First of all, I think he's great. Somehow I felt it was a bit more...there's a lot of this sliding scale things where the atmosphere is slowly changing. I felt it's what Jerry can do in the most beautiful way because he can nuance the orchestra so that little instrumentations give just a touch of change. Basil, I feel, is much more for broad brushstrokes, like when he writes for ROBOCOP or STARSHIP TROOPERS. Broad strokes, a bit orchestra, a lot of horns and trumpets and all that stuff. I think his best scores, which he did for CONAN and ROBOCOP, have that kind of visceral quality. I felt that this was more BASIC INSTINCT-oriented, because it's a really slow buildup, from scientific work that has a fantasy quality to it, to more and more fear that it might be evil and then knowledge that it is going to be evil. So it felt that way.

In fact, I have always been working with two d.p.'s. Jost Vacano and Jan DeBont. Jan DeBont is not available anymore, unfortunately, because I have a feeling I can express myself much better to the left than to the right, because Jan would be better at one way of shooting and Jost would be the other way of shooting, so I was able to use Jan for one kind of movie and Jost for another kind of movie. I'm really looking for another d.p, next to Joss, that can do the other kind of thing, someone that is more Jan-oriented. Jan is more to the red, and Josh is more to the blue. Jost is much colder; Jan is much warmer. That works for certain movies in a good way and sometimes in a bad way; then you want to change.

With Jerry, it's the same way. Jerry would be perfect for this, and Basil would be perfect for that.

AT ONE TIME, YOU WERE SET TO DIRECT DINOSAUR WHAT WOULD THAT HAVE BEEN LIKE?
Well, let me tell you. The original story was written by Walon Green; that story was written for me, Phil Tippet, Jon Davison, and Dennis Murren. So we started that project; it was an idea by Phil Tippet and me to do a movie about dinosaurs, when we were doing ROBOCOP. Then we went to Walon Green and Disney, saying we want to do a story about dinosaurs. So we did. That original idea is a bit difficult to find in the DINOSAUR that we've now got.

To show you the difference...There's a meteor in the beginning of DINOSAUR. But that was the end, of course; all the dinosaurs were killed. That was the difference. The dinosaurs were killed because a meteor; that's the most common thought. So we thought, 'Okay, we have a movie about survival and evolution.' So the dinosaurs would be living in the beginning, and at the very end they would be killed by the meteor that's coming closer and closer and hits themboom!and everybody dies. Except the small mammalsand that's us, because we are mammals, of course. It was a story about how evolution stopped one thing and went to another one, promoted the smaller mammals. The difference was that they took that meteor and put it in the beginning, and it was just a little fire. Just to give you an idea of the difference from what it could have been. And they did not sing or talk!