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Joe Eszterhas—who at the peak of his powers in the 1990s single-handedly overturned the image of the meek Hollywood scribe by earning millions for his uncompromising tales of beaver-flashing, psychosexual intrigue—has finally addressed the film that many finger as his undoing. Showgirls was meant to be a titillating, sensational look at the cutthroat world of Las Vegas entertainment; instead, it ended up being one of the most unintentionally hilarious movies of all time, thanks in no small part to Eszterhas' powerful dramatic choices, such as the scene in which Nomi and Cristal discover they are united by their Doggy Chow-eating pasts. According to New York magazine, however, Eszterhas claims to have been in on the joke all along:

"It's a movie that I wish I'd have written differently, and I wish would have been cast differently." Still, he adds, "I never agreed with the notion that this movie was accidentally funny. I think it defies the imagination to think that a line like 'How does it feel not to have anybody comin' on you anymore?' isn't purposely funny. If you have a character named Henrietta Bazoom walking around poppin' her tits out every 30 seconds, that's a darkly humorous moment." To that end, he's planning a musical, with help from the producers of Urinetown, that "celebrates the over-the-top and campy nature of the piece." Naturally, it's to open in Las Vegas.

Unlike so many Hollywood properties that fail to make the successful leap to the live stage, Showgirls: The Musical sounds extremely promising. Should the material find its way into the hands of a theatrical visionary such as Julie Taymor, visitors to The Strip might soon find themselves thrilling to a spectacular interpretation in which a parade of whore-puppets on stilts is only outdone by an Esther Williams-style number in which 25 bathing beauties have synchronized epileptic seizures while mounted on a chorus line of Kyle MacLachlan-lookalikes.