Michael Douglas Was Actually the "Sex Star" in This

Lemme just try this.

When Sharon Stone accepted the role of Catherine Trammel in Basic Instinct, as these things go, the promotion was all about her: a fair amount of nudity, an extended sex scene with Michael Douglas(even MORE extended on the unrated director's cut) and the oh-so-famous moment in the police interrogation room where she uncrosses her legs(you see less that you think you see, but just the IDEA that she is showing it got a huge roar from the full house audience I saw this with.)

And yet..in certain ways...Michael Douglas is the sex star in this. And took a few risks for an established male movie star of some prominence in 1992.

By then, Michael Douglas had his Oscar for Wall Street and (from the same year, 1987), an earlier "topical sex thriller" in Fatal Attraction (where he and Glenn Close went at it, but not quite with the full bravado of Douglas and Stone in this one.) Douglas was a major star when the "Basic Instinct" filmmakers came to him with this pitch. And he took it.

One reason he took it was (I think) about the highest paycheck Douglas would ever get: $15 million or so. And only his name is above the title(this made Faye Dunaway mad - -she said that Warren Beatty had moved her up above the title for Bonnie and Clyde, and Douglas should have done the same for Stone. But he didn't.)

In exchange for this pay and this billing, Michael Douglas did one more sex scene than Stone did -- the one early on with Jeanne Tripplehorn which is at minimum, pretty rough, and more likely a rape(though the Tripplehorn character goes along with it.) And Douglas got right on into it with Stone (again, particularly in the directors uncut version of their big sex scene.)

Some porn director in the 70's told Playboy he'd give anything to get a star like Al Pacino in a porn. Well, Michael Douglas in Basic Instinct comes close.

And this: what Douglas really has to do in this movie to "earn his big bucks" is to ACT in those sex scenes. With his face, and trying to communicate the "male side" of the sexual act when usually its just the women we are concentrating on.

And this: in a famous moment, a very fit, very tan -- and rather oiled-up? - Douglas walks nude(from behind) into a bathroom. Its a display of "forced male ego" that got a laugh in the theater when i saw this. (A coupla years later, some comedy spoof of this scene had Charlie Sheen get up out of bed nude...only to be replaced in the shot of the nude Douglas walking into the bathroom by a gigantic bodybuilder type. Funny.)

These are all "nervous making" things, but they boil down to: women are sensual on the screen, men less so.

At least back in 1992. And Michael Douglas put his star name and his (real?) body on the line to challenge that.

These days, that feller in the "50 Shades" movies is taking up where Douglas left off -- but he is not nearly the star that Douglas was.