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Informationen zum Autor Joe Eszterhas Klappentext Joe Eszterhas had everything Hollywood could offer. A combination of insider and rebel, he saw and participated in the fights, the deals, the backstabbing, and all the sex and drugs. But here, in his candid and heartwrenching memoir, we see the rest of the story: the inspiring account of the child of Hungarian immigrants who, against all odds, grows up to live the American Dream. Hollywood Animal reveals the trajectory of Eszterhas's life in gripping detail, from his childhood in a refugee camp, to his battle with a devastating cancer. It shows how a struggling journalist became the most successful screenwriter of all time, and how a man who had access to the most beautiful women in Hollywood ultimately chose to live with the love of his life in a small town in Ohio. Above all, it is the story of a father and a son, and the turbulent relationship that was an unending cycle of heartbreak. Hollywood Animal is an enthralling, provocative memoir: a moving celebration of the human spirit. CHAPTER 1 The King of Point Doom KARCHY I wanna show off the car. I wanna show you off. DINEY Why do you have to show off all the time? KARCHY I ain’t got that much to show. Telling Lies in America I My great-grandfather grew up a poor kid in a tiny village in Hungary. He was about to be drafted into the Austro-Hungarian army and he fled to America.He worked as a miner in Pennsylvania for a while but didn’t like the work. He went out to the American West and became a stagecoach robber.He became wealthy.He rode with Black Bart and Jesse James. I grew up a poor kid in the refugee camps of Austria and on the West Side of Cleveland, Ohio. I worked as a furniture mover, a disc jockey, and a newspaper reporter, but I didn’t like the work. I went out to the American West and became a screenwriter. I rode with a whole lot of famous hombres . I sold screenplays in Hollywood for record amounts of money. My agent, Guy McElwaine, referred to these sales as “bank heists.” My wife, Naomi, wore a leather strap of silver bullets around one of her cowboy boots when I met her. And when she knew she had fallen in love with me, she gave me the strap of silver bullets and tied them around one of my cowboy boots. The day I married her, I wore her silver bullets. . . . My great-grandfather took his fortune and went back to the village in Hungary where he had grown up.Old crones wearing black babushkas said they saw him through the cellar windows of his castle playing cards by candlelight with the devil. He had sold his soul to the devil in the American West and was trying to win it back now. When I was a screenwriter in Hollywood, the Los Angeles Free Press wrote that I had sold my soul to the devil. A columnist in South Dakota wrote that I was “in the devil’s employ.” A Canadian magazine wrote that I was “a devil living in Malibu.” My hometown newspaper, the Cleveland Plain Dealer , wrote about me with a headline that said, “Eszterhas — Ordinary Joe or Satan’s Agent?” A cartoon in Entertainment Weekly showed the devil’s hand on my shoulder and these words: “December 31, 1999 — The Devil Takes Formal Possession of Joe Eszterhas’ Soul.” A secretary at Paramount who liked to wear Blessed Virgin Mary T-shirts had a vision of me. I was ascending from the putrid steam of a black-water pond. And shortly after her vision, during the making of the movie Sliver , the actor Billy Baldwin and I were walking down Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles heading into a bar owned by the actor Tony Danza’s brother. A bag lady approached us, took one look at me, made the sign of the cross, and turned around and ran in the other direction. ...
