Billy Baldwin and Sharon Stone in Sliver Photo: Alamy
Since her breakthrough performance in Paul Verhoeven's erotic blockbuster Basic instinct,” Sharon Stone was no stranger to controversy. However, her recent claim that producer Robert Evans tried to force her to have sex with her Sliver co-star Billy Baldwin to improve his performance is the latest shocking development in a life full of them. She previously called Evans «one of the weirdest people I've ever met in the movie business, and one of the most inappropriate.»
Evans asked her to do this in the 1993 film, she recalls, so that «Billy Baldwin's performance would improve, and we needed Billy to improve in the film because that was the problem.» Stone refused, and so both Evans and Baldwin reportedly made her life hell: all for the sake of trying to sexualize a third-rate «erotic thriller» that tried, and failed, to capitalize on the much greater success she had achieved. I liked it in Basic Instinct. It has spawned one of the nastiest and most persistent Hollywood feuds in decades, full of nasty (and sometimes hilarious) rumors and details, and showing no signs of coming to an end.
The couple's mutual off-screen hatred led to the fact that the picture was changed so that in the love scenes they communicated with each other as little as possible. Given the extremely poor relationship between Baldwin and Stone, the chances of Evans' wishes being granted were somewhere far below zero.
Stone mentioned the unpleasant experience she had in her 2021 memoir, The Beauty of Living Twice, in which she wrote that an anonymous producer «explained to me why I should fuck my co-star so we could have on-screen chemistry.» Her understandable response was to point out that “no one is that good in bed.”
She has always made it clear that she did not sleep with another actor, and on Louis Theroux's podcast she named Evans and Baldwin. The producer tried to blame Stone for her co-star's woodenness. As she recalled: “The real problem with the movie was me because I was so uptight and didn't seem like a real actress who could just fuck him and get everything back on track. The real problem was that I was so cool…»
Baldwin did not take the criticism well. He responded to X that he's «not sure why Sharon Stone keeps talking about me all these years later? Is she still in love with me or is she still hurt after all these years because I avoided her advances?” He claimed Stone told her friend Janice Dickinson, «I'll make him fall on me so hard he'll be dizzy» (Dickinson denied this), and ended the conversation with a threat. “I have so much dirt on her that it would make her head spin, but I didn’t say anything,” he said. “I wonder if I should write a book and tell many, many disturbing, strange and unprofessional stories about Sharon? It can be fun.”
Baldwin may have to do this since his own career hasn't kept up with Stone's. Although she went on to work with Martin Scorsese in Casino after Sliver (and was nominated for an Oscar), Baldwin's biggest subsequent appearance was a self-parodying cameo in the 2008 comedy Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Nevertheless, he acts — most recently in the Serbian series «South Wind».
Joe Eszterhas stayed with Robert Evans ( plus guests Naomi Baca and Christine Hoffman) at the premiere of «Sliver» in Los Angeles. Photo: Getty
Robert Evans, who died in 2019, lived a long, eventful life that included everything from the highs of producing The Godfather, Chinatown and Marathon Man to the lows of being accused of trafficking cocaine in 1980. subsequent participation in unimpressive films. His 1994 autobiography, The Kid Stays in the Picture, is a classic film memoir, although it says nothing about Sliver or his relationship with Stone.
On paper, this picture should have been his great comeback. It was based on the novel by Ira Levin, whose hit Rosemary's Baby Evans brought to the screen, and Evans' agent advised him to «get on your knees and try to get this project.» The storyline revolves around a New York book editor who becomes involved with a charismatic video game designer and a mysterious writer and tries to solve a murder in the apartment building where she now lives.
It was exciting, unusual, and ended with an audience-irritating conclusion that suggested the killer had escaped justice, Basic Instinct style. Through a combination of charm and a strong hand, Evans managed to buy the rights from Levine for $500,000 and used the deal he struck to return to the Paramount lot, where he had been persona non grata since his drug arrest.
At first everything went well. Evans hired Basic Instinct screenwriter Joe Eszterhas for less than a third of the $3 million fee he usually charged, and after Rosemary's Baby director Roman Polanski turned down the opportunity to work on another Levine picture — on the grounds that that he was unable to return to the United States thanks to the extradition order against him — Evans hired Dead Calm and Patriot Games director Phillip Noyce, whose previous films featured his finished subject with tension.
Billy Baldwin with his brother Alec in 2007 Photo: Bloomberg
Sliver needed a star, however, and Evans used a combination of charm and steel to coax Stone into taking the lead. She had a good relationship with Eszterhas as they became close while battling many of Basic Instinct's critics. (According to Eszterhas, they became lovers during filming.) However, she was not thrown off by the script; Noyce later said that «Sharon didn't really want to play Sliver, and when you have a leading role that's not in the film, things can get complicated.» She was wary of typecasting and knew that while her iconic lead role in Basic Instinct as Catherine Tramell had made her a star, the quieter, less dynamic role of Carly Norris was unlikely to have the same effect.
Eszterhas persuaded her to take part. Noyce noticed the close relationship between the star and the writer during a meeting between the three of them: «Things got very interesting when Sharon started giving Joe a spontaneous massage and he started moaning under her deft fingers.» Evans, meanwhile, was bluffing, «knowing a woman's head about competition with other women.» He told Stone that Demi Moore and Geena Davis were desperate to star in the film if she turned it down, and promised that «if this picture works, you will get an award, a price that is higher than anyone in the industry.» The «Basic Instinct» in his advertising campaign was a prelude; Sliver would be a great solution. He later admitted that he never even sent Moore and Davis the script.
Stone was lured into signing a contract for a fee of $2.5 million, and a budget of $33 million was agreed upon. Her co-stars will be Tom Berenger, still in contention for the Oscar nomination he received for Platoon, and Baldwin, who was rising to fame at the time thanks to the success of hits like Backdraft and Flatliners. Sliver, if it had worked, would have launched him into the stratosphere, just like Stone.
Sharon Stone and Billy Baldwin in the film “Sliver” Photo: Alamy
The on-screen relationship between them was vital. Stone wanted to play the then-little-known Brad Pitt opposite her—showing the same excellent taste for up-and-coming stars that she later demonstrated when she insisted Leonardo DiCaprio play her in her western The Quick and the Dead—but Noyce refused. “However, I had already fallen in love with William Baldwin. I loved how mysterious and reserved he was in his acting style,” he said. As he later admitted: “I was wrong.”
At first, Stone felt sorry for Baldwin. She had a great relationship with her Basic Instinct co-star Michael Douglas and was hoping to regain the same chemistry — famously joking on set that «I need time to calm men down» on the days when they had to protrude. love scenes — but was disappointed by the less experienced actor. As she told the New Yorker: “Billy was so sweet and young and naive. He had no idea what these monster people were up to. By the time I got on the set of Slivers, I was very fluent in the studio language, and Billy was still a child. They threw him into the deep end of the pool.»
She tried to act professional by inviting him to come to her trailer to work on their scenes together; something that Baldwin, relied upon by Evans, misinterpreted. As she later recalled: “He was trying to be adequate… I don’t think he realized that I really wanted to work on the scenes because they were very much imposing alternate realities on both of us.”
The chemistry dissipated and the relationship between the actors became difficult. Stone soon insisted that she perform close-ups with a double and not with her hated co-star. Meanwhile, Baldwin joked after one reluctant love scene that Stone had «thin lips, normal breathing» and begged Evans to let him choreograph a climatic sex scene so he wouldn't have to kiss Stone during it.
Meanwhile, she questioned why Evans didn't make the effort to pay a talented or at least competent co-star — «someone who could direct a scene and remember his lines.» Eszterhas suggested that during one intimate scene, Stone bit Baldwin's tongue so hard that he had difficulty speaking for days, prompting her to respond, «I think it's funny.» I knew (Joe) was funny, but I didn’t think he could write a comedy.”
Aside from the difficulties between Stone and Baldwin, the production was troubled, with the budget quickly rising from $33 million to $40 million and rumors as high as $50 million. It didn't help that the ending, which Eszterhas and Noyce had planned to be bold and provocative, was changed at the last minute. As the director recalled: «The original ending, written by Eszterhas, had two lovers flying over an active volcano in Hawaii, and, as a continuation of the erotic charge that both characters were always looking for, the film ended on this impressionistic note: if they were heading straight for molten lava.» .
It was not popular with either the studio or test audiences. “Needless to say, audiences weren’t going to see Sliver in an art-house finale,” shrugged Noyce. “And it’s not like the final ending was any more specific.” It was initially assumed that Baldwin's character was a killer and that Stone was so in love with him that it became irrelevant. A clumsy last-minute reshoot revealed that Berenger was the killer instead, removing any hint of moral ambiguity or interest from the film.
Sharon Stone and her then-boyfriend Bill McDonald at the premiere of Sliver in 1993. Photo: Getty
Berenger, meanwhile, had long since grown tired of the lack of professionalism from both his co-stars and the director, and eventually exploded at Noyce during reshoots, claiming that he was «sneaking around and manipulating» the cast while Evans worried and exhorted from the sidelines. When one journalist asked him what his relationship with Stone was, he answered ambiguously. “Every close-up she does is great. The switch just turns on and the light comes on. Selfish, perhaps. She's no walk in the park. Charm? Like a barracuda. I wouldn't want to live with her. But I'd sure as hell love to work with her again.» As expected, he didn't.
After Sliver was completed, the sexual content predictably proved too much for the US ratings board MPAA, which announced that the film would be given an NC-17 kiss of death classification if it was not edited out. Evans, already dreading his big comeback, shouted, “To hell with them! Let's just go with NC-17″ before he had a heart attack brought on by stress (and possibly continued cocaine use). Noyce, unencumbered by his producer, dutifully made 110 changes to the film to ensure a more commercially successful R rating.
In the end, thanks to Stone's commercial appeal, the film became a box office hit, although it grossed less than a third of the box office. «Basic Instinct» Reviews were dismal, with many suggesting that Stone was mislabeled as a closeted book editor and the sexual content was ridiculed; Particularly criticized was a scene in which Stone masturbates in a bathtub while Baldwin watches a security camera. Everyone involved in the film shrugged and moved on, but Baldwin never became a big star. Yet the animosity between him and Stone, three decades after Sliver's release, remains more interesting—and compelling—than anything shown on screen.
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