Reel Scenes, in Real Moments: ‘Showgirls’

It's just how I relate to everything.

May 20, 2024

Dear Moviegoers,

Getting into a narrow tube and staying still for an hour, with sounds buzzing around me, might as well be my middle name. I’ve often proclaimed that I could withstand a trip to the planet Mars by myself, though now I add the asterisk that I might go insane in the process of staying awake and alive for so long. But one hour in a tube? Piece of cake.

I’m describing a medical procedure known as an MRI, which stands for Magnetic Resonant Imaging. In my case, a recent trip in this machine was to scan my neck and my brain, to help determine the cause of body inflammation that I’ve been experiencing for some time. There’s also the possibility that I have something known as “Hyperreflexia,” a condition where my body’s reflexes are over-responsive. I’m not sure how the two illnesses (?) are connected, but hopefully, that will be determined in a follow-up appointment.

Ever since I first watched clips from Rocky IV on home video, I’ve thought of instances in my life in terms of film. It’s similar to word association, but in how anything that I see, hear, or feel triggers a memory of a movie scene. Every day, and almost every hour, I experience this sensation. In the days since my MRI procedure, I’ve come to accept the one movie that I thought of while in for that hour in the tubed machine and the one scene that played on repeat in my mind as it was being scanned.

And it gives new meaning to Magnetic Resonant Imaging. And Hyperreflexia.

Nomi Malone entered Las Vegas not with open arms so much as an immediate embrace. It was the perfect city for a chaotic and distressed young ingenue to make a life for herself. To reach for the stars. To use her body in more ways than one to get whatever she wanted, from burgers to Kyle MacLachlan.

I, of course, am describing the epic and the infamous film extravaganza known as Showgirls. The weekend before my MRI, I watched it in full for the first time, and instantly had my teeth blown into the back of my mouth, as what happens with a shotgun. This was no suicide or murder, but a revelatory discovery.

I recall the controversy surrounding the picture from its theatrical run (I was but a kid back then), and avoided the film as a result. All of the jokes and the memes took their toll on my excitement, at least for a few decades. But finally taking the plunge by pressing play, I was pleasantly surprised and disappointed in myself. Surprised by how endearing and engaging a movie of sleaze and greed could be. Disappointed in myself because of how long I lived without giving the movie a shot.

So much about Showgirls sticks out to me, from Robert Davi’s gross but somehow positive figure of emotional encouragement to Gina Gershon going all in and acting all out. However, there is one moment in one scene that has forever-staying power.

Actor Patrick Bristow has made plenty of supporting roles in flicks like Transformers: Age of Extinction and Pain & Gain (and better movies) - usually as a comic relief of sorts, but being superb in his few frames. Showgirls had him play an assistant in the movie’s highlighted dance revue called “Goddess,” which the lead character Nomi auditions for. During dance preparations, Bristow, as an assistant, does dance practice through drill sergeant-type badgering, at least in fits and bursts. He’d go from a likable helpful hand to a raving jerk in a flash. Brilliant.

Actress Elizabeth Berkley, so young and seeking a breakout chance, took on Nomi with boldness and bravado, to the extreme. She’s fiery, ferocious, and feral. She grinds and she glows. She works it and flaunts it. Berkley as Nomi may have been a nightmare made in heaven, and that’s meant in the most complimentary and genuine of ways. Brilliant!

Let’s put the two performers together. Let’s see what happens.

In the MRI machine, there’s a plastic vice that your head goes in, there’s a moving platform that you are placed on, and a projected screen saver that plays on shuffle/repeats on the inside of the tube, right above your face. The earplugs go in, the soft and soothing music turns on, and the machine begins its job. For one hour, I stared at pictures of outer space, as loud cranks and alarms went off all around me. For the first phase of the procedure, I went in as I was. For the second phase, I was injected with a somewhat radioactive dye that would make my internal systems look much clearer. Talk about glowing.

Between moments of almost falling asleep and trying to stay as still as possible, I began to recognize and count the various sounds that the machine made. Some went off in sequences of ten, others went for more of a rhythm that impersonated speech patterns, by which I mean how words are pronounced and how many breaths are taken in a sentence. I couldn’t help but think of the conversations that this MRI was having with the attending medical professionals, oddly.

What would the MRI machine say to me, if given the opportunity?

For me, movies are best remembered by sensory reactions to clips. Not in the moment of first viewing, but in the bits (or clips) of reality that come after, which I feel are similar in some way.

In that medical procedure, between me and the noises that rang out, I heard what the MRI machine was saying to me: “THRUST IT!!”

It’s nonsensical to think this way, in that time, and in those words, but it was the truth. Some sounds matched the pattern and the repetition of that line of dialogue, and I couldn’t help but let it in and entertain me for all it was worth.

This scene comes when Nomi is practicing a routine for the show, which involves laying (or is it lying?) on the stage, and thrusting her sweaty midsection into the air, over and over and over again. The show assistant, yelling at the other dancers, focuses on Nomi as the camera pushes in on the two of them. He kept at it, in order, with “THRUST IT! THRUST IT! THRUST IT!!” as he stared into Nomi’s eyes, before finally screaming at her belly.

Oh, what we sacrifice to make it to the top of the mountain. To have a scrawny guy in a cardigan speak R. Lee Ermey's craziness into our stomachs. Into our intestines. Into our souls.

Ridiculous. Hilarious. Brilliant.

Memorable.

I wasn’t traveling through the solar system, nor was I going mad from radiation and tunnel vision. I was bewitched by Nomi Malone, by a little loud man, and by a bomb of a movie.

Thinking of mere seconds from a film like that can come at any moment and at any time for me. It just depends on my surroundings and my senses. A distraction? An escape? Cinema is an escape, but I hesitate to suggest it as a distraction. If anything, it’s an enhancement of my world and the way I see it. This is how I think. This is how I see everything. This is how I see everyone.

Maybe this is a symptom of Hyperreflexia. After all, movies come to me in the speed of a knee-jerk. Maybe we can all it Magnetic Resonant Imagining. After all, there’s a magnetism to these images that resonate with me.

See how I did that?