Seattle-based journalist, raconteur, playwright and cultural theorist David Schmader has impeccable credentials in the worlds of literature and art. But for more than a decade now, he's been closely linked to the most quintessentially American of films maudit, Paul Verhoeven's 1995 camptastrophe Showgirls.
Schmader's evolving interactive lecture/commentary on the film has taken him around the world to get at the textual and subtextual heart of the journey of Nomi Malone (Saved by the Bell's Elizabeth Berkley), a tough girl from '”lots of places” who just wants to be a star. Showgirls is the story of her rise and fall from lapdance specialist to backup dancer to Vegas star to kickboxing avenger, and it remains a singular cinematic experience.
But Showgirls is also an astounding gathering of talent (director Paul Verhoeven, actress Gina Gershon, dueling sleazeballs Robert Davi and Alan Rachins, the glorious Rena Riffel) and madness (screenwriter Joe Eszterhas; actor Kyle MacLachlan, who looks like he's suffering from quaalusions of grandeur). There's nothing else in movie history like its toxic brew of backstage melodrama, catfight theatrics, lowbrow tawdriness and lofty contempt.
When MGM decided to do up an ultra-glam DVD boxset back in the early Aughts, the studio bypassed Verhoeven, Berkley, Gershon and others on the scene for the commentary — because they knew it was all there already, in David Schmader's show. His commentary track, “The Greatest Movie Ever Made,” is an essential part of the Showgirls home video experience.
But his live performances with the film have built an international following, and he brings that live show to The Belcourt 9 p.m. Thursday for one show only. The Scene had the immense pleasure to talk with Schmader, a columnist for Seattle’s awesome alt-weekly The Stranger, about Showgirls and his relation to it. The interview appears in Thursday's print edition and online, but we couldn't resist serving up an appetizer tray of outtakes (two-drink minimum, of course):
