Paul Verhoeven (Dutch:[ˈpʌulvərˈɦuvə(n)]; born 18 July 1938) is a Dutch film director. His films are known for their graphic violence and sexual content, combined with social satire.[1] After receiving attention for the TV series Floris in his native Netherlands, Verhoeven's breakthrough film was the romantic drama Turkish Delight (1973), starring frequent collaborator Rutger Hauer.[2] Verhoeven later directed successful Dutch films including the period drama Keetje Tippel (1975), the war film Soldier of Orange (1977), the teen drama Spetters (1980) and the psychological thriller The Fourth Man (1983).
Paul Verhoeven was born in Amsterdam on 18 July 1938,[8] the son of a schoolteacher, Wim Verhoeven, and a hatmaker, Nel van Schaardenburg.
In 1943, the family moved to The Hague, the location of the German headquarters in the Netherlands during World War II. The Verhoeven house was near a German military base with V1- and V2-rocket launchers, which was repeatedly bombed by Allied forces. Their neighbours' house was hit and Verhoeven's parents were almost killed when bombs fell on a street crossing. From this period, Verhoeven mentioned in interviews, he remembers images of violence, burning houses, dead bodies on the street, and continuous danger. As a small child, he experienced the war as an exciting adventure, and has compared himself with the character Bill Rowan in Hope and Glory (1987).[9]
Verhoeven's father became headteacher at the Van Heutszschool in The Hague, and Paul attended this school.[10] Sometimes the two watched informative films at home with the school's film projector.
Verhoeven and his father went ten times to see The War of the Worlds (1953). Verhoeven was a fan of the Dutch comic Dick Bos. The character Dick Bos is a private detective who fights crime using jujutsu. Verhoeven liked comic drawing; he created The Killer, a character in a detailed story of revenge. Other fiction he liked included Frankenstein and the Edgar Rice BurroughsBarsoom series.[9]
Verhoeven made his first film Één hagedis teveel ("One Lizard Too Many") for the anniversary of his students' corps in 1960.[13] In his last years at university Verhoeven also attended classes at the Netherlands Film Academy. After this he made three more short films: Nothing Special (1961), The Hitchhikers (1962) and Let's Have a Party (1963).
Verhoeven has not professionally used his mathematics and physics degree, opting instead to invest his energies in a career in film. After his studies, he entered the Royal Dutch Navy as a conscript. He made the documentary Het Korps Mariniers ("The Marine Corps", 1965), which won the French 'Golden Sun' award for military films.[9]
Verhoeven on the set of Floris (1968)
When he left the Navy, Verhoeven took his skills to Dutch television. First, he made a documentary about Anton Mussert titled Mussert (1968). His first major success was the 1969 television series Floris, starring Rutger Hauer in the title role. The concept of Floris was inspired by foreign series such as Ivanhoe and Thierry La Fronde.
First feature films (1969–1983)
Verhoeven's first feature film Business Is Business was released in 1971 and was not well received. His first national success came in 1973 with Turkish Delight, starring Rutger Hauer and Monique van de Ven. Based on a novel by bestselling Dutch author Jan Wolkers, Turkish Delight tells the passionate love story of an artist and a young liberal girl from a conservative background. It received an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film in 1974. In 1999, the film won a Golden Calf for Best Dutch Film of the Century. Katie Tippel (1975) again featured Hauer and van de Ven, but it did not match the success of Turkish Delight.
Verhoeven (center) in 1983
Verhoeven built on his reputation and achieved international success with the Golden Globe-nominated Soldier of Orange (1977),[14] starring Rutger Hauer and Jeroen Krabbé. Based on a true story about the Dutch resistance in World War II, it was written by Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema. Soldier of Orange received the 1979 LA Film Critics Award for best foreign-language film, and it was also nominated for a Golden Globe in 1980.
In 1980, Verhoeven made Spetters with Renée Soutendijk and Rutger Hauer. The story is sometimes compared to Saturday Night Fever, but it has more explicit violence and sexuality (in this case also homosexuality), which are sometimes seen as the director's trademarks. The Fourth Man (1983) is a horror film starring Jeroen Krabbé and Renée Soutendijk. It was written by Gerard Soeteman from a novel by the Dutch writer Gerard Reve, and was Verhoeven's last Dutch production until Black Book (2006).
The Seattle Times praised Verhoeven by saying he "often appears to be a one-man Dutch movie industry".[15]The San Diego Union-Tribune called Verhoeven "a busy bee whose movies pollinate the festival circuit".[16]
Filmmaking in the United States (1983–2000)
Gerard Soeteman also wrote the script for Verhoeven's first English-language film, Flesh and Blood (1985), which starred Rutger Hauer and Jennifer Jason Leigh. Verhoeven moved to Hollywood for a wider range of opportunities in filmmaking. Working in the U.S., he made a serious change in style, directing big-budget, violent, special-effects-heavy hits RoboCop (1987) and Total Recall (1990) — each of which won an Academy Special Achievement Award: RoboCop for Sound Effects Editing and Total Recall for Visual Effects.
Verhoeven followed those successes with Basic Instinct (1992), an erotic thriller. The film's most notorious scene shows Sharon Stone's character in a police interrogation, where she uncrosses her legs, briefly revealing her vulva (she does not wear underwear underneath her skirt). The film received two Academy Award nominations, for Film Editing and for Original Music, and was the ninth-highest-grossing film of the year.[17]
During this time, Verhoeven also worked on creating an historical epic based around the Crusades that would have starred Arnold Schwarzenegger. It went into pre-production in 1993, but a year later the studio backing it, Carolco, pulled funding for the project. Verhoeven would continue to discuss it throughout the 1990s.[18][19][20]
Verhoeven's next film was the poorly received, NC-17-rated Showgirls (1995), about a stripper in Las Vegas trying to make a career as a showgirl. It won seven Golden Raspberry Awards, including Worst Film and Worst Director; Verhoeven became the first director to accept his award in person. Showgirls enjoyed a large amount of success on the home video market, generating more than $100 million from video rentals,[21] and became one of MGM's top twenty all-time bestsellers.[22]
After Basic Instinct and Showgirls, Verhoeven returned to the science fiction genre, utilizing the graphic violence and special-effects tropes that had marked his earlier films, making Starship Troopers (1997), loosely based on the novel of the same name by Robert A. Heinlein,[23] as well as Hollow Man (2000). Each film received an Academy Award nomination for Best Visual Effects. He also served as an executive producer on an animated TV series called Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles, which was based off the movie and novel of Starship Troopers.[24] The series only ran for a single season, from August 1999 until April 2000.
Return to Europe (2006–2021)
After about twenty years of working and living in the United States, Verhoeven returned to the Netherlands for the shooting of a new film. Together with his screenwriter Gerard Soeteman, Verhoeven made Black Book (2006). The director was hailed by the host of the Netherlands Film Festival with the words "The return of a hero".[25]Black Book won six Golden Calves at this festival, including Best Director.[26] When the shooting of Black Book was delayed due to financial issues, there was speculation about a new production. Beast of Bataan had been announced, but once the shooting for Black Book resumed, the other film was not made.
Since Black Book, Verhoeven has been connected to a large number of projects, but in the first decade after his return, none came to fruition. Some of those titles were produced with other directors at the helm, such as The Paperboy. In 2016, however, Verhoeven followed Black Book by directing a French film: Elle, an adaptation of a novel by Philippe Djian. A psychological thriller in which Isabelle Huppert plays a rape victim, Elle was selected for the Official Competition at the Cannes International Film Festival, where it obtained very favourable reviews.
In December 2016, it was announced that Verhoeven would be the president of the jury for the 67th Berlin International Film Festival, scheduled to take place in February 2017.[28]
Return to filmmaking in the United States (2022–present)
Verhoeven is currently preparing his next film, Young Sinner, which reunites him with RoboCop screenwriter Edward Neumeier. An erotic political thriller, it is set in Washington DC and is about a "young staffer who works for a powerful Senator [and] is drawn into a web of international intrigue and danger."[34] Verhoeven hopes to begin shooting Young Sinner in 2024.[35]
Other activities
Verhoeven was a member of the Jesus Seminar,[36] and he was the only member who does not have a degree in biblical studies.[37] He graduated with a degree in mathematics and physics from the University of Leiden.[38][39] Since he is not a professional biblical exegete, his membership in the Jesus Seminar has occasionally been cited by opponents of the Seminar as a sign that this group is less scholarly than it claims. For example, Luke Timothy Johnson criticizes the Jesus Seminar's methods on exegetical grounds, and also criticizes what he perceives to be a dependence on the theatrical and an attempt to manipulate the mainstream media. He singles out Verhoeven as a key player in the media activities of the Jesus Seminar.[40] On the other hand, some Jesus Seminar members were unhappy with Verhoeven's portrayal of Jesus as an eschatologicalprophet.[41]
In 2007, Verhoeven wrote the book Jesus of Nazareth (Dutch: Jezus van Nazaret) about the life of Jesus of Nazareth.[42] The book reviews the ideas of Jesus of Nazareth and the alleged corruption of these same ideas over the last 2,000 years. Co-written with Verhoeven's biographer Rob Van Scheers, the book is the culmination of the research Verhoeven conducted in preparation for Jesus: The Man, a motion picture about the life of Christ.[37] The book tells about the Jewish uprising against Roman rule and characterizes Jesus as a radical political activist, downplaying any supernatural events and miracles as unproved or unprovable. Jesus of Nazareth: A Realistic Portrait was released in September 2008 in Dutch, and was published in English in May 2010 by Seven Stories Press.[43]
Personal life
In 1967, Verhoeven married Martine Tours, with whom he has two daughters.[citation needed]
^ abcTestelmans, Rob (2003). "Een beetje oorlog, best spannend" [A little war, quite exciting]. De cinema van Paul Verhoeven: voorbij de controverse (in Dutch). Retrieved 17 October 2006.
^Hakkenes, Emiel (24 October 2008). "Verhoeven is niet echt zeer geleerd". Trouw. Zijn academische titel zou Verhoeven behaald hebben aan de Universiteit Leiden. Maar is hij wel gepromoveerd? "Dan zouden wij een proefschrift van hem moeten hebben", zegt een woordvoerder van de universiteit. "Dat is niet het geval." English translation: Verhoeven would have received his academic degree at the University of Leiden. But did he receive a doctor's degree? "Then we should have a dissertation", says a spokesperson of the university. "This is not the case."
^Shaw, Dan (January 2003). "Paul Verhoeven". Senses of Cinema. Archived from the original on 17 November 2007. Retrieved 28 November 2007.
