Tales of a 'Hollywood Animal'
Joe Eszterhas names names, cuts loose in new book
By Paul Clinton
CNN
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Joe Eszterhas
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LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- At one time not so long ago, Joe Eszterhas was the highest-paid screenwriter in Hollywood -- and the most controversial. The former Rolling Stone magazine writer -- part of that periodical's early-'70s writers' Golden Age -- wrote "Music Box," "Basic Instinct" and "Showgirls."
He was known for battling agents, directors and colleagues -- sometimes all at once.
But Eszterhas has changed. Now living back in his home state of Ohio, he has a new book out, a memoir called "Hollywood Animal" (Knopf). In the book, he discusses his Hollywood experience with a cutting ferocity, but also his life growing up in Cleveland, his throat cancer (he's now a leading anti-smoking crusader) and his family.
Paul Clinton talked to Eszterhas about his book.
Q. What is it about Hollywood that sucks people in?
ESZTERHAS: Everyone wants to have something to do with show business -- even the mayor of Los Angeles.
I describe a scene in the book where [former] Mayor [Richard] Riordan is at a outdoor party, and he's invited a producer that he knows, and the producer thinks that he's perhaps gonna be named to some kind of an art commission or something to do with the mayor's office. And Mayor Riordan pulls him aside at the party and says and pitches him a story. Here he is, the mayor of one of the great cities of the United States, and what is he doing, he's pitching a screenplay. It sort of illustrates the point that there's some kind of a vortex here that seems to draw people into show business.
Q. And does anyone in this town tell the truth?
ESZTERHAS: Of course they do, I think there are a lot of good people in this town. I don't agree with saying that this book trashes Hollywood. I think I describe the good people, the bad people, and the people in between, which means most of us.
There have been terrific people that I've run into: Irwin Winkler, the producer, he and I worked on two movies and the man really cares -- he believes in the good things that I think we all believe in and he's willing to put the work in for it by being on the set from 7 in the morning to 7 o'clock at night.
[And] I describe an incident with Ray Stark in this book where I I've gotten into a gigantic battle with the agent Michael Ovitz. I barely know Ray, I've shaken his hand, and suddenly Ray sends my agent a check for 2 million dollars, because he's read that I can't afford -- because of the battle with Ovitz -- to buy the new house that I want to buy. Of course I didn't take the money, and then Ray said, "Well, you really should."
Q. You were attacked for both "Showgirls" and "Jade" ...
ESZTERHAS: Yes.
Q. ...and you wrote a big response. But you don't mention that those screenplays were butchered by the directors and the studios, and so you were being accused of those things for scripts that weren't yours anymore.
ESZTERHAS: That's certainly true with "Jade," not with "Showgirls." I mean, "Showgirls" was pretty much the script with a few scenes left out.
With "Jade," that's very true, [but] I've never believed in publicly pointing the finger and saying I didn't do it, he did it. Most screenwriters in Hollywood are always telling victim stories and he did this to me, he did this to me, and it was my script it was terrific, and he ruined it. I haven't done that in nearly 30 years of screenwriting.
Q. You name names: Sharon Stone, Sylvester Stallone ... are you ever going to eat lunch in this town again?
ESZTERHAS: I will. I will if I wanted to get the best table at Spago. Wolfgang [Puck, Spago's owner] has always taken great care of me.
Q. How difficult was it to write about your father? The whole "Music Box" situation was spooky. [Eszterhas wrote the movie "Music Box," about a man with a Nazi past, before he found out his own immigrant father had a relationship with the Nazi government.]
ESZTERHAS: It was spooky.
What happened was that my father was a Hungarian editor and novelist. [He] was the great inspirational figure in my life, he was the one who convinced me to study and to read, it was his influence that took me off the streets where I would have gotten into some serious trouble sooner or later. It was also my father who gave me my values; who said, don't ever judge a man on the basis of his skin color or his religion or his sexual inclination, always judge people on character.
Therefore, in 1990, when I discovered that the Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations had been conducting an investigation of him for alleged war crimes in Hungary in the '30s and '40s, I was at first in shock and then devastated. My father, I discovered, lied and lied until he said he couldn't remember. And the OSI did indeed have the evidence that implicated him in both scurrilous and anti-Semitic propaganda.
As a result was that I was torn between loving this man who had been the greatest influence in my life, and loathing him for the things he had done. And we never really did work our relationship out while he was alive. My dad died in 2001 just about the time I had my throat surgery.
In the course of writing this book, I think I finally resolved it. I came to catharsis and I was able to forgive him. There was a moment in the cemetery two years after my surgery where I thought to myself, yes, I love you papa. And I forgive you, I think.
Q. What are you working on now?
ESZTERHAS: I haven't written a script in seven or eight years. I've written two books back to back [and] I'm writing a novel for Knopf.
The other thing I've been doing, frankly ... is I put a lot of time into my recovery and I'm spending more time with my children and my wife than I ever did before. I've learned a lot in the course of three years and in the course of my cancer experience and in the course of breaking two very serious addictions, and I view life differently and spend much of my time doing different things than I did before.
