Hollywood Animal: A Memoir

I read this to hear about Hollywood and scriptwriting game, however, I ended up very intrigued by the backstory concerning the author's parents. If you are interested in scriptwriting or film-making, then this book is four or five star. However, a friend of mine without such interests really struggled with this book and ultimately didn't finish it. Joe Eszterhas has lead a life which many would judge him for, but that doesn't stop it from being interesting.

When Joe Esterhasz gets to about page 600 he reveals he has cancer of the oesophagus because of his smoking, drinking lifestyle. The book, at that moment, takes on a surreal tone and you realise the irony of what has gone before. It is a great work, not a great literary work but as a detailed picture drawn by a talented although slightly eccentric screenwriter who manages to alienate more people (according to the book) than most. Sometimes the detail is self-indulgent and unnecessary, such as the over-done italicised love letters/diaries of his second wife. I must admit I could have done without most of those but for the most part, and for the lifestyle 'don't smoke' warning, and for the Hollywood gossip, this is worth a read, especially if you like stories about movie directors lusting after starlets...who doesn't?

I have listened to the CD of this book, all the comments pertain to that edition. I picked up this CD from the public library before a long road trip. I had no idea who this man was or who most of the other "larger than life" stars were. The story, I found out, is fascinating, well-written and Scott Brick's delivery helps to bring out Eszterhas' personality. The author himself ... I can't stand. Or can I? This is a story of transformation and redemption and the trick is - as another reviewer has commented - indeed, for the writer not to get ahead of himself, but leave things to be discovered, let the complexity of his personality peel away like layers of an onion. In a series of flashbacks that show Joe as a Hungarian boy and ones that show him as an American man, we witness how a scared, geeky, immigrant boy with quite a temper becomes first a successful millionaire Hollywood screenwriter who learns to play the Hollywood game of power, then gains some perspective via the experience of throat cancer, finding God and learning to value less glamorous things such as being able to breathe while walking. Obvious things apparently take a long time to understand if there is a lot of money, drugs and pussy on the other side. Honesty and integrity are at the core of his tale in Hollywood (defending his script from changes, incursions into his creative freedom even when the odds are against him) and I rooted for him as a screenwriter right through his fight with Ovitz where he puts his career on the line. Honesty and integrity are missing from most his private life, where he cheats on his wife every chance he gets and identifies "strains" in his marriage as he is working to hack it apart. By contrast, Bill MacDonald, his would-be wife's former husband, is not into cheating, for which he labels him a "prude" and attributes this strange attitude to his "Catholic upbringing." Eszterhas' twenty years fit well into a Hollywood that uses up starstruck, ambitious young women hoping to make it and spits them out half-destroyed, but too stoned to notice. I am not sure which is worse: the women who would do "anything and everything" - in the book's returning phrase - to make it or the men who know they can and therefore will do whatever with them. Eszterhas happily assists, honesty and integrity do not play here. The lifelong liberal democrat, who abhors atrocities toward the weak and the poor is caught in a strange blindspot here. In defending his ambiguous scripts Eszterhas is right that the audience can handle and even like ambiguity. He has written a book that reads in part like a soap opera, that gives enough clues to alternative readings to that you are tempted to sort out where you stand with regard to this man, someone you have never met and most likely never will. Well done.

Joe Eszterhas is the well-known writer of Basic Instinct, Jagged Edge, Music Box and other movie scripts. In this book, he intersperses his Hollywood experience with his modest Hungarian background - two different worlds. Eszterhas relates some of his experiences of the good life, being highly paid and famous in Hollywood amongst his new best friend actors, producers and agents. This atmosphere is not for the faint-of-heart but Eszterhas was able to hold is own and command top payment for his scripts. Eventually, and fortunately, he and his family moved out of Hollywood where shortly thereafter, he was diagnosed with throat cancer. His efforts to stop smoking and drinking, both entrenched and decades-old, took more strength than anything preceeding it. But he did it. Hollywood Animal will provide many titillating stories of the big (and sometimes tough) guys and gals in The Business. It also gives us a glimpse of Eszterhas as a survivor who lived to write about it. Recommended.

You won't put this book down! If you ever wanted to know the juicy little secrets about the famous and infamous in Hollywood, read this. A uniquely written tell tale book that's gonna make Hollywood squirm. And oh, how we like to see them squirm. From the highest paid writer in the biz, he trashes everyone from stars to studio heads and even himself, in this rag to riches story about a kid from Cleveland with a talent for words and a flair for controversy. Sharp! Witty! Brutally honest writing!!!