“By” Joe Eszterhas is a bit rich – it really should be “edited by”. Oh, OK, there is some original material, about a chapter’s worth, where Joe suggests what sort of routine to use to write a screenplay, and gives some advice about what to do. But most of this book consists of him quoting others, in particular others about Hollywood, especially screenwriting – William Goldman is quoted extensively, so is Robert McKee (who Eszterhas sometimes makes fun of, sometimes seems to approve what McKee says), also John Gregory Dunne’s Monster, the autobiographies of Zsa Zsa Gabor and Swifty Lazar, the books of William Froug, other books on screenwriting, Phil Noyce’s book.
This is an irritatingly lazy book. Eszterhas already wrote a brilliantly entertaining memoir on his life and career, Hollywood Animal (material from which he re-hashes here). Why another one? It must have been the money. He hasn’t had a screenplay credit since he moved back to Cleveland, is what why? But his books have sold well.
Reading this you can’t shake the feeling that part of Eszterhas wishes he could wind the clock back to the early 90s, when he was still smoking and drinking and making millions with his spec scripts (many of which had basically the same plot: person falls in love with person so obviously guilty of murders that they must be innocent and they turn out to be guilty) and bragging about being a great family man by living in Marin County and commuting to Hollywood, rooting around on his wife pretty much non-stop, including with Sharon Stone, telling execs to get stuffed, writing blockbusters, making records. Since then he got re-married (he says he’s faithful), had a new family, quit smoking after a bout of cancer, moved from LA, returned to prose – but he keeps looking back at Old Joe with one suspects a touch of wistfulness.
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