Rewatchables Reference

• CR: The nightclub scene, '100 out of 100.' Loves that the drug dealer gets to dance with them. Also mentions Glenn Plummer — 'that guy is in every 90s movie for some reason.'
• Mallory: The fuck of the century sex scene. 'I've across the course of my life diagrammed that like I'm scoring a baseball game.'
• Van: The interrogation scene. 'This is one of the most well-written scenes of the 90s.' His analysis: the scene has to establish how dangerous Catherine is, but can't betray it — then 'she lets that thing out' and it 'completely wipes his mind and our mind.' Also the Tripplehorn scene for showing Nick's character change the moment he meets Catherine.
• Runner-up nominees from Bill: the opening murder scene ('He got off before he got off'), first visit to Catherine's house (great Bay Area drive, amazing deck), the car ride where she's not wearing underwear ('What's your new book about?' 'A detective. He falls for the wrong woman.' 'What happens?' 'He kills her.'), the police interrogation, the car chase, fuck of the century, the next-day deflation ('I thought it was the fuck of the century.' 'I thought it was a good beginning'), and the ending twist.

• CR: Beth has a Bart Simpson keychain — mistaken for a gun at the end.
• Van: Only the attractive people have sex in this movie. 'If they made this movie right now, there'd be a random scene of Gus hitting something from the back.' We've 'democratized sex scenes' since 1992.
• Bill: Quitting cocaine for three months being treated as an achievement. The green police computer screens. Calling a condom 'a rubber.' Sharon Stone hosting SNL in April 1992 with musical guest Pearl Jam (their first SNL performance).

• Bill: All the San Francisco location stuff — 'pre-tech San Francisco, I used to come here a lot in the 90s, it was fucking awesome.' One of the great cigarette smoking movies ever made. Michael Douglas's hesitation laugh. The screenwriting quality — 'fuck like minks, raise Rugrats, live happily ever after.' George Dzundza's character (you know he's dead the moment you see him). Johnny Boz's apartment with a Picasso.
• CR: Douglas for best on-screen smoking — the cigarette is 'the highway to hell for him, it unlocks everything.' Also the broken-lock detail at Beth's house — the only clue that Catherine has been planting evidence in Beth's apartment, and the whole movie almost falls apart without it.
• Mallory: Catherine's first appearance on the deck — 'draws your attention to the jagged rocks, the danger of the person and the setting.' The Jerry Goldsmith score. Sharon Stone's performance. How props are used as plot drivers — ice picks, hand ties, ceiling mirrors, matching Picassos, the Bart Simpson keychain.
• Van: 'Men fucking with women who will eventually destroy them. This movie should be required viewing for anyone who's thinking about dating a Kardashian.'

• CR: The push-in on Catherine saying 'I'd have to be pretty stupid to write a book about killing and then kill him the same way I described in my book' — 'she's saying it to the audience, almost breaking the fourth wall.'
• CR also praises Jan de Bont's camera work throughout: 'There's a bunch of really cool shit in here.'

Bill: 'Blue' by LaTour in the nightclub scene — the song that opens the show and accompanies Nick's hilariously out-of-place nightclub visit. Jerry Goldsmith's film score received an Oscar nomination.

• CR and Mallory (both pick): Hazel Dobkins. CR: 'What the fuck is Hazel Dobkins doing in this movie?' Unless you subscribe to the online theory that she's secretly the mastermind and Catherine is deferential to her. 'She's either kind of just written into the movie, or she is the Joker.'
• Mallory: Also the DNA evidence problem — 'Every single murder involves every bodily fluid that you could possibly excrete. How are they not finding the killer?' DNA evidence had been in practice since the 80s.
• Bill: Nick attacks Internal Affairs guy Nielsen in front of 30 cops, has to be restrained, and six hours later Nielsen is shot in the head — yet Nick isn't arrested or even a suspect.

• CR: 'We know too much after David Simon. We know way too much about law enforcement storytelling.' Nick is a narc who killed 2 tourists while high on coke, now fucks his therapist, and gets promoted to homicide detective to drive the suspect around while they make 'fuck me eyes' at each other.
• Bill: The first sex scene with Tripplehorn — 'problematic now, but in 1992 wasn't not problematic.' The photo ID for Beth in the investigation — same photo but with a blonde wig Photoshopped on, '$59 million budget, unforced error.' The crazy last 40 minutes of the movie. The rip-off erotic thrillers that followed: Jade, Color of Night ('Bruce Willis pool penis on a 70-foot screen'), Sliver.
• Mallory: The shoddy police work — Beth's jacket that fits = case solved. Beth's kitchen drawer with chronologically ordered incriminating evidence: 'Always keep a full binder of chronologically ordered incriminating evidence in their kitchen drawer.' Nick reads the book page about the detective's partner being killed in an elevator, then lets Gus go up in the elevator alone. Beth has no blood on her hands after an ice pick murder.
• Bill: 10 years later, DNA evidence would have solved this in 5 minutes. But counters: even during the OJ trial in 1995, 'people still barely knew what DNA evidence was and didn't even really believe it.'

• Bill: Nick Curran might be 'the single worst cop performance ever by a cop in a movie.' Off cocaine for three months, killed 4 tourists in 5 years, somehow got promoted, immediately falls in love with the suspect, loses his mind and badge, lets his partner go into the elevator he just read about in the murder book, shoots his girlfriend, and somehow gets away with all of it.
• Mallory: Catherine is a 'pretty generous murderer' — 'cocaine on the penis, sure, you're alive to see the ice pick, but you're shooting your load inside of her while it's happening.' CR: 'She could just kill them.' Mallory: 'Exactly. Thoughtful.'
• Van: If you scratch his back during sex, it's over. Has been saying this since '99. 'I don't even like spicy food. I don't like pain. She scratches his shit like Wolverine seeing Magneto and this motherfucker's like ahhhh.'
• CR: 'Is this movie a perverted man's version of Gilligan's Island, where the professor is caught between the psychosexual dealings of Ginger and Marianne?' Also his safe home-field take: 'San Francisco is the best movie city.'

• Sharon Stone was the 13th choice. Kim Basinger, Meg Ryan, Geena Davis, Ellen Barkin, Mariel Hemingway turned it down. Demi Moore vs Sharon Stone for the final slot — Stone won. Michelle Pfeiffer was offered the role — Bill: 'Thank God, 'cause I think that might have actually killed me.'
• CR: 'By far the funniest casting what-if is that Emma Thompson auditioned for Catherine.' She won the Best Actress Oscar that year for Howard's End instead.
• Original script had Nick Curran as a lesbian cop written with Kathleen Turner in mind — then they switched it.
• Verhoeven wanted Tom Berenger for both RoboCop and Basic Instinct. Berenger said no both times. CR: 'I'll be doing Sniper instead.'
• Milos Forman was the first choice to direct. CR: Linda Fiorentino was considered for Beth, Brooke Shields for Roxy. Bill: 'Every white actor from 1982' was considered for Nick.

Winner: Michael Douglas — 'He does this thing where he says the line but then yells the last two words.' Bill demonstrates: 'Who has access to my goddamn FILES?' 'What is this, some kind of JOKE?' Van joins in: 'You keep riding me, MAN!' 'I'll get your fucking TEETH in!'

• Bill declares Wayne Knight ('Newman from Seinfeld') and Stephen Tobolowsky ('the Groundhog Day guy') ineligible — too recognizable. James Rebhorn ('Dickie Greenleaf's dad, the headmaster from Scent of a Woman') also declared ineligible but seems to emerge as the consensus winner.
• Van nominates Jack McGee (the sheriff) — 'he's also in Showgirls.' CR nominates Bruce Young, 'the guy who says he had a minute amount of cocaine on the penis.' Craig poses the right question: 'Who would the most amount of people in this room be like oh, that guy?'
• Bill notes the Spielberg factoid: Spielberg allegedly hired Wayne Knight for Jurassic Park off the strength of this interrogation scene. CR: 'That was Steven Spielberg's takeaway from the scene.'

• Unanimous: Roxy. Bill initially tries to give her the That Guy award, but CR corrects him — 'You're changing the definition.' She's promoted to the Dion Waiters award instead.
• Bill: 'She's in this movie and she's the cop stripper in Days of Thunder, never seen again. If you just saw this movie, you would have thought she was going to be as big of a star as Sharon Stone, or at least close.' Mallory: 'If you saw this movie now, you'd think that's a person who's going to be responsible for generating a lot of memes.'
• Van on Roxy: she's the friend at the club who isn't getting attention, 'pissed off,' and 'then I come over and I validate her. I go, girl, you are her.'

• Extended Tom Cruise as Nick discussion: Bill thinks Cruise brings the same unintentional comedy. 'There's probably a running scene at one point' — Craig: 'Probably across the Golden Gate.' Cruise smoking Marlboro Reds 'would be great.' The nightclub scene: 'He's going to fucking dance. He's not going to be able to stay away.' Cruise nude talking to Roxy: CR imitates him: 'Let me ask you something, Roxy.' Consensus: stick with Douglas.
• Bill suggests Jacqueline Bisset as Hazel Dobkins — 'dead silence from the crowd.'
• Craig's flex: Vincent Chase Award, 'Are we sure this character was actually good at her job?' — Catherine is a messy, reckless killer. 31 stabs on Johnny Boz: 'Act like you've been there before, he's dead after 5.' Also leaving ice picks at crime scenes and buying them with no regard for DNA.

• $49 million budget, made $353 million worldwide — the 4th highest grossing movie of 1992. Craig: 'That would be $800 million today.'
• Joe Eszterhas got $3 million for the script (bidding war from Carolco Productions). He wrote it in 10 days with no outline 'while listening to The Stones' — CR: 'which is a great euphemism for on cocaine.' Eszterhas eventually walked off set when Verhoeven added extra content.
• No body doubles used in any sex scenes. Five days to film the fuck of the century — 10 hours a day — for a 92-second scene. Verhoeven wanted coverage in case the studio made him cut things.
• Douglas declined to go full frontal (it was in his contract). The first sex scene with Tripplehorn was actually the rehearsal — Verhoeven secretly kept it. Douglas and Stone were reportedly not close during filming.
• The leg-crossing scene was not in the script. Stone's version: they asked her to remove her underwear because it was affecting the lighting. She saw the cut and almost stopped the movie with her lawyer Marty Singer, but ultimately decided to let it stand.
• Verhoeven describes Nick as 'a cop who has gone through some bad times and has done some things that we might consider wrong' — Bill: 'Including four murders. Incredible.'
• Sharon Stone stabbed Bill Cable (Johnny Boz) so hard during filming that the ice pick went through the blood pack and pierced his skin, sending him to the hospital.
• In Joe Eszterhas's book 'Hollywood Animal,' he claimed he slept with Sharon Stone after the movie came out.
• Film score by Jerry Goldsmith got an Oscar nomination. The movie also received protests from LGBT groups — six people disrupted Stone's April 1992 SNL monologue.
• Verhoeven was supposed to direct 'Black Rain' but dropped out to do 'Total Recall.'

• Michael Douglas: No — Wall Street and the rest of his run are bigger.
• Sharon Stone: Yes, easily.
• Joe Eszterhas: Yes.
• Ceiling sex mirrors: Yes, though Cribs brought them back in the early 2000s. Bill: 'Three members of the Trail Blazers had the ceiling mirrors. Zach Randolph definitely had it.'
• Erotic thrillers: Yes.
• San Francisco movies: Probably not.
• Jeanne Tripplehorn: Probably The Firm.
• Freeze frame / pause moments in a movie: Yes (Mallory's side Dick confession).
• Ice picks: Yes (Van).
• Fucking your therapist: This movie or Sopranos (fantasy scene only). Bill: 'Not Sopranos — they never fucked.' CR: 'Prince of Tides.'
• Gratuitous male actor ass shots: Maybe — Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon, Kevin Costner in Robin Hood, Bruce Willis later in Color of Night. Van: 'Douglas the Stallion got to do it.'
• Women on top: Possible (Van). 'When she wants to exert her power, she flips over.'
• Cops getting in too deep: CR's Floyd Gundoli pick — 'something I just enjoy.'

• Hazel Dobkins killed her husband and three kids, served nine years. Roxy killed her brother, out after six. Van: 'I know people in jail 55 years for weed. Like, that tracks.'
• Nick reads the page about the detective's partner being killed in an elevator, then lets Gus walk into an elevator alone. Mallory: 'And then he's killed shortly thereafter in the exact scenario that was described in the pages he just read.'
• Beth's kitchen drawer has a full binder of chronologically ordered incriminating evidence. Mallory: 'Yeah, always.' The elevator is also impossibly fast in that sequence.
• Nick gets hit by Roxy's Lotus and is unaffected — 'one head shake, no blood, no injuries, no damage to the car.' Roxy's car rolls off a cliff — she dies with no injuries or blood on her. Beth also has no blood on her hands after an ice pick murder.
• Bill: 'Why didn't Johnny Boz's corpse have a rigor mortis boner?' Craig Googles it — death erections are a real thing. Mallory: 'But he doesn't have an erection.'
• When does Catherine write? She wrote 'Shooter' in two weeks. CR: 'She's a prolific writer in a matter of weeks, and most of the time she's having sex, doing cocaine, or driving around San Francisco.'
• Van: Nick spoons Catherine after the first time they have sex. 'Spooning is for Sunday. We watch an Avengers: Endgame on TNT. You do not spoon the psycho killer girl that you are investigating.'

• CR: Prestige TV could work, 'only to explain the ending.' Would go back to the Manny Vasquez boxing years with Catherine as his girlfriend. Bill: could also go backwards to Berkeley with Beth.
• Basic Instinct 2 exists and is horrible. Bill: 'Please don't rent Basic Instinct 2.'
• Brief discussion of an all-Black cast version — Van mentions 'A Thin Line Between Love and Hate' with Martin Lawrence and 'Obsessed' with Beyoncé as the closest attempts: 'We don't like depicting our sisters like that.'

• CR does Zane Lowe: 'Nick, man, from nights of cocaine-fueled sex to days of shooting tourists, you've done it all. So what is it that gets you fired up? Could it be the bestselling author of mass-market paperbacks uncrossing her legs in the interrogation room?'
• CR does Wayne Jenkins: 'God damn, she's on a book tour? In Baltimore?' 'If Wayne was Gus: God damn, Nick, you got sweaty birds playing around your head.'
• Bill does Ryan Ruocco announcing the opening scene: 'Catherine's riding, and now she's reaching back. Is she going for the ice pick? You bet.'

Unanimous: Sharon Stone, Best Actress. No debate needed.

• How long did Nick and Catherine date after the movie ended? CR: 'No. Nick has died.' Mallory: 'Thursday.' Craig: 'He mentions Rugrats at the grocery store later that day and she stabs him.' Consensus: days at most.
• Was it a big deal when Manny the boxer died in the ring in 1984? Bill: 'Like, cover of Sports Illustrated? Led SportsCenter?' Van: 'Had to be a huge deal.'
• Should she have just killed him at the ending? CR thinks a murder ending wouldn't be 'a fun theater-going experience.' Van: better if it ends with her actually grabbing the ice pick (Sopranos-style). Mallory likes it as-is. CR admits: '8% of me thinks Beth could have done it.'
• Mallory: Newman (Wayne Knight) disappears from the movie after the interrogation. 'Did seeing Catherine's vagina kill him? Dropped dead in the bathroom stall cranking one out.' Mallory notes he's not in the director's cut either.
• The cumshot crime scene: Mallory asks how there's semen everywhere when Johnny Boz was inside Catherine. CR's theory: they'd done it multiple times that night — 'it's Johnny Boz's fuck of the century.' Van references Peter North.

• Bill: A copy of 'Love Hurts' by Catherine Tramell.
• CR: Nick's V-neck sweater from the nightclub scene — 'If I had it, yeah, I'd wear it.'
• Craig: The giant red-tinted glasses from Johnny Boz's apartment — 'the semen glasses.'
• Van: The ice pick.
• Mallory: The Verhoeven storyboards — 'I would frame them and display them tastefully next to my ceiling mirror.'

• Bill: It's actually worth it to risk it all for the fuck of the century. Nick wins — gets a girlfriend, breaks up with someone he didn't really like, gets out of a murder investigation, gets rid of everyone at work he hated. 'Big dub.'
• Mallory: Wash your sheets.
• Van/Gus's wisdom: 'That's her pussy talking' — 'it hates your brain.'

• CR: 'Jagged Edge' — another Joe Eszterhas thriller, also set in San Francisco.
• Bill: 'Total Recall' — Verhoeven/Stone double feature.
• Mallory: 'Fatal Attraction' — Douglas erotic-thriller double feature.
• Van: 'Body of Evidence' — 'the bad version of this movie,' with Madonna and Willem Dafoe. Notes that the masturbation scene Mallory wanted is actually in that movie: 'Madonna just fucking goes for it and Willem Dafoe doesn't know what to do. The Green Goblin is like, what?'

Sharon Stone, no question. 'This was kind of her moment' — bouncing around Hollywood for 10 years (Irreconcilable Differences 1982, Action Jackson, a Seagal movie, Total Recall), then this made her a superstar.

• Craig: 'This movie is just elite entertainment. We didn't know how good we had it in the early 90s.' Calls it crazy that it was reviewed poorly. 'Compared to what we have now, this movie looks fantastic — elite actor, great performance, based on nothing, huge star, made $400 million. This would be the achievement of the decade if this movie came out right now.'
• Van adds: one reason the movie holds up is that San Francisco is a character — 'You can't fix San Francisco. It's immaculate in terms of the way you can film it.' Cities being characters in movies is going away with volume shooting.