The most memorable moment from Chayefsky’s 1976 masterpiece “Network” is, of course, when unhinged newsman Howard Beale (a pitch-perfect Peter Finch) bellows on live television, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore.” With his latest book “The Devil’s Guide to Hollywood” Eszterhas, 61, commits his “mad as hell” moment in print—he’s striking a blow for Tinseltown’s little guy, the lowly screenwriter. Ostensibly a guidebook for wannabe bards, “The Devil’s Guide,” succeeds more as a dishy, sleazy, comedic impressionist portrait of Hollywood from the studio system days through Eszterhas’s own golden years. Eszterhas, who lives in Ohio, gets his licks in where he can—specifically at onetime superagent Michael Ovitz, whom he publicly battled in 1989, and Sharon Stone, whom he reminds us he both “created” and “bedded.” But more generally, he lashes out at directors, producers and actors who all conspire to undo great scripts. (This from the guy who wrote “Jade.”)
Mildly mellowed by the throat cancer that nearly killed him in 2001, he’s also got a new movie—“Children of Glory,” a foreign-made film about the 1956 Hungarian revolution—coming out in the United States next year. Eszterhas, who has quit his famous boozing and womanizing, spoke with NEWSWEEK’s Brian Braiker about the book, the film and other projects. Wearing black sweats, a black Harley Davidson T shirt and a yellow LIVESTRONG bracelet in his Manhattan hotel room, Eszterhas was accompanied by his wife, Naomi. Excerpts:
NEWSWEEK: Why this book and why now?
Joe Eszterhas: I’ve always felt that the screenwriting books out there are by guys who haven’t really written screenplays, for the most part.
Like Robert McKee? You give him a really hard time.
Yeah, McKee’s the best example. But there are dozens of them. There are guys who just haven’t written the scripts, and they pontificate and they talk about dramatic arts and all of those things. They just haven’t done it. I’ve always believed that screenwriters are treated like second-class citizens, and I wanted to do a book that was a survival guide, a war manual, to how screenwriters can win. To sort of share everything that I’ve learned in 30 years of screenwriting and 15 movies being made, to do an anti-textbook textbook. Most textbooks are really boring. This is not boring. It’s fun and funny and accessible. But at the same time, besides amusing you, it also leaves some tips that wannabe screenwriters or beginning screenwriters can use. It seems today that nobody wants to write the great American novel anymore. They all want to write the screenplay and the screenplay that sells for $3 million.
Yes, this is a bit of a how-to guide, but with all these salacious anecdotes you kind of feel like you need to take a shower after reading it.
It’s in some ways an uplifting and inspiring book. I think young screenwriters will find it that. I think it’s a truly brutish person who might want to take a shower afterward. I’m saying that impersonally. [ Laughs.]
There are some people who see screenwriting as a trade—a means to a paycheck. There are others who see it as an art form. Talk about that tension.
There’s a longstanding literary tradition of viewing it as a trade. A lot of East Coast literati going way back to [Robert] Benchley and [Dorothy] Parker. Graham Greene and [William] Faulkner and Nathaniel West all viewed it as something to collect the money with as they did their most serious work.
Which is ironic because the “Third Man,” which was written by Greene, is one of the great movies.
I agree with that. Incidentally he published it as a novella, as well. I’ve always felt and Chayefsky felt that if you put your heart and soul and gut into writing something, whatever the form, it’s yours and your creation and your baby. And it’s worth fighting for. To take the East Coast literati position that had been taken through the years of going out there to make the money is just a lot of old fancy folderol for hooking. Those guys hooked. They said, “We don’t believe in it, and we’ll write what you tell us to write, and as long as we get the money we’re cool.”
How do you feel about that mentality?
That’s exactly what’s wrong with much of screenwriting. One of the hopes that I have with the book is that young screenwriters reading this book would say, “No, we’re not going to do that. If it comes from us we’re going to fight for it and see that that vision gets up on screen.” I think it’s very tough for young screenwriters the way it’s loaded. The system has changed in that they make very few spec scripts. They write things by committee. It’s become more and more like TV writing. That’s one of the reasons I think there’s a lot of bad movies out there. That individual creative spark that worked a lot in the ’70s and even the years that I worked in the ’80s and the ’90s is pretty well gone today. Plus the other consideration is that there are very few adult movies being made. Hollywood’s making kid movies with thrill rides. If you want to write something that’s much more of an individual vision, that’s a bit off the wall or dark or sexual, pretty well your only outlet is the independent market.
What was the most recent film you saw that you did like?
I liked “Hollywoodland.” Just saw that movie. I thought it was nicely written, really nuanced. It captured L.A. at that time and that studio world really nicely. Directed well, too.
You got your start as a journalist, when you did some really interesting work, especially for Rolling Stone. Do you miss the nonfiction or the investigative aspect of the work, that muckraking stuff?
I don’t, but I use it continuously in my screenplays. Many of them are really researched. I have a movie coming out early next year in this country—it opens on the 23rd of October in Hungary. I really researched that and did a lot of interviews and put together this whole picture of the Hungarian revolution. Even “Basic Instinct” came from the notion that as a journalist I interviewed mass murderers and people who killed. And I also ran across a cop when I was a police reporter who got a little bit too close to the action and liked it a little bit too much. “Showgirls” was researched. [Director] Paul [Verhoeven] and I together interviewed hundreds of dancers. It was before I met Naomi, of course. The producer says that I was relentless about the “research,” and he was probably right.
[To Naomi] How do you feel when you hear him talk like that, or read some of the things in this book, like the bragging? Are you comfortable with that?
Naomi: I think had I not lived out there I might have thought, “Oh, come on.” But I saw a lot that defies belief. It’s all true and it’s funny and it’s outrageous.
Joe: I’ve never been shy about being outrageous.
Naomi: Joe is brutally honest. About himself, as well. I think it paints an accurate picture of the absurdity of what it is to be in that business, which is why we took our four boys and moved to Ohio. We had our little preschooler coming home saying for show and tell Jim Cameron’s kids brought [his] Oscar! We took a look around and said, “Can we possibly, no matter what solid base we give them at home, provide them with the upbringing we had in this environment?” Now they’re bringing wasps nests to show and tell.
Joe: But what was really bad was when the eldest came up to me and said, “Where’s your Oscar?” [ Laughs .]
Do you feel like you’ve been unfairly portrayed in the media in the past decade or two?
Joe: Only in the sense that I’ve done 15 movies and some of those movies include things like “Telling Lies in America” and “Music Box” and “Betrayed” and “F.I.S.T.” and the media relentlessly goes after “Basic Instinct” and “Showgirls.” It’s a body of work that includes a lot of different movies.
But they became such iconic films, in their own way capturing the ’90s zeitgeist.
You mean that “Telling Lies” is not an iconic movie? [ Laughs.]
Well with “Basic Instinct,” there was a resonance with audiences, regardless of what critics may have said.
“Telling Lies,” which I think is a beautiful little movie, didn’t have a distributor. It was made for a $2 million budget; we did a cast with Kevin Bacon and Calista Flockhart and Brad Renfro. It was one of two American movies invited to the New York Film Festival. Even [NEWSWEEK’s] David Ansen said that I had redeemed myself. To get it out in front of the public and put the studio machinery behind it, we were incapable of doing. I do think that, to answer your question in terms of the critics, they certainly know there are a whole bunch of other movies [I’ve made] that don’t fall into that particular genre and they have a responsibility to point that out.
You’re turning “Showgirls” into a stage show.
Through the years so many people have come up to me, glanced around to make sure they weren’t being overheard, and whispered, “I loved ‘Showgirls’.” And it has become this huge cult thing through the years. We’ll do a musical in Vegas and then bring it [to New York]. What we do with it is give people enough new things so that it will stand on its own but celebrate this over-the-top campy classic. I’m going to do the book and the lyrics and have fun with it.
So you acknowledge that it’s campy.
Of course. When Paul [Verhoeven] and I sat down and first went through the script, we laughed our way through the script. Where the movie fell apart, I think, among other reasons, was the humor mixed with the story in terms of tone was never realized. I think the thing that really killed it was the rape scene at the end of the picture, which was so jarring and so hard and so harsh, it completely did the movie in.
