The Devil’s Guide To Hollywood (3 page)

I have been called “the rogue elephant of screenwriters” (the
Los Angeles Times
); “the Che Guevara of screenwriters (
Daily Variety
); “a living Hollywood legend” (ABC’s 20/20); and “a force of nature” (
The New York Times
). My fa vorite quote about myself, of course, and one I use shamelessly to infuriate my critics, is a quote from
Time
magazine: “If Shakespeare were alive today, would his name be Joe Eszterhas?” (No, I will reluctantly admit that I am not Shakespeare; I am a refugee street kid from the West Side of Cleveland, in love with his wife, his children, movies, baseball, and America.)

I lived for twenty-two years in Marin County in northern California; a year in Kapalua, Maui; eight years in Malibu’s Point Dume; and, for the past four years, back home in Ohio, where Naomi and I have decided to raise our four boys (so they, too, will grow up to be in love with their wives, children, baseball, and America).

But while I’ve lived in all these places, in my head I’ve lived in Hollywood all this time, beginning my days by reading
Daily Variety
and
The Hollywood Reporter
—and
then The New York Times
(starting, like George W. Bush, with the sports pages).

The lessons that I am about to pass on to you were learned in many and varied places: in so-called (and oxymoronic) studio creative meetings; on tension-laden sets; on luxurious Learjets headed for European locations; in limos moving like bulletproof armored vehicles down Sunset Boulevard in the L.A. night; on family vacations to movie-family vacation spots like the Kahala Hilton on Oahu and, later, the Four Seasons on Maui; at poker games in the Hollywood Hills and in Bel Air; at craps tables at Caesar’s Palace, the Mirage, and Bellagio in Vegas; at innumerable parties in Aspen, Malibu, and the Hamptons; and at myriad power breakfasts, lunches, and dinners at Morton’s, the Ivy, Elaine’s, the Four Seasons Grill Room, Spago, Crustacean, Frida’s, Citrus, Orsini’s, the Friar’s Club, the Daisy, Ma Maison, Café Rodeo, the Swiss House, Scandia, the Brown Derby, Palm, Patrick’s Roadhouse, Michael’s, the patio of the Bel Air Hotel, the bar at the Four Seasons Hotel and the Peninsula, the lobby bar at the Chateau Marmont, the Sky Bar, the Monkey Bar, On the Rox, La Dolce Vita, Jimmy’s, La Scala on Little Santa Monica and La Scala at the beach, Nicky Blair’s, Granita, Eureka, Dan Tana’s, the Padrino Room at the Beverly Wilshire, the Polo Lounge at the Beverly Hills Hotel, the Grill on Dayton Way, and Nobu in L.A. and in New York.

In the world of Hollywood, the true battlefields are restaurants and bars in L.A. and New York. I have fought many battles in those places and have learned some hard-won, hilarious, and painful lessons.

I pass them on to you because my creative life has been dedicated to the belief that we screenwriters are not “schmucks with Underwoods” (as Jack Warner once called us) but that through hard work, strength of will, treachery, God’s help, and big balls, we can write good scripts, protect them from being mutilated on-screen, make millions, and live lives that are self-respectful and fulfilling.

I am convinced the day will come when screenwriters will no longer be at the bottom of the Hollywood totem pole; the schmucks with laptops will be kicking ass.

Hollywood has often been a hellish place for screenwriters, but I think that with my
Devil’s Guide
in hand, you’ll feel less pain.

—Joe Eszterhas
Bainbridge Township, Ohio

PART ONE

P
URSUING
Y
OUR
D
REAM

LESSON 1

They Can Snort You Here!

Why do you want to be a screenwriter
?

T
he answer I get from most young wannabe screenwriters is, “Cuz I want to be rich.”

I tell them what Madonna says: “Money makes you beautiful.”

And I tell them that I’ve made a lot of money but that I’ll never be beautiful.

Why do you want to write a screenplay
?

S
creenwriter/novelist Raymond Chandler (
The Blue Dahlia
): “Where the money is, so will the jackals gather.”

You, too, can be a star
.

M
y biggest year was 1994. I wrote five scripts in one year. I made almost
10 million. I had houses in Tiburon and Malibu, California, and in Kapalua, Maui.

I made half a million dollars for writing a thirty-second television commercial for Chanel No. 5 perfume.

I fell in love. I got divorced. I married my second wife. Our first child was born.

I had the best tables at Spago and the Ivy and at Granita, Postrio, and Roy’s. I had limos in northern California, in Malibu, and on Maui.

I ate more, I drank more, I made love more, and I spent more time in the sun than I ever had. The world was my oyster.

I became the screenwriter as star
.

“Ben Hecht,” his friend Budd Schulberg wrote many years ago, “seemed the personification of the writer at the top of his game, the top of his world, not gnawing at and doubting himself as great writers were said to do, but with every word and every gesture indicating the animal pleasure he took in writing well.”

Robert McKee makes money, doesn’t he
?

W
hen a student interrupted a McKee seminar with a question, McKee roared, “Do not interrupt me!”

A few minutes later, McKee shouted to the student, “If you think that this course is about making money, there’s the door!”

I’ll say this right up front:
This book is about making money
.

Money is not the best thing about screenwriting
.

T
he best thing about screenwriting is this: I sit in a little room making things up and put my conjurings down on paper. A year and a half later, if I’m lucky, my conjurings will be playing all over the world on movie screens, giving enjoyment to hundreds of millions of people.

For two hours, the lives of hundreds of millions of people will have been made better by something that
I
conjured up in a little room out of my own heart, gut, and brain.

By then, my conjurings will have become a megacorporation employing thousands of people—from gaffers to makeup people to ticket sellers.

And it will all have begun with
me
, with
my
imagination and
my
creativity, literally communicating with the whole world.

That’s the best part of screenwriting.

The money (almost) doesn’t matter
.

S
creenwriter Jack Epps (
Top Gun, Legal Eagles
): “You do it because you love the movies. The money gets in the way. I think that if you’re a good writer, the money will follow. But if you’re writing for money, I don’t think it’s going to work. I think that very few people can make that happen.” I’ll say this right up front:
This book is about making money. Without losing your soul
.

Ben Hecht is no role model
.

W
rote Ben: “The fact that the movie magnate is going to make an enormous pile of money out of my story and that I am therefore entitled to a creditable share of it seldom, if ever, occurs to me. I am, to the contrary, convinced that my contribution is nil. The story I will provide will be a piece of hack work, containing in it a reshuffling of familiar plot turns and characterizations.”

T
AKE IT FROM ZSA ZSA

Actress and famed Hungarian femme fatale Zsa Zsa Gabor: “Money is like a sixth sense that makes it possible for you to fully enjoy the other five
.”