Hollywood Animal: A Memoir [Hardcover]

Joe Eszterhas (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 27, 2004

He spent his earliest years in post WWII–refugee camps. He came to America and grew up in Cleveland—stealing cars, rolling drunks, battling priests, nearly going to jail. He became the screenwriter of the worldwide hits Basic Instinct, Jagged Edge, and Flashdance. He also wrote the legendary disasters Showgirls and Jade. The rebellion never ended, even as his films went on to gross more than a billion dollars at the box office and he became the most famous—or infamous—screenwriter in Hollywood.

Joe Eszterhas is a complex and paradoxical figure: part outlaw and outsider combined with equal parts romantic and moralist. More than one person has called him “the devil.” He has been referred to as “the most reviled man in America.” But Time asked, “If Shakespeare were alive today, would his name be Joe Eszterhas?” and he was the first screenwriter picked as one of the movie industry’s 100 Most Powerful People. Although he is often accused of sexism and misogyny, his wife is his best friend and equal partner. Considered an apostle of sex and violence, he is a churchgoer who believes in the power of prayer. For many years the ultimate symbol of Hollywood excess, he has moved his family to Ohio and immersed himself in the midwestern lifestyle he so values.

Controversial, fearless, extremely talented, and totally unpredictable, the author of the best-selling American Rhapsody and National Book Award nominee Charlie Simpson’s Apocalypse has surprised us yet again: he has written a memoir like no other.

On one level, Hollywood Animal is a shocking and often devastating look inside the movie business. It intimately explores the concept of fame and gives us a never-before-seen look at the famous. Eszterhas reveals the fights, the deals, the extortions, the backstabbing, and the sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll world that is Hollywood.

But there are many more levels to this extraordinary work. It is the story of a street kid who survives a life filled with obstacles and pain . . . a chronicle of a love affair that is sensual, glorious, and unending . . . an excruciatingly detailed look at a man facing down the greatest enemy he’s ever fought: the cancer inside him . . . and perhaps most important, Hollywood Animal is the heartbreaking story of a father and son that defines the concepts of love and betrayal.

This is a book that will shock you and make you laugh, anger you and move you to tears. It is pure Joe Eszterhas—a raw, spine-chilling celebration of the human spirit.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Author/screenwriter Eszterhas introduces readers to the ultimate in Hollywood animal thinking when he quotes an unnamed Oscar-winning producer as saying, "the only time I’ll root for anybody to be a success is if he or she has cancer, and I know for certain that the cancer is terminal." Eszterhas’s book is unabashedly vulgar, a brutally revealing blend of sex and greed that goes much further than Peter Biskind’s Down and Dirty Pictures (Forecasts, Jan. 5) in exposing Hollywood’s dark side. Eszterhas refers to himself as "insufferable" for coveting success and money, but as the horrifying anecdotes unfold, he mounts a dynamic defense of screenwriters who have been treated like "discarded hookers... not invited to premieres of their own movies, cheated of residual payments." Salacious details mingle with explosions of temper, and Eszterhas isn’t afraid to take potshots at William Goldman, Ron Bass, Robert Towne and other screenwriters he believes have compromised too heavily with the system. A particularly absorbing story centers on Sylvester Stallone, who starred in F.I.S.T. and then tried to take credit for Eszterhas’s script. Even more shocking is producer Marty Ransohoff’s relentless criticism of Glenn Close during the filming of Jagged Edge, which made the actress throw Ransohoff and his daughter (who was not involved in the movie) off the set. Just as readers begin to drown in an ocean of gossip, Eszterhas introduces two dramatic plots: his battle with throat cancer and the discovery that his father was an outspokenly anti-Semitic former Nazi. This electrifying section overshadows the Hollywood material and deserves a book of its own. It makes an argument readers will immediately pick up on: that animalistic behavior is just as savagely prevalent outside Hollywood studio gates.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Sleaze and more sleaze. But don't we love it? Hollywood insider stuff par excellence, from a well-known and contentious screenwriter. Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 752 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; 1 edition (January 27, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375413553
• ISBN-13: 978-0375413551
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.6 x 2.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (88 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #374,082 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Don't stop for commercial break-- addictive read!, June 27, 2004

By 

Gwen A Orel (Millburn, New Jersey United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hollywood Animal: A Memoir (Hardcover)

This book is so much more than a Hollwyood tell-all. For one thing, it's just terrifically written-- not "terrifically written for a Hollywood hack," but "terrifically written," period. Eszterhas' style is succinct, surprising and vivid. Some think he's boasting that he admires Salinger, Faulkner and Hemingway-- but Eszterhas writes terrific prose. He seems to be speaking directly, but his details are surprising and vivid. I haven't read his journalism, but I bet his articles were great.

He alternates chapters about Hollywood (which are yes, fascinating and appalling) with chapters called "flashback" about his dirt-poor and often difficult childhood as Hungarian immigrant in Cleveland, and brief, italicized sections called "close-ups" that are portraits of unnamed Hollywood personalities (a poolcleaner, a vice president, an actress).

It's a long book, but because of the way it's structured, it's a quick read (well, it took me a few weeks to get through it, but each time I'd pick it up I'd read 60-70 pages before I could bear to put it down). Ezsterhas includes verbatim hatchet-letters he's written to agents and producers who've offended him-- including one hilarious letter to Mike Ovitz that sets off a feud that is a running theme throughout the book. And while Ezsterhas is articulate and hilarious, any reader-- including apparently Ezsterhas himself-- can see that he's also defensive, arrogant and difficult as hell.

You can't help liking him anyway.

Even as he recounts episodes of cheating on his first wife. Even as he recounts painful alienations from friends and family that he is at least partially responsible for. Even when he shows a less than forgiving heart not only to his father but, in one of the sections that shows him in a rather petty light, to old high school classmates (he carries a grudge after 20 years and seems to take some glee in it).

In part that's because Joe is onto himself. He's deeply critical of himself and the book is long and full enough to show him actually reversing earlier actions that might raise an eyebrow. His portraits are sometimes cruel, but he doesn't spare himself either-- and there's as much love as contempt. Well, nearly. You get the sense that even when he was most a "hollywood animal"-- the guy was FUN. With a kind of fairness and honesty that is rare, threatening and delightful.

In the end, the book praises "flyover" values (the states in between the coasts)--prayer, family, changing seasons, hard work. Joe moves to Ohio with his family, and stays.

I found it inspiring on a lot of levels. Yes, I'm in entertainment and picked up the book for the "hollywood gossip"-- and there's lots of it here. One of the most admirable qualities Joe has is his sheer output. He doesn't write a whole lot about his process (though there is one section detailing his work on one of the screenplays). But many times throughout the book he writes of pitching this or that spec-- here is a man who didn't wait for assignments to just get to work.

But the book is inspiring too as an American Dream/Nightmare story, complete with pitfalls and rewards. finally Joe battles with cancer-- and goes on to become an anti-smoking activist. Go, Joe!

I rarely want to read a memoir more than once. But this one is so rich and full I know I'll be referring to it often. A great treat, easy going down but good for you too. Bravo!

25 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Finest Autobiography I've Read in Twenty Years, April 3, 2004

By 

Anthony Damato "Law professor" (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Hollywood Animal: A Memoir (Hardcover)

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.

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Finally.......Behind The Veil, January 28, 2004

By 

J. Bowman (Irvine, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hollywood Animal: A Memoir (Hardcover)

I've read quite a bit about the book, but was surprised to learn after reading it that it's more like a tutorial on screenwriting and moviemaking in general. The Hollywood insights, anectdotes and hard cold facts are something anyone in the entertainment business should read if they want to survive or, hell, even thrive. Joe's entertaining style and no-nonsense approach makes this book a must read!!!