Trivia for
Basic Instinct (1992) More at IMDb Pro »

• Kim Basinger, Emma Thompson, Michelle Pfeiffer, Greta Scacchi, 'Julia Roberts' and 'Meg Ryan' turned down the role of Catherine Tramell. Kelly Lynch was reportedly offered the role, and Mariel Hemingway and Kelly McGillis both auditioned for it. Lena Olin reportedly wanted the role, but refused to work with Paul Verhoeven.
  
  
• Writer Joe Eszterhas and producer Irwin Winkler walked off the picture after failing to reach agreement with Verhoeven over how the film should be tackled. Verhoeven promptly hired Total Recall (1990) writer Gary Goldman to come up with some new scenes, most of which beefed up Michael Douglas's character and made him less wimpy. These changes were largely made at the behest of Michael Douglas. It was during this stage that Verhoeven realized his changes weren't going to work so he had to publicly make up with Eszterhas. Problems reoccurred later when Eszterhas wanted to make more changes to appease the gay and lesbian communities. Verhoeven point blank refused to incorporate these changes.
  
  
• The apartment complex where Detective Nick Curran lives is located at 1158-1170 Montgomery Street at the Green Street L-Bend.
  
  

• The dresses that Sharon Stone wears throughout the film were designed to match, in the same order, the dresses that 'Kim Novak' wears in Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958).
  
  
• Michael Douglas (a former race-car driver) did most of his own stunt driving in the film.
  
  
• To get an R-rating, Paul Verhoeven had to re-cut the movie a total of fourteen times.
  
  
• The Johnny Boz Club was a set built inside Warner Bros Studios.
  
  
• Writer Joe Eszterhas was paid a then-unheard-of sum of $3 million for his script.
  
  
• Paul Verhoeven briefly considered Peter Weller for the role of Nick Curran.
  
  
• Paul Verhoeven was on record when he first signed to do the film as saying that he wanted to make it the first Hollywood mainstream film with an erect penis in it. He didn't get his wish. But he did get a limp penis on screen - on Boz's cadaver when the police examine his body.
  
  
• The first film of Jeanne Tripplehorn.
  
  
• 50 San Francisco Police Department riot police had to be present at every location every day to deal with picketing gay and lesbian activists.
  
  
• So choreographed were the sex scenes that Sharon Stone referred to herself and Michael Douglas as "the horizontal Fred and Ginger of the '90s".
  
  
• When first released, the viewers were in huge disagreements over who the killer in the film really was. It wasn't until the director and stars went public in interviews, telling the public who the killer was and where the clues could be found, that the debate about the ending finally was put to rest.
  
  
• While appearing on "Inside the Actors Studio" (1994), Sharon Stone claimed that she had no idea that Paul Verhoeven was filming up her dress during the interrogation scene. She also claims that when she saw the rushes, she slapped the director across the face and ordered him to remove the shot. Verhoeven denies this.
  
  
• According to director Paul Verhoeven, the woman in the opening scene was Sharon Stone and not a body double.
  
  
• According to Sharon Stone, director Paul Verhoeven asked her to remove her underwear for the leg-crossing scene, as he said they were too bright and reflected at the camera. Stone agreed to do so under the assumption that her genitals weren't visible. It was only at an early preview that Stone discovered Verhoeven chose to use this specific shot. Stone was mainly cross with Verhoeven for not discussing the matter with her beforehand, but decided to let the scene go without changes, as she felt this conformed with her movie character. However, director Paul Verhoeven's version of the conflict is that he told Stone beforehand about the leg-crossing shot, as it was important for showing Catherine Tramell's free-spirited nature and her constant drive to toy with people. Stone was reportedly excited about the idea and shot the scene. However, during the early preview, her agents supposedly disproved of the scene, fearing it would harm her future career. According to Verhoeven, Stone radically changed her mind about the shot and demanded that he remove it, which he ultimately refused.
  
  
• Catherine's last name comes from Alan Trammell. Sharon Stone discovered that a trammell was a Scottish death shroud and complimented Joe Eszterhas on his subtlety with the choice, not believing the truth.
  
  
• Nick Curran is based on an adrenaline-junkie Cleveland Police officer that Joe Eszterhas knew when he was a crime reporter with the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
  
  
• Joe Eszterhas wrote the script in ten days while listening to The Rolling Stones non-stop. He then sold it three days later at auction.
  
  
• Paul Verhoeven was so intent on making the sex scenes as explicitly as the censors would allow, that he showed the study executives very detailed storyboards depicting what he had in mind, as to avoid later discussions about the graphic nature of the love scenes.
  
  
• This marks the final film appearance of actress Dorothy Malone.
  
  

• SPOILER: Paul Verhoeven offered the role to Sharon Stone mainly because he admired her acting in Total Recall (1990) where she played an evil character pretending to be innocent.
  
  
• SPOILER: Gay rights activists were against the way the gay characters were portrayed that they blocked the set numerous times while in San Francisco. Director Paul Verhoeven had to issue fake call sheets to trick the protesters into blocking unused locations. When the movie was released, the activists paraded around San Francisco theaters handing out flyers saying "Catherine did it" to ruin the plot for moviegoers. This didn't seem to impact at all as the movie opened #1 on that same weekend and went on to become one of the highest grossing movies of the year.
  
  
• SPOILER: Sharon Stone, when doing the interview circuit, was really annoyed by the fact that everyone always asked her how she felt about all the nudity, when she had real problems with the fact that her character killed someone on screen. When filming this sequence, a paramedic had to be on standby as she kept passing out, and suffered nightmares.
  
  
• SPOILER: Brooke Shields turned down the role of Roxy (Catherine's girlfriend) because she feared the role called for nudity.
  
  

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