Hollywood Animal, Joe Eszterhas
Hollywood Animal, Joe Eszterhas
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Hollywood Animal

Author: Joe Eszterhas

Narrator: Scott Brick

Unabridged: 28 hr 33 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/15/2003


Synopsis

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.

About The Author

Joe Eszterhas is the author of American Rhapsody and Charlie Simpson's Apocalypse, which was nominated for the National Book Award. His fifteen films include Basic Instinct, Flashdance, Jagged Edge, Telling Lies in America, Showgirls, Sliver, Jade, Music Box, Betrayed, F.I.S.T, and An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn. He lives in Bainbridge Township, Ohio, with his wife and four sons. He is also the father of two grown children from his first marriage.Scott Brick, an acclaimed voice artist, screenwriter, and actor, has performed on film, television, and radio. His stage appearances throughout the US include CyranoHamlet, and MacBeth. In the audio industry, Scott has won over 20 Earphones Awards, as well as the 2003 Audie Award in the Best Science Fiction category for Dune: The Butlerian Jihad. After recording nearly 250 books in five years, AudioFile Magazine named Scott “one of the fastest-rising stars in the audiobook galaxy” and proclaimed him one of their Golden Voices. Brick’s range is unparalleled as he reads thrillers to narrative nonfiction, from biographies to science fiction with aplomb.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Brad

Hollywood Animal is Joe Eszterhas' autobiography and reads as such. The screenwriter behind Flashdance, Basic Instinct, and, yes, Showgirls, lets loose with all the profane sleaze as one would expect. This is a long book but I powered through it in a couple of weeks. Like his movies, this is junk fo......more

Goodreads review by Nathan

This is a terrible, terrible book I could not stop reading. Look for it in a future Silly Show-Biz Book Club entry.......more

Goodreads review by Andrew

The abridged audiobook read by Eric Bogosian is a trip.......more

I don't even like most of his films, but his various memoirs are all extremely entertaining, honest, and illustrative of the rock-star writer's rise and fall in the Hollywood Machine. Even when he was the most sought after screenwriter in Hollywood (getting millions of dollars for even an outline of......more