#Liberated from #FB - #StarshipTroopers #PaulVerhoeven

A story of true leadership

Most of the arachnids appearing in "Starship Troopers" (1997) are CGI but a few life-sized, robotic models were built. However, during the battle scenes, the actors mostly wound up looking at director Paul Verhoeven himself who would stand in front of them and jump and scream, even chasing them with a broom in an attempt to generate some of the fearsomeness of a 12-foot space ant. Clancy Brown, who played Sgt. Zim, affectionately described the director as "a nutbag,"given to "jumping up and down with a bullhorn going, 'I'm a big fucking bug! I'll kill you!' I loved him; he was so much fun."

Verhoeven explained that his reasons for including the notorious co-ed shower scene were to show that for all its flaws, the Federation's army has complete gender and racial neutrality, as women and people of color are seen in high ranks with no issue. He added that the gender neutrality extends to the point where men and women shower together, pointing out that most of them are fascists without libido, too preoccupied with their military career to regard their nudity as even vaguely erotic.

When talking about the legacy of the scene in a 2014 interview with Empire Magazine, he mentioned the difficulty of including it: "It is strange, but of course Americans get more upset about nudity than ultra-violence. I am constantly amazed about that. I mean, I haven't seen any sex scenes in American film that are anything other than completely boring. A bare breast is more difficult to get through the censors than a body riddled with bullets."

Verhoeven and stars Dina Meyer and Casper Van Dien confirmed that Verhoeven and cinematographer Jost Vacano shot the co-ed shower scene in the nude themselves, on a dare from Meyer ("And it helped!" added Verhoeven). On the day of the shoot, Verhoeven had cleared the set of everyone except himself, Vacano and the cast, and asked them to do a little "fashion show without fashion" so that they could get comfortable being naked. When the cast was reluctant to disrobe, Verhoeven asked them what the big deal was, to which Meyer responded, "Paul, if it's no big deal, why don't you do it?" Quite unexpectedly, both Verhoeven and Vacano got undressed. Vacano had no problem with it, as he had been raised in nudity camps, but Verhoeven later admitted that he found it somewhat difficult; however, as he told Vacano, "Hey, we need to give an example." The effort payed off, because after an initial shock (Van Dien reportedly yelled "Oh God! Dina! Why!?"), everyone started to laugh, and the scene was filmed without problems.(IMDb)