You Don't Nomi: How Showgirls Was Redeemed By Its Fans
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“We’re still talking about it cause we’re not done with it”, says the opening narration of the new documentary You Don’t Nomi. It’s the voice of critic/writer Haley Mlotek and it's the statement of the film. You Don’t Nomi doesn’t intend to be a documentary about the making of Showgirls - but rather about how the film found meaning long after its initial release and catastrophic critical and commercial failure. You Don’t Nomi is about how a film can inspire joy, redemption and creativity in fans in spite and because of its status as a cinematic mess.
It’s important to set the scene. Showgirls was made in 1995, directed by Paul Verhoeven and based on a script written by Joe Ezterhas. Joe Esztherhas, one of the highest paid writers of 1980s and 90s Hollywood, had penned Flashdance (1983), Jagged Edge (1985), amongst others. He had worked with Verhoeven before on the box-office smash Basic Instinct (1992), the film that both defined and doomed the erotic thriller subgenre. Showgirls was sold to the studio for $2 million based on an idea Esztherhas scribbled on a napkin during lunch with Verhoeven, who’d always wanted to make a “big Hollywood musical”. They were riding high off their success of their erotic thriller Basic Instinct, and the industry banked on them working together again.
There have been many takes, think pieces, and tales about how Showgirls was made, how it failed, and whether it was designed to be “bad”. Yes, it’s sexist. Yes, it’s terribly written. Yes, it’s over-the-top. Yes, it’s excessive in every single way. Yes, it’s totally unhinged. But that’s not the point of this new documentary. It’s about what happens after the film is made. What’s so intriguing about You Don’t Nomi, in the sea of documentaries and video essays about the film, is that it’s not about the film itself as much as it is about the fascination with the film. There is something undeniably surreal and magical about Showgirls that’s meant that both critics and fans have been trying to understand its odd “it factor” for years.
Adam Nayman, a film critic and author, wrote a whole critical book about it. In It Doesn’t Suck, part of the Pop Classics series, Nayman’s argument centres on three core claims: it’s a piece of shit; it’s a shit masterpiece; and it’s a cult masterpiece. In his own words, he didn’t write the book so that the filmmaker would like it - or him. Eventually, Verhoeven was in touch with Nayman directly and contributed a lengthy interview to the second edition of the book. Writer David Schmader started putting on public “making fun of” Showgirls screenings in 1999, and was eventually contacted by the studio that made the film to do the DVD commentary for its 2004 special edition release. Poet Jeffrey Conway wrote a deconstruction of Showgirls in the form of sestinas, combining his love of poetry with his love of the film. Their voices are featured in the film, not so much justifying their appreciation of the film, but exploring what about it has sustained that intrigue and even propelled them to create work inspired by it.
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Peaches Christ put on her first midnight screening of Showgirls in 1998, as part of her Midnight Mass series that celebrated her love of midnight movies and combined them with drag shows. The performance has since then evolved over the years from a scrappy pre-show to a full-fledged, lavish affair at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco.
You Don’t Nomi pays tribute to the film’s queer fandom, and why Nomi’s journey resonates with queer audiences. She arrvies in a new town with a new name, ready to reinvent herself, she has a chosen family, uses sex as a tool and, most importantly, when her family is bashed - Nomi bashes back. In an interview with SFGate, Peaches put it simply: “When women are that aggressive, it’s usually the queers who are first to appreciate it.”
After being assaulted and suffering from severe PTSD as a result of her assault, April Kidwell auditioned for a spoof musical of Saved by the Bell (Bayside! The Musical!) and got the role of Jessie Spano. Her Elizabeth Berkley parody was so good that she subsequently also starred in Showgirls! The Musical! as Nomi. Just in 2018, she wrote, produced and starred in her one-woman-show I, Nomi, dedicated to the “feral heroine” of Showgirls. Kidwell talks about how Nomi avenging her friend’s sexual assault as the best part of the movie. She finds catharsis in every song, every roundhouse kick when she performs the song “Whorierr” (as in, whore and warrior combined) in the musical. The two world of queer and feminist fandoms collided when Peaches Christ played the role of Cristal Connors (as originated by inimitable Gina Gershon in the film), for the San Francisco version of Showgirls! The Musical!.
The devotion to Nomi Malone, and Berkeley, is an honest and palpable throughline through the Showgirls found fandom. The film tries to do right retroactively by the star of Showgirls. People had grown up with Jessie Spano, Berkeley’s teenage feminist lead of the 90s iconic show Saved by the Bell, who was outspoken, wholesome and the sensible foil to Zack Morris’s cool bro dude. Showgirls was going to make her into a movie star. Berkeley jumped from being a wholesome teen star to a raunchy role that demanded her to carry a film, be fully nude for a big chunk of the film, and deliver a high-octane performance that combined violence, sex and dance. Showgirls didn’t make her into a star. And because she carried the film, she also bore the brunt of the brutal criticism it received. No one had to deal with the critical devastation of the film as she did, whilst Verhoeven moved on to direct the sci-fi satire Starship Troopers (1997) and acclaimed European dramas Black Book (2006) and Elle (2016), both of which garnered him awards recognition. In every interview that she’s ever done since the film’s release, Showgirls comes up. And mostly, in these interviews it falls on Berkley to reframe the narrative around the film that was supposed to make her into a star whilst keeping a smile on her face as “this over-the-top fun movie, which is what it was intended to be”. Berkeley has since embraced Showgirls’ cult status, even appearing at the 2015 Cinespia screening at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. In the documentary, footage of Berkley introducing the film shows that she’s joyfully living its second life, truly being uplifted by the fans of the film. Whilst You Don’t Nomi is not interested in going into the behind-the-scenes of Showgirls, it does make it clear that during the initial shelf-life of the film, the critical onslaught left Berkley out there to fend by herself. She didn’t get “to experience the sweetness of a screening with a crowd that embraced it”, she says before doing her famous “Nomi hands move” to a crowd of 4,000 people.
Berkeley missed out on the joy of seeing a crowd honestly embrace the film for everything it is, good, bad and straight-up odd, and You Don’t Nomi is also an ode to that cathartic experience of finding something that resonates, regardless of who made it, what their intention was, or how the tastemakers perceive it.
Words: Anna Bogutskaya of The Final Girls
