Stone soul birthday

On this day in the year of our lawd nineteen hundred and fifty-eight, your humble narrator was born. For the occasion, I dug up the following blog entry which was first posted back when I hit the seemingly callow age of forty-eight. Enjoy. Oh, and, Sharon: you can still call me any time. — Flickhead

Sharon Stone and I slept together. Or at least I think we did. It was a very long time ago. Forty-eight years ago, to be precise, in the maternity ward of a hospital in Pennsylvania where the two of us had been born just hours apart…or a day or two. Some of Sharon’s bios offer contrary dates. Most say March 10, some place her at the 8th, others go as early as the 6th. For simplicity’s sake, let’s say she and I will be celebrating our birthdays sometime this week. But not in the same room. I’m sure Sharon would want that little fact quite clear.

    I would never have given Sharon a second thought had it not been for Paul Verhoeven’s Total Recall (1990). It was then when I recognized the familiar face, the manner, that seductive, calculated smile. Had she enchanted me when we were newborn bed buddies? Did those icy-yet-inviting blue eyes put the whammy on me while I lay there innocently sucking my thumb in the next crib?

    Imagine Sharon in a crib as Daddy’s Little Girl. Bad girl! You need to be spanked…!

Basic

    The eyes are flirtatious and hostile. The promise of a wild time in the sack shielded by an impenetrable wall built on that dysfunctional beast indigenous to the ‘90s, ‘attitude.’ And then there’s the mystery of the scar on her neck, which one day may yield too much information than I’d care to know.

    She had her fifteen minutes in the early ‘90s. Before Total Recall there were forgettable movies, TV shows, a lot of junk. After the Verhoeven picture, there was still the looming threat of a career in mediocrity: fifth billed in He Said, She Said (placing her a degree away from Kevin Bacon), John Frankenheimer’s Year of the Gun, the bizarre cable staple Scissors, the intriguing Diary of a Hitman — all in 1991! — and Where Sleeping Dogs Lie (1992).

    Then came Verhoeven’s Basic Instinct (1992). Kismet. I was certain that I’d been hexed. How else to explain my fascination with this clanging monstrosity of a murder mystery action flick? Sharon smoking. Sharon crossing and uncrossing her long, tan legs. Sharon messing with Michael’s head. Sharon giving head. Sharon snorting coke. Sharon grinding with Roxy. Sharon’s aerobic intercourse workout. Michael going down on Sharon. Sharon for breakfast…for lunch…for dinner!

    There followed a run of magazine covers, fashion shoots, cocktail parties, social events, red carpets, the whole bag, all leading up to…Sliver (1993). This is a prime example of the comet burning itself out in a moment’s notice. The picture made one-third of its total U.S. gross on opening weekend alone. People went sweating from Basic Instinct but were sobered by a mess of a thriller, and word-of-mouth pulverized it from there. Part Robert Evans, part Ira Levin, part Joe Eszterhas, all of it crying out for the guidance of Roman Polanski but entrusted to Phillip Noyce, who failed to fathom the dark satire of media addiction and voyeurism. There’s still a great movie waiting to be made here, starring…Jessica Alba?

Still fairly real

    The fall was swift and assured: career suicide with Intersection (1994) — second-billed to Richard Gere in a Canadian production?!? Ouch!; guns and fast cars in The Specialist (1994), playing second-fiddle to Stallone (not even a steamy shower scene could bring in business); Sam Raimi’s The Quick and the Dead (1995), an interesting satire on Westerns, Sharon quite fetching in buckskin, but likewise without an audience.

    A telling vindication of time taking its toll, when Verhoeven was casting Showgirls (1995), Sharon tested for the older dancer. She lost out to Gina Gershon and the sex kitten days drew to an end. I’m fascinated by an Elizabeth Berkley / Sharon Stone Showgirls: they could almost be sisters…or trailer park mother and daughter.

    The critics and Academy noticed her in Scorsese’s Casino (1995; no Oscar, but a Golden Globe), though she was better in Peter Chelsom’s The Mighty (1998), a quiet, overlooked gem. She was miscast in the Simone Signoret role in an unnecessary rehash of Diabolique (1996) — a picture that managed to make Isabelle Adjani appear dowdy; and she was semi vacant in Barry Levinson’s Sphere (1998). Two earnest attempts at social drama — Bruce Beresford’s Last Dance (1996) and Sidney Lumet’s remake of Cassavetes’s Gloria (1999) — played to empty seats.

    Which meant that Sharon had become a star who couldn’t sell tickets. And now that her ‘day’ is over and she’s inching up on fifty, the roles and opportunities seem strange, outmoded, even a little reaching. There’s a Basic Instinct 2 in the pipeline — Catherine Tramell in London directed by Michael Caton-Jones, a guaranteed train wreck — and we’ve been informed that she’s naked in several scenes. At this point in time, is that something we really want or need to see? Other than the rock-solid softball-size breast implants, she’s in fairly good shape from the neck down. But her face has seemingly frozen, the mouth and eyes apparently flattened (along with all that early, earthy rambunctious character) by Botox. The wrinkle-free, ironed skin was lampooned in Catwoman (2004), when her evil cosmetics magnate cultivated an epidermis as hard as a diamond. I’m among the few who appreciated the erotic stupidity of that goofy venture, to say nothing of Halle Berry looking fabulous in leather. (For the record, Halle played ‘Sharon Stone’ in the live action Flintstones movie.)

Reborn

    So happy birthday, my dear. You’re getting older. I’m getting older. You still look glamorous even though you no longer resemble yourself. Time, gravity, and a diminutive bank account has shaped me into a pale, doughy schlub with thinning, graying hair. You continue to attract handsome millionaires; I make Paul Giamatti look like Brad Pitt. Will your eyes ever search mine again, the way they did in that maternity ward, your deep, innocent gaze so longing and free? Whether we really were side by side never truly mattered. It’s the thought that counts.


All my love forever,

Flickhead