Heaven and Mel (Kindle Single) [Kindle Edition]

Joe Eszterhas (Author)

Book Description

Joe Eszterhas and Mel Gibson had a global confrontation in April of this year over their movie "The Maccabees". "Heaven and Mel" is Eszterhas's explosive, unabridged, no-holds-barred account. It is a Hollywood story but it's not. It is the story of love and hatred, of anti-Semitism and fathers and sons, and of a movie star's tragic sexual obsession. It is the story of God and the Devil, devastating but often hilarious. It is Joe Eszterhas at his best: two-fisted, movingly sensitive, always outrageous.

Product Details

• File Size: 234 KB
• Print Length: 150 pages
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B0087PTQ96
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray: Enabled
• Lending: Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #101,461 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
  • #14 in Kindle Store > Kindle Singles > Arts & Entertainment

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

50 of 64 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Warning: This Book is Highly Disturbing (and not just in the way the author imagines) June 9, 2012

By JSH9

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

This is a difficult review for me to write. To set the stage, I've never seen Basic Instinct or Showgirls (movies he mentions over and over in the two books of his I've read). I'd never heard of Mr. Eszterhas until I read his book, Crossbearer, which I greatly enjoyed. He is a gifted writer in the sense that he's transparent, and he transports the reader to his life. The book was, in the main, a great witness to his new-found (or newly rediscovered) faith.

Then I bought this Kindle Single.

Lesson: never buy a Kindle Single again without sampling. They get you on the 3 buck price--it's cheaper than the Sunday paper! But this book was hastily and very sloppily put together. It's printed in awkward courier (fixed-width typewriter font) which is used for manuscript submissions. I suppose we're supposed to feel like it's straight from Mr. Eszterhas's manual typewriter. But instead, since it's aligned on the right and left margins (unlike something from a real typewriter) you get some lines with three words. This, plus the inexcusable typos (was it even proof-read--by anyone?) makes this production feel like a piece of junk.

Which, unfortunately, it is.

Don't get me wrong, I expected the content to be tawdry (how could you not?) but Joe is professional writer and this is not a worthy effort for the mistakes and typos alone.

Then I finished the book.

Mr. Eszterhas, as a recent convert, has the sanctimony and ostentatious pride in his practice of his Catholic faith shared with many converts (a lot of it reminds me of Evelyn Waugh, a great artist who was in person a sanctimonious jerk but who wrote Brideshead Revisited and Handful of Dust which are towering books). That I can get over. We get that Gibson is a loathsome anti-semitic pig but at the end, parts of this book by Mr. Eszterhas just didn't hang together.

For one, it's an endless poison pen screed about Mel Gibson. Is he 100% evil? Is he ALL bad? If so, why, Mr. Eszterhas, did you spend so damned much time with him, living at his houses in Malibu and Costa Rica. You tell us about a thousand times that he wasn't fair, that he was using you by asking you to work for free. From reading your book, I think most of us would've left after the first night. Why did you stay? You slept with a golf club and a rosary because you feared for your safety. I just can't figure out why you would put your wife, yourself, and your fifteen year-old son in such danger.

You say your script on the Macabees (sorry, I'm not sure how to spell it) was a work of genius. Your best friends all told you so. But when it was rejected by Warners you claimed it was because this sick, psychopathic, shattered man was somehow all powerful. That he controlled "self-hating Jews" (your words) who ran the studio. Ugh. It makes me squeamish just thinking about it.

So, the man who'd been fired by his agent, who was reduced to acting in slasher sequels, this disgusting mean-spirited, psychopath, got your script rejected? It can't be because it was bad? It was because this monster who no one wants to work with somehow pulls all the strings in Hollywood? It just doesn't make any sense.

I mean, as much as I wanted to, I won't even watch The Passion of the Christ because, after hearing Mel Gibson's anti-semitic, anti-gay rants (not the ones you relate, but the ones that were well-documented and which you knew about before you moved in with him) I decided I wouldn't support him. And it makes me sad, because you and many others have said what a powerful, artfully-crafted film it is.

So, in finishing your book, I wanted to soak in bleach for an hour. You mention Mel's anal/enema obsession four or five times! It's so unbelievably disgusting. Why, again, were you living with this man?

You recount a story of Gibson relating a pathological slash-murder/anal-rape fantasy with his ex-wife. And then you had dinner with this man? You flew to Costa Rica with this man? You finished the script for this man?

None of this makes sense to me.

I'm sorry for you, Mr. Eszterhas, because rather than trying to help a profoundly ill man--a man who is a danger to himself and others--a man who from your book should be institutionalized, your show-boating sanctimonious faith tells you instead to exploit him for three bucks?

I don't get any of it.

Please return my $2.99.

22 of 29 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Worst piece of crap I've ever (started to) read! June 12, 2012

By Patricia C. Rinsky

Format:Kindle Edition

This is poorly written and full of hyper-Christian magical thinking. Example- This author believes a movie project of his was approved because the sun SPUN in the sky. Because of the Blessed Virgin. Ugh. The epitome of hubris. Seriously...who's more delusional and sick? This guy, or Mel Gibson?

28 of 38 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Both main characters are wack jobs June 7, 2012

By M. Beck

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

This was an interesting set of diary entries, not a "book". It just confirms that Hollywood is filled with mental cases who obviously are good at acting and creating fantasy but at a price; which is their personal grasp of reality. In Joe's case, he's clearly gone off the deep end of religion as has Mel Gibson who in addition to his extremist religious views, wallows in anti-semitic, and sadistic sexual fantasy. People will celebrate "celebrity" and look the other way and continue to enable these screwballs as long as the money is good and the fame is there. I don't understand why Joe didn't "run" far earlier than he did. After the first episode at Mel's house with his wife, a normal person would get out and never come back. So, the story is telling regarding Joe's psyche as well. And Mel? He'll probably end up killing someone (or himself) one day. Or, he'll win an Oscar and be "celebrated" by his fellow Hollywood screwballs. Mel is clearly mentally ill and not being treated. I wonder how typical his case is in our California version of Sodom and Gomorrah.