’Showgirls’ Q&A | Paul Verhoeven & Gina Gershon

Director Paul Verhoeven and actor Gina Gershon discuss their 1995 film ’Showgirls’ before a screening at the Film Society of Lincoln Center. Unbound by musty notions of “good taste,” Showgirls goes further than any other film of the 1990s in its orgiastic depiction of consumerism, crass spectacle, and the dark side of the American Dream. Elizabeth Berkley (in a tour-de-force of hysterical excess) stars as Nomi, a tough-as-nails drifter with a go-it-alone attitude and a murky past, who arrives in Las Vegas and sets about trampling on everyone around her—including Gina Gershon’s evil-seductive nightclub diva—as she fights her way up from stripper in a sleazy club to star showgirl. With its deliciously overripe dialogue and nigh-unhinged performances, Showgirls is both a delirious star-is-born satire and a terrifying vision of capitalism’s corruption of the soul. The Film Society of Lincoln Center is devoted to supporting the art and elevating the craft of cinema. The only branch of the wo