'Showgirls': it's so bad, it's brilliant

It took a long time coming, but there may finally be a 1990s version of the Rocky Horror Picture Show; a movie, if you like, to carry the kitsch and vulgar flame handed down by two decades worth of popcorn-toting weirdos. Rocky Horror, a musical stinker and a total flop when released in 1975, has gone on to gross more than US$100 million (HK$773 million), with its Saturday-night cult status keeping the film running at more than 60 cinemas across the United States. Its audiences, ranging from bored college kids to drag queens, are united in one respect: their penchant for a bad script in bad taste. So, in 1996, what does a major film studio do with an even worse turkey that cost US$40 million to make and, hit by unanimous disapproval from critics, took in only half that at the box office? Ladies and gentlemen, sophomores, drag queens, late-show addicts everywhere - put your hands together for Showgirls. Some bright spark at United Artists decided not to let last year's horrible flick about the silicone set of Las Vegas gather dust in the bargain bins in video stores. After Showgirls, directed by Basic Instinct's Paul Verhoeven and starring Elizabeth Berkley, won worst film award (and a lot more) at the annual Golden Raspberry Awards, and critics referred to it disparagingly as a 'camp classic', the studio reckoned it was on to a sub-culture money-earner. In a masterpiece of post-Rocky Horror marketing, it put the movie on for midnight showings in trendy New York and Los Angeles theatres, hired MCs in drag to introduce the film, and placed advertisements in local newspapers designed to attract the right kind of crowd - exploiting the bad reviews ('A rich sleazy kitsch-fest' - Boston Globe ) for the best effect possible. Of course, the audience is encouraged to get into the action as much as possible, enriching the cardboard dialogue with shouted smart-alec one-liners. For all its efforts, the studio must wish American audiences were more like those in Hong Kong, where people flock to see bad films without having to be asked. Taxpayer rebellion - combined with hatred of federal government and all that kind of stuff - is not only big in the wild and wacky wildernesses like Montana. One California resident recently had his own unique reasons for telling the taxman where to get off. When told he owed US$150,000 in back taxes, Don Rogers of Tehachapi said he was exempted as a 'non-residential alien' under the 14th amendment to the constitution. Rogers claimed that the amendment, passed in 1868 following the Civil War to grant US citizenship to former slaves, also had the effect of freeing white men like him from the obligation to pay taxes to the government. Some were appalled at the kind of right-wing guff Rogers was spouting in a bid to evade his civic responsibility. 'It sounds just like what the Freemen up in Montana are saying,' said the leader of the California State Senate. And there's no doubt that Rogers would have heard that criticism, since he himself is a member of the State Senate. It's official: the land of the skyscraper is no longer the land of the skyscraper - and it's hard to take. The nation's morale was badly dented last week when the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, self-styled arbiters of the biggest and tallest, decreed that Chicago's Sears Tower no longer classified as the world's tallest building; that honour will now go to the twin Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. First came the dispute over a spire on top of the Malaysian edifice that led to complaints from the Chicago camp supporters. Many business groups had lobbied the council not to change the rankings - to no avail. 'It looks taller, it feels taller, it is taller,' whinged one Windy City executive of the Sears Tower. But the ruling has wider ramifications for America's self-respect. Gone are the days when the skyscraper was invented and monopolised by America as a shining symbol of its corporate might. The baton was handed down from generation to generation: the Empire State Building giving way to the World Trade Centre, which in turn gave way to Sears Tower. And now East Asia is home not only to the biggest building, but also to the economic growth it symbolises. The US is no longer building such towers. Even worse, the next time the tallest building title changes hands, it will be to China, which is constructing the heir apparent in Shanghai. But there is a silver lining: when the Asian upstarts need someone to teach them how to build big, to whom do they turn? Why, to American architects, of course - in each and every case.