Basic Instinct - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[discussimdb]

Fan of Basic Instinct or just want to share your movie knowledge? This topic is dedicated to all trivia and questions related to Basic Instinct

[kyle]

The main sex scene with Michael Douglas and Sharon Stone took five days to film.

[jessie]

Paul Verhoeven briefly considered Peter Weller for the role of Nick Curran, having worked with him on RoboCop (1987).

[dustin]

Nick Curran is based on an adrenaline-junkie Cleveland police officer Joe Eszterhas knew when he was a crime reporter with the "Cleveland Plain Dealer".

[ava]

The apartment complex where Detective Nick Curran lives is located at 1158-1170 Montgomery Street at the Green Street L-Bend.

[ava]

One of the main points of disagreement between Paul Verhoeven and Joe Eszterhas concerned Verhoeven's wish to include a lesbian love scene between Catherine Trammell and her lover Roxy, as he considered a movie that only mentioned bisexuality without showing bisexual love, to be overly puritan. Eszterhas considered adding such a scene to be sensationalism. Verhoeven made some attempts, but found that the scene ruined the movie's pace, so he abandoned the idea. The only remnant of the scene in the movie, is when Catherine and Roxy passionately kiss after Nick angrily leaves Catherine's apartment.

[chad]

Kirk Douglas, then aged 75, attended the premiere and praised his son's "bravery" in making the movie.

[ivan]

In 2002, Joe Eszterhas apologized in an op-ed for The New York Times, for glamorizing smoking in this movie. Eszterhas was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2000, as was Michael Douglas in 2010 (although Douglas later said he actually had tongue cancer).

[lynn]

Joe Eszterhas conceived the screenplay in part because Shane Black replaced him as the highest paid screenwriter in Hollywood with his $1.75 million sale of The Last Boy Scout (1991), He quickly committed himself to take back his record and succeeded when Carolco paid him $3 million for the script.

[wesley]

One of the locations for Sharon Stone's ocean front home was filmed at 157 Spindrift Rd, Carmel Highlands, CA recently sold for $16 million. Only 5 rooms of the 12,000 square foot mansion was used, including the deck, once featured on Sunset Magazine and the stone steps that led to the beach, actually led to the ocean directly. The film shows Stinson Beach, but several locations were blended. There is also additional footage along Spindrift Rd.

[tamara]

Beths car is a 1991 Acura Integra [DA9].

[jesus]

This was Number 1 on the British Channel Sky Movies Plus(now Sky Cinema) UK Top 10 in 1992.

[kenneth]

During an interview with RuPaul and Michelle Visage, Cassandra Peterson (famous for playing Elvira, who was dating Bill Cable at the time), reported that during the scene Bill is stabbed with the ice pick, the ice pick was only supposed to hit the blood packs on Bill's chest, but Sharon Stone got so into the scene, that the ice pick ended up piercing through the blood packs and penetrated Bill Cable's chest underneath in multiple spots. No one was aware at the time, except for Bill, whose screams of pain were real. Bill was later rushed to the emergency room and treated for puncture wounds varying from half an inch to an inch deep. Thankfully, he didn't sustain any serious injuries, but the incident left him with permanent scars on his chest.

[ken]

The character of Nick was originally supposed to be a young man, but after Michael Douglas was cast, his age was described in the script as forty-two (Douglas was actually forty-seven).

[lena]

Final film of Dorothy Malone.

[charlie]

Michael Douglas and Paul Verhoeven both approached the film as if it were a detective novel. Verhoeven wanted to make a modern version of an Alfred Hitchcock thriller, except with a lot more sex, and Douglas agreed with the noir aspect.

[lonnie]

The film cast includes two Oscar winners: Michael Douglas and Dorothy Malone; and one Oscar nominee: Sharon Stone.

[alyssa]

Paul Verhoeven was so intent on making the sex scenes as explicitly as the censors would allow, that he showed the studio executives very detailed storyboards depicting what he had in mind, as to avoid later discussions about the graphic nature of the love scenes.

[terry]

Opening film at the 1992 Cannes Film Festival.

[tamara]

Paul Verhoeven previously directed Miguel Ferrer in RoboCop (1987). Leilani Sarelle (Roxy) was married to Ferrer from 1991-2003.