Hollywood Animal: A Memoir

If you know the slightest anything about movies then you've read, heard about and/or seen the characters screenwriter Joe Eszterhas has written about here, probably fantasized about having the life they've had. After reading this you might want to think again and then fantasize about something, anything, else.The man is definitely a HOLLYWOOD ANIMAL---"Denizen" might be a better word---and his memoir work here proves that there are only very few that live on such an exalted level. Very few reach this plain and very few, in actuality, would want to. You have to be a narcissistic hedonist masochist with a strong desire for self destruction to truly "want" a life like this. Superficially it sounds good; realistically it sounds like a nightmare.Eszterhas reached a plateau in Hollywood no other screenwriter had before or since. The epitome of "Right Place--Right Time--Right Who-You-Know" he reached rarefied status: paid millions to write a script from just a couple lines pitched; had two hits with FLASHDANCE and BASIC INSTINCT but then continued to fail upwardly with SHOWGIRLS and JADE with an ego and super-powerful industry friends that wouldn't quit.HOLLYWOOD ANIMAL is the telling of that journey. Often it's compelling and hurtful when he writes of his family, escaping the Holocaust from his native Hungary and the reader understands the drive he inherited from these beginnings. That's historically hypnotic and empathetic. The Hollywood tales read like dark fantasies with sex, drugs, booze and sleaze wrapped in gilded packaging and that ultimately becomes distasteful.Eszterhas is an engaging writer, tells it like it was as he remembers it and lays the territory out without sugar coating. He wraps it all up at the end with a pitch for another, more peaceful, kind of life and living but by the time that happens the reader's sympathies are with the worn out members of his family and one wants to say, "What took you so long?"

This book provides a -warts and all- description of exactly what it takes to become a working writer in Hollywood. Joe Eszterhas describes his amazing journey from the dirt poor refugee camps of Hungary (where his family survives on pine needle soup) to the adventures of his youth in the Hungarian enclave of Cleveland, OH. He describes his tortured relationship with his father and mother, how he ascends to the heights of screen writer mega-fame in the sleaze pit of LA and back to reality as he moves his family away from Hollywood and back to sanity in the tiny town of Bainbridge Ohio. Do you dream of going to Hollywood as a writer or actor? Read this book first and see if you are willing to pay the ultimate price that fame demands.

Every life is intrinsically interesting; every life has its tremendous highs and abysmal lows. But very few people can tell their own story. First of all you need a photographic memory, and Joe Eszterhas has it. Next you need an ability not to write chronologically, because nothing is as deadly as "the next day I did something different." Eszterhas has the utterly brilliant ability to write in intellectual sequence: one idea comes up, it is dealt with fully, from all autobiographical angles, and then we segue into the next idea. Each idea is a topper. I thought by page 100 that I had already read a tremendous book; what could possibly be left? Well, each new 100 pages topped the previous ones. But the trick is not to get ahead of your autobiographical story. In other words, life's ordinary sequences must not skip around, in the sense that what you find out now can take away from any surprise in finding it out later. This is incredibly hard to mesh with intellectual sequencing. Thus, although Eszterhas skips around in periods through his life, nevertheless he preserves a rough chronological order that is more satisfying than real chronology because it is artistic. Finally, if you have all these attributes, you still have to write good prose. Eszterhas is no Nabokov, he is no Christopher Hitchens. In short, you don't see his words, you see through them. He is a master of the unobtrusive word, the unobtrusive sentence. It's like looking at a film; no one seems to be "explaining" it to you. Eszterhas uses performatives with ease. Of course, he's one of the most successful screenwriters of all time. Actually, the theatre lost a great playwright when he went to Hollywood. There isn't a word in his book about any desire to write for the living theatre, and yet that's the kind of writing he does. He gains his laughs by skillful echoing of previous remarks, the way that is so effective in live theatre and so unappreciated in film. As I read this amazing book, I paid the author what perhaps is a reader's best compliment: I went and replayed his films as he discussed them. What an amazing treat! "Jagged Edge" was better than when I first saw it, although now I knew with great regret that Jane Fonda had turned down the role eventually played by Glen Close; how much superior Fonda would have been! "Music Box" was the biggest revelation, given the eerie, creepy, and unintentional parallel to Joe Eszterhas' own life. I hadn't previously seen "Flashdance," but oh, how marvelous! And "Basic Instinct"? A movie that, if Hitchcock had directed it, would have been at the top of his oeuvre. I even liked "Showgirls," which I think will get an underground following as soon as people get over the idea that it's supposed to be sexy. As for all the reviewers who have "reviewed" this book without reading it, and who have nothing but contempt for a great author, I hope you spill coffee on your keyboards. I'm afraid Eszterhas hurt himself with his brutally self-deprecating title; he sort of invited the sleaziest reviewers to review his book just because they already knew what they were going to say before they skimmed it. Finally, if you're going to be a great autobiographer, you have to give the reader her money's worth. You can't skimp because the reader has paid good money to read about you. Eszterhas doesn't skimp; he has never skimped on his writing in his life. What you get is solid gold. If to some people it looks tawdry, it's their own fault.

Didn't want to put it down.... Eszterhas has led one helluva life and you get a real sense of the screenwriter's status in the Hollywood system - ie, lower than a snake's belly. Yet Joe, a tough Hungarian immigrant who looks like a Hell's Angel, wasn't prepared to be walked over like many of his kind and became one of the few writers who got the same treatment as the director and the actors in his films. Loads of good anecdotes about actors and the films he wrote - Basic Instinct, Jagged Edge etc etc. Highly recommended for movie lovers.

I'd never heard of joe esterhas, but i put him right up there with the best now. His speciality is point of view writing.This must be a screen writer thing but some of the passages were dazzling.You wonder what he might have written prose wise, but when he was getting four million a script, or even in one case four million for a four page treatment, then even a bestseller would have been a financial disaster.On top of the that all the top hollywood totty wanted to bang him when he was at the top of his game.

But there are some Hollywood gems to be found amidst a lot of anecdotal detail. Dig in and the La La Land horror stories don't disappoint.

Arrived on time and as described....thank you. Interesting life! Worth a read

Joe Eszterhas hat solch sensationelle Drehbücher wie „Basic Instinct" geschrieben, aber auch so einen Blödsinn wie „Showgirls". Und genau so wie die Qualität seiner Drehbücher gewaltig schwankt, verhält es sich auch mit dem was er in dieser Autobiographie schreibt. Ungefähr die Hälfte ist tatsächlich interessant und unterhaltsam. Den Rest hätte er lieber weglassen sollen, weil er mit seinen ewigen Wiederholungen den Leser langweilt. Dabei gibt sich Eszterhas wirklich viel Mühe um mal einen anderen Typ Autobiographie abzuliefern. Er schreibt locker und originell. Das Buch ist aufgebaut wie ein Drehbuch. Es gibt Rückblenden, Dialoge aus seinen Drehbüchern und Auszüge aus dem Tagebuch seiner Frau. Gerne springt Eszterhas immer wieder von seinem Luxusleben im amoralischen, dekadenten Hollywood zurück in die Kindheit in Ungarn, die von Armut und dem Zweiten Weltkrieg geprägt war. Eszterhas hat ihn gelebt, den Amerikanischen Traum, vom armen Einwandererkind zu einem der bestbezahltesten Drehbuchschreiber der Welt. Was ich von diesem Buch erwartet und erhofft hatte, waren brauchbare Informationen und Anregungen zum Thema Schreiben. Doch in diesem Punkt ist das Buch sehr enttäuschend. Eszterhas äußert sich kaum dazu wie er auf die Ideen für seine Werke gekommen ist und welche Schreibtechnik er verwendet. Zwar spricht er davon, daß er bereits seit seiner Kindheit viel und gerne gelesen hat. Offensichtlich war auch sein Vater, der in Ungarn ein relativ erfolgreicher Autor war, ein wichtiger Einfluß für ihn. Eszterhas erzählt wenig vom Schreiben, dafür um so mehr von den Summen, die er für den Verkauf der Drehbücher bekam. Angegeben und vor allem getratscht wird sehr, sehr viel in „Hollywood Animal". Das ist auch ganz amüsant, aber die Begeisterung nutzt sich auch schnell ab. In Hollywood geht es in erster Linie darum viel Geld zu verdienen, um sich damit Sex und Drogen kaufen zu können und seinen Geltungsdrang zu befriedigen. Die meiste Aufmerksamkeit bekommen die Schauspieler. Das richtig große Geld verdienen die Produzenten. Und die stillen Stars sind die Drehbuchautoren. Das ist der Inhalt dieses Buches in wenigen Worten. Langweilig ist, daß nichts Überraschendes passiert. Nach den ersten 50 Seiten weiß man wie es weitergeht. Eszterhas schreibt ein Drehbuch, die Produzenten versuchen es umschreiben zu lassen, Eszterhas hält stand, wird hintergangen und am Ende wird der Film entweder ein Flop oder ein Hit. Dann erzählt er wieder etwas von seinem cleveren Vater und seiner geistig verwirrten Mutter. Anschließend prahlt er mit seinen Erfolgen beim Fremdgehen. Und dann geht es um das nächste Drehbuch. Und so weiter und so weiter...Zur Auflockerung werden immer wieder pikante Details aus dem Privatleben der Reichen und Schönen preisgegeben. Sharon Stone, Silvester Stallone, Steven Spielberg, Mick Jagger u.v.m. - kommen nicht gut weg in diesem Buch.„Hollywood Animal" ist das richtige Buch für Bunte-Leser und RTL-Exclusiv-Zuschauer. Ein unterhaltsamer Einblick in die eitle, vom Jugendwahn besessene Scheinwelt von Hollywood. Mit vielen, vielen Informationen. Unnützen zumeist.