After a robust career in the Netherlands as the country's most successful director, Paul Verhoeven (b. 1938) built an impressive career in the United States with such controversial blockbusters as RoboCop, Total Recall, Basic Instinct, Starship Troopers, and Showgirls before returning home to direct 2006's Black Book. After a recent stint as a reality television judge in the Netherlands, Verhoeven returned to the big screen with his first feature film in a decade, a highly anticipated French-language production, Elle, starring Isabelle Huppert. Verhoeven, who holds an advanced degree in mathematics and physics, boasts a fascinating background. Traversing Hollywood, the Dutch film industry, and now French filmmaking, the interviews in this volume reveal a complex, often ambiguous figure, as well as a director of immense talent. Paul Verhoeven: Interviews covers every phase of the director's career, beginning with six newly translated Dutch newspaper interviews dating back to 1968 and ending with a set of previously unpublished interviews dedicated to his most recent work. He experimented with crowd-sourced filmmaking for the television show The Entertainment Experience, which resulted in the film Tricked, as well as his latest feature Elle. Editor Margaret Barton-Fumo includes "Sex, Cinema and Showgirls," a long out-of-print essay by Verhoeven on his most controversial film, accompanied by pages of original storyboards from this and some of Verhoeven's other films. Finally, Barton-Fumo allots due attention to the director's little-known lifelong fascination with the historical Jesus Christ. Verhoeven is the only non-theologian member of the exclusive Westar Institute and author of the book Jesus of Nazareth.

Building on the work of biblical scholars—Rudolph Bultmann, Raymond Brown, Jane Schaberg, and Robert Funk, among others—filmmaker Paul Verhoeven disrobes the mythical Jesus to reveal a man who has much in common with other great political leaders throughout history—human beings who believed that change was coming in their lifetimes. Gone is the Jesus of the miracles, gone the son of God, gone the weaver of arcane parables whose meanings are obscure. In their place Verhoeven gives us his vision of Jesus as a complete man, someone who was changed by events, the leader of a political movement, and, perhaps most importantly, someone who, in his speeches and sayings, introduced a new ethic in which the embrace of human contradictions transcends the mechanics of value and worth that had defined the material world before Jesus. "The Romans saw [Jesus] as an insurrectionist, what today is often called a terrorist. It is very likely there were ‘wanted’ posters of him on the gates of Jerusalem. He was dangerous because he was proclaiming the Kingdom of Heaven, but this wasn’t the Kingdom of Heaven as we think of it now, some spectral thing in the future, up in the sky. For Jesus, the Kingdom of Heaven was a very tangible thing. Something that was already present on Earth, in the same way that Che Guevara proclaimed Marxism as the advent of world change. If you were totalitarian rulers, running an occupation like the Romans, this was troubling talk, and that was why Jesus was killed." —Paul Verhoeven, from profile by Mark Jacobson in New York Magazine

Paul Verhoeven's father, John, is a cop. Well, an ex-cop. Long since retired, John spent years embroiled in some of the seediest, scariest intrigue and escapades imaginable. Paul, however, is something of an artsy, sensitive soul who can’t understand why he doesn’t have the same heroism and courage as his dad. One day, John offers Paul the chance of a lifetime: he'll spill his guts, on tape, for the first time ever, and try to get to the bottom of this difference between them. What unfolds is a goldmine of true-crime stories, showing John’s dramatic (and sometimes dodgy) experience of policing in Sydney in the 1980s. The crims, the car chases, the frequent brushes with death and violence, and the grey zone between what’s ethical and what’s effective: finally Paul gets real insight into what’s formed his father’s character. Thrilling, fascinating and often laugh-out-loud funny, Loose Units is a high-octane adventure in policing, integrity and learning what your father is really all about.

Known for always pushing the envelope when it comes to showing sex and violence on screen, Paul Verhoeven has directed controversial films in several genres, including the erotic thriller (Basic Instinct), melodrama (Showgirls) and science fiction (RoboCop, Total Recall, Starship Troopers, Hollow Man). However, even before going to Hollywood, Verhoeven had been a succ's de scandale in his native Netherlands, where he directed a war saga (Soldier of Orange), a medieval epic (Flesh+Blood), a psychosexual thriller (The Fourth Man) and a sex comedy (Turkish Delight, which was voted Best Dutch Film of the Century at the Netherlands Film Festival). Verhoeven has shown that visceral thrills can be thought provoking, challenging our received notions of heroism, patriotism, and eroticism. He has created some of the most courageous and contentious films of recent years. Made with full access to Paul Verhoeven's archives!

After a robust career in the Netherlands as the country's most successful director, Paul Verhoeven (b. 1938) built an impressive career in the United States with such controversial blockbusters as RoboCop, Total Recall, Basic Instinct, Starship Troopers, and Showgirls before returning home to direct 2006's Black Book. After a recent stint as a reality television judge in the Netherlands, Verhoeven returned to the big screen with his first feature film in a decade, a highly anticipated French-language production, Elle, starring Isabelle Huppert. Verhoeven, who holds an advanced degree in mathematics and physics, boasts a fascinating background. Traversing Hollywood, the Dutch film industry, and now French filmmaking, the interviews in this volume reveal a complex, often ambiguous figure, as well as a director of immense talent. Paul Verhoeven: Interviews covers every phase of the director's career, beginning with six newly translated Dutch newspaper interviews dating back to 1968 and ending with a set of previously unpublished interviews dedicated to his most recent work. He experimented with crowd-sourced filmmaking for the television show The Entertainment Experience, which resulted in the film Tricked, as well as his latest feature Elle. Editor Margaret Barton-Fumo includes "Sex, Cinema and Showgirls," a long out-of-print essay by Verhoeven on his most controversial film, accompanied by pages of original storyboards from this and some of Verhoeven's other films. Finally, Barton-Fumo allots due attention to the director's little-known lifelong fascination with the historical Jesus Christ. Verhoeven is the only non-theologian member of the exclusive Westar Institute and author of the book Jesus of Nazareth.

Paul Verhoeven’s ex-cop dad, John, spent years embroiled in some of the seediest, scariest intrigue and escapades imaginable. One day John offered Paul the chance of a lifetime: he’d spill his guts on tape. What unfolded in Loose Units was a goldmine of true-crime stories, showcasing John’s dramatic experience of policing in Sydney in the 1980s and brilliantly twisted sense of humour. But what happened next in John’s career was twice as weird. Electric Blue spans the final years of John’s stint in the New South Wales Police Force, when he took up an offer to move into the grimy, analytical world of forensics. Paul unpicks his father’s most terrible cases. There was the case of a rapist hiding in the walls of a shower block, a body that was quite literally cooked, and the bizarre copycat suicides. But what’s it actually like to have a heroic ex-cop as a dad? Paul and John delve into their unique father–son relationship and how they ended up so different to each other. They figure out how to deal with the choices they’ve made . . . or wish they’d made. And Paul’s mum, Christine, reveals what it was like to be a pioneering female cop in the eighties, when misogyny was rife in the force. Thrilling, fascinating and unexpectedly laugh-out-loud funny, Electric Blue is another high-octane adventure in policing, integrity and learning what family is really all about.

What's celebrated as the "worst movie ever," film writer Adam Nayman explores the 1995 Paul Verhoeven film that won the Razzie and perhaps ended its star's career. He argues that Showgirls is not so bad it's good, it's so good it's mistaken for bad.