Joe Eszterhas: Hollywood Animal

Just started but, as I hoped, ridiculously enjoyable and jaw- dropping. And not just the Hollywood scenes...his early life in Europe; wow!

Well now finished...and superb. He has lived in two worlds...the wartime upbringing and life dirt poor in the USA as a very new immigrant and as a star at the top of the Hollywood tree.

As one would expect it is very well written...there an easy and very vivid flow of the language..not least in some of the blistering letters he sent to various luminaries when defending his work and the value of the writer. While many may dislike his scripts, the fact that he was and is a writer, first, last and always is wonderful. As he says almost every writer in Hollywood is a wanna-be director...as are many of the other roles including producers. His feu and fights are wonderful to read but by the end he has had an epiphany which if described third-hand would probably be classed as a poor idea for a Lifetime movie but here is powerful and moving. Moving out of Hollywood, beating his addictions, surviving a bout of cancer and having a wonderfully idyllic home life...admittedly with his second wife but what comes across with this is that he clearly, I believe lived and was utterly devoted to first wife as to his second.

Reading this it is still to me staggering that SO many people still believe and want to live ' the Hollywood Dream' when it is clearly a vile nightmare.

Very fine.