Hollywood Animal: A Memoir

From Publishers Weekly
Author/screenwriter Eszterhas introduces readers to the ultimate in Hollywood animal thinking when he quotes an unnamed Oscar-winning producer as saying, "the only time I’ll root for anybody to be a success is if he or she has cancer, and I know for certain that the cancer is terminal." Eszterhas’s book is unabashedly vulgar, a brutally revealing blend of sex and greed that goes much further than Peter Biskind’s Down and Dirty Pictures (Forecasts, Jan. 5) in exposing Hollywood’s dark side. Eszterhas refers to himself as "insufferable" for coveting success and money, but as the horrifying anecdotes unfold, he mounts a dynamic defense of screenwriters who have been treated like "discarded hookers... not invited to premieres of their own movies, cheated of residual payments." Salacious details mingle with explosions of temper, and Eszterhas isn’t afraid to take potshots at William Goldman, Ron Bass, Robert Towne and other screenwriters he believes have compromised too heavily with the system. A particularly absorbing story centers on Sylvester Stallone, who starred in F.I.S.T. and then tried to take credit for Eszterhas’s script. Even more shocking is producer Marty Ransohoff’s relentless criticism of Glenn Close during the filming of Jagged Edge, which made the actress throw Ransohoff and his daughter (who was not involved in the movie) off the set. Just as readers begin to drown in an ocean of gossip, Eszterhas introduces two dramatic plots: his battle with throat cancer and the discovery that his father was an outspokenly anti-Semitic former Nazi. This electrifying section overshadows the Hollywood material and deserves a book of its own. It makes an argument readers will immediately pick up on: that animalistic behavior is just as savagely prevalent outside Hollywood studio gates. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From AudioFile
Screenwriter and iconoclast Joe Eszterhas tries his hand at autobiography with good results. Casting veteran monologist Eric Bogosian was a fine choice, as he certainly has been immersed in "the business" as well. Eszterhas contrasts memories of life as a poor Hungarian immigrant child with accounts of his increasingly wild and unhinged Hollywood life. Names are dropped and souls bared in a mea culpa of epic proportions, leavened with sweetness and a heart the size of Budapest. Bogosian shines as Eszterhas loves and hates, and is loved and hated, with equal intensity. D.J.B. © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

From Booklist
Sleaze and more sleaze. But don't we love it? Hollywood insider stuff par excellence, from a well-known and contentious screenwriter. Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Book Description
He spent his earliest years in post WWII–refugee camps. He came to America and grew up in Cleveland—stealing cars, rolling drunks, battling priests, nearly going to jail. He became the screenwriter of the worldwide hits Basic Instinct, Jagged Edge, and Flashdance. He also wrote the legendary disasters Showgirls and Jade. The rebellion never ended, even as his films went on to gross more than a billion dollars at the box office and he became the most famous—or infamous—screenwriter in Hollywood.

Joe Eszterhas is a complex and paradoxical figure: part outlaw and outsider combined with equal parts romantic and moralist. More than one person has called him “the devil.” He has been referred to as “the most reviled man in America.” But Time asked, “If Shakespeare were alive today, would his name be Joe Eszterhas?” and he was the first screenwriter picked as one of the movie industry’s 100 Most Powerful People. Although he is often accused of sexism and misogyny, his wife is his best friend and equal partner. Considered an apostle of sex and violence, he is a churchgoer who believes in the power of prayer. For many years the ultimate symbol of Hollywood excess, he has moved his family to Ohio and immersed himself in the midwestern lifestyle he so values.

Controversial, fearless, extremely talented, and totally unpredictable, the author of the best-selling American Rhapsody and National Book Award nominee Charlie Simpson’s Apocalypse has surprised us yet again: he has written a memoir like no other.

On one level, Hollywood Animal is a shocking and often devastating look inside the movie business. It intimately explores the concept of fame and gives us a never-before-seen look at the famous. Eszterhas reveals the fights, the deals, the extortions, the backstabbing, and the sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll world that is Hollywood.

But there are many more levels to this extraordinary work. It is the story of a street kid who survives a life filled with obstacles and pain . . . a chronicle of a love affair that is sensual, glorious, and unending . . . an excruciatingly detailed look at a man facing down the greatest enemy he’s ever fought: the cancer inside him . . . and perhaps most important, Hollywood Animal is the heartbreaking story of a father and son that defines the concepts of love and betrayal.

This is a book that will shock you and make you laugh, anger you and move you to tears. It is pure Joe Eszterhas—a raw, spine-chilling celebration of the human spirit.

From the Inside Flap
He spent his earliest years in post WWII–refugee camps. He came to America and grew up in Cleveland—stealing cars, rolling drunks, battling priests, nearly going to jail. He became the screenwriter of the worldwide hits Basic Instinct, Jagged Edge, and Flashdance. He also wrote the legendary disasters Showgirls and Jade. The rebellion never ended, even as his films went on to gross more than a billion dollars at the box office and he became the most famous—or infamous—screenwriter in Hollywood.

Joe Eszterhas is a complex and paradoxical figure: part outlaw and outsider combined with equal parts romantic and moralist. More than one person has called him “the devil.” He has been referred to as “the most reviled man in America.” But Time asked, “If Shakespeare were alive today, would his name be Joe Eszterhas?” and he was the first screenwriter picked as one of the movie industry’s 100 Most Powerful People. Although he is often accused of sexism and misogyny, his wife is his best friend and equal partner. Considered an apostle of sex and violence, he is a churchgoer who believes in the power of prayer. For many years the ultimate symbol of Hollywood excess, he has moved his family to Ohio and immersed himself in the midwestern lifestyle he so values.

Controversial, fearless, extremely talented, and totally unpredictable, the author of the best-selling American Rhapsody and National Book Award nominee Charlie Simpson’s Apocalypse has surprised us yet again: he has written a memoir like no other.

On one level, Hollywood Animal is a shocking and often devastating look inside the movie business. It intimately explores the concept of fame and gives us a never-before-seen look at the famous. Eszterhas reveals the fights, the deals, the extortions, the backstabbing, and the sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll world that is Hollywood.

But there are many more levels to this extraordinary work. It is the story of a street kid who survives a life filled with obstacles and pain . . . a chronicle of a love affair that is sensual, glorious, and unending . . . an excruciatingly detailed look at a man facing down the greatest enemy he’s ever fought: the cancer inside him . . . and perhaps most important, Hollywood Animal is the heartbreaking story of a father and son that defines the concepts of love and betrayal.

This is a book that will shock you and make you laugh, anger you and move you to tears. It is pure Joe Eszterhas—a raw, spine-chilling celebration of the human spirit.

About the Author
Joe Eszterhas lives in Bainbridge Township, Ohio, with his wife, Naomi, and their four sons. He has two grown children from his first marriage.


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The highest-rolling screenwriter in Hollywood history tells all. Eszterhas gives the big picture up front: He's repeatedly set records for the biggest payments for the screenplays for phenoms (Jagged Edge, Basic Instinct) and bombs (Showgirls, Jade) that have gone on to gross over a billion dollars; he's "the only screenwriter . . . who had groupies"; and a lot of qualified judges think he's the devil. "I don't mean to sound insufferable, but . . ." he compares himself to Hemingway, Steinbeck, and Faulkner ("Compare myself to other screenwriters? Say what?"). Behind the self-aggrandizing headlines is the story of a kid rescued from Hungary's postwar refugee camps to land in Cleveland, where he battled the brothers at his Catholic school and lied to his parents about bogus honors. But his life becomes far more arresting the moment he arrives in Hollywood and starts dishing dirt on everybody from Michael Ovitz to himself. Eszterhas is brutally candid about his early years as a screenwriter, when his price soared even though his scripts were either unproduced or turned into duds like F.I.S.T. He's less candid about his shortcomings as writer (every failure is blamed on megalomaniac directors, poor casting, blinkered reviewers, or studio execs too stupid to see that every word in an Eszterhas script was golden), as husband (he embarrassingly reproduces the journals of his second wife, Naomi Baka, to confirm his version of the breakup of his first marriage, which just happened to fall apart as Naomi's bridegroom was running off with Basic Instinct star Sharon Stone), and as colleague (his often hilarious accounts of industry infighting infallibly vindicate his judgment at the expense ofeverybody else's). Precious little about filmmaking in these pages, but a great deal about deal-making and even more about getting back at your family, your childhood tormentors, and the Nazi Party. Eszterhas's memoir may be the longest gotcha ever penned. Agent: Ed Victor


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