“I can’t believe I will be able to forgive him one day”: This great film has crushed the old friendship between Paul Verhoven and his beloved actor

The first film to be filmed in English and co-financed by the American-Nereland-Spanish, meat and blood is a major work called “Medieval Realistic”. For Paul Verhoven, this film was a kind of answer / reaction to the idealized middle age or in any case, on the screen previously romantic.

He wanted an era when the brutality of struggle, illness, and poverty was much more often than not men than natural deaths, which was very rare. It was a period of time for him “Cruel, shameless, dangerous and infectious era”.

In the 16th century, in 1501, precisely, Paul Verhoven’s film established a group of mercenaries who, as injured by the Lord, given the removal and violated his son’s promise before sowing terror in his fortress …

From a historical point of view, flesh and blood show unregulated practices, which we call large companies that have assimilated the war with the most offering. These large companies consisted of employees who had been removed from the peacekeepers, gathered in gangs and lived to the detriment of the population, which had been terribly weakened by war, hunger and diseases.

“Required Compromise”

After years of battle, to get subsidies from the Dutch state that wants to produce less controversial films, Paul Verhoven was looking for money elsewhere for his next project, which will therefore be flesh and blood.

At that time, in 1985, the filmmaker wanted to make an American -funded film and was designed for the American market without settling in America. After gaining most of the $ 7 million budget from the Hollywood studio, which will be pictured in Orion, and the opportunity to film in Europe (in Spain), the film’s adventure continued on good rails. But with his own assumptions, the film has almost become “Private Waterloo”…

International CO-production obligations, everyone has sought to impose their ideas, technicians and actors. For example, the pictures of Orion, who have imposed a love story that is likely to seduce the American community, amid the main confrontation of the film. Verhoeven has accepted these changes as “Required Compromise” With its investors.

But he will regret it later: “Posteriori, I will never compromise on the main lines of the script. In the case of meat and blood, so all the problems began” Said he quotes in the book Paul Verheven, life as a film director. *(1)

In addition to very capricious or even frankly awful weather nights, even when the thermometer goes – at 20 ° C, the international team is taken by a heterogeneous director to Verhoven’s nightmare, between Dutch, American, British and Australian actors, and not very cooperative Spanish technicians. Without counting casting and drug abuse … shooting became so chaotic that Verhoven was convinced that he would send the studio.

“It was the most unpleasant movie of my career”

At the head of Merekenari Group: His favorite actor Rutger Hower, with whom he will still maintain the worst relationship during the shooting; He who saw him as his alter ego. In the quarrel: the actor who made his debut in the United States (he shot in 1982 in the Blade Runner, along with Sam Pekingpa on the weekend of Osterman, and in 1985 in the excellent Ladyhawk), who believed his role to be rape and rape.

“Under the pressure of his agent, he agreed to make a movie, but he didn’t want to do it. The director will say later.

Although he was accepting the judgment of Verhoven at all times, Rutger Hower was now weighed on the pros and cons of each offer made by the filmmaker. When Verhoeven and Hower talked about the team, he was always hostile. And in English, because the rest of the team pointed out that he did not appreciate that they would settle their accounts in Dutch …

Jan de Bont, Future Director of Speed and Photography Director Meat and Blood, so summarizes the tension between the two: “It was a terrible divorce, with the doors that criticize. And these two will never be reconciled.”

“I don’t think I can forgive him one day”

The actress performed Estocad even before the movie was released. On December 22, 1984, the newspaper The Hague Post Shows soon after the interview was shot, in which Rutger Hower did not put his words: “If you want to have good contact with the actor, you have to devote time to him. What Paul does not do. When preparing meat and blood he has gone through my request.

What he does is my influence and my personality for his dirt. These are really two -dimensional. Kiss, drink beer and kiss. That’s it. Nothing else is happening. In none of his films. If The choice of destiny By taking this level, we can say that thank you. “

A few months later, Daily published new comments on the actor during a new interview. Rutger Hower then tried to soften the roughness of his initial notes, anger slightly fell:

“There is no doubt that we could never understand. But what is on screen still testifies the Alliance between Paul Verhoven and Rutger Hower. Paul means a lot to my career. I have always had a love hate with him.

It is not enough to insult Verhoven after his actor’s first torpedo: “I realize it wasn’t done. It was a betrayal of her. Both, in fact, never worked.

“My work causes too many negative reactions”

The meat and blood marked the onset of strained relationships between the filmmaker and the MPAA in the United States of the classification body. The first assembly will strike X classification, which is mandatory to review its copy of classification R. He discovers that American censorship causes more sexual scenes than violence. In France and elsewhere, the film is used in its full assembly.

Unfortunately, in the United States there was a terrible commercial failure, with a humiliated recipe almost $ 100,000. In France, he caught only 336,000 spectators; Far from his 529,000 access in 1973.

One of the teachings that Verhoven out of this painful experience is that he could not lead an American career while far from Hollywood. When he is at the airport in Los Angeles, his farewell words are removed by a television group who ironically passes the documentary about the future of the Dutch cinema.

“Currently, my work causes a lot of negative reactions in the Netherlands. We lose a lot of time and energy to make the cinema sacrifice to the moralization of all commission’s prejudices, which to portray its money in this country.” He convinced him.

In the interview he transferred to the Guardian in July 2000, Paul Verhoeven will explain the following items: “One of the reasons why I left the country is that the subsidy committee did not want my funding because I was some obscene, perverse and decadent.

Hardly staged, flesh and blood are the film, as we do more, and who also revealed a promising actor who plays one of the roles, Tom Burlinson, who depicts the son of the Lord, who wants to win his castle and his promise. The actor who has since, unfortunately, has almost disappeared from circulation …

*(1) Paul Verhoven: Life as a film director, Van Sherer Robbie, published in The Fildes de Vulcain in June 2025.