This Is Why Bart Simpson Has a Cameo in ‘Basic Instinct’
Apart from The Simpsons Movie, Bart Simpson really isn’t in any other feature films. That being said, thanks to the show’s Spaceballs-esque penchant for excessive merchandising, Bart’s image has shown up in a few non-Simpson movies, such as 1991’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze, which included a prominently placed Bart Simpson-branded glass.
But while Ninja Turtles II was a family film, a far more unexpected pseudo-cameo from Bart occurred in a movie released the following year: the blockbuster erotic thriller Basic Instinct, which featured Sharon Stone, Michael Douglas and, if you saw it in a theater in the ‘90s, hundreds of horny moviegoers.
The film concerns a homicide detective (Douglas) investigating a series of ice pick murders seemingly committed by a famous author (Stone). Oddly, the police psychologist who’s having an affair with Douglas, Dr. Beth Garner (played by Jeanne Tripplehorn) keeps her keys on a Bart Simpson keychain, which isn’t exactly the sexiest keychain that the production could have selected, to be honest.
Why include a prop shaped like America’s favorite cartoon troublemaker in this otherwise 100 percent adult thriller? Well, Alan Siegel, author of the upcoming book Stupid TV, Be More Funny: How the Golden Era of The Simpsons Changed Television-and America-Forever got to the bottom of this pop-culture mystery.
As he recently revealed on social media, Siegel actually spoke to director Paul Verhoeven, the filmmaker behind classics such as RoboCop, Total Recall and Showgirls. According to Verhoeven, he never actually intended to include a shout-out to The Simpsons in Basic Instinct. In fact, he’d never even seen a single episode of the show. “In my storyboard I had drawn a close-up keychain coming out of Beth’s pocket,” the director explained. “And among these keys was a finger-long little puppet — also hanging on the keychain ring. As my storyboards were often used by the crew to find out what I had in mind, the prop master might have, seeing my drawing, (put) a Simpsons character in there.”
Verhoeven added that he never looked “at The Simpsons and was only five years in the USA.”
There you have it, Verhoeven’s storyboards, for some inexplicable reason, featured a finger puppet on Beth’s keychain, which the crew then interpreted to be Bart Simpson. Incidentally, just three years after the release of Basic Instinct, the show returned the referential favor. In “Who Shot Mr. Burns? Part Two?” a kilt-wearing Groundskeeper Willie recreates Stone’s famous interrogation scene.
Sadly, they didn’t include any scenes in which Bart owns a Jeanne Tripplehorn keychain.
