Basic Instinct

We re-watched BASIC INSTINCT, partly because I'm pitching an erotic horror movie at the Fantasia festival this week, and I'm hoping to sell glamor and seduction. I had not noticed how much of a tribute to Hitchcock the film is. There's Sharon Stone dressed up like Grace Kelly, but with less underwear, her hair tight and blonde. There are murderous women who look sort of like each other. There's a shot down a staircase. There's a shot of a woman in a rocking chair turned away from us. And there's the whole Bernard Herrman-esque thriller score.

I remember reading the script a while back. My memory is that Verhoeven shot Esterhas's script almost word for word -- oh, there was a rewrite, but nobody liked it. It is a tight, clever script.