She endured the furore over Basic Instinct, and then she suffered a near- fatal stroke. SHARON STONE is a true survivor, but Paul Dale sees her
reflection in a much older film star.
f only Sharon Stone would move to Scotland and marry Bing Hitler (craggy faced comedian Craig Ferguson, with whom she has recently been romantically linked). If only she would go on record and say that she knows that her ten minutes in Jim Jamiusch’s glorious Broken Flowers are better than anything she has done since Casino. If only she would break rank at press conferences and scream down the microphone that Basic Instinct 2: Risk Addiction (released next March) ‘is going to be about as interesting as sucking on Michael Douglas’ I incontinence pants’. If only she would lock her I celebrity friends Elton John and Kate Moss in an overheated car while she dines at the Ivy. If only she would write that book of crap chat up lines she’s been promising for ages. But more than anything — if only she had got that part playing 40s and 50s screen goddess Lana Turner. , A few weeks ago Sharon Stone found out that the role she has coveted and chased for almost a decade — that of Turner in Stompanato, Adrian Lyne’s retelling of the scandalous murder of thug and wannabe actor Johnny Stompanato (Keanu Reeves) by Lana Tumer’s young daughter, Crane — was not to be hers. Catherine Zeta Jones nabbed the part. In some ways Stone should maybe count her lucky stars: Lyne, the man behind both Fatal Attraction and Indecent Proposal, is a truly appalling filmmaker who will no doubt mess the whole thing up by shooting his pathetic load on a fatuous plot conceit early in the film, and Stone, like her heroine Turner, deserves not to have her reputation besmirched by the association. And yet, for reasons of association and common sense, Stone, without a shadow of a doubt, should have won the role. Let’s look at some facts here. Both Tumer and
22 THE LIST 20 Oct—3 Nov 2005
Stone started their careers as so called ‘sweater girls’ — pretty hired faces in the films of established directors who were going through their own particular brand of nervous breakdown (in William Wellman’s A Star is Born and in Woody Allen’s Stardust Memories respectively). Within ten years both had got their first big breaks (The Postman Always Rings Twice, Total Recall). Within another decade and a half, however, both had almost totally ruined their own careers. She’d made two irresistiny camp classics in the The Bad and the Beautiful (I952) and Peyton Place (1957) but Tumer’s career took a nose dive following the media circus surrounding the court case over Stompanato’s murder.
Stone, on the other hand, had followed her 1992 bona fide fanny flashing hit with a bunch of turkeys so irredeemable (Sliver, The Specialist, Gloria and Cold Creek Manor were just the tip of the iceberg) that by the time she was admitted to hospital in 2001 with a brain aneurism she was considered box office poison. Both actresses also shared an affinity with the sound bite, never passing up the opportunity to bleat out a witty riposte or a philosophically divisive remark (in Hollywood no one likes a smart girl) and both women possessed incredibly high IQs.
Having harboured a fascination for her old Hollywood counterpart, Stone went to visit
IF ONLY STONE WOULD LOCK HER CELEBRITY FRIENDS IN AN OVERHEATED CAR WHILE SHE DINES AT THE IVY
Turner before she died of throat cancer in 1995 and claims the screen legend wanted her to play her in any movie about her life. Whether that’s true or not it hardly seems to matter. nor does it that Stone, who has just turned 47. would have been playing a character ten years her junior (Turner was 38 at the time of the murder). when you consider the Cymric alternative. In Broken Flowers. in which she plays saucy single mum Laura. the ex-lover of Bill Murray's wandering Don (Juan). she reverses the traditional gesture of a man kissing a woman’s hand. It is a perfectly performed (or. this being a Jarmusch film. perhaps the correct phrase is ‘improvised’) moment of tender. needy devastation. Lana Turner may have just have approved.
Basic Instinct 2: Risk Addiction is released in March 2006