Showgirls

Director: Paul Verhoeven

1995 / 131min / 4K DCP

Elizabeth Berkley’s Nomi, a poor, street-smart young drifter with a hazy past and plenty of blonde ambition, rolls into Las Vegas with dreams of success and Versace glitz… and God help whoever gets in the way of her achieving it by any means necessary. Verhoeven glories in the crass, glossy grotesquerie of the sex-and-sin business while following Nomi’s tooth-and-nail climb to the top of the erotic cabaret scene, including submitting to the indignities of strip club owner sleaze Robert Davi, a fierce face-off with diva Gina Gershon, and athletic pool sex with bigwig Kyle MacLachlan. A defining film of 1990s America, in all its excess, glitter, and false-bottomed prosperity.

“One of the central jokes, or spiritual prompts, of Maddie’s Secret was ‘What if the Bon Appetit Test Kitchen was as cutthroat and as horny as Showgirls?’ I figured if we reached for Showgirls with no time and no money, we might land somewhere like Perfect Body, the 1997 TV movie about an anorexic gymnast that feels like it was directed by Verhoeven. What more can I say about this movie and its influence over me that I haven’t already said? I guess that, in a way, I’ve always wanted to be Elizabeth Berkley.” —John Early

Distributor: Park Circus

Pre-screening video clip by John Early

Part of Thrust It! The Films That Inspired Maddie's Secret