History Trivia / Showgirls

* RaceLift: In the script, Molly was a chubby white girl. She's played by the thin African-American Gina Ravera.

** Director Creator/PaulVerhoeven's career recovered somewhat from this nadir, culminating in ''Film/StarshipTroopers'' (usually considered to be his return to form), before leaving America entirely to return to Europe. It ''does'' help that he proved he was a good sport by actually [[MedalOfDishonor showing up at the]] [[UsefulNotes/GoldenRaspberryAward Razzies]], calling it more entertaining than reading the reviews.

** Poor Elizabeth Berkley. She ''did'' somewhat redeem herself when she appeared on the FOX sitcom ''Series/{{Titus}}'' as Titus' sister, Shannon, but she wasn't in that many episodes and the show didn't stay on the air very long for her to make people forget that she was in this movie. She started to make a comeback in 2013, appearing on ''Series/DancingWithTheStars'' and performing a dance inspired by her infamous scene from ''Series/SavedByTheBell''. She also seems to have embraced her ''Showgirls'' fame, by poking fun at herself and interacting with fans on Twitter.

** We also started to see much less of Creator/KyleMacLachlan on film following this movie, although he's since had a healthy TV career and provided his voice in the Creator/{{Pixar}} film ''WesternAnimation/InsideOut'' 20 years later. In the late 2010s and early 2020s, he found success as a character actor in live-action films such as ''Film/TheHouseWithAClockInItsWalls'' and ''Film/ConfessFletch'', in addition to receiving the best reviews of his career for ''Series/TwinPeaksTheReturn''.

* StillbornFranchise: A sequel was envisioned while the movie was in production, this one with Nomi going to Hollywood and taking on the film industry (hence why the ending includes a sign for the Los Angeles freeway). Needless to say, the disaster of the film put a kibosh on those plans. That said, a DirectToVideo sequel (spinoff really) focused on Rena Riffel's minor character Penny called ''Penny's from Heaven'' came out in 2011.

* StillbornFranchise: A sequel was envisioned while the movie was in production, this one with Nomi going to Hollywood and taking on the film industry (hence why the ending includes a sign for the Los Angeles freeway). Needless to say, the disaster of the film put a kibosh on those plans. That said, a DirectToVideo sequel called ''Penny's from Heaven'' did show up in 2011.

* BeamMeUpScotty: Nomi never actually says the line, "I'm not a whore! I'm a dancer!" in the film. She does say "I'm a dancer" and "I'm not a whore" in scenes roughly an hour apart. The misquote is actually from [[https://snltranscripts.jt.org/95/95alegup.phtml a sketch]] in a ''Series/SaturdayNightLive'' episode hosted by Creator/MarielHemingway.

* BeamMeUpScotty: Nomi never actually says the line, "I'm not a whore! I'm a dancer!" in the film. She does say "I'm a dancer" and "I'm not a whore" roughly an hour apart. The misquote is actually from [[https://snltranscripts.jt.org/95/95alegup.phtml a sketch]] in a ''Series/SaturdayNightLive'' episode hosted by Creator/MarielHemingway.

* BeamMeUpScotty: Nomi never actually says the line, "I'm not a whore! I'm a dancer!" in the film. She does say "I'm a dancer" and "I'm not a whore" roughly an hour apart. The misquote is actually from [[https://snltranscripts.jt.org/95/95alegup.phtml a sketch]] in a Series/SaturdayNightLive episode hosted by Creator/MarielHemingway.

** Two of the film's studios, Creator/CarolcoPictures and Chargeurs, went out of business soon afterwards. Carolco, which sold the film off to Chargeurs, went bankrupt and was bought by [=StudioCanal=], while Chargeurs spun off its library as Pathé.

* OldShame: Nearly everyone involved was ashamed of it:
** Virtually everyone was revolted by the final product, although Creator/PaulVerhoeven claimed that critics missed the satire. A few of the cast and crew do poke fun at the movie these days, see below for Elizabeth Berkley.
** While he didn't walk out of the premiere as reported, Creator/KyleMacLachlan was embarrassed about the film:
--->I was absolutely gobsmacked. I said, “This is horrible. Horrible!” And it’s a very slow, sinking feeling when you’re watching the movie, and the first scene comes out, and you’re like, “Oh, that’s a really bad scene.” But you say, “Well, that’s okay, the next one’ll be better.” And you somehow try to convince yourself that it’s going to get better… and it just gets worse. And I was like, “Wow. That was crazy.” I mean, I really didn’t see that coming. So at that point, I distanced myself from the movie. Now, of course, it has a whole other life as a sort of inadvertent… satire. No, “satire” isn’t the right word. But it’s inadvertently funny. So it’s found its place. It provides entertainment, though not in the way I think it was originally intended. It was just… maybe the wrong material with the wrong director and the wrong cast.
** In 1997, Joe Eszterhas said:
--->Clearly we made mistakes. Clearly it was one of the biggest failures of our time. It failed commercially, critically, it failed on videotape, it failed internationally....In retrospect, part of it was that Paul and I were coming off of ''Basic'', which defied the critics and was a huge success. Maybe there was a certain hubris involved: "We can do what we want to do, go as far out there as we want." That rape scene was a god-awful mistake. In retrospect, a terrible mistake. And musically it was eminently forgettable. And in casting mistakes were made.
** Patrick Bristow, who played Marty the choreographer, has said that [[https://anchor.fm/kevin-higgins32/episodes/I-Helped-Make-That-Episode3--Showgirls-with-Patrick-Bristow-e1fus62 he felt something was off about the film even as he was ''auditioning'' for it, though he's also grown to embrace the fame he's gotten from the movie]].

** We also started to see much less of Creator/KyleMacLachlan on film following this movie, although he's had a healthy TV career since and provided a voice for ''WesternAnimation/InsideOut'' 20 years later. In the late 2010s and early 2020s, he found success as a character actor in live action films such as ''The House With a Clock in Its Walls'' and ''Confess, Fletch'', and received the best reviews of his career for ''Twin Peaks: The Return''.

** We also started to see much less of Creator/KyleMacLachlan following this movie on film, although he's had a healthy TV career since and provided a voice for ''WesternAnimation/InsideOut'' 20 years later.

* CreatorBreakdown: Creator/JoeEszterhaus later said:

** Creator/JoeEzterhas offered the part of singer-''cum''-rapist Andrew Carver to [[Music/TheAllmanBrothersBand Gregg Allman]]. [[SarcasmMode Shockingly,]] he turned it down.

* AbilityOverAppearance: In the script, Molly was a chubby Caucasian girl. She's played by the thin African-American Gina Ravera.

* GenreKiller: Its instant reputation as a trashy mess rapidly killed off any chance of the NC-17 rating succeeding in its goal of allowing non-porn films with harder-than-R content to get distribution into mainstream cinemas.[[note]]''Showgirls'' got the widest release of any NC-17 film ever[[/note]]

* CreatorBreakdown: Joe Eszterhaus later said:

** Screenwriter Joe Eszterhas, formerly the highest-paid screenwriter in Hollywood, also had ''Jade'' bomb both critically and commercially that same year; both movies got called out by Creator/GeneSiskel at the end of the year. He took what little cachet he had left and made ''Film/AnAlanSmitheeFilmBurnHollywoodBurn'', which finished off both his career ''and'' the tradition of using AlanSmithee as a stand-in name for disowned works. That film ALSO won a Worst Picture Razzie, by the way.

** Joe Ezterhas offered the part of singer-''cum''-rapist Andrew Carver to [[Music/TheAllmanBrothersBand Gregg Allman]]. [[SarcasmMode Shockingly,]] he turned it down.

* UnintentionalPeriodPiece: The film is a time capsule of the final days of "old" Las Vegas. The premise of an anti-heroine finding stardom in a showgirl revue at the Stardust Hotel and Casino was completely dated well before the resort was imploded in 2007; at the TurnOfTheMillennium, such shows were marginalized/put out of business by the more elaborate, ambitious, and classier productions of Siegfried and Roy, Creator/CirqueDuSoleil, Music/BlueManGroup, and others like them. No hotel newer than the Luxor (opened 1993) appears, and characters drive on downtown's Fremont Street (by the time the film hit theaters, it became a pedestrian-only thoroughfare).

* {{Jossed}}: Creator/KyleMacLachlan was rumoured to have stormed out of the premiere, but denied those reports - saying he "suffered through the whole two hours of it". Composer Toni Halliday, however, was the one who walked out after forty-five minutes.