Joe Eszterhas

The dramatic and eye-opening original account of events that shook the nation. At noon on May 4, 1970, a thirteen-second burst of gunfire transformed the campus of Kent State University into a national nightmare. National Guard bullets killed four students and wounded nine. By nightfall the campus was evacuated and the school was closed. A generation of college students said they had lost all hope for the System and the future. Yet Kent State was not a radical university like Berkeley, Columbia, or Harvard. Although a new mood had been growing among the students in recent years, the school was not known for political activity or demonstrations. In fact, exactly one week before, students had held their traditional spring-is-here mudfight. What most alarmed Americans was the knowledge that if this tragedy could occur at Kent State, on a campus made up of the children of the Silent Majority and in the heart of Middle America, it could happen anywhere. But why? how did it happen that young Americans in battle helmets, gas masks, and combat boots confronted other young Americans wearing bell-bottom trousers, flowered shirts, and shoulder-length hair? What were the issues and why did the confrontation escalate so terribly? Would there be future confrontations like the one of May 4? To answer these questions, prize-winning reporters Eszterhas and Roberts, who were on campus on May 4, spent weeks interviewing all the participants in the tragedy. They traveled to victims' homes and talked to relatives and friends; they spoke to National Guardsmen on the firing line and to students who were fired on. By putting together hundreds of first-person accounts they were able to establish for the first time what actually took place on the day of the shooting. With new prefaces by Joe Eszterhas and Michael D. Roberts.

Joe Eszterhas knew a lot about darkness. Growing up in refugee camps and then in America's back alleys, he used this knowledge, first as a journalist, and then as a wildly successful screenwriter of sexually graphic and violent films like Basic Instinct, Jagged Edge, and Jade. Then, on a hellishly hot day in 2001, desperately battling to survive throat cancer and his addictions to alcohol and cigarettes, Joe Eszterhas found God. Or God found him. And he came from darkness into light. Crossbearer is the moving, and sometimes funny, story of a man who turned his back on the wild world he'd immersed himself in for far too long to embrace a new life full of faith, family and love. During his journey, Eszterhas discovers God in the most surprising places: a family game of baseball, a child's photograph of a cloud, a dying mother's dying roses. Through it all, he remains thoroughly himself--wearing a Rolling Stones T-shirt as he carried the cross down the church aisle--but becomes a better version of himself than he'd been before.

Joe Eszterhas has written some of Hollywood's biggest hits Basic Instinct; Flashdance and walked away with some of the largest writing cheques in the industry's history. In The Devil's Guide to Hollywood he reveals everything he knows about the movies the players, the personalities, the legends and screenwriting itself, revealing all that has inspired, amused and enraged him in Hollywood since his career began. Hilarious, colourful but also practical, this is required reading for anyone who s ever thought of writing for the screen, and for anyone who wants the inside story on the organised insanity of the movie business.

In The Devil's Guide to Hollywood, bestselling author and legendary bad-boy screenwriter Joe Eszterhas tells everything he knows about the industry, its players and screenwriting itself--from the first blank sheet of paper in the Olivetti to the size of the credit on the one-sheet. "There's just one hunk of funny anecdote after another, quotes from everyone who ever mattered in the movie biz, and the thing is jam-packed with screenwriterly advice. Plus it's hilariously funny, ribald, sexy and brilliant."--Liz Smith Often practical and always entertaining, The Devil's Guide to Hollywood distills everything one of Hollywood's most accomplished screenwriters knows about the business, from writing advice to negotiation tricks, from the wisdom of past players to the feuds of current ones. Eszterhas has selected his personal pantheon of the most loved and loathed players in the business and treats the reader to a treasure trove of stories, quotes and wisdom from those luminaries, who include William Goldman (loathes) and Zsa Zsa Gabor (loves). The Devil's Guide to Hollywood could only have been written by someone who loves the business as much as Eszterhas does--but who also has its number. "Eszterhas delivers a dishy, catty mix of reminiscences and Hollywood trivia...his forte is skewering sycophants and phonies in this opinionated showcase of the underside of Hollywood life."--Publishers Weekly

He spent his earliest years in post-World War Two refugee camps. He came to America and grew up in Cleveland - stealing cars, rolling drinks, battling priests, nearly going to jail. He became the screenwriter of the world-wide 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.