Joe's Back!

[Tom & Jerry]

Big story today.  

The film, a cross between "Instinct" and Fatal Attraction," revolves around a married 30-year-old beauty who is seduced by a younger charming playboy.
Joe Eszterhas is back.
The man who turned sexual thriller into its own genre with films such as Basic Instinct and brought sizzle to the screen with movies ranging from Flashdance and Jagged Edge to Sliver and Showgirls, has written Lust, an erotic thriller which Scott Steindorff and his Stone Village Productions are producing.
A cross between Basic Instinct and Fatal Attraction, Lust centers on a 30-year old beauty who is married and in love with an older Miami-based fashion magazine publisher, only to be seduced by a younger charming playboy on a business trip in Los Angeles. The playboy has an Russian assistant who is in love with him, and in this twisted jealous love triangle, secretly videotapes him and his new lover having sex to show it to her husband.
The consequences of the woman’s impulsive, escapade unravel into a high suspense thriller promising plenty of steamy sex scenes, set against the backdrop of the high-stakes world of real estate brokering in Miami.
“There are a lot twists and turns that only Joe Eszterhas can do,” said Steindorff, one of the producers of The Lincoln Lawyer, the hit legal thriller starring Matthew McConaughey. “There’s reason why he was the top writer for many years: the guy knows how to write. And there hasn’t been a great sexual thriller since Unfaithful.’”
Steindorff and Eszterhas plan on going out to cast and a director in the next few weeks in order to sell the project at Cannes next month.  A late summer start is being eyed.
Steindorff plans to independently finance the $30 million film through private equity.
Hungarian-born Eszterhas was a reporter for Rolling Stone before making the jump into movies. At the height of his career, the writer was getting paid millions for his specs but was ultimately undone by high-profile flops such as Showgirls. He left Hollywood disillusioned by the movie industry in the late 1990s.
He ensconced himself in his hometown of Cleveland, focusing on raising a family and writing books. Eventually, the screenwriting siren called.
For Steindorff, Lust came to timing. The producer had called ICM looking for a sexual thriller, with the agency teaming him with Eszterhas just as he was finishing up his script.
Eszterhas’ scripts have given career-changing opportunities to Sharon Stone and Michael Douglas and the scribe and Steindoff see the potential for star-making turns in the four-hander.
Peter J. Fruchtman will also produce Lust with Dylan Russell, Craig Baumgarten and Scott LaStaiti as exec producers.
Eszterhas is repped by ICM and attorney Jaimi Afifi.

[Pitchpatch]

Nope.  Joe's not 'back'.  He's back when his next movie opens to big numbers on opening weekend.  Until then he's just a dinosaur searching for the old sweet watering hole he drank deep from once upon a time.

I read HOLLYWOOD ANIMAL.  I watched BURN HOLLYWOOD BURN.  While I'm all for comebacks, nothing I've read or seen convinces me Eszterhas is a changed man.  Hint: the old Eszterhas was a thugish, self-destructive, self-absorbed, overpaid, nasty piece of work.  His family life and childhood made him that way.  It's in his DNA.  You'd think a life-threatening experience would truly change a man.  Normally it would.  But not when that shit is in your DNA.

I dislike the man intensely.  I do not particularly dislike his scripts.  I dislike the man himself.

[Fleeting Sow]

I read somewhere he became deeply religious and quit the screenwriting trade. Would be interesting to see if he takes any moralistic stances in the script, remember last year Tom Jones got flack from the record company producing his latest album because it was overly spiritual, the company vice president called the album a "sick joke".

Maybe it's seeing Shane Black's growing success that made him try his luck again, no-one's about to get paid like the 90's though.

[Sibo]

Watched an interview with him recently, youtibe I think, and he seemed pretty contrite and self aware. I think I veer towards Pitch's opinion though, something about the man is...just not right.

[Jawbreaker]

Nope.  Joe's not 'back'.  He's back when his next movie opens to big numbers on opening weekend.  Until then he's just a dinosaur searching for the old sweet watering hole he drank deep from once upon a time.

I read HOLLYWOOD ANIMAL.  I watched BURN HOLLYWOOD BURN.  While I'm all for comebacks, nothing I've read or seen convinces me Eszterhas is a changed man.  Hint: the old Eszterhas was a thugish, self-destructive, self-absorbed, overpaid, nasty piece of work.  His family life and childhood made him that way.  It's in his DNA.  You'd think a life-threatening experience would truly change a man.  Normally it would.  But not when that shit is in your DNA.

I dislike the man intensely.  I do not particularly dislike his scripts.  I dislike the man himself.

I understand completely, hate is too strong of a word for me here but I agree on the people that pull that card and go on living the exact same way they always have, and sometimes worse while still waving that "I'm saved flag".  You can decide to be your best self all day long, but you HAVE to work at it or else you are only giving lip service.

Time will tell with him...

As far as Lust goes, it sounds interesting and convoluted.  It seems like he's trying to put too much in there.  Also, when did Lincoln Lawyer become a hit?  That's news to me.

[Tom & Jerry]

Ha, JB.  That's exactly what I was thinking about Lincoln Lawyer.

I'm not a fan of Joe either.  His movies don't do anything for me and I don't think I have ever peeked at one of his scripts.

[Pitchpatch]

HOLLYWOOD ANIMAL.  That was the thing that turned me fully against JE.

I started off LOVING that book.  Joe has an interesting writing style.  And the Hollywood stories are, of course, juicy and tantalizing.  He effectively interweaves chapters charting the lows of his difficult childhood years and family life with the highs of his Hollywood writing supremacy.

But about a third or maybe half the way in, I start feeling skeezy.  Sibo's "this guy is not quite right in the head" feeling creeps in.  Joe tells you early on what a fuckhead he is.  He embraces that.  He revels in how other people think he's the devil.  He seems to feed off it.  The more he's despised the more pleased he gets.  When he talks about beating a hobo almost to death, just for the hell of it, there's no hint of remorse.  Not genuine remorse.

And then, in the second half of the book, Joe covers the emotional clusterfuck of his relationship with his longtime wife and next wife.  That's when I became fully aware that Joe never grew beyond an emotionally abused child.  He's a man on the outside but inside... something else entirely.  Something destructive and selfish and deluded and nasty.

The drugs, the women, the power plays, the ridiculous paydays... the Hollywood bubble cocooning him from reality... did that breed and supercharge the contagion inside him?  If he'd remained a writer instead of a screenwriter could he have cultivated his strengths and achieved massive success outside of Hollywood?  Not become a symbol for all everything wrong with the system?  Maybe.

One thing I'm sure of.  If Hollywood begins again feeding Joe's destructive hungers, he will quickly become the HOLLYWOOD MONSTER he once was -- born again or not.

But my guess is, that won't happen because this isn't the nineties.  I don't believe Joe can give us something fresh, something that fits with today's audiences.  Or maybe that's just my hope.  I hate to see the bully win.

[120pages]

Did anyone else notice that a number of his movies, including MUSIC BOX, JAGGED EDGE and BASIC INSTINCT are structurally EXACTLY THE SAME MOVIE?  Laziest writer, laughing all the way to the bank.