Toxic masculinity was his forte.Īfter Eszterhas and producer Irwin Winkler left the project – they’d protested Verhoeven’s desire to show unclothed body parts in “various stages of excitement” – Verhoeven invited Goldman (who wrote Total Recall) to work on the Basic Instinct script. Leading man Michael Douglas, meanwhile, was on a sensational run: Wall Street, Fatal Attraction, and a year later Falling Down. “I think sex is one of the most important things in life, isn’t it?” he said in a promotional interview. “More lesbianism or something!”īasic Instinct, which was released in the UK 30 years ago on 8 May, was perfect fodder for Verhoeven, whose films – including RoboCop, Total Recall, and Showgirls – deal in extremes: profanity, violence, sex. “I don’t know what,” laughs screenwriter Gary Goldman, who worked on later drafts. The cause of the friction? Apparent script changes. At one point, Eszterhas later claimed, he threatened to punch Verhoeven out. Months after screenwriter Joe Eszterhas had sold the script for $3m (£2.2m) after spending just 13 days writing it, he and director Paul Verhoeven embarked on a much-publicised bust-up. Basic Instinct was scandalous – and long before Sharon Stone sat down for questioning, uncrossed her legs, and made the sexually charged neo-noir the hottest movie of 1992.
