PH441 Cult Selects: SHOWGIRLS

While Picturehouse 441 is normally dedicated to exploring essential cinema, we wanted to take a night to explore one of cinema’s most beloved cult classics: SHOWGIRLS. After the smash-hit success of BASIC INSTINCT, legendary director Paul Verhoeven and enfant terrible screenwriter Joe Eszterhas joined forces again for SHOWGIRLS. The film’s ambitions couldn’t have been higher: SAVED BY THE BELL’s Elizabeth Berkeley wanted to use the film to break into serious roles, Verhoeven and Eszterhas aimed to satirize the cutthroat, sleazy world of Sin City strippers, and the film would be the most widely-released NC-17-rated film ever. What actually resulted is one of the most notorious films in modern cinema history - a critically-assailed, Razzie-sweeping box office flop that quickly garnered a huge cult following and record-breaking ($100 million+) video sales for MGM. However, SHOWGIRLS did demonstrate that beneath all of the fabulously over-the-top line readings, insane sex scenes, and nonsensical behavior was typically strong technical craft, exemplified by Mark Helfrich and Mark Goldblatt’s electric editing. This one-of-a-kind event will explore the makings of this wildly entertaining phenomenon through the eyes of one of the veteran editors who was tasked with putting it together. 

Mark Helfrich, ACE, is an editor and director best known for cutting PREDATOR, SHOWGIRLS, RUSH HOUR, SCARY MOVIE, RED DRAGON, JUMANJI: WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE, and JUMANJI: THE NEXT LEVEL, among many others. He is on the board of American Cinema Editors.