Black Book - Paul Verhoeven interview

PAUL Verhoeven talks about returning home for epic World War Two movie Black Book and his thoughts on Hollywood and the controversy that once surrounded Sharon Stone’s knickers. He was speaking at a UK press conference...

Q. Are you turning your back on Hollywood and all that goes with it?

Paul Verhoeven: Not necessarily. I felt that I just wanted to do something very dear to me and I felt that I could express myself my better [with this] than with other projects that were available to me in the United States. They always have a tendency to use me in the science fiction field.

Of course, I started my career in Holland making films that were based on reality and I felt that I should get out of this science fiction atmosphere and try to do something realistic again. In America, I either couldn’t find that or I couldn’t get all the projects I was trying to do off the ground because people didn’t believe in them, or they were too controversial. So, ultimately I thought I should do something that was ready, which was this script that I’d developed with my scriptwriter in Holland. It became Black Book.

Q. Why did it take so long? The first idea was born almost 20 years ago, wasn’t it?

Paul Verhoeven: Yeah. In fact, some of the ideas originated in 1966. But I had made a World War II film called Soldier of Orange and a lot of the ideas you see in this movie were the same as Soldier of Orange, which was made in the late ’70s – and you don’t want to do two World War movies in a row. So it was there but not really as a finished script.

Then I went to the US and I needed all my energy to survive – because if you’re 48 and you go to another culture with another language it’s very difficult. I didn’t have much possibility to open my eyes to things outside the US and go from movie to movie. It was only in late 2000, after doing Hollow Man, that I thought I’d surpassed a red line, because I was doing a movie that I didn’t care very much about. Technically, yes, I think it was very well done but soul-wise it was pretty alienating to me, much more so than Showgirls, and so I felt like I had to do something else.

Q. Does the extra time distance make the events depicted and the shades of grey colouring each character less controversial in Holland now than 40 years ago?

Paul Verhoeven: Strangely enough it’s not controversial at all. People don’t seem to worry too much about it. Making it in 1966 would have been different. In ’66, I was making a documentary about a Dutch Nazi leader in Holland and that was controversial enough already. But the controversy that I was expecting a little bit didn’t appear. It seemed like the Dutch were a little surprised, but not unpleasantly. I think there was an understanding that lots of things happened that were not so great.

Q. The shades of grey of all the characters is one of the strengths of the film, but we’re currently living through a time when political leaders prefer things to be clearly defined as good and evil. Is that going to have any bearing on how the film is received in America?

Paul Verhoeven: You might make an argument that the making of this movie has something to do in some way with the US government’s foreign policy. My interest in the Dutch element of the past had a lot to do with my doubts about the motives of the American government.

I don’t know if that’s a real argument or if I’m just fantasising, but of course it’s clear now that the America people have been misled and there were a lot of other things at stake other than what they were led to believe. So you would expect that the American public would be happy to see that other countries, like the Dutch, were very bad. It helps them to accept the fact that they’re not doing well, that they’ve been making mistakes in the invasion of Iraq. The same applies probably to Britain and all countries that have supported the policies of [President] Bush very strongly.

Q. Do you think Dutch people have come to terms with the fact that during the Second World War many dutch people did what they had to do survive?

Paul Verhoeven: I think that has been accepted for a long time and it’s been clear to the Dutch now that a high percentage of the Dutch population didn’t do much. They proved in Denmark that the Dutch tried to prevent the Jews being deported to Poland.

The highest percentage of Jewish people being killed was in Holland. The highest percentage of people going to the Eastern Front to fight with Germany against the Russians was in Holland. These facts have been known for 20 or 30 years and are part of the discourse. They know these things so I think the Dutch can live with that.

Q. It’s been reported that your leading lady, Carice van Houten, watched a documentary on the making of Turkish Delight that suggested you were hard on actresses. Do you think you’re tough and how would you describe your directing style?

Paul Verhoeven: As far as I know there’s no documentary on the making of Turkish Delight. But some actors in Holland have voiced their opinions about me as a director, which is not always that nice. I personally feel that I’m extremely nice to actors and especially actresses. So there might be a misunderstanding about my tone…

But I can assure you that if you ask Carice [Van Houten] about how I was to her, she’ll be very positive. I think she did a lot of things because she believed in me. Whatever misdeeds I’ve done [in the past] I don’t remember and certainly on this movie I behaved very gentlemanly-like.

Q. The legend about your working relationship with actresses goes back to working with Sharon Stone…

Paul Verhoeven: Well, there was also a moment when we actually liked each other very much, especially during the shooting of that movie [Basic Instinct], otherwise she might not even have done that shot. I’m not revealing anything new here, but before doing that shot she took off her knickers and gave them to me as a present. Now, about all her claims that she didn’t know about that shot … well … this is the truth. She has been lying a lot.

Q. Do you still have her knickers?

Paul Verhoeven: No. I think my wife washed them and gave them to the kids.

Q. For years it was assumed you were going to direct the sequel Basic Instinct 2 – what happened and what did you think about the new one?

Paul Verhoeven: Yes, I saw the sequel. Clearly, there were many attempts to do it. The script, by Henry Bean, was there for a long time. For nearly 10 years and the producers of the movies – who also produced Total Recall and Showgirls – were trying to make it work.

I had discussions with Henry Bean but by the time they finally said “let’s do it” there were two things I had a big problem with. Firstly, the story was written for New York, which I thought was really excellent to move from San Francisco to New York. But for financial reasons there was a regretful decision to move it to London, which I felt was a mistake. I think it needed to be in the US to make it more honest to her [the character of Catherine Tramell]. She’s a radical woman, so for her to be in exile in London I had a hard time accepting.

Secondly, and most importantly, I felt that what was highly underestimated in the release of the original Basic Instinct was the work Michael Douglas. A lot of people were only looking at Sharon Stone, for good reasons, and she did an excellent job. She’s beautiful, sexy and whatever… but Michael gave her a lot. He gave her a lot of strength to fight against and he did that in a very generous way. Michael is very generous to women if he works with them. He’s as strong off camera as he is on camera. And he was very supportive to all the actors because he’s also a producer, so he knows it’s not just his performance that matters, it’s everybody’s performance that makes the movie.

Sharon was impressed by Michael. She couldn’t wipe him off the table in any way. I always insisted that next to Sharon there should be someone of Michael’s calibre; even of his celebrity level and his charisma level. But they felt they had to pay so much for Sharon that they didn’t have enough money to pay another actor of that level, so that was ultimately the reason I refused to do the movie. They said that’s not necessary, but I knew that Basic Instinct was brilliant because Michael was that good. I was absolutely convinced that she need someone like that again for her to be that brilliant again. But they didn’t want to give it to me, so I passed.

Q. What did you think of the movie?

Paul Verhoeven: Well, I saw it and thought that clearly I was right.

Q. How are you perceived in Holland, particularly having had so much success in America?

Paul Verhoeven: I would say that at the time I left they hated me, and then they started to admire me greatly because I was successful. But by the time I came back to Holland the critics had returned to their original opinion. Not the audience, they were always very positive and went to see my movies, but the reviews got worse and worse.

Q. What did you learn in Hollywood that served you best in making Black Book?

Paul Verhoeven: Mostly the idea of a compelling and driving narrative. Even if you look at Soldier of Orange, there’s no really driving narrative. After working 20 years in the film industry, there’s something to be said for a driving narrative. It perhaps makes it a bit easier for the audience to stay with it all the time.

So, I asked my script writer to make it into a story that starts like an adventure story, or survival story, and then we find out some plot and coincidence, etc. I also wanted the lat hour of the movie to be propelled by a question mark. What’s happening? Who did it? Who’s guilty? Who’s black? Who’s White?

The point is to ask these questions in such a way that people are gripped – so, for good or bad reasons I asked my scriptwriters to make that choice. That’s why we spent a lot of time developing the plot, so that you can see the movie twice and it doesn’t look silly.