How Basic Instinct's Sex Scene Left Cannes Film Festival Attendees Overwhelmed

Apparently, the torrid sex scene featuring Michael Douglas and Sharon Stone in the classic erotic crime thriller "Basic Instinct" was too much for its audiences to absorb when the film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 1992. Directed by Paul Verhoeven, the movie stars Douglas as San Francisco Detective Nick Curran, who is trying to solve the murder of a retired rock star who was violently stabbed to death with an ice pick. The chief suspect in the case is Catherine Tramell, a best-selling book author whose hit novel hauntingly mirrors the events of the murder.

"Basic Instinct" has three major sex scenes: The first at the beginning of the film, which conceals the identity of the murderer, while the second and third definitively involve Catherine and Nick. The second is the sex scene to end all sex scenes, which Douglas claimed stunned Cannes audiences into silence.

Recalling the film's 1992 Cannes premiere as he accepted an honorary Palme d'Or at the festival in May 2023, Douglas said in a press conference that the showcase sex scene in "Basic Instinct" was unique, even by French standards (via Entertainment Weekly). "And seeing that sex scene on the Palais Festival's huge screen, the biggest screen I've ever seen, was a little overwhelming, I think, for a lot of people. We had a very quiet dinner afterwards," Douglas said. "Everybody was just sort of digesting it, but it was a lot of fun."

The linchpin that holds "Basic Instinct" together, of course, is the unnervingly realistic sex scene midway through the film, when Catherine Tramell ties Nick Curran's wrists to the best post in the same manner the undisclosed killer does in the opening scene before she stabs her victim to death. Catherine doesn't stab Nick, but the scene provides a piece of concrete evidence for the audience that she could indeed be the killer.

Written by Joe Eszterhas, "Basic Instinct" looked great to Michael Douglas on paper, but he and director Paul Verhoeven found out that getting a female actor to sign the dotted line to play Catherine was going to be difficult because of the film's explicit nudity and sex scenes. Thankfully for the production, Stone was willing to go the distance. "We wanted to hit something, and we had a good script, and we had a fabulous actress in Sharon. She was just perfect for the role," Douglas recalled at the 2023 Cannes press conference. "Again, it was very funny. We were auditioning, trying to find the right actress for the part, and Paul knew there was going to be a lot of active sex — there is in a lot of his films. So when he would meet these actresses, he would always preface it by saying, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah. But there'll be nudity. Yeah, nudity ... Lots of nudity.' I said, 'Paul, you don't have to say that.'"

But Verhoeven did keep saying that, Douglas remembered, adding, "So we kept getting turned down by actresses!"