Joe Eszterhas
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Josef Eszterhas | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born | November 23, 1944 Csákánydoroszló, Hungary |
| Occupation | Screenwriter, author |
| Nationality | American |
| Writing period | 1974-present |
Josef Eszterhas (born November 23, 1944) is a Hungarian-American writer, known for his screenplays for the films Basic Instinct and Showgirls. He has also written an autobiography called Hollywood Animal.
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[edit] Life
Eszterhas was born in Csákánydoroszló, 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 Bainbridge (small suburb of 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, and he has trouble talking and swallowing. He has since become an outspoken campaigner against smoking in films. The New Jersey anti-tobacco youth group REBEL awarded him the Fight the Good Fight award in 2004.
He is an avid Cleveland Indians fan.
[edit] Early forays into 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 he was 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.
Another touch of notoriety concerned a "Cleveland Plain Dealer" editor who singlehandedly sailed a small sail boat from the United States to England. The "Plain Dealer" would not sponsor the editor's trip. However, as the gentleman neared the culmination of his trip, the "Plain Dealer" chartered an airplane fly low and drop "Cleveland Plain Dealer" sweat shirts to the editor. According to the account Eszterhas wrote, the editor retrieved the sweat shirts and when he saw what they were, tossed them overboard. Eszterhas was subsequently relieved of his duties at the newspaper
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, and although it was stated by star Sylvester Stallone that he himself rewrote the majority of the film, Eszterhas denies this assertion, and Stallone's lack of screenwriting credits suggests he may have been exaggerating. He then contributed to the script of 1983's highly successful Flashdance. Other films he wrote include Jagged Edge, Jade, Betrayed, and Sliver.
Eszterhas re-entered the limelight in 1992, writing the screenplay for the major hit Basic Instinct. The screenplay resulted in his being accused of homophobia and misogyny, although he supported changes made to the film's dialogue requested by gay rights groups. He was paid three million dollars 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. Eszterhas' own explanation of the failure of that film, according to his recent book[1] was that it was ruined by the sexual affair between its director and its female star.
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 by 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".
None of Eszterhas's screenplays were produced from 1997 to 2006; his latest project, Children of Glory, was released in 2006 (it was also entered by invitation in the official section of 2007 Berlin Film Festival). He currently has an estimated twenty-five unproduced screenplays (that he sold to studios or production companies but were never made into films), which have so far earned him a combined total of over thirty million dollars. He has also written several best-selling books, including American Rhapsody about politics in Hollywood and an autobiography[2] which superimposes his life as a young World War II refugee in America on his life as a powerful Hollywood player. A third book, The Devil's Guide to Hollywood, was published in September 2006.[3]
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ The Devil's Guide to Hollywood: The Screenwriter as God! St Martin's Press, 2006. ISBN 978-0-312-35987-4. p.242
- ^ Hollywood Animal; Alfred A. Knopf, 2004. ISBN 0-375-41355-3
- ^ The Devil's Guide to Hollywood: The Screenwriter as God! (U.K. edition) Gerald Duckworth and Company Ltd, 2006. ISBN 978-0715636701.
