"I was a militant smoker, and in my case, I think I particularly used smoking because what I felt was a kind of politically correct big brother assault on smoking." -- Joe Eszterhas
József A. "Joe" Eszterhas (born November 23, 1944) is a Hungarian-American writer, best known for his work on the pulp erotic films Basic Instinct and Showgirls. He has also written several non-fiction books, including an autobiography entitled Hollywood Animal.
"And the inner dynamics of Hollywood are like politics. Say you give a script to a group of executives - they all sit around, afraid to voice an opinion, saying nothing, waiting to know what the consensus is. Just like focus groups, opinion polls or a cabinet.""Cigarettes are not a part of human behaviour, they are a habit.""Every time I flicked channels, there I was, talking. I was talking too much and writing too little. So Naomi and I went to Hawaii. The phone was cut off and we lost touch. This gave me the chance to have a good think about my life.""Fact is we went on to do other things. But we still wanted to do our success like rock'n'roll stars.""From a writing point of view, you now have teams of screenwriters working with a director. What's lost in the process is the power of that one heart, brain, gut and soul that makes something an original piece of writing.""From what I've been able to determine, many of our big stars are addicted to tobacco. They want to smoke in movies for the same reason I smoked as I wrote, which is that they think their performance is going to be better.""I always wanted to be a rock'n'roll star.""I had read too many memoirs that were written after the writer or the director was past his or her prime.""I have always been fascinated by the corruption of power.""I have my own religious bond with the God in my own head.""I have only one loyalty - to my writing. I never wanted to be the head of a studio or a producer.""I just wanted to make sure that what I write is what appears on screen, to not have some idiot change it on its way to the screen.""I was six when we came to this country. When I was 14 or so, I still had a lot of trouble with it.""I worry that we are approaching a time when that which is shocking is squeezed out by the Stalinism of political correctness.""Meanwhile, politics is about getting a candidate in front of the public as a star, politics as rock'n'roll, politics as a movie.""My father could have been deported because on his immigration application he said that he was a printer, obviously because he didn't want them to be checking his writings.""Now on a personal level with things like the California Tax Commission... I really think if people started banding together and saying no to this it could snowball and that could really help.""Politics has become entertainment.""That's sort of what I felt... I miss drinking, I thought bars were truly holy places.""The studios have been taken over by marketing people and accountants.""The terrible, diabolic thing with this disease is that you are always looking behind your shoulder every couple months with the most recent checkup to see whether there is any sign of it, and I thank God to say at this point there is not.""There are no crowds out there demanding to see smoking scenes in movies."
Eszterhas was born in Csákánydoroszló, Hungary, the son of Mária (née Bíró) and István Chrisht. He was raised as a young child in a refugee camp in Austria. Eventually his parents moved to New York City, and then to poor immigrant neighborhoods in Cleveland, where he spent most of his childhood. His mother had a mental illness which estranged her from the family while he was entering adolescence. His father was a Roman Catholic newspaper editor and author.
Eszterhas attended Ohio University, but did not graduate.
He was a reporter with the Cleveland Plain Dealer, where he gained his first touch of notoriety due to his handling of color photos of Vietnam's My Lai Massacre, which depicted American soldiers murdering Vietnamese civilians. Although he was annoyed at his newspaper’s apparent lack of belief in the authenticity of the photos, the paper permitted Eszterhas to try and sell them for $125,000. Some media outlets, however, used the photos without permission, causing the photos to decline in value. He ended up receiving only $20,000 from Life magazine.
Another touch of notoriety concerned a Cleveland Plain Dealer editor who singlehandedly sailed a small sail boat from the United States to England. The Plain Dealer would not sponsor the editor's trip. However, as the gentleman neared the culmination of his trip, the Plain Dealer chartered an airplane to fly low and drop "Cleveland Plain Dealer" sweat shirts to the editor. According to the account Eszterhas wrote, the editor retrieved the sweat shirts and when he saw what they were, tossed them overboard. Eszterhas was subsequently relieved of his duties at the newspaper.
Eszterhas was a senior editor from 1971 to 1975 for Rolling Stone. He became a National Book Award nominee for his nonfiction work Charlie Simpson's Apocalypse in 1974.
Eszterhas' first screenplay to be produced wasF.I.S.T., directed by Norman Jewison, and although it was stated by star Sylvester Stallone that he himself rewrote the majority of the film, Eszterhas denies this assertion. He then contributed to the script of 1983's highly successful Flashdance. Other films he wrote include Jagged Edge, Jade, Betrayed, and Sliver.
Eszterhas re-entered the limelight in 1992, writing the screenplay for the major hit Basic Instinct.
In 1995, he wrote Showgirls. His screenplay won that year's Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Screenplay. Eszterhas' own explanation of the failure of that film, according to his recent book was that it was ruined by the sexual affair between its director and its female star. The film enjoyed success on the home video market, generating more than $100 million from video rentals and became one of MGM's top 20 all-time bestsellers.
He turned his eye to producing following Basic Instinct, making two films in 1997, both of which he wrote. The first one, Telling Lies in America, was generally well-regarded by critics and audiences, but was not a great box office success. The second was the flop An Alan Smithee Film Burn Hollywood Burn, which won several Golden Raspberry awards, of which Eszterhas won two: another Worst Screenplay and one for Worst Supporting Actor (a cameo in which a caption described him as a "penile implant").
None of Eszterhas' screenplays were produced from 1997 to 2006; his latest project, Children of Glory, was released in 2006 (it was also entered by invitation in the official section of 2007 Berlin Film Festival).
He has written several best-selling books, including American Rhapsody, an autobiography about politics in Hollywood which superimposes his life as a young World War II refugee in America on his life as a powerful Hollywood player. A third book, The Devil's Guide to Hollywood, was published in September 2006.
His latest book, Crossbearer: A Memoir of Faith, was published on September 2, 2008 by St. Martin's Press. The release tells the story of his return to the practice of Roman Catholicism and his newfound devotion to God and family.
