And Joe Eszterhas is notorious for being with Shane Lethal Weapon Black the most highly paid

And Joe Eszterhas is notorious for being, with Shane (Lethal Weapon) Black, the most highly paid screenwriter in the world: he was given a record-breaking $3m (pounds 2m) for his previous collaboration with Verhoeven, Basic Instinct. Before it opened in the States to a flood of indifference, Showgirls was touted as the most shocking, sexually explicit film ever made by a major studio. (In fact, there is more potent eroticism in a single Bogart- Bacall exchange from The Big Sleep than in Showgirls’ acres of perky nipples.) Thereafter, it became clear that, as was widely observed about Basic Instinct, the only shocking thing about the film was that Eszterhas can obtain such gorgeous sums of money for writing what amount to minor variations on the same script. If you wanted to be respectful of Eszterhas, you could say that his recurrent theme is betrayal: a compromised protagonist (in Showgirls, a young dancing girl) discovers that something or someone (in Showgirls, various Las Vegas sleaze balls) in which they have placed their trust is not as it seems. If you want to be less respectful, you summarise.
Hence Jagged Edge, in which a lawyer (Glenn Close) becomes too closely involved with a man (Jeff Bridges) who may or may not have murdered his wife; Basic Instinct, in which a cop (Michael Douglas) becomes too closely involved with a bisexual novelist (Sharon Stone) who may or may not be an ice-pick murderer; Betrayed, in which an FBI agent (Debra Winger) becomes too closely involved with a farmer (Tom Berenger) who may or may not be a right-wing terrorist; Music Box, in which a lawyer (Jessica Lange) is already dangerously involved with her father (Armin Mueller-Stahl) who may or may not be a Nazi war criminal; Jade, in which.. well, you get the picture The cardinal rule: TANATS (Things Are Not As They Seem).

Surely it’s harder, though, to write an Eszterhas story than such brusque summary implies? Perhaps so; but for anyone who is interested in following the Eszterhas path to screenwriting millions, here is a breakdown of his formula’s key elements, which I have tried to illustrate with my own plot.CHOOSE A TITLE:Before getting cracking on the story outline proper, it would be a good idea to have an appropriately lurid title. Sometimes Eszterhas goes for the obscure/ poetic angle (Music Box, Jade), sometimes for the prosaic, if enticing (Betrayed, Showgirls). But he has never come up with anything quite so good as the slobbering phrase Basic Instinct, which leered at you insolently from the poster like Sharon Stone’s feral eyes. No matter that it didn’t have much literal connection with the plot (what was the instinct in question? To kill during acts of bondage? To adopt the identity of one’s classmate? To wear V-necked sweaters to a discotheque?): it was a means of titillating the audience’s lowest impulses.

The ideal Eszterhasian title would combine sex and death with some kind of multiple meaning; but we won’t reveal it until after our first sequence, which is as follows.SHOCK OPENER:Such as Bloody Murder, Preferably with an Eccentric Implement, during Sex. (In Basic Instinct it was an ice-pick, in Jade an antique hatchet.) So: our film begins in a bedroom, with a naked man – he will prove to be a diplomat from an Islamic state on the brink of attaining nuclear status thrashing his way towards climax The face of his partner is hidden behind long hair As his excitement mounts, a whirring noise begins This is not a sex aid, but a common power drill. The man’s ecstatic features convulse into agony as the mysterious, still unseen partner bores a fatal hole in his head. Fade to title: Deadly Boring.INTRODUCE DUAL LEADS:The compromised protagonist with a past, the femme (or homme) fatale (or fatal) with an improbably fancy job. So let’s say the hero is a former cop turned crime reporter, drummed out of the force after an Internal Affairs bribery investigation, and engaged in a long-term vendetta with his brutish former sergeant. The femme fatale (hereafter FF) is a Nobel Prize-winning nuclear physicist with contacts in the Islamic world who also moonlights, Belle du Jour style, as a high-class whore.

(This may not be quite ridiculous enough for a true Eszterhasian female lead, but it will have to do.)FLESH OUT SORDID WORLD:Our cast of minor characters will include the vicious, racist but ultimately lovable police chief who sides with our hero against his enemy the sergeant; other cops; a variety of possibly sinister Arab businessmen; the dodgy local politicians and businessmen who may or may not be in cahoots with them; the hero’s trusty sidekick (TS); the femme fatale’s menacing transvestite associate (TV) who may also be complicit in the drill murder. Apart from setting up the plot elements – police suspect FF of murder, case against her looks bad but hero, fatally attracted, is desperate to prove her innocence – we will also plant a few notes to suggest that… Things Are Not As They Seem.DEVISE OUTRE SEX SCENE:To give the press something to wax about in the columns next to their picture spreads (the Basic Instinct look-mum-no-undies shot, the Showgirls lap dance). In Deadly Boring, the FF taunts and teases the hero by forcing him to watch from hiding as she turns a trick with an Arab businessman who can only achieve satisfaction by copulating in a bath-tub filled with cold custard. Close-up on the burning humiliation of the hero’s face as a fleck of custard lands on his nose.INTRODUCE RED HERRINGS:Hero starts to realise that the local businessmen and their Arab visitors are united in some kind of baroque conspiracy involving nuclear power, oil (another connotation for our title, Deadly Boring) and weird sex (a third connotation). What is a rip-off and what is a bargain is the January fashion conundrum. One of the latter is a black, fitted satin jacket from Oasis, which doesn’t look out of place in the after-party season.

It is reasonably fitted and cut to a give a slimming silhouette. Black cotton ski pants, pounds 78, from Jigsaw branches nationwide. Black-ribbed jumper with orange stripe, pounds 49, by Kiliwatch, as before. Black track boots, pounds 99.99, by Technica, from Blacks, 215/217 Kensington High Street, London W8.Photographer: Heather FavellStylist: Jo Adams assisted by Liz LambHair and make-up: Laurent Mole using Bobbi Brown and Shu Uemura productsModel: LoretaShot at Click Studios, Northburgh House, Northburgh St, London EC1. Royal blue fleece T-shirt with pink stripe, pounds 80, and matching skirt, pounds 60, by Bordingirl, stockists as before.Top:Blue and orange ski jacket, pounds 75, by Kiliwatch, from The Big Apple, 70 Neal St, London WC2. While both Ralph Lauren and Giorgio Armani have launched their separate ski lines, which are both technically correct for the sport, other fashion designers are only really interested in the appearance of sleek clothes for apres-ski.