As the star of such 80s classics as Action Jackson and Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol, Sharon Stone was the object of many film geeks fantasies. She increased that demographic when she became an international star with the lead in Basic Instinct and later her Oscar nomination for Casino. Now Stone is reprising her role as the bisexual murderess Catherine Tramell in the sequel Basic Instinct 2.
Check out the official website for Basic Instinct 2
Daniel Robert Epstein: I am a big fan of David Cronenberg and I know he was attached to direct Basic Instinct 2 at one point, why didnt it work out?
Sharon Stone: We love him of course. He's so talented and so amazing. How great was Crash? Also he is the most gentle, interesting, intelligent, sophisticated person. One of the most fun things Ive done was when Marty Scorsese wanted to see Crash so I made a surprise dinner party for him and invited David Cronenberg and screened the movie. What a great night! He had really great ideas, but that would've been a very different movie. In the end people just got afraid that it wouldn't be commercial enough. That's not to say that some of his ideas didn't remain in the movie because they did. What's funny is that some of his ideas that stayed in were the ones that they were the most afraid of.
DRE: What was one of his ideas that stayed in?
SS: I don't think that it's fair to say because I don't think that I have that permission.
DRE: How did London become the setting of the sequel as opposed to San Francisco in the first movie?
SS: What happened was that we got a list of places that we could go that had tax shelter and a financial exchange that made it become financially viable to shoot. There was a list of seven choices and Ive made like 150 movies in Canada so I wanted to go somewhere else. Not that we don't love Canada but I just wanted to go somewhere that looked different and looks more Basic Instinct, I'm not sure that I could see Catherine Tramell in Canada going, The cow wont come out of the field!
DRE: The first film had such a unique look, how involved were you with the costumes and the look of the film?
SS: Very much so. I thought that Catherine should be really fashion forward and yet have her own look. I wanted to pick the wardrobe person and I thought of Beatrix Pasztor who is the most fascinating, interesting, amazing wardrobe person. The work she did on the movie Vanity Fair was just mind blowing. The colors in that movie were not modern day dyed. I looked at that and realized she used vegetable dyes to dye those fabrics. She didn't just go out and buy those fabrics. That meant she was out there dyeing taffeta in tubs to make those gowns those rich colors. To me that means that this is a person you want to know because she's up to her shoulders dyeing those things to make that film come alive emotionally. Then I was watching Vanity Fair and at one point I noticed that someone had a bat on as a corsage. After that I knew I had to have her on this! Then I met her and it turns out we were born the same year, the same month, two days apart. We had this big artistic rapport. She just really understands emotionally that she's not creating just clothes, but an emotional tone for the film in this gigantic way.
DRE: Why did it take so long to get the sequel going?
SS: They tried other things over the years. They had all of these different ideas and they even sold it to a different producer who wanted to make it with a different actress. About a year and a half ago, that producer called me in to have a meeting and talked to me about it. I explained to him, That's great. That's a great idea. Lets do it. I told him that if he wanted me to take that actress out to lunch and talk about it, I would. That completely freaked him out.
DRE: How was it coming back to this character after 14 years rather than jumping into a sequel right away?
SS: Over time a character like she becomes so much more observational and so much more dangerous because of her need and her desire to be loved and her desperate disability to accomplish that. At the beginning of the movie, I thought that she really truly was suicidal. Playing with the police is a little buzz, but it's not much anymore. So when she finds someone that understands her and gets her, it is a dim flicker of hope. It still takes a while for her to engage which is very risky in a movie like this because she is a little bit out of it. You want the character to be interesting, but you have to find a way to make her interesting while she is disparate and disconnected.
DRE: How has 14 years of your experience changed the way you approached Catherine Trammell?
SS: I hope that I was more like Michael [Douglas] in the first one where I came to work more relaxed and more generous and was able to be there for other people. When I went to work on the first one I was paralyzed. I kept waiting for them to replace me with the actor that they really wanted. For this one I figured, Who else are they going to get? So I will probably get to play it all the way through. I was surer of myself. I think over time you come to understand that a movie is just a movie and it isn't everything.
DRE: That first scene with her speeding on the road through London is wild.
SS: Yeah, it's very exciting. She's on the edge but nothing is happening. So the concept of I'll kill myself and you too is the only thing left for her.
DRE: How was doing the scene where the car plunges into the water?
SS: The Spyder really is an amazing car. But it has Gullwing doors which are really thick so it is terrifying to go under water in it for three and a half days of shooting because getting out is a problem so it was a giant risk to do the scene. Even though we were as protected as we could possibly be, we still felt that it was risky. At one point my heel got caught in the floor in the middle of a take and I had to use my spare air until they came and got me out.
DRE: It is interesting that Basic Instinct is coming out now after 2005 was Hollywoods gay year
SS: Right. This year can be Hollywood's sex year [laughs].
DRE: When the first film came out it was very controversial and was picketed by gay activists. How do you see Basic Instinct 2 in the context of todays society?
SS: What's so terrific is that we did break those boundaries of sexuality and homosexuality and all kinds of things that were so taboo. Since we did that its afforded all kinds of things to be said and done in filmmaking. I'm very proud of the boundaries that we broke. When I was nominated for a Golden Globe for the first film people laughed because they couldn't cope with it getting critical acclaim. But who's laughing now? The film is still playing. It's still being rented. People still know that character by name and look at the kinds of films that are being made as a result of taboos being broken in the theater. I'm thrilled.
DRE: Is there less for Basic Instinct 2 to do in terms of breaking taboos?
SS: Jeez, what are you going to do? We're now able and allowed and afforded the possibility of being who and what we are as humans in filmmaking so I couldn't be more pleased.
DRE: The lesbian aspect seemed to be played down a lot for the sequel.
SS: We did a mnage tois scene with a French actress but when we took everything to the ratings board they just made us cut out a bunch of stuff and that scene was one of them. I think that it's been on the internet so you can see her there. She was so lovely and pretty and talented and interesting and hot.
DRE: How did you decide on David Morrissey as the male lead in the sequel?
SS: What's really interesting is that they like to talk about who turned down the part. I'd like to thank the 13 women who turned down the first Basic Instinct because I was the 14th choice. I'd like to thank each guy who turned down Basic Instinct 2 because we got David Morrissey. There isn't anyone who could play that part better. There isn't anyone who is more handsome and sexy and talented and interesting. There isn't anyone that would have caused me to be more challenged and more on my toes and more on my game than David Morrissey. That guy is a giant star. He is super talented and super smart and witty, interesting and fabulous. Even more, he's a spectacular human being and I loved working with him.
DRE: What was different about working with Michael Caton-Jones as opposed to Paul Verhoeven?
SS: Night and day. That was also very challenging and very interesting because Paul Verhoeven believed in me and trusted me and brought me to that movie when I don't think that anyone else would've or could've. I was very lucky and enormously indebted to Paul and I just adore him. Playing Catherine Tramell puts you into a very peculiar and weird headspace. It's not an affable place because you bring out the darkness in everyone. You just watch them like a rat in a maze. Paul totally understood because he pushed me to be that. But coming to work as someone who didn't invent that with me is very different. Michael wanted me to be that, but I can't say that he liked me very much when I was being that. When the movie was over we liked each other a lot because we both respected and admired each other for staying in our game and doing a good job. But it's not great to be Catherine Tramell.
DRE: Do you think of Basic Instinct 2 as a film noir?
SS: I do and I think people today very rarely write a good noir script. I think that because [Basic Instinct 2 screenwriters] Henry Bean and Leora Barish are so smart and interesting they really got into that as a result. My whole style consciousness is that I like things that have a vintage quality with a modern twist. It's always been my style in general. But we're not trying to be deadly serious and lets face it; the noir movies of those periods were always a little too serious. My five year old son is obsessed with detective and police things so I love showing him the black and white movies from the 40's.
Basic Instinct 2 has that suspension of disbelief so when people say that it's over the top, I go Well, no kidding. That's why I have 17,000 outfits and I wear high heels and black clothes at home.
DRE: Your upcoming movie, Bobby, seems like it will be fantastic.
SS: It's unbelievable. I have scenes with everyone in this movie because I run the beauty shop in the Ambassador Hotel and it's the 16 hours leading up to when Bobby Kennedy is assassinated. Bill Macy is my husband who runs the hotel and Christian Slater works for him and Anthony Hopkins is the retired doorman who doesn't leave. Harry Belafonte is his friend that he plays chess with at the hotel and Laurence Fishburne runs the kitchen. Also Lindsay Lohan, Heather Graham, Holly Hunter and Elijah Wood are in it. We're using real footage of Bobby, Ethel and Sirhan Sirhan and we're putting it together like Forrest Gump.
DRE: Do you ever see doing a Basic Instinct 3?
SS: [laughs] It's really funny because it never crossed my mind and then all the press people keep asking me that. In the beginning of the press tour I thought we would never do one, now six countries later I'm like, Oh my God, what if they really wanted to do that? I could roll up to people in my wheelchair and stab them.
DRE: At this point in your career you dont have to do nude scenes, did you have any hesitations about being nude in the sequel?
SS: I didnt because I think that it's so appropriate to the character because it's the way that she chooses to be manipulative. She uses sex and nudity as a weapon. She's not a gunslinger. She's a sex-slinger. We've all seen these movies where the character is supposed to be nude and the actress refuses to do it and she gets up and the sheet is taped to her and you think, That's the weirdest thing that I've ever seen and you're out of the movie. But if a person is nude in a movie and there's no reason for it or nude in an ad about shoes you think, Why is she nude with shoes? Why is she nude with the handbag? You feel confused. When I was nude in The Muse it was because I wanted to freak out Andie MacDowell and not have her sleep in the bed because I wanted to take over her household and it was funny. It took me all day to convince Albert Brooks that I should be nude in that scene. He was like What would that look like? I just don't know what that would look like. I was like, It would look like a nude butt, Albert. But you're not going to be nude in The Mighty. That would just be absurd. So you have to ask what the movie is about and why are you doing it. If you're doing a movie and it's an acid trip movie and everyone is pouring candle wax on everyone else and taking acid and then you get up and you have the sheet taped to you suddenly everyone is out of the movie. Whereas if the actor was just pouring candle wax on her and taking acid you would never think about how she was naked.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
Check out the official website for Basic Instinct 2
Daniel Robert Epstein: I am a big fan of David Cronenberg and I know he was attached to direct Basic Instinct 2 at one point, why didnt it work out?
Sharon Stone: We love him of course. He's so talented and so amazing. How great was Crash? Also he is the most gentle, interesting, intelligent, sophisticated person. One of the most fun things Ive done was when Marty Scorsese wanted to see Crash so I made a surprise dinner party for him and invited David Cronenberg and screened the movie. What a great night! He had really great ideas, but that would've been a very different movie. In the end people just got afraid that it wouldn't be commercial enough. That's not to say that some of his ideas didn't remain in the movie because they did. What's funny is that some of his ideas that stayed in were the ones that they were the most afraid of.
DRE: What was one of his ideas that stayed in?
SS: I don't think that it's fair to say because I don't think that I have that permission.
DRE: How did London become the setting of the sequel as opposed to San Francisco in the first movie?
SS: What happened was that we got a list of places that we could go that had tax shelter and a financial exchange that made it become financially viable to shoot. There was a list of seven choices and Ive made like 150 movies in Canada so I wanted to go somewhere else. Not that we don't love Canada but I just wanted to go somewhere that looked different and looks more Basic Instinct, I'm not sure that I could see Catherine Tramell in Canada going, The cow wont come out of the field!
DRE: The first film had such a unique look, how involved were you with the costumes and the look of the film?
SS: Very much so. I thought that Catherine should be really fashion forward and yet have her own look. I wanted to pick the wardrobe person and I thought of Beatrix Pasztor who is the most fascinating, interesting, amazing wardrobe person. The work she did on the movie Vanity Fair was just mind blowing. The colors in that movie were not modern day dyed. I looked at that and realized she used vegetable dyes to dye those fabrics. She didn't just go out and buy those fabrics. That meant she was out there dyeing taffeta in tubs to make those gowns those rich colors. To me that means that this is a person you want to know because she's up to her shoulders dyeing those things to make that film come alive emotionally. Then I was watching Vanity Fair and at one point I noticed that someone had a bat on as a corsage. After that I knew I had to have her on this! Then I met her and it turns out we were born the same year, the same month, two days apart. We had this big artistic rapport. She just really understands emotionally that she's not creating just clothes, but an emotional tone for the film in this gigantic way.
DRE: Why did it take so long to get the sequel going?
SS: They tried other things over the years. They had all of these different ideas and they even sold it to a different producer who wanted to make it with a different actress. About a year and a half ago, that producer called me in to have a meeting and talked to me about it. I explained to him, That's great. That's a great idea. Lets do it. I told him that if he wanted me to take that actress out to lunch and talk about it, I would. That completely freaked him out.
DRE: How was it coming back to this character after 14 years rather than jumping into a sequel right away?
SS: Over time a character like she becomes so much more observational and so much more dangerous because of her need and her desire to be loved and her desperate disability to accomplish that. At the beginning of the movie, I thought that she really truly was suicidal. Playing with the police is a little buzz, but it's not much anymore. So when she finds someone that understands her and gets her, it is a dim flicker of hope. It still takes a while for her to engage which is very risky in a movie like this because she is a little bit out of it. You want the character to be interesting, but you have to find a way to make her interesting while she is disparate and disconnected.
DRE: How has 14 years of your experience changed the way you approached Catherine Trammell?
SS: I hope that I was more like Michael [Douglas] in the first one where I came to work more relaxed and more generous and was able to be there for other people. When I went to work on the first one I was paralyzed. I kept waiting for them to replace me with the actor that they really wanted. For this one I figured, Who else are they going to get? So I will probably get to play it all the way through. I was surer of myself. I think over time you come to understand that a movie is just a movie and it isn't everything.
DRE: That first scene with her speeding on the road through London is wild.
SS: Yeah, it's very exciting. She's on the edge but nothing is happening. So the concept of I'll kill myself and you too is the only thing left for her.
DRE: How was doing the scene where the car plunges into the water?
SS: The Spyder really is an amazing car. But it has Gullwing doors which are really thick so it is terrifying to go under water in it for three and a half days of shooting because getting out is a problem so it was a giant risk to do the scene. Even though we were as protected as we could possibly be, we still felt that it was risky. At one point my heel got caught in the floor in the middle of a take and I had to use my spare air until they came and got me out.
DRE: It is interesting that Basic Instinct is coming out now after 2005 was Hollywoods gay year
SS: Right. This year can be Hollywood's sex year [laughs].
DRE: When the first film came out it was very controversial and was picketed by gay activists. How do you see Basic Instinct 2 in the context of todays society?
SS: What's so terrific is that we did break those boundaries of sexuality and homosexuality and all kinds of things that were so taboo. Since we did that its afforded all kinds of things to be said and done in filmmaking. I'm very proud of the boundaries that we broke. When I was nominated for a Golden Globe for the first film people laughed because they couldn't cope with it getting critical acclaim. But who's laughing now? The film is still playing. It's still being rented. People still know that character by name and look at the kinds of films that are being made as a result of taboos being broken in the theater. I'm thrilled.
DRE: Is there less for Basic Instinct 2 to do in terms of breaking taboos?
SS: Jeez, what are you going to do? We're now able and allowed and afforded the possibility of being who and what we are as humans in filmmaking so I couldn't be more pleased.
DRE: The lesbian aspect seemed to be played down a lot for the sequel.
SS: We did a mnage tois scene with a French actress but when we took everything to the ratings board they just made us cut out a bunch of stuff and that scene was one of them. I think that it's been on the internet so you can see her there. She was so lovely and pretty and talented and interesting and hot.
DRE: How did you decide on David Morrissey as the male lead in the sequel?
SS: What's really interesting is that they like to talk about who turned down the part. I'd like to thank the 13 women who turned down the first Basic Instinct because I was the 14th choice. I'd like to thank each guy who turned down Basic Instinct 2 because we got David Morrissey. There isn't anyone who could play that part better. There isn't anyone who is more handsome and sexy and talented and interesting. There isn't anyone that would have caused me to be more challenged and more on my toes and more on my game than David Morrissey. That guy is a giant star. He is super talented and super smart and witty, interesting and fabulous. Even more, he's a spectacular human being and I loved working with him.
DRE: What was different about working with Michael Caton-Jones as opposed to Paul Verhoeven?
SS: Night and day. That was also very challenging and very interesting because Paul Verhoeven believed in me and trusted me and brought me to that movie when I don't think that anyone else would've or could've. I was very lucky and enormously indebted to Paul and I just adore him. Playing Catherine Tramell puts you into a very peculiar and weird headspace. It's not an affable place because you bring out the darkness in everyone. You just watch them like a rat in a maze. Paul totally understood because he pushed me to be that. But coming to work as someone who didn't invent that with me is very different. Michael wanted me to be that, but I can't say that he liked me very much when I was being that. When the movie was over we liked each other a lot because we both respected and admired each other for staying in our game and doing a good job. But it's not great to be Catherine Tramell.
DRE: Do you think of Basic Instinct 2 as a film noir?
SS: I do and I think people today very rarely write a good noir script. I think that because [Basic Instinct 2 screenwriters] Henry Bean and Leora Barish are so smart and interesting they really got into that as a result. My whole style consciousness is that I like things that have a vintage quality with a modern twist. It's always been my style in general. But we're not trying to be deadly serious and lets face it; the noir movies of those periods were always a little too serious. My five year old son is obsessed with detective and police things so I love showing him the black and white movies from the 40's.
Basic Instinct 2 has that suspension of disbelief so when people say that it's over the top, I go Well, no kidding. That's why I have 17,000 outfits and I wear high heels and black clothes at home.
DRE: Your upcoming movie, Bobby, seems like it will be fantastic.
SS: It's unbelievable. I have scenes with everyone in this movie because I run the beauty shop in the Ambassador Hotel and it's the 16 hours leading up to when Bobby Kennedy is assassinated. Bill Macy is my husband who runs the hotel and Christian Slater works for him and Anthony Hopkins is the retired doorman who doesn't leave. Harry Belafonte is his friend that he plays chess with at the hotel and Laurence Fishburne runs the kitchen. Also Lindsay Lohan, Heather Graham, Holly Hunter and Elijah Wood are in it. We're using real footage of Bobby, Ethel and Sirhan Sirhan and we're putting it together like Forrest Gump.
DRE: Do you ever see doing a Basic Instinct 3?
SS: [laughs] It's really funny because it never crossed my mind and then all the press people keep asking me that. In the beginning of the press tour I thought we would never do one, now six countries later I'm like, Oh my God, what if they really wanted to do that? I could roll up to people in my wheelchair and stab them.
DRE: At this point in your career you dont have to do nude scenes, did you have any hesitations about being nude in the sequel?
SS: I didnt because I think that it's so appropriate to the character because it's the way that she chooses to be manipulative. She uses sex and nudity as a weapon. She's not a gunslinger. She's a sex-slinger. We've all seen these movies where the character is supposed to be nude and the actress refuses to do it and she gets up and the sheet is taped to her and you think, That's the weirdest thing that I've ever seen and you're out of the movie. But if a person is nude in a movie and there's no reason for it or nude in an ad about shoes you think, Why is she nude with shoes? Why is she nude with the handbag? You feel confused. When I was nude in The Muse it was because I wanted to freak out Andie MacDowell and not have her sleep in the bed because I wanted to take over her household and it was funny. It took me all day to convince Albert Brooks that I should be nude in that scene. He was like What would that look like? I just don't know what that would look like. I was like, It would look like a nude butt, Albert. But you're not going to be nude in The Mighty. That would just be absurd. So you have to ask what the movie is about and why are you doing it. If you're doing a movie and it's an acid trip movie and everyone is pouring candle wax on everyone else and taking acid and then you get up and you have the sheet taped to you suddenly everyone is out of the movie. Whereas if the actor was just pouring candle wax on her and taking acid you would never think about how she was naked.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
VIEW 6 of 6 COMMENTS
dmac:
I think Sharon Stone is one of the most beautiful women in Hollywood and I'm looking forward to seeing the character of Catherine Tramell come back to the screen. I hope this sequel does at least SOME partial justice to the original (although by the sound of Anton's comment, it doesn't). Still, I'm willing to see for myself. Great interview!
sabro:
I totally agree with her last answer about nudity in films. I love this woman.