Showgirls - A Masterclass of Crap and What it Can Teach Us (kind of)

Disclaimer: this is a fly by the seat of my pants type post, more a collection of wonderings than a coherent argument. So like many of my other posts then. Kill your darlings, as they say. (please also excuse the weird formatting, it seems there's nothing I can do about it.)

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good… It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions.”

Ira Glass

I’ve used this (edited) quote by radio producer Ira Glass before. I followed it by saying he’d obviously never read any of the fiction I wrote as a teenager. Now I think he might have done, but I am not sure I’ve ever closed that gap in my work over the last twenty or so years. The quality of my writing still depresses me, and the depression deepens when I read books by other writers. I recently finished the ‘Bill Hodges’ trilogy by Stephen King. It was the first time in for a while that I was excited to get to bed time and read a book. As is often pointed out by critics and fans, King may not be an exceptional writer but he is an exceptional storyteller. His skill lies in keeping you reading, page after page, even though it’s getting very late and your eyes are drooping.  Why can’t I write like this? I’d think to myself roughly every 5 pages or so.

A day writing looks like this:

Coffee.

BBC breakfast.

Read what you wrote last time.

Feel like crying, delete half of it.

Stand up and look out of the window, at the February drizzle. The neighbour opposite is taking the bins out, but he’s still in his PJs and barefoot, so he’s standing in the doorway, trying to throw stuff into the bin from there. He’s got a bad aim.

Think to self, I have been writing this book for a hundred years, and I’m not even halfway through.

Go to Costa to steal their wifi. Wonder to yourself what kind coffee your main character would drink. Probably the same kind as you, if you follow theory that all characters are merely extensions of the author’s ego.

YouTube.

YouTube.

Write 3 words.

Delete them.

YouTube.

Walk home in the rain, heart pounding from two costa cappuccinos,  notice that now the snow’s melted, there’s a lot of rubbish on the pavements and stuck in hedges.

Sit at home in the dark, having an existential crisis about how writing is really just a vanity project because you’re scared of death, especially your own, and you think one day everyone you love will die and you still won’t have finished your fucking stupid book and then you’ll die too and your whole life was for nothing. You were a blip on the ultrasound of the universe, a tiny speck in the entire expanse of time, and now you are just carbon, food for the planet, like everything else that dies – leaves, birds, bugs.  Only you won’t care about any of that because you’re dead. Dead-edy dead, dead. 

I find this both comforting and depressing in equal measure. I remember my A-Level Sociology teacher telling us how she made a student cry by repeatedly asking her how she knew her house was there when she wasn’t in it. Apply this to yourself and if like me you are of a sensitive, and over-thinking nature, you can scare yourself shitless. The thought occurred to me recently. Do I actually exist? You can extend it further. Does this room exist? Does this house exist, this street, this town? I know, I know, red pill blue pill blah blah blah. I am taking a long time getting to the point, and the point is in a moment of existential crisis, I turn to films. Shit films.

If you’re going through something, you don’t need to watch a film like Enemy (which is amazing, and thought provoking and generally marvellous in any other circumstance) or even something like Fight Club, which used to be my go-to get me out of a hole watch. Nope, you need shit. Some shit so bad it’s not even good shit, it’s just shit shit. And this is where ladies and gents, I introduce Showgirls, the 1995, soft-core erotica Paul ‘Basic Instinct’ Verhoeven masterpiece and my new old favourite shit shit film.

Showgirls begins with Nomi Malone, played by Saved by the Bell’s Elizabeth Berkley (‘No Me’ / Know Me, geddit?) hitching a ride to Vegas with an Elvis rip-off.  Nomi runs into trouble almost immediately, which is a weird thing to happen, given what we learn about her later on. Poundland Elvis nicks her suitcase, (because all thieves are after suitcases full of women’s clothing) and Nomi finds herself alone and penniless in Vegas.

Nomi is saved by Molly ‘deus ex machina’ Abrahams, even though Nomi is a total dick to her and throws the fries Molly just bought her in her face. This actually happens. Molly buys a random woman some dinner and is thanked for it by getting French fries thrown at her. There’s a weird sexual vibe between Molly and Nomi where they gaze at each other and rub faces, and I was thinking, ‘Did EL James write this shit? It seems like something she’d write. OH GOD JAMES IS GOING TO START WRITING LESBIAN PORN ISN’T SHE, SOMEONE FIND HER AND STOP HER FOR THE LOVE OF GOD.’

Nomi goes from dancing in a topless bar to being a showgirl in a top topless show (apparently there’s a difference) she pushes the lead dancer, Cristal, down the stairs, so she can steal her part, fucks Cristal’s boyfriend, kicks the shit out of a man who raped Molly, then heads ‘back East’, weirdly managing to hitch a ride with Discount Elvis again. There’s some weird subplots involving a guy that inexplicably likes Nomi (she’s a bit like Anastasia Steele, and has a lot of men lusting after her for no reason) and a rivalry between two unnamed, random dancers. We find out Nomi has a history of drug addition, theft and prostitution. Like most protagonist Hollywood hookers, Nomi isn’t toothless with terrible skin and track marks, but flawless and beautiful with a perfect body. Everyone knows that you end up looking like Julia Roberts when you sell your body to buy drugs. 

Everything Nomi does is ANGRY, especially her dancing (which is literally hands down the funniest thing I have ever seen in my life, I would highly recommend any of you that are in a blue funk to watch this: 

She eats angrily, she walks angrily, she does her makeup angrily.  She even has sex angrily. Even if you haven’t seen the whole film, you probably still would have seen the pool sex between Nomi and Kyle MacLachlan – a sex scene that makes no biological sense, a scene that’s a virgin teenager’s idea of what good sex is like. Dale Cooper’s penis seems to be located somewhere between his navel and nipples. With her thighs tucked under Coop’s armpits, Nomi thrashes around like a dying fish in the grip of a fever dream, jerking and arching her back like…like…Elizabeth Berkley hasn’t ever had sex before, either. I enjoyed this scene almost as much as the bit in Fifty Shades Freed where Christian almost paralyses Ana with the spreader bar. And I couldn’t stop thinking about that urban myth where the couple that have sex in the bath get stuck together by the magical vacuum powers of water and have to go to A & E to be separated.

Why would I find such a terrible film so comforting?

1)     It’s very, very unintentionally funny

2)     The soapy, wooden acting

3)     The go nowhere plot with random scenes that are there for no reason, like when  another dancer asks Nomi what she thinks of her breasts

4)     The bit where chimps break into the dressing room and put makeup on

5)     The private dance Nomi gives Kyle in front of Cristal. Something is happening….I’m just not sure exactly what it is, but it’s from the 50 Shades School of Sex with Your Trousers On

6)     Why does a mega Vegas dance show employ a girl who can’t dance?

7)     Why is Nomi always on her period? Is she me aged 14 trying to get out of PE lessons?

8)     Why are we privy to long conversations between minor, nameless characters?

9)     When Nomi’s not looking very angry, she’s looking very startled

10) Kyle MacLachlan isn’t Dale Cooper or Trey McDougall

11) The way Nomi uses her flick knife (third best bit of the film, after the pool sex and the nightclub dancing)

12) The bit where we find out Nomi knows martial arts and kicks the shit out of a man that’s raped Molly. While she’s karate chopping him Miss Piggy style, his bodyguards are right outside and don’t hear a thing

13) Former child actor attempts to shed goodie two shoes image by tweaking her own nipples, pretending to finger herself and air fucking damn fine cup of coffee Dale Cooper

14) Frosted lipstick

15) Hair glitter

16) Mum jeans (the first time round)

17) Molly’s clothes – she would not look out of place in a hipster coffee shop

18) I feel like this film was written by a couple of 13 year old boys.

A confession

I don’t think The Girl on the Train is a great book.  There, I said it. It hit the peak wave of ‘girl’ books where other, better authors had paved the way (for the record, I thought Gone Girl was pretty good until Amy went mental with the box cutter and wine bottle) and I thought it was good idea, but the three female voices were indistinguishable to me, and Rachel was not only unlikeable, she was also irritating and boring and it’s hard to root for a main character like that. I found myself skim reading it, and feeling bad that I didn’t want to finish it to find out what happened (because I had already guessed and it took so fucking long getting there) But most people, with the exception of two, seemed to really like it. All the people that liked it seemed offended when I said I didn’t, like they’d written it themselves.

Showgirls was panned when it was first released in 1995. I can even remember the Smash Hits magazine review of it, which is where I stole the ‘No Me / Know Me, geddit?’ bit from. It now has a cult following, like Tommy ‘oh hai Mark’ Wiseau’s what-the-fuck film The Room.

Where am I going with this? I think it’s this way: I am probably never going to write a bestseller that makes me famous like Hawkins, or a film that’s so terrible it achieves cult status. But the point is to carry on writing, through what Amy Young calls ‘February’ moments in your life, when it’s grey and soggy outside and winter feels like it’s going to last forever.

 I am not a fan of the never, ever give up following your dreams school of thought, but I can write for me, can’t I? I can write things for my ‘ideal readers’ and never have them see a word of it. There’s no nobility, or higher cause, or importance to it, or any attempt to leave a legacy. It’s just writing and it’s more often than not, it’s going to just a bit shit. Like Ira says, it’s going to take a while. You’ve just got to fight your way through.

So go forth my pretties, and be unafraid of being…a little bit shit. It might not be magnificent and world changing, but it’s probably going to be alright and that’s got to be worth trying for.