Gentler but still angry, Hollywood rogue returns

[stu]

Money, drink, [bleeped!], success -- Joe "Basic Instinct" Eszterhas has had and seen it all.

 

But the burly, notorious author of some of Hollywood's biggest hits is still nursing one dream -- that one day the "schmucks with laptops (screenwriters) will be kicking [bleeped!]."

 

If there is one thing that angers the reformed, now non-smoking, non-drinking, cancer survivor, it is the way fellow screenwriters are treated.

 

"They have always been second-class citizens, at the bottom of the totem pole. That enraged me 30 years ago and it continues to do so. If you want to protect your own vision, you have to fight for it and I certainly got into enough fights in the course of 15 movies to feel like a grizzled ring veteran," Eszterhas told Reuters.

 

Five years after quitting Hollywood for Ohio after a string of flops including "Showgirls" and "Sliver," and a bout of throat cancer, Eszterhas, 61, is back with a new movie and a gossipy survival guide for aspiring screenwriters.

 

He is even enjoying a turnaround in the fortunes of "Showgirls," the 1995 Vegas stripper movie that was once savaged but is now enjoying recognition as a cult classic and could be reborn as a stage show.

 

The screenwriter of "F.I.S.T." and "Flashdance" who dished the dirt on some of Hollywood's top stars in two previous books says he is now a "much kinder and gentler Joe" than in his rambunctious days as one of Hollywood's highest-paid screenwriters.

 

But it doesn't stop him lacing his primer for screenwriters, "The Devil's Guide to Hollywood," with some hilarious and biting tales about the industry's elite.

 

-- Director Martin Scorsese, Eszterhas says, is so paranoid that he puts a mirror on top of the monitor while he is filming so he can see who's standing watching behind him.

 

-- Michael Douglas "in my experience is not brilliant and may very well, in some cases, be dumb. This is the guy who wanted to change the ending of 'Basic Instinct' because he said it wasn't redemptive."

 

-- Sharon Stone was so disliked on movie sets that the crew on one of her early films urinated in a bathtub she was supposed to use in a scene.

 

Eszterhas said he used anecdotes to illustrate how Hollywood works, adding "I have the same friends I always had. No one has ever said one word to me in complaint of anything I've ever written about Hollywood."

 

GIVING ADVICE

 

Along with the straight advice -- write what you know, never write the sequel, refuse to rewrite your script, don't live in Los Angeles -- Eszterhas provides the kind of insight that only a veteran with 15 movies to his name can supply.

 

Don't work with a director who's just won an Oscar -- they'll be too petrified of falling short of the industry's high expectations to shoot it.

 

Hide in the stall of the men's room of The Grille in Beverly Hills any weekday lunch hour and listen to the conversations and "you will have learned everything you need to know about Hollywood."

 

"Children of Glory," Eszterhas's first movie since being diagnosed in 2001 with a malignant tumor that cost him 80 percent of his larynx, is an independent film about the short-lived 1956 Hungarian revolution.

 

It focuses on an Olympic water polo match between the Soviet and Hungarian teams that took place while Soviet tanks moved in to crush the uprising.

 

The story had a special resonance for Eszterhas, who is Hungarian, and the movie will have its premiere in Budapest on October 23 -- the 50th anniversary of the start of the Hungarian revolution.

 

It's a lifetime away from the sexually charged movies that brought him fame.

 

"I think it is possible that after my throat surgery and a difficult recovery I decided to do movies that were more serious," he said. "You never know after a serious illness like that how much time you have left."

 

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