Joe Eszterhas

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Josef Eszterhas (born November 23, 1944 in Csakanydoroszlo, Hungary) is a controversial Hungarian-American screenwriter best known for his work on the films Basic Instinct and Showgirls. He has also written an autobiography called Hollywood Animal.

1 Life
2 Early forays in journalism
3 Screenwriting and fame
4 External links

[edit] Life

Eszterhas was born in Hungary and raised as a young child in a refugee camp in Austria. Eventually his parents moved to New York City, and then to poor immigrant neighborhoods in Cleveland, where he spent most of his childhood.

His mother had a mental illness which estranged her from the family while he was entering adolescence. His father, Istvan Eszterhas, was a Roman Catholic newspaper editor and author, and was later revealed to have worked for the pro-Nazi Hungarian government by writing anti-Semitic literature. He did not face deportation, however.

Eszterhas attended Ohio University, but did not graduate. He became a National Book Award nominee for his nonfiction work Charlie Simpson's Apocalypse in 1974.

In the late 1990s, Eszterhas gave up the Hollywood lifestyle, and moved back to Cleveland with his wife and four children (two other children with a previous wife were grown).

He is currently recovering from throat cancer after having been a heavy smoker. Four-fifths of his esophagus was removed due to the cancer and he has trouble talking and swallowing. He has since become an outspoken advocate against smoking in movies, perhaps ironically considering movies he wrote featured a lot of smoking. The New Jersey anti-tobacco youth group REBEL awarded him the Fight the Good Fight award in 2004. An avid Cleveland Indians fan, Eszterhas enjoys his new lease on life post-cancer and is a devoted family man to his wife and four children.

[edit] Early forays in journalism

Prior to his involvement with screenwriting, he was a reporter with the Cleveland Plain Dealer and, later, a writer for Rolling Stone.

During his stay at the Plain Dealer, he gained his first touch of notoriety due to his handling of color photos of Vietnam’s My Lai Massacre, which depicted American soldiers murdering Vietnamese civilians.

Although annoyed at his newspaper’s apparent lack of belief in the authenticity of the photos, the paper permitted Eszterhas to try and sell them for $125,000. Some media outlets, however, used the photos without permission, causing the photos to decline in value. He ended up receiving only $20,000 from Life magazine.

He became a screenwriter when Rolling Stone moved its offices from San Francisco to New York City because he did not want to leave California.

[edit] Screenwriting and fame

His first screenplay to be produced was F.I.S.T., directed by Norman Jewison, although it was rewritten by Sylvester Stallone. He then contributed to the script of 1983's highly successful Flashdance. Other films he wrote include Jagged Edge, Jade, Betrayed and Sliver.

Eszterhas came back into the limelight in 1992, writing the screenplay for the major hit Basic Instinct. The screenplay resulted in him being accused of homophobia and misogyny, although he supported changes made to the film's dialogue requested by gay rights groups. He was paid $3 million for the screenplay (the highest amount of money paid for a screenplay at the time). In 1995 he wrote Showgirls. His screenplay won that year's Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Screenplay.

He turned his eye to producing following Basic Instinct, making two films in 1997, both of which he wrote. The first one, Telling Lies in America, was generally well-regarded with critics and audiences, but was not a great box office success. The second was the flop An Alan Smithee Film Burn Hollywood Burn, which won several Golden Raspberry awards, of which Eszterhas won two: another Worst Screenplay and one for Worst Supporting Actor (a cameo in which a caption described him as a "penile implant"). Afterwards, the Worst Screenplay award was renamed The Joe Eszterhas Dis-Honorarial Award.

Eszterhas redefined the role of Hollywood screenwriter, becoming a major Hollywood power broker and receiving the kind of treatment and press coverage given to stars.

None of Eszterhas's screenplays have been produced since 1997, until his latest project Children of Glory which will be released in 2007. However, he currently has an estimated twenty-five unproduced screenplays which has so far earned him a combined total of over $30 million. He has also written several best selling books including American Rhapsody about politics in Hollywood and Hollywood Animal, a vivid autobiography which superimposes his life as a young World War II refugee in America over his life as a powerful Hollywood player. A third book, The Devil's Guide To Hollywood: The Screenwriter As God!, full of quotes and anecdotes on screenwriting in Hollywood, was released in September 2006.