Paul Verhoeven doesn’t understand why there’s such taboo around sex scenes. In fact, he says, he plans them meticulously.
“If you feel, like I do, that one of the most important things in life is sexuality, then I don’t know why there would be a problem to show sexuality,” the Basic Instinct director told MovieMaker. “Sexuality is essential for life. Without sexuality, there are no babies. Without babies, there is no species. You should at least think that sexuality is as important to survive as oxygen… if you don’t feel that way, it is difficult to defend showing it.”
Verhoeven is used to people getting upset over sex scenes in his films. His latest movie Benedetta, starring Virginie Efira and Daphne Patakia, follows a heavily sexual affair between lesbian nuns at an Italian convent in the 17th century.
The movie’s sex scenes, one of which involves the use of a Virgin Mary statue as a dildo, have drawn so much ire that protestors actually showed up outside of its recent New York Film Festival premiere.
Verhoeven has no intention of stopping the sex scenes in his films anytime soon — but he does have a method for making sure the actors know exactly what the scenes will entail, he explained. When filming sex scenes, the director, whose other works include RoboCop, Total Recall, and Elle, said he likes to make storyboards in order to keep everyone on the same page.
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“In my own life, it’s extremely rare that when I explain myself and explain the scene, that people refuse to do it. That is also certainly true about nudity and sexuality. To go back to sexuality, it’s important that if you do sexuality or nudity, then it has to be made extremely clear to the actor and actress what the shots will be. Whenever there was nudity, I had storyboards,” he said.
“We discussed the storyboards with the actors and actresses, every storyboard on its own. Every actor and actress knows not only his dialogue, but also his position, and what kind of nudity will be used. That has to all be done before one shot of the movie. The actors need to know precisely what the shot will be and from what corner, how far away, what lens. When I showed Michael Douglas and Sharon Stone the storyboards of the sex scene for the first time for Basic Instinct, they were like, What? But when we were shooting, there was no problem at all. We didn’t discuss anything anymore, because it was choreographed. I didn’t have to tell them what to do.
MovieMaker reached out to reps for Basic Instinct stars Michael Douglas and Sharon Stone for comment on Verhoeven’s use of storyboards with them, but did not immediately hear back.
In Stone’s memoir, The Beauty of Living Twice, she said that Verhoeven misled her into appearing nude below the waist in an infamous Basic Instinct scene. Verhoeven has repeatedly denied that he misled her.
“Because everything was said before and it was explained and drawn so they could see it, more or less, by doing that, I have not had any discussions about nudity on the set. Even if Sharon Stone said that I did, that’s not true either,” he told MovieMaker.
Rather than toning down human sexuality in media, Verhoeven feels it’s more honest to show it as it is in real life.
“I have a problem with this kind of Puritanism that there is now. As if we are not animals. We are. We come from primates. By hiding sexuality, you are trying to say we are not animals, we are something different. But we are not,” he said. “Violence is another factor of the universe—that building up and destruction. Violence is probably one aspect of our universe that is also dominant. But we have no problem in going to the utmost in showing violence. But there are problems in showing two naked people. So don’t worry about it, when you ought to do a sex scene. I’m a little bit unclear what the problem is.”
Our full interview with Paul Verhoeven appears in our fall print issue, on newsstands now.
Main Image: Virginie Efira and Daphne Patakia in Benedetta. Photo Credit: Pathé Distribution
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