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ITN Source
NETHERLANDS: Dutch film director, Paul Verhoeven returns to the Netherlands to shoot his latest film, a WW2 thriller, "Black Book"
NETHERLANDS: Dutch film director, Paul Verhoeven returns to the Netherlands to shoot his latest film, a WW2 thriller, "Black Book"
After thirty years in Hollywood, Dutch film director Paul Verhoeven returns to the Netherlands to shoot his new WW2 thriller, Zwartboek (Black Book) on a 16 million Euro budget. Mr. Verhoeven decided to shoot in Europe because he wants his characters to be more realistic and gray, instead of black and white, like in Hollywood movies. "That's one of the main reasons to step back for a moment, I must stay, out of Hollywood, where everybody has more inclination to separate heroes from the villains. You know, that's the political situation. The Bush government does that and everybody does it and follows, while in the reality of life, my opinion is there are only grey people, dark gray and slightly gray. There are no white knights and black, black, black men. That doesn't exist in my opinion. So this is much more real and after doing 30 years of Hollywood movies I felt compelled to do something a bit more realistic again". Paul Verhoeven (born 1938 in Amsterdam) became famous with his movie "Turkish Delight"(1973), shot in the Netherlands (and got an Oscar for the foreign film). In early eighties, he moved to Hollywood. His box-office carrier started with "RoboCop"(1987), continued with "Total Recall"(1990) and "Basic Instinct"(1992). He is also responsible for taking Rutger Hauer (Bladerunner, The Hichhiker) with him from The Netherlands and making him an international star. Similarly, Sharon Stone was barely known before Total Recall, and went straight to stardom after Basic Instinct. "Black Book" is a story of a Jewish German girl who narrowly survives the war in Holland. She joins the resistance to find out who betrayed her family after all of them were killed in an attempt to reach the liberated south. His next movie will be "Beast of Baataan" - a chronicle of a Japanese general's war crimes trial related to the Bataan death march endured by American and Filipino prisoners of war in 1942 in the Philippines. FILM DIRECTORS
ITN Source | September 22, 2005
