Articles & Interviews > Verhoeven present at discussion in Amsterdam

January 5th 2004

Tonight Paul Verhoeven was present at a special premiere at the Filmmuseum Cinerama in Amsterdam, followed by a short discussion session. The discussion itself had little, if not nothing to do with his oeuvre or movies. The subject was derived from the topic of a short documentary called 'Bigger than James Dean'. It describes a fragment in the life of the Dutch young man Christiaan trying to pursue his dream of becoming an actor in Hollywood. After the showing of the documentary, Paul Verhoeven, Job Gosschalk, Frank Krom, Johanna ter Steege, Antonie Kamerling and Halina Reijn, all 'Dutch People from the Business', sat in to discuss this topic. So to be clear about it: Paul Verhoeven was present, but it was not hís evening, although of course he drew most of the attention.

At first Verhoeven seemed bored, could be that he was listening, could be that he didn't want to lead the focus off the director of the documentary, Frank Krom. But we both noticed it clearly; he was low-key. Johanna Ter Steege had a particularly funny and fascinating anekdote about Stanley Kubrick and the way decisions are made in Hollywood, but Verhoeven didn't really step in to reveal any exciting additional information.

Basically it was short and sweet. Short as in actually short (the movie lasted 50 minutes, the discussion about half an hour), sweet as in 'we finally got to meet and greet Paul Verhoeven!'.

Latti and wasta

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