Screenwriter Joe Eszterhas, best known for films such as "Basic Instinct" and "Flashdance," took his first plane ride in the mid-1960s, when the Hearst Foundation sent him to LBJ's White House to be honored as the country's outstanding college journalist. A big beginning, followed by nearly 10 years honing his nose for news, until he caught the eye of a film industry exec impressed by his book, "Charlie Simpson's Apocalypse," which was nominated for the National Book Award.
His new doorstop of a memoir, "Hollywood Animal," spotlights his rowdy years in La-La Land and the 15 films that earned him a reputation –- unfair, he says -- for pumping up the level of sex and violence in movies. But to learn about his career in print, I had to give him a call.
Now living on five bucolic acres in Township, Ohio, Eszterhas is a changed man, having shucked the glitz and booze for daily five-mile walks and more time with his four young sons. Surgery for throat cancer three years ago roughed up his voice but has had no effect on his feisty, direct manner. Here's an edited version of our conversation.
Heltzel: Why journalism? Eszterhas: I got into journalism partly because I was very poor and knew that at a certain point I wanted to write novels. Also, as an immigrant, it was a wonderful way to learn about American society, and it forced me out of my shyness. (Editor's note: And how!)
Where did you start, and what did you learn that you could use in your screenwriting? In my first job, at the
Dayton Journal-Herald, mostly I drove around listening to the police radio. One night I heard there'd been a shooting in a suburban neighborhood. I got there before the police did, and I heard someone crying in the house, so I walked in. I moved toward where I heard the crying, and in the first room I saw blood and tissue all over the wall, and a dead body on the floor. I kept going, and there was another body, and more blood and tissue. And then, in the next room, I found an old lady with white hair, and the surreal thing was that she was crying and talking in Hungarian, which is my native tongue. Her son-in-law had shot her daughter and himself. In terms of everything I covered, this really moved me. But I never used it in a movie.
What did you do to get fired at the Cleveland Plain Dealer? I started as a police reporter and a general assignment reporter, and I ended up with a Jimmy Breslin-type column, the kind that laid the foundation for what became New Journalism.
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One day this guy called me and said his name was Ron Haeberle, and he was a photographer, and he'd been in this village where the American G.I.s had massacred everybody, including women and children. A few weeks before, Seymour Hersh had broken the story of My Lai, and some newspapers ran the story, but most didn't. Now here comes Ron Haeberle, saying he had these photographs, part of a slide show he'd been taking to Kiwanis groups around Cleveland. I said, "Get down here."
To my utter shock, he had color and black-and-white photographs of the most startling kind possible. I broke the story of the photographs, of Haeberle's account, in the
Plain Dealer. The photographs immediately caused an internal firestorm, but more importantly, they proved everything that the Hersh stories alleged. The combination was a body blow to the American psyche and really helped end the war.
After that, I wrote an article for the
Evergreen Review called "The Selling of the My Lai Massacre," in which I was critical of the way the photographs were published. I was summarily fired for biting the hand that fed me.
A couple of days later, Jann Wenner called me to see if I wanted to come to San Francisco and do an article for
Rolling Stone magazine on narcotics agents who were setting up kids and rigging cases to push their own arrest records. He didn't know I'd been fired.
Rolling Stone was quite the place to be then, in 1971. What Jann was hoping to do was the kind of non-music, sociological stories that would serve as a metaphor for what was going on in the country at the time. I remember seeing a three-graph item in the
San Francisco Chronicle about some kid in Missouri who'd shot up the town and killed himself. So I walked into Jann's office and said, "This might be a good story," and he said, "Go." Hours later, I was in Harrisonville, Mo. That was the start of what became the book "Charlie Simpson's Apocalypse."
What was the sociological meaning in that story? It was a classic case of rhetoric from both sides, from the left and right, creating an absolutely tragic situation. The Abbie Hoffman types were saying, "Go kill your parents," and the Nixonians in law enforcement were saying, "These kids are bums." That fueled this confrontation that ended up in gunfire. It was a little parable of what was going on. Jann had the eye to spot that kind of story and a writer who could run with it.
A side trip: Was Hunter Thompson really as gonzo as his reputation? Hunter was the (writers') dean, if you want to call him that. I'd recently come out from Cleveland, and he and I went to some party, where Hunter took out this gigantic needle and proceeded to shoot himself in the navel. I said, "-----, what was that?" He said, "Ether. Would you like some?" I declined.
Is it fair to say that your print career laid the groundwork for screenwriting? I don't think it's as clearcut as that. I was always interested in writing novels, not journalism, even when I was writing journalism that I loved and stands the test of time, which is some of the
Rolling Stone pieces. One of them, "Chief Perkins' Fury," was written exactly as it would be been as a short story, except that it was true, about a police chief in a small town in Idaho.
You've been described as the highest paid screenwriter in Hollywood, and your films have grossed more than $1 billion. But you also describe screenwriters as the "discarded whores" of the business.
They cheat and steal from all screenwriters, including me. One of my movies, "Jagged Edge," was the No. 1 movie for six weeks, and they still claimed it wasn't making a
When I did print journalism, there was no such thing as ethics ... Journalism has become more civilized, and I think that's good, to have ethics issues and ombudsmen in the newsroom.profit. Now it's even worse, because in the past five years they've gone back to the step deals, where you get a certain amount for the first draft, and if they like that, you get some more for the second. Before it was a set deal that gave you all the money up front.
When I sold "Basic Instinct" for $3 million -- mind you, the director still got $8 million and the star got $15 million -- immediately after that, Jeff Katzenberg wrote a very famous memo saying we can't keep paying these prices to screenwriters, because if we do, it's going to affect the amount we have to pay directors and actors. The clout that screenwriters have is their individual clout, and how willing they are to go to the wall.
You describe film critics as failed screenwriters. My problem with film critics is that they never read the screenplays. They see the movie, and if they don't like the movie, they tee off on the screenwriter -- even if the screenwriter's work has been mutilated by other people the director brought in to "fix" whatever he thinks is wrong. My theory is that film critics want to do interviews with celebrities, such as the actors and directors, but they never want to interview the screenwriter, so he's the easiest one to hit.
How has daily journalism changed since you were part of it? When I did print journalism, there was no such thing as ethics. I remember going to get a photograph of a robber who'd been shot by the police, and having to go down to the morgue while they posed the dead guy with his eyes open so it looked like his mug shot. We ran it on the front page. Journalism has become more civilized, and I think that's good, to have ethics issues and ombudsmen in the newsroom.
What about the movie industry when it comes to ethics? Does it get off the hook because movies aren't news, but entertainment? And how does this relate to your crusade to stop the glamorization of smoking on film? (See www.clevelandclinic.org/joinjoe/ for more information on Eszterhas' campaign.) Hollywood absolutely has a responsibility. And it has been very socially enlightened in terms of the civil rights struggle and the gay struggle. But with smoking, even though the evidence is absolutely in, they just look the other way.
People can tell me exactly, whether it's Robert Mitchum in "Thunder Road" or Madonna in "Dick Tracy," which actor convinced them to smoke. I've even spoken to former studio heads, asking, "Are people being paid off here?" In my experience, I never ran into anyone being paid off. The closest I can come is a human truth, that most of our young stars are addicted to smoking, and they want to smoke while they act, and movie studios don't want to make it an issue.
Has your anti-smoking crusade affected the way you see screenwriting? Do you have any regrets about the sex and violence you've put in movies? There's a huge difference between smoking and drinking on screen, and sex and violence. Sex and violence are a huge part of human behavior. I'm a writer, and I'm going to concern myself with human behavior. Cigarettes aren't in the Bible or in Shakespeare. They're a social habit, or an anti-social habit, which is a better way to say it. Does showing sex on the screen influence people's behavior? As far as I'm concerned, the jury's out on that one. But the jury is in on the influence of seeing a movie star smoking a cigarette.
Hi, Ellen: Having been a sportswriter when Esterhaus was editor...
