THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, February 11, 1995 TAG: 9502100069
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, ENTERTAINMENT WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 176 lines
``You know, men are so dumb. They go: `Hey, hey, hey' and what woman doesn't want to say just `Hello, would you stop looking at my breasts? You want to watch me take the twins for a walk?'.....If I was just intelligent, I'd be OK, but I'm fiercely intelligent, which a lot of people find threatening. We Barbie Dolls are not supposed to behave the way I do.''
- Sharon Stone
THE NEW Stone age may be the last whimpering, feeble stand at preserving the Hollywood Sex Symbol as a national institution.
If Marilyn Monroe came along today, would anyone notice? In the jaded, cynical 1990s, can the publicity mill create the kind of femme fatale that once was the mainstay of movie glamour? With starlets surfacing and disappearing regularly on 100 TV channels and films that bare all almost before the first date, is there anything left that can shock or even amuse us in the flash-flesh game?
Sharon Stone has proved that the game can still be played, but on her own terms. With Madonna turning out to be no more than a bad joke, Stone is the only living remnant of the kind of flamboyant style that once was routinely branded as ``the movie star.'' Since the now-infamous interrogation scene in ``Basic Instinct,'' she has single-handedly provided the publicity and style that harks back to La Monroe and before her to Jean Harlow.
More than just a male fantasy, though, Stone wants to also represent the strong, aggressive female who can handle herself.
``I have a strong point of view based on my experience,'' she has said. ``It may or may not be the correct one, but it is an informed one, and I'm willing to fight for it.''
Sneaking on the set of ``Casino,'' currently before the cameras in Las Vegas, I found Sharon Stone draped across a roulette wheel at the Riviera Hotel and Casino. She was wearing a frumpy trench coach and was studying her script. ``Casino,'' set to be released just in time for Oscar consideration in December, is her arty breakthrough; it's directed by Martin Scorsese, and co-stars Oscar-winning actors Robert DeNiro and Joe Pesci.
``I didn't make all those B-budget films not to get a chance to do a film with Scorsese,'' Stone said. ``I played one bimbette after another in junk. I was making three movies a year, traveling, and getting good money, but it wasn't enough. There had to be more.''
With crowds of tourists loitering around to get a look, she obliged by giving Scorsese a peck on the cheek and flirting outrageously with him. But no interview. ``It's not the time, hon,'' she said. ``I'm working.''
The time came a few months later in Los Angeles to coincide with this weekend's release of ``The Quick and the Dead,'' a Western that also marks her debut as a producer. In it, she wears scroungy leather, rides horseback and, notably, has not one nude scene.
After waiting three hours for her to ``get dressed,'' Stone arrived, wearing a brown leather skirt and a beige, turtleneck sweater.
``There simply wasn't much opportunity for me to get naked in this movie,'' she said. ``I'm a gunslinger. I'm a woman who can hold her own against the men in the town. Can you imagine that they wanted me to ride into the town wearing a dress? No deal. Was I supposed to ride sidesaddle? Women in Westerns have always been portrayed as either whores or Miss Goody Two Shows schoolmarms. I didn't want that.. . . I'm playing a woman who may be vulnerable but she's still able to hold her own.''
It's a role that Sharon Stone likes. ``I learned my lesson on `Sliver,' '' she said. ``The movie turned out to be bad. There were things going wrong with it all the time, but I tried to be a good girl and keep my mouth shut. I learned that that doesn't work. I'm one of the producers on `The Quick and the Dead' and I make myself be heard.''
The film co-stars Gene Hackman as the bad man in her life and brooding Australian star Russell Crowe as the good.
Asked if she was aware that she has a reputation as being something of a pain on a set, she replied, ``That's OK. Having a reputation as a b---- makes people step back a bit, which gives me a chance to breathe. I don't mind it at all.''
Sharon Stone was born the second of four children in Meadville, Pa. She was never content there. ``I was weird,'' she said. ``I was born wanting to be a movie star, I think. I was always pathologically honest. As a kid I was always getting into trouble and I always wanted to get out of that town. My father championed that. I was a farm girl. I grew up on mashed potatoes and milk. It was not like `Could I have the dressing on the side?'
``Today, I'm still pathologically honest. I say what I think. I'm going to a psychiatrist who is trying, essentially, to teach me how to lie.''
She attended Edinboro State University in Pennsylvania and was found to have an I.Q. of 154. But she quit to take her chances in New York City. Between 1977 and 1980, she became one of the top 10 models at the Ford Agency, making $500 a week. Still, she wanted to be a movie actress.
Her debut was as the girl who throws a kiss to Woody Allen from a subway window in ``Stardust Memories.'' After that, though, she was cast in one B movie after another. The worst experience was ``King Solomon's Mines'' and its sequel ``Allan Quartermain and the Lost City of Gold,'' both filmed in Africa.
``I've paid my dues. I tried over and over to break out. I tested for Ridley Scott in `Alien' and I was so close - so close. But I didn't get it. I tested, believe it or not, for `Agnes of God.' I could have played that, but no one believed it. It's just as well it didn't happen back then. I wasn't ready.''
She scored with the role of Arnold Schwarzenegger's kick-boxing wife in ``Total Recall.''
But during auditions for her next role, a director told her she wasn't sexy enough for the part. Deciding that action was needed, she posed nude, sucking an ice cube, for the cover of Playboy magazine, and followed with a shirtless cover for Vanity Fair.
She landed the part of the sexually liberated Catherine Tramell in 1992's ``Basic Instinct'' only after Debra Winger and Geena Davis turned it down. There is still argument over the flash scene, in which she proved she didn't wear underwear. She claimed she was tricked into doing it. But I located the cameraman who shot the scene who told me ``Sharon was not only aware of what was going on. It was her idea.'' In any case, the movie became the biggest hit of the year.
``Well, I'm not bashful,'' Stone admitted. ``What would be the point? This is a business.''
If ``Basic Instinct'' made her a star, it was ``Sliver'' that cemented it. ``Sliver,'' in which she played a lonely book editor opposite William Baldwin, was hated by the critics, but sold $12 million in tickets on its opening weekend. While going on to gross $36 million in the United States, it became a phenomenon in foreign countries, taking in $75 million, more than either Tom Cruise in ``A Few Good Men'' or Clint Eastwood in ``In the Line of Fire.'' The industry suddenly took note. Here was a female American actress who could sell tickets around the world.
``When I became famous, it was accepted that I was supposed to run down Rodeo Drive naked and I was to say wildly outrageous things, but I wasn't supposed to have a boyfriend,'' she said. ``. . . I did resent all this interest in who I dated. If you believed all those stories, I'd make more money by opening up an 800 line and charging for each person who claimed they had slept with me.''
She has been married to and divorced from George Englund and Michael Greenburg. For over a year, she's been going with a guy who is involved in the technical side of making movies. He was on the crew of ``The Quick and the Dead.'' She wouldn't name him. ``Hey, look it up yourself. Don't expect me to do all your work,'' she said. There isn't much record of him which, she said, ``due to the fact that we are not a public couple. We don't go to awards ceremonies together. There aren't many pictures around of he and I together, but it's good - it's a good relationship.''
Stone, 36, shakes her head and declares, ``You know I was approaching middle age before this whole fame thing happened. But I'm one leading lady who is not leading just to retirement at 40. I still have a few 14-year-old boys who think I'm hot. Thank God!''
She scares some people. Sam Raimi, the 36-year-old director of ``The Quick and Dead,'' was one of them. Raimi has a cult following for his wry humor in horror flicks like ``The Evil Dead'' and ``Darkman.'' Stone wanted him, and only him, for her Western.
``When I heard that Sharon Stone had called me, I thought the guys were kidding,'' Raimi said. ``To know that Sharon Stone wants you wouldn't make any man feel bad. It's the first time I've directed a film with big stars. I was like Dorothy going to see Oz. What should I do? Pretend I'm really smart? Wear cologne? I found that Sharon has a good sense of herself. She's very savvy. Very tough. We had a good collaboration.''
Josh Donen, her co-producer and son of famed musical director Stanley Donen of ``Singing in the Rain'' fame, said ``I've never met anyone who was more interested in the film and less interested in her own image than Sharon was on this picture.''
There is a small worry, though.
Fans didn't like Stone when she switched images and played a cool, sophisticated and wronged wife in ``Intersection.'' They like her as the femme fatale, not the wronged woman. Will they buy her wearing dirt and rough-hewn togs in ``The Quick and the Dead?'' And what's more, the film has no hot love scene.
``We filmed one,'' Stone said, ``but it got cut out. It just didn't fit. It slowed the movie down.''
Raimi said, ``to cut a Sharon Stone love scene doesn't seem like the smartest thing to do, but it didn't fit this movie.''
With a Martin Scorsese film coming up, Stone is determined not to go backward. ``I have to grow,'' she said. ``You've got to let me. I've got to be the best that I can be. I know there are a lot of people who want Sharon Stone movies, but they can still rent those movies. I don't have to repeat them.'' MEMO: For a complete list of Sharon Stone's movie credits, see microfilm.
ILLUSTRATION: Color photos
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by CNB