> In a 2014 interview on The Adam Carolla Show, the actor Michael Ironside, who read the novel as a youth, said that he asked Verhoeven, who grew up in the Germ

> In a 2014 interview on The Adam Carolla Show, the actor Michael Ironside, who read the novel as a youth, said that he asked Verhoeven, who grew up in the German-occupied Netherlands, "Why are you doing a right-wing fascist movie?" Verhoeven replied, "If I tell the world that a right-wing, fascist way of doing things doesn't work, no one will listen to me. So I'm going to make a perfect fascist world: everyone is beautiful, everything is shiny, everything has big guns and fancy ships but it's only good for killing fucking Bugs!"