Auteurist Updates

Paul Verhoeven gives exceptionally good audio commentary, especially on the Kino Lorber Blu-ray of (1980), a powerful feature about teenage motocross racers in a small Dutch town that I’ve just seen for the first time. Speaking in English, Verhoeven tells us a good deal about Dutch culture and life at the time his film was made; his own ideological motivations (such as his desire to depict accurately the behaviour of his young working-class characters) and personal contributions to the script (especially, but not exclusively, those relating to his early involvement with Pentecostal Christianity); his literary influences (in particular, the role played by Céline in conceptualizing the final sequence) and his strategies as a director (including the use of his own dog, who also turns up in [1983]); his relations with his producer, his locations in and around Rotterdam, his cast and how he directed them; the differences between shooting in Holland and shooting in the US; the filming of stunts; his tricky dealings with Dutch government representatives to avoid censorship (which involved lying and subterfuge); the film’s disastrous initial critical reception, which had a lot to do with Verhoeven subsequently moving to Hollywood; and a great deal more. (There’s even a lot of detail about how he filmed erections.) He doesn’t ever get around to explaining the meaning of the film’s title (which, according to Google Translate, is the Dutch word for “splashes”), but given the wealth of what he has to offer, it’s an excusable omission. In short, Verhoeven offers just about everything one might want from an audio commentary, including an acute critical appreciation of