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'How We Made Starship Troopers' (theguardian.com)
The Guardian quotes Paul Verhoeven, the director of Starship Troopers:
Robert Heinlein's original 1959 science-fiction novel was militaristic, if not fascistic. So I decided to make a movie about fascists who aren't aware of their fascism... I was looking for the prototype of blond, white and arrogant, and Casper Van Dien was so close to the images I remembered from Leni Riefenstahl's films. I borrowed from Triumph of the Will in the parody propaganda reel that opens the film, too. I was using Riefenstahl to point out, or so I thought, that these heroes and heroines were straight out of Nazi propaganda...
With a title like Starship Troopers, people were expecting a new Star Wars. They got that, but not really: it stuck in your throat. It said: "Here are your heroes and your heroines, but by the way -- they're fascists."
The actors weren't even clear on what the giant arachnids would look like, since their "Bug" battles were filmed entirely with green screens, remembers one of the movie's stars, Denise Richards. Instead Verhoeven "would be there jumping up and down with a broom in the air so we would have a sense of how big they were."
Verhoeven told one interviewer that he never actually read Robert Heinlein's original book. "I stopped after two chapters because it was so boring. It is really quite a bad book."
With a title like Starship Troopers, people were expecting a new Star Wars. They got that, but not really: it stuck in your throat. It said: "Here are your heroes and your heroines, but by the way -- they're fascists."
The actors weren't even clear on what the giant arachnids would look like, since their "Bug" battles were filmed entirely with green screens, remembers one of the movie's stars, Denise Richards. Instead Verhoeven "would be there jumping up and down with a broom in the air so we would have a sense of how big they were."
Verhoeven told one interviewer that he never actually read Robert Heinlein's original book. "I stopped after two chapters because it was so boring. It is really quite a bad book."
How did we make Starship Troopers?
Like a piece of shit.
What a team, back in the day. Ed Neumeier was also scripitwriter on the Verhoeven-directed RoboCop and a lot of the tone in both movies can be attributed to him. I can definitely feel the same style of humour in both movies.
Neumeier did not work on the RoboCop sequels, and I think a lot of that is why they were so different, without the same edge.
And now there are rumours that Neumeier would be working on a stand-alone sequel to the original RoboCop, based off an outline that he wrote decades ago. We'll see...
The Starship Troopers sequels weren't very good IMHO so I'm afraid that he could have lost it.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
A lot of conservative fuckwits love him. Not because he's any good, but that he wrote in fiction the most quoted for fact fiction line I see on Slashdot, "An armed society is a polite society." America proves him wrong.
The original article, as saved by the Internet Archive, had a slightly different subtitle:
‘I borrowed from the films of Leni Riefenstahl to show that these US soldiers were like something out of Nazi propaganda. I even put one in an SS uniform. But no one noticed’
(Emphasis added to highlight the text that was removed).
The current version has a note at the bottom saying:
The subheading of this article was amended on 23 January 2018 to remove a reference to US soldiers.
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
aixylinux opined:
It was a great book. Now I know why the movies stank.
I'm not sure I'd call it a "great" book. The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress is a great book. Starship Troopers is more good than great. I say that because it's far and away the most polemical of Heinlein's juvenile books, and polemics and juveniles make for an awkward mix.
Not coincidentally, it was the last book he ever offered Scribners & Sons. (After Scribner's rejected it on the grounds that its subject matter was "too controversial" and inappropriate for a juvenile audience, he terminated his til-then-exclusive relationship with S&S, directed his agent to seek another publisher for the book - which was quickly snapped up by Putnam's - and re-focused his writing on an adult marketplace. Stranger in a Strange Land and The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, as well as lesser works such as Farnham's Freehold and Glory Road, swiftly followed.)
I read every one of Heinlein's juveniles as a kid growing up in the 1950's and 60's, and I thought Starship Troopers was great stuff. But, even then, I realized that, although it was cast as a juvenile novel, it was a good deal more adult in both theme and tone than most of his other books aimed at "young adults" - although, admittedly, other juvenile works, such as Between Planets and Citizen of the Galaxy put their protagonists in fairly adult situations and were also discursive on political and social issues. But The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress achieved a whole new level of artistry for Heinlein from my perspective. A masterful blend of revolutionary theory, applied low-gravity physics, societal adaptation to significant, chronic male-female population imbalance, inherited physiological exile from mainstream society, and the high-stakes politics of resistance to colonialism (along with a mickle bit of romance and the first fictional depiction of a superintelligent AI from a sympathetic perspective), it utterly captivated me as a teenager, when I first read it in serial form in Galaxy Magazine. I still consider it Heinlein's best novel, and I've read 'em all - including his blecherous first effort For Us, the Living and his posthumous juvenile "collaboration" with Spider Robinson, Variable Star.
FWIW, my second favorite Heinlein novel is Double Star, which also (and deservedly) won him his first Hugo ...
Check out my novel.
"he never actually read Robert Heinlein's original book" well not that shocked.
Verhoeven had an agenda and searched for a vehicle to present that agenda it just so happened the name of the book seemed a good vehicle for him.
From wiki: "Ken Macleod argues that the book does not actually advocate fascism because anybody capable of understanding the oath of Federal Service is able to enlist and thereby obtain political power. Macleod states that Heinlein's books are consistently liberal, but cover a spectrum from democratic to elitist forms of liberalism, Starship Troopers being on the latter end of the spectrum. It has been argued that Heinlein's militarism is more libertarian than fascist, and that this trend is also present in Heinlein's other popular books of the period, such as Stranger in a Strange Land (1961) and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (1966)."
*** Spoler Alert *** Verhoeven also injects racism where there is none, again part of his agenda that has nothing to do with the actual book. John Rico, aka Juan Rico, is not white, not an "aryan", he is of Philippine descent if I remember correct. He is obviously portrayed as Hispanic on the book cover in pre-movie printings.
Really THAT's the 'most quoted Heinlein line'? I highly doubt it....here let me give you some help:
TANSTAAFL
TANSTAAFL
TANSTAAFL
TANSTAAFL
O in full...There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
Or better yet...how about 'grok'. Not a line, but likely the most used term from any of his novel's. Of course people who use it probably have NO idea where it came from.
Heinlein should be liberal's or "progressives" wet dream. Stranger in a Strange land alone delves in to 'acceptance of diversity' to a far deeper level then anyone actually in society today. For crying out loud, that book promotes sex between consenting adults regardless of sex, color, etc.
I don't recall which book it was, maybe The Cat Who Walked Through Walls or maybe Tuesday, but he introduced UBI in a LIBERTARIAN society. Not a deep theme in the book in so much as it was 'incidental'/background to the society in the book though it was important (the book itself in terms of the driving theme for the protagonists isn't one of my favorites by far, Heinlein was human not a god, not everything he wrote was good).
Of course the reason liberals and 'progressives' hate him is that his most common underlying theme is that you are responsible for your own fucking life & don't go crying to others because you're different or can't handle 'reality'.
Since you are unlikely to be able to distinguish between 'libertarian' & 'conservative' however it's no wonder you didn't like his writing or attribute a group's ('conservatives') "love" of him incorrectly. Go back to your tidy little 'safe space' where mommy & daddy take care of all your worries.
But TANSTAAFL isn't his. It was in use decades before he used it in The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress.
Answering a response made things a little clearer ...
In Heinlein's Starship Trooper universe voting is an "earned" right, not a "birth" right. It is earned by volunteering and completing service that is hazardous, military or construction. Anyone may serve and ultimately attain the right to vote, accommodations are made for those with disabilities so that they may serve. The only obstacle to service is volunteering. The core idea is that through service you risked your life for others, this "earns" you the right to vote.
Once honorably discharged from service a person now has the right to vote. They are free to vote in any manner they chose. The government will follow the majority of the voters. There is no fascist dictate from government. The enfranchised elite have "earned" the right to believe whatever they chose to in a political power sense, their majority has "earned" the right to direct the government. The voters are in control.