Says Joe Eszterhas, who is 81 years old now, in this great conversation with Joe Rogan.
The classic note he's talking about is Hunter S. Thompson's suicide note. I've quoted it before: "No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun — for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax — This won’t hurt."
Eszterhas wrote a lot of movies. Is any of them a classic? Here's a list. I haven't seen any of them. Not my sort of thing. Maybe you've seen "Basic Instinct." But anyway, he talks about a lot in that interview. There's a long section about his dinner with Jimi Hendrix, who was, we're told, "the nicest guy... very nice... just laid back."
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51 comments:
He's just a vulgar Hollywood hack. Look at his films, just just one medicore movie after another. And its Sharon Stone's tits that made Basic instinct a hit.
IRC, he thought "Passion of the Christ" was anti-semitic and got in a fight with Mel Gibson over a script. Mel thought his draft script was crap, so Esterhouse called him a Jew-hater. That's par for the course.
Mediocre talents are usually very political and lean on sex or vulgarity to make money in Hollywood.
As for HST, this guy took so many drugs and booze its incredible he made it to 67. His list of things that made his life worthwhile and could no longer do is rather pathetic.
"...You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax — This won’t hurt."..."
Maybe he didn't feel anything, but he left it for his son and wife to discover, and they might have something to say about leaving behind a corpse with a .45-to-the-head mess. Self-involved to the end.
I have not heard of, or thought of Joe Eszterhas in years. I used to read some of his stuff. I guess when he was with Rolling Stone. This was back when Rolling Stone had some good writers. As for his movies, he did make some good ones, and a couple of huge hits. I'll look forward to this conversation as I was once a fan of Hunter S. Thompson.
I read that Ezsterhas was once in the works to write the script for a movie about Judah and the Maccabees. It was to be directed by Mel Gibson. It eventually never got made because Mel was going through his Tucker Carlson phase at the time. Too bad. It's a story I'd like to see made. For those of you who don't know the story of the Maccabees, look it up. Though...be prepared. It's about Jews. In Judea. Centuries before Islam even existed.
I’m 76. Abandoned the bar, club theater music scene when I was 60. Moved to church service musician gigs, and accompanying pro and amateur choral groups. Make more money consistently today than ever in my career, and it’s a lot more enjoyable. The congregations and groups I support are grateful and supportive. And, I always get paid.
HST and Hendrix. Talented counterculture icons with reputations inflated by myth, timing, persona, and selective nostalgia that far exceed actual achievements. Sex, drugs, and rock n roll.
I have seen the early films plus Basic Instinct. Only really enjoyed Flashdance and Jagged Edge.
There’s nothing on the other side of the fence but our religious and fantastical constructs.
I've seen Flashdance and Basic Instincts. I liked Flashdance, but it struck me as a female fantasy movie. Working class girl works as a welder and as a stripper (but tasteful stripping without nudity) gets accepted by a prestigious dance school by not following the "RULES" and gets a handsome rich boyfriend.
ChatGPT says the average wage for an entry level welder in Pittsburgh was $16,000 to $20,000 a year in 1983 dollars and you could live comfortably there for around $8,000 to $14,000 a year. So, no need to strip for extra money, but that would have made for a boring movie.
Wikipedia says he did an uncredited "rewrite" of Blue Thunder, which is an awesome movie. The rest of his stuff veers from the okay to the really bad.
At one point he was the highest paid screenwriter in Hollywood, which is insane. And apparently he used to get paid in the seven figures just for a 3-page outline for a screenplay. That's so crazy I don't think it happened.
He must have had the best agent in the world. His career is all sizzle and no steak.
Why men liked Flashdance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAXX73HEXXs&list=RDbAXX73HEXXs&start_radio=1
Almost everything HST wrote that is still worth reading was done before he reached 40. He was an alcoholic/druggie and that takes its toll. The Rolling Stone editor/Publisher said he did nothing of note for them after 1975.
Its amazing he was able to coast on Fear and loathing in Las Vegas, F/L on the campaign trail, and Hells Angels, for almost 30 years.
Hunter was a selfish bastard who killed himself because he didnt believe in anything
I'm a simple guy. Liked Jagged Edge, Basic Instinct, Flashdance.
I have not seen Showgirls more than 3 times.
And, production of movie makes all the difference, no matter how good, or bad, the script is.
"Swing for the fences."
Re: woman welders. Couple of decades ago met an old lady who worked in shipyard during ww2. Said she used 1" welding rod.
Personally a 3/32s and quarter inch 6011 man. Pros refer to it as "idiot rod", but I don't take offense.
didn't hunter blow his brains out while he was on the phone with his wife?
what a guy
what a man
people are ALL THE TIME talking about "the problem"
The Problem IS: overpopulation..
The Problem IS: not enough children..
The Problem IS: immigrants aren't smart enough for simple labor..
Maybe, just Maybe, we (unlike Canada) aren't addressing
THE REAL PROBLEM
The Real Problem IS: many non productive people think that THEY don't HAVE TO commit suicide.
If you are NOT paying taxes.. WHY haven't YOU committed yet?
If YOU are worried about climate change.. WHY haven't YOU committed?
If you are worried about people trying to control Your life,
and tell YOU what to do.. WHY haven't YOU commited yet?
problems are MAID to be fixed.. PEOPLE are the problems
Jagged edge was pretty good. The DA, improbably showing up at the crime scene: if I was going to kill my wife, this is how I would do it. Make it look like Charlie Manson did it.
anyone that thinks HST wasn't a great writer should reread Hell's Angels.
anyone that thinks HST continued to be a great writer should read (try to read) his later stuff.
note: this is ME agreeing with rco.. disturbing but true
People who commit suicide are suffering. Many times it is a permanent solution to a temporary problem, like love and marriage gone bad.
The man who blows his brains out, or the woman who ODs on sleeping pills has ended their suffering.
Naturally, many times friends and family members don't like that. They're attitude is "But what about me, I feel so bad that they did that. They could have continued to live in their misery so I wouldn't have to suffer"
It is understandable.
Guy across the street suffered from constant migraines. The real ones, not the pretend ones every woman has. Used a shotgun to end his misery. His pain would have never ended.
Teen-age boy and girl both dead over break-up. That was example of permanent solution to temp problem. Each may have led a happy life with a family if they had endured the misery for several months or so.
No sex, no drugs, no wine, no women
No fun, no sin, no you, no wonder it's dark. . . . .
Blue Thunder A+ (no official credit)
Jagged Edge B
Music Box B-
Basic Instinct C+ (one great scene)
Jade C- (You left NYPD Blue for this? Ouch)
Sliver D+ (great book, lousy movie)
One Night Stand D+
Flashdance D (saw it in my teens, hated it)
"Maybe he didn't feel anything, but he left it for his son and wife to discover"
This. I don't know why people do this. Especially in North America which is bursting with BLM Aokigaharas. Shuffle yourself and your Beretta to this continent's Pole of Inaccessibility in the Dakotas or the Sierra Nevadas where Steve Fossett crashed and leap the fence somewhere bears will find you before a human does.
If a person's going to make a plan, not having planned to clean up after oneself is infuriatingly incompetent.
“Flashdance D (saw it in my teens, hated it)”
Two snaps up!
narciso with a splendid summary @9:23am.
There’s nothing on the other side of the fence but our religious and fantastical constructs.
So now I know how you answer that question. Fair enough.
If you're answering that question that way, then of course you can't meaningfully object to MAID as a policy, I suppose, though you could still oppose how it's applied. I mean, maybe you could object to suicide for anyone who will be leaving behind loved ones who will suffer grief and, often, profound guilt and anger, so I suppose you could oppose MAID on those grounds. But if you know that there's nothing on the other side of the fence, then as soon as this side of the fence becomes intolerable or even just boring - for you - then there's no personal reason not to jump it.
I answer the question differently. I don't know for sure what's on the other side of the fence. I have some things I'm hoping for (notably a bunch of answers, but no matter what, that isn't up to me), but ultimately I am content to live in ignorance.
But I believe I was created, based on various lines of evidence that I find compelling, and not for nothing. I don't know why I was created - unlike some people, I've never discovered a clear purpose for my life, although my kids certainly give me a lot of reasons to keep on getting up every morning - but I don't need to know. It's enough for me to believe that my life exists for a purpose (which may not even have to do with me or anyone I know or love), and because I don't know what part(s) of my life will serve that purpose, it's incumbent on me not to end my life at my option.
Pope John Paul II showed me a way to die that I think served this question of purpose very well. I posted about that here, back in the day, because he died just two days after Terri Schiavo, and the contrast between her life's being ended for the convenience of another and his life ending because his God decided it was time was very stark for me.
I've only seen Blue Thunder (excellent) and Flashdance (meh; we called it Trashdance). The latter has interested me mostly for the subsequent controversy over the dancer who did some portion of the actual dancing and didn't get credit.
"RideSpaceMountain said...
"This. I don't know why people do this. Especially in North America which is bursting with BLM Aokigaharas. Shuffle yourself and your Beretta to this continent's Pole of
If a person's going to make a plan, not having planned to clean up after oneself is infuriatingly incompetent."
Yep, guy across street shotgun to his head in back yard. Eventually young girl next door, 12 or 13 years old, wonders what the bad smell is and looks over the fence. Then, of course her dad has to look. No doubt a memorable experience. Mom just took their word for it
I have been in the same room while other people watched various titles from the Eszterhas ouevre, but can honestly claim never to have seen one through.
But his is a nice immigrant success story. Good on him, good on America.
One memory of my HS years is the classmate who rode his chopper into a gymnasium wall at an estimated 70 mph during second period. They held us in class for the hour or so it took to clean things up a bit.
"the nicest guy... very nice... just laid back."
Yeah, smack'll do that.
From the movie, wages of fear. “ what’s on the other side of the wall?” “ nothing.” William Fried Henry made this movie as sorcerer but the original French movie wages of fear is so much better.
Tell me you never seen Basic Instinct without saying you never seen it: “ its Sharon Stone's tits that made Basic instinct a hit.”
I don’t think you even seen a parody of the movie.
Um thats not right
Esterhaz recycled the twist fron jagged edge
I don’t think you even seen a parody of the movie.
And I dont think you've seen a bunny rabbit with a pancake on its head. But thanks for the low effort post!
"I liked Flashdance, but it struck me as a female fantasy movie. Working class girl works as a welder and as a stripper (but tasteful stripping without nudity) gets accepted by a prestigious dance school by not following the "RULES" and gets a handsome rich boyfriend."
Like Pretty Woman with a hooker w/o sex with whomever.
Very realistic.... Meh.
Now I need to have someone run that "Manic" video with Swan Lake playing in the background. If that's a winner, I'll take back my meh.
“If you're answering that question that way, then of course you can't meaningfully object to MAID as a policy, I suppose.”
You suppose wrong. Something is almost always better than nothing. What made Terri Schiavo a hard case is that there was really nothing on either of the fence, except the imposition of beliefs. I understand that at the end John Paul II went onto a kind of hospice. Why not want that for Terri too.
“The Edge... There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. The others-the living-are those who pushed their control as far as they felt they could handle it, and then pulled back, or slowed down, or did whatever they had to when it came time to choose between Now and Later. But the edge is still Out there.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, Hell's Angels
"William Fried Henry made this movie as sorcerer but the original French movie wages of fear is so much better."
Probably at typo, but it's Friedkin. Sorcerer is good, but Wages of Fear is better.
"Hollywood Animal" is an interesting book. He left Hollywood, went back to Ohio and rediscovered Catholicism.
Good fences make good neighbors
And that has made all the difference.
I just started the podcast. It's very hard to listen to his COPD breathing. I hope everybody has quit smoking by now.
Nietzsche said, “The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of it one gets through many a dark night.” But unlike HST, one has to get through it for it to console you.
Joe Eszterhas ... meh. "Sliver" was crummy and boring. "Jagged Edge" was pretty good. By now the "erotic thriller" genre is played out, but "Jagged Edge" was an early example, before the genre was run into the ground with ever worse productions.
"Betrayed" and "Music Box" seem like they were the same movie with American rightwing extremists swapped out for Eastern European Nazi collaborators. About the time he wrote the movie Eszterhas found out that his own father had been a collaborator.
Of course it wasn't Sharon Stone's breasts that caused the sensation, but whatever was between her legs. Just what that was -- did she or didn't she -- was quite a topic 30 years ago.
You suppose wrong. Something is almost always better than nothing.
Almost, yes! But I can ready envisage situations in which "something" is decidedly not preferable to nothing. What do I do then?
In my case - though thankfully I haven't been tested in this way, even remotely - I hope I would choose to keep on experiencing Something, because it might be helpful to someone in some way I can't specify, rather than taking the Nothing way, which - honestly, maybe that too would be helpful to someone. But because I don't and can't know, my personal choice is - let me emphasize again, in the absence of the challenges of terrible pain or weariness - to keep on going through whatever it is, and let my life end when it Is Ordained to end (I'm avoiding explicitly invoking a deity here although my belief is that my life is created, made possible, and in service of one).
What made Terri Schiavo a hard case is that there was really nothing on either of the fence, except the imposition of beliefs. I understand that at the end John Paul II went onto a kind of hospice. Why not want that for Terri too.
I did, if her death was imminent. Her parents were willing to continue caring for her, even if it wasn't. Her husband, or maybe ex-husband by then, differed in his opinion, and he won the day. At the time I judged him for it - he was with another woman and wanted to move on with his life. I try, today, not to judge him - he said she'd made her desires known to him and what could I possibly know?
Interesting. I just discussed this thread with my husband and he doesn't share my sentiments, at least not the WAY I feel them. He has more sympathy for the definitionally mentally troubled person who chooses suicide than... I was going to say "than for those left behind," but I'll change that to "than I do," because, as he says, "that's not how mental illness works."
Ok. I have to concede that: if a person is so troubled that she is willing to MAKE her loved ones suffer so she can escape, maybe she can't be asked to plan ahead so they don't suffer. I have a relative of a prior generation who died horribly by suicide, leaving his 16yo son to discover his mutilated body* - maybe he was so mentally ill that he couldn't realize that the basement, where the laundry was, was going to ensure that he'd be found by his wife or one of his kids. Or maybe he wanted that outcome. Either way, maybe my husband's right and he couldn't be blamed, so to speak.
But we can only deal with what's left. Other surviving relatives suffered for years - decades - because of this suicide. He was gone; the survivors were not. Am I wrong to prioritize his effect on them over his mental disturbance, since he was gone and no longer suffering?
My husband's beloved cousin recently lost her ex-husband to suicide. He put a sign on the garage door not to come in, because he'd hanged himself. His 16yo daughter blames herself. His 22yo daughter is furious at everyone. His current wife is desperately trying to deflect, because of things she'd done. Our cousin is trying to keep her daughter - the 22yo - on an even keel. I don't really get why my husband had so much sympathy for the guy, but I do acknowledge that it's to his credit - I think.
* That 16yo boy, who discovered his father, also died at about the same age and was sadly discovered by his own teenage son, but he died of a heart attack. And - if this is the right word - fortunately, he'd had a smaller heart attack a couple of days previously, recovered, been released home, and spent the ensuing days maximizing his loving contact with his family.
Fear and loathing was at the end of the dark desert highway for those too jacked-up to notice the ‘vacancy’ sign at the hotel along the way. Angelenos of a certain age, time and mind were familiar with the trip. Ironically, fear and loathing were unknown…
The guy who documented this was an asshole.
You can ‘go to ‘Vegas’ only so many times or you’re going to age poorly. Very poorly.
Thompson was exhibit A. My recollection is the person he was talking with on the phone was his granddaughter. Regardless of who it was, it’s hard to imagine a greater confirmation of assholery.
Known Unknown, you are right thanks. That B Siri let me down again. You don’t ever want to call her Alexa by mistake, she’ll wipe your phone.
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