Great Character: Catherine Tramell (“Basic Instinct”)
This month’s theme: Femme fatale. Today’s guest post by Jason Cuthbert features Catherine Tramell from the 1992 movie Basic Instinct, written by Joe Eszterhas.
Just how prolific is spec script super hero and Basic Instinct screenwriter Joe Eszterhas? He has had at least 17 screenplays produced and roughly 25 un-produced stories circulating around various movie studios since the 1970’s. But it was director Paul Verhoeven’s (Robocop, Total Recall) $352 million grossing erotic thriller juggernaut Basic Instinct in 1992 that garnered Eszterhas the record breaking screenwriter paycheck of $3 million, raising the bar of the speculative script market high above the Hollywood hills. With that Mount Everest of a script sale only representing under 1% of the worldwide box office gross, the Basic Instinct success story was clearly an influence on the total amount of spec sales more than doubling from 40 during its release year in1992 — to a bolstered 89 stacks of Courier type being sold in 1993.
Basic Instinct plot summary from IMDB:
A police detective is in charge of the investigation of a brutal murder, in which a beautiful and seductive woman could be involved.
As far as famous femme fatales go, Sharon Stone’s portrayal of Catherine Tramell in Basic Instinct merges the famed lit cigarette, smoldering sultry seductress vibe of the 1940’s with a confident contemporary cat woman — smarter and more fearless than her prey. But Tramell is surely not a bargain basement sex and violence stereotype. With a $110 million inheritance, distinctive college credentials from UC Berkeley and a career as an enviable author, Catherine Tramell does not need to pin her sexuality onto a man’s fishing pole to lure a reward out of the deep blue sea… then drown his poor corpse in the raging currents. She would rather use her biological recipe for lust to turn interesting lovers into even more interesting fictional characters for her novels.
CATHERINE: I’m a writer, I use people for
what I write. Let the world beware.
Is there a better alibi for murder than to volunteer all the juicy, details of your hormonal hurricanes with the victim?
CATHERINE: I wasn’t dating him. I was fucking
him.
She is so positive that she has no blood on her hands that she over-cooperates with the investigation, offering to be interrogated and putting a lie detector under her Zen-like calm spell. She practically dares the officers of the law to try to arrest her.
CATHERINE: Read me my rights and arrest me and
I’ll go downtown. Otherwise, get the fuck out of
here. Please.
Catherine uses the truth to her advantage… and boy does it set her free. She has no problem lining her trashcan with political correctness scraps and crumpled lady-like expectations. Tramell seems to get aroused by the “Is it me, or is it hot in here?” reaction that the graphic realities of her lifestyle elicits from men. Her brutal honesty is like an instant full disclosure tabloid cover story with all the goodies left in to jaw-drop and gawk at.
Tramell’s police interrogation scene succeeds in capturing her four strongest qualities: endless intelligence, manipulative sex appeal, a constant calm under pressure and shock value honestly. How often do you see law enforcement dangling off of a suspect’s every word, ready to eat off of the ground she walks on? Tramell single handedly manages to make her interrogators begin to think with their “mini head with the hole in it” and also start to doubt Detective Curran’s objectivity in the case.
Not only can Catherine remain centered when she is the central subject of a murder story she appears to have premeditated in one of her novels, but she can also turn the tables and stay composed while asking the tough questions during her own research investigation of Detective Curran’s previously smoking gun barrels.
While Detective Nick Curran (Michael Douglas) struggles with relapsing into his addictive vices, an ongoing Internal Affairs probe into his psychological stability and sleeping with possible murderers, he not only is attracted to Tramell, but he becomes even more like her. Catherine has Curran in such a lustful trance that he returns to alcohol and cigarettes, engages in rough sex with his bedroom buddy Dr. Beth Garner, and adopts her nonchalant attitude towards rules and regulations.
For her power of influence, dominant personality without aggression, her “crack habit for eyeballs” sex kitten status and her well cultivated open mind — Catherine Tramell is one amazingly GREAT CHARACTER.
Eszterhas wrote — essentially — the same movie three times: Jagged Edge, The Music Box and Basic Instinct where the central question was this: Is s/he guilty or not? Basic Instinct trumped the other two primarily because of the Catherine Trammell character, a classic femme fatale.
And if you want to read a super effective first page of a script, go here to read my post on Basic Instinct. Try to imagine a script reader in 1990 not getting all hot and bothered by the story after reading that!
Femme fatales are compelling figures. Often they are the embodiment of a Trickster — sometimes an ally, sometimes an enemy — but finally reveal themselves to be a Nemesis. Also, too, we can think of them as a projection of the Protagonist’s shadow, particularly their most base needs as expressed sexually, lust as desire or want gone wild.
Thanks, Jason, for another excellent Great Character post. Please go to comments and provide your take on Catherine Trammel, femme fatale par excellence.