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The Humiliation, Harassment and Menachem Golan: Do Not Miss Sharon Stone's Autobiography

Beyond the sensational headlines that came out of it, in Sharon Stone's autobiographical book one can find very much: not only intimate and revealing confessions, but also social statements, human diagnoses and Buddhist wisdom of life, and even an Israeli point.

Only one thing is missing in it

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• Sharon Stone

Avner Shavit

Monday, 05 April 2021, 05:02 Updated: 12:40

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Sharon Stone was first born in 1958, and has been reborn numerous times since.

She called her new and talked about autobiography "The Beauty of Living Twice," but you could also call it "A Cat with Nine Souls."

Since her birth, death has lurked in every corner: her uncle has died tragically, and her best friend in high school has passed away in even more tragic circumstances.

She herself, however, ended her encounters with the angel of death with her hand on the top.

Once she was rescued by a terrorist who cut her neck, once she overcame a lightning strike, and once she miraculously succeeded in a stroke.

It all went through her, and she survived to tell.

Stone does this with great talent.

The world first knew her as a film actress, then also stood out as a presenter of leading fashion brands, and eventually reinvented herself as a social activist, before returning to cultivate a acting career - she was recently seen in the series "Ratched" on Netflix.

Here, she also turns out to be a gifted writer.

Her writing is personal and revealing.

As people like to write in newspaper headlines, Stone "talks about everything": about the deplorable conditions of poverty in which she grew up in Pennsylvania;

About the mother who did not know how to return her love;

For incest in her family;

For the tragedies that were a smooth dish;

About the schoolgirls who boycotted her, laughed at her and gossiped about her, especially after she became famous;

About the child they took from her and those she adopted;

And on the long line of humiliations and harassment it has endured in the industry.

Yet, and behind all the yellow quotes that the various sites (and I of course) knew and will know to derive from the autobiography, this book has much more than intimate confessions and sensations.

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Mom, Stone.

Sharon Stone in "Rached" (Photo: Saeed Adyani / Netflix)

Stone at her best as she provides with her wisdom and wit more universal diagnoses.

For example, when she talks about the built-in paradox between the rigid and military nature of cinematic productions and the liberated nature of actors and actresses, calling them "an army of hippies";

Or when she writes that the education system did not expect women, certainly not pretty-looking blondes like her, to show wisdom, and used to despise her as a high schooler precisely because she excelled - "I got into trouble because I did this not-so-feminine thing - to think."

She also has self-humor.

When she learned she had suffered brain damage, she says, her response was - "Oh well, the perfect punch line: now I'm a tall blonde with big boobs, long legs and brain damage. Funny."

But Stone leaves her sense of humor aside when required for the MeToo issue.

The actress intentionally does not write too much about it, intentionally saves a lot of information for the last episodes and intentionally saves a lot of the names in the system, because she knows what the media wants and why - she has no doubt, and it is often implied here, that the media interest in these stories , Not out of some feminist awareness of the editors.

As a woman who began her career in Hollywood in the 1980s, Stone testifies that she experienced her little flesh incessantly.

They did not listen to her, even and especially when she was right.

When she insisted on giving a role in "The Fast and the Dead" to a young and anonymous actor named Leonardo da Caprio, the producers reacted with contempt and said that if she wanted him so much, that she would pay him herself - she did, and the rest is history.

In this context, it is almost needless to say that most of the time, her salary was much lower than that of her colleagues, and when she starred in "Basic Instinct" alongside Michael Douglas, and her character was much stronger and dominant, it was his name that starred in the poster.

(Photo: Giphy)

Because she was a woman, she says, she thought there was no weight.

Studio managers and producers gave her the feeling that at best she was in filming only on the standard of a sex symbol, and at worst - that she was air, a disposable tool that could easily be replaced by a less forced good actress.

In most cases, Stone does not mention explicit names - one can only guess, for example, who is the director who encouraged her to have sex with the actor in front of her to improve the chemistry between them, and of course he refused.

One name is clearly stated: Paul Verhoeven, the Dutch director who gave her the groundbreaking roles in "Fateful Memory" and "Basic Instinct", and who is considered by many and many, also by me, not only as a brilliant master, but also as a creator of feminist and empowering films that preceded the discourse .

Here, disappointingly, he is portrayed in a slightly different way - as the one who gave her the important ones in her roles, but also as the one who belittled her, insisted on calling her "Karen" even though he knew her real name and generally did not respect her.

Worst of all, he manipulated her into exposing her pubic area to the whole world with a "basic instinct," though he assured her that the audience would see nothing;

And if that wasn't enough, she discovered the deception only at a pre-premiere screening of the film, surrounded by a host of foreign men licking their lips.

Verhoeven has so far expressed no remorse, but I express my own sorrow: At the beginning of the previous decade, when the film celebrated some anniversary, I published an article about this famous scene, which treated it as nothing more than an amusing curiosity;

Subject to gestures (including an advertisement with Millie Avital) and parodies.

We did not know, nor did we try to know, what the truth behind it was, and the reality as usual is much more complex.

Sharon Stone with Michael Douglas in "Basic Instinct" (Photo: GettyImages)

Stone's way of thinking is also complex, and so is the book.

Maybe there were those who expected her to join the automatic and convenient cancellation culture that is so popular today, and to call for the genizah or exclusion of a "basic instinct," but she refuses to do so.

The actress is proud of the film as a whole, and recognizes the importance it has for discussion and gender representation in Hollywood cinema - and rightly so, if I may.

"I could have demanded to cut the scene from the film, but I didn't want to," she admits.

"Why? Because it suited the film and the character and because after all, I filmed it."

The actress then says that when "Basic Instinct" was released, she rented a limousine and wandered around the cinemas in New York, where the audience watched this huge hit while cheering for her character.

Anyone who has watched the blockbuster thriller understands why;

And those who have not yet done so - will search for it on Netflix.

Today it has only improved and become even more exemplary and relevant.

This is also an opportunity to note, for those who do not remember - "Basic Instinct" was one of the great hits of the nineties, and Stone was one of the great stars of the period.

For nineties kids like me, she's one of the first Hollywood actresses to know.

This is also why her book is resonating so much right now, even though her career has long since not peaked.

Stone also refers to the cinematic moments of depression, one of which leads to the Israeli point.

In the mid-1980s, when she was still anonymous, she collaborated with the Canon Company of Menachem Golan and Yoram Globus, in the films "King Solomon's Mines" and "Alan Quartermine and the Lost Golden City."

A cat with nine souls.

Sharon Stone Nowadays (Photo: GettyImages)

Stone does not mention Golan and Globus by name, nor can Canon, and only defines it as "a company that would make movies for pennies."

The filming took place in Zimbabwe during apartheid, which did not bother Israeli producers, as well as some other filmmakers from our country at the time, nor official government institutions.

The conditions were appalling, and the actress was exposed to the AIDS epidemic and the names she is causing in Africa, and became a vigorous activist on the subject - so this negligible production eventually changed her life.

There have been innumerable more upheavals in this life, and it is too short to list them here.

It is only said that whoever comes for the yellow trail only, will have to look for it among quite a few psychological diagnoses, social statements and Buddhist wisdom of life.

Those looking for a behind-the-scenes glimpse of specific cinematic productions will be sorry to hear that Stone skimpes on that as well - few of her films at all are mentioned here in their full name.

"Basic Instinct" and "Casino" star, of course, and also the fresh "Laundromat" thanks to which it got to work with Meryl Streep, but "Sliver" and "Broken Flowers," for example, are not mentioned, but the book certainly makes up for it.

This is a fairly short book, about 250 pages.

It is not wise to read it in one breath, and so I did, both in its overall length and also because it is fluent and interesting.

For me, he turned Stone into a beloved actress I knew nothing about, an esteemed and fascinating woman.

Sharon Stone's autobiography cover (Photo: screenshot, screenshot from Amazon)

Still, a word of criticism: More than once, Stone treats herself as a saint, and as the only decent woman around.

Her self-esteem is sometimes exaggerated, and it is also impossible not to ask: in the end, she is a white woman, who at one point also became a privilege;

Has it always been part of the solution, and never part of the problem?

This time, Stone does not really answer the question, but given her writing talent and the resonance the book has gained, there is little doubt that she will write more books, and perhaps there will be answers to that as well.

* "The Beauty of Living Twice" was published by Knopf in the United States.

It is not clear when, if at all, it will be translated into Hebrew.

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