Joe Eszterhas’s Tales of Sex, Money, and Hollywood Warfare

 

Basic Instict. Sharon Stone, 1992. ©TriStar. Courtesy of Everett Collection.

Joe Eszterhas’s Tales of Sex, Money, and Hollywood Warfare

By Patrik Sandberg

June 29, 2026

Joe Eszterhas’s films have grossed over a billion dollars globally, and he’s raked in millions writing them. Joe’s known as one of the only writers in Hollywood history to get paid more for writing scripts than the directors were paid to film them. He’s also the first writer ever to bank first-dollar film grosses. At his peak, the Hungarian-born voice behind such gonzo classics as Flashdance, Basic Instinct, Jagged Edge, Sliver, and Showgirls was labeled a living legend by ABC News, compared to William Shakespeare by Time magazine, and hailed by Variety as “the Che Guevara of screenwriting.” Starting in the early ’70s as a journalist alongside Hunter S. Thompson at Rolling Stone, Eszterhas imbued his films with the grittiness of our country’s criminal underbelly and an erotic, tabloid voyeurism. Every movie was an event. And to those who think that era is over, think again: Joe’s hot off a sale to Amazon MGM worth up to $4 million for a long-awaited Basic Instinct reboot. As he puts the finishing touches on it, we sit down to talk taking the cash, cashing the check, and showing ’em what they wanna see.

 

The Sly Poetics of Terry Zwigoff

By Julia Yepes

May 19, 2017

“I can’t relate to 99 percent of humanity,” says a character in Terry Zwigoff’s perceptive cult film Ghost World (2001).  That movie—an ode to alienation, loneliness, and the melancholy process of growing up—was inspired by the graphic novel of the same name by Daniel Clowes. It’s a bittersweet comedy with a strange but alluring rhythm that intricately captures the peculiar moods and emotions of its characters, which include two teenage girls, Enid (Thora Birch) and Rebecca (Scarlett Johansson); Seymour (Steve Buscemi), a middle-aged record collector; and various other characters in an unnamed suburban town. Zwigoff and Clowes collaborated on Ghost World‘s Oscar-nominated screenplay. With its intentionally oversaturated colors, quirky characters, and offbeat dialogue, the movie bears the signature features of Zwigoff’s work.

 

The Agony and Ecstasy of Thien Venus Milo

By Julia Yepes

October 7, 2016

Twenty-four-year-old Thien To, who makes clothes under the name Thien Venus Milo, is a designer to watch. This June, for her senior collection at Philadelphia’s Drexel University, To presented seven edgy and opulent couture looks in silk, satin, leather, and tulle, inspired by the story of Alice in Wonderland. Molding laser-cut plexiglass forms into leather and incorporating patterns used in welded iron railings into her red, white, and black designs, To created an imaginative eveningwear collection with ornate details.

Scott Fitzgerald / The Great Gatsby IX

 

The Great Gatsby / Annotated Edition

THE GREAT GATSBY
by
F. Scott Fitzgerald

IX

After two years I remember the rest of that day, and that night and the next day, only as an endless drill of police and photographers and newspaper men in and out of Gatsby’s front door. A rope stretched across the main gate and a policeman by it kept out the curious, but little boys soon discovered that they could enter through my yard, and there were always a few of them clustered open-mouthed about the pool. Someone with a positive manner, perhaps a detective, used the expression “madman” as he bent over Wilson’s body that afternoon, and the adventitious authority of his voice set the key for the newspaper reports next morning.

Scott Fitzgerald / The Great Gatsby VIII

 

The Great Gatsby

THE GREAT GATSBY
by
F. Scott Fitzgerald

VIII

I couldn’t sleep all night; a foghorn was groaning incessantly on the Sound, and I tossed half-sick between grotesque reality and savage, frightening dreams. Toward dawn I heard a taxi go up Gatsby’s drive, and immediately I jumped out of bed and began to dress—I felt that I had something to tell him, something to warn him about, and morning would be too late.

Scott Fitzgerald / The Great Gatsby VII

The Great Gatsby: An Illustrated Novel

THE GREAT GATSBY 

by 

F. Scott Fitzgerald

VII

It was when curiosity about Gatsby was at its highest that the lights in his house failed to go on one Saturday night—and, as obscurely as it had begun, his career as Trimalchio was over. Only gradually did I become aware that the automobiles which turned expectantly into his drive stayed for just a minute and then drove sulkily away. Wondering if he were sick I went over to find out—an unfamiliar butler with a villainous face squinted at me suspiciously from the door.

Scott Fitzgerald / The Great Gatsby VI

THE GREAT GATSBY
by
F. Scott Fitzgerald

VI

 

About this time an ambitious young reporter from New York arrived one morning at Gatsby’s door and asked him if he had anything to say.

Scott Fitzgerald / The Great Gatsby V

The Great Gatsby, 2013

THE GREAT GATSBY

by
F. Scott Fitzgerald

V

When I came home to West Egg that night I was afraid for a moment that my house was on fire. Two o’clock and the whole corner of the peninsula was blazing with light, which fell unreal on the shrubbery and made thin elongating gli. nts upon the roadside wires. Turning a corner, I saw that it was Gatsby’s house, lit from tower to cellar.

Scott Fitzgerald / The Great Gatsby IV

 ' ' ' '

THE GREAT GATSBY
by
F. Scott Fitzgerald

IV

On Sunday morning while church bells rang in the villages alongshore, the world and its mistress returned to Gatsby’s house and twinkled hilariously on his lawn.

Scott Fitzgerald / The Great Gatsby III

 

Alamy

Leonardo DiCaprio y Carey Mulligan in The Great Gatsby, 2013

THE GREAT GATSBY
by
F. Scott Fitzgerald

III

There was music from my neighbour’s house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars. At high tide in the afternoon I watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft, or taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach while his two motorboats slit the waters of the Sound, drawing aquaplanes over cataracts of foam. On weekends his Rolls-Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from the city between nine in the morning and long past midnight, while his station wagon scampered like a brisk yellow bug to meet all trains. And on Mondays eight servants, including an extra gardener, toiled all day with mops and scrubbing-brushes and hammers and garden-shears, repairing the ravages of the night before.

Scott Fitzgerald / The Great Gatsby II

 

Imágenes de Getty

Robert Redford in The Great Gatsby, 1974.

THE GREAT GATSBY
by
F. Scott Fitzgerald

II

About halfway between West Egg and New York the motor road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land. This is a valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of ash-grey men, who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a line of grey cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak, and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-grey men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud, which screens their obscure operations from your sight.

Scott Fitzgerald / The Grant Gatsby l

Mía Farrow and Robert Redford in The Great Gatsby

Alamy

THE GREAT GATSBY
by
F. Scott Fitzgerald

Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her;
If you can bounce high, bounce for her too,
Till she cry “Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover,
I must have you!”

Thomas Parke d’Invilliers

I

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.

“Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”

‘I’ve only been addicted to two things – funk and praise’ | Eddie Marsan’s honest playlist

 

Eddie Marshan

‘I’ve only been addicted to two things – funk and praise’: Eddie Marsan’s honest playlist

The actor dances his insecurities away and wells up at a particular Eric Clapton song. But which double act brings out his inner cockney?

As told to Rich Pelley

Sun 28 Jun 2026 

The first song I fell in love with
When I was a little boy, we had a caravan on the Isle of Sheppey, and I remember hearing My Sweet Lord by George Harrison one summer. It’s about searching for God, and I’ve always thought the way it moves from Hallelujah to Hare Krishna is really beautiful.

 

Actress Marisa Abela and actor Eddie Marsan film a scene for the Amy Winehouse biopic ‘Back to Black’ in London. Neil Mockford

By not lip-syncing Amy Winehouse’s songs, actress Marisa Abela confronts impossible expectations in ‘Back to Black’

Katherine Meizel

Published: May 14, 2024 8:11am EDT

Like Amy Winehouse, “Back to Black,” the new biopic about the late British singer, has been no stranger to controversy. 

In the case of the film, opinion has been fiercely split about director Sam Taylor-Johnson’s decision to have actress Marisa Abela sing – instead of lip-sync to – Winehouse’s recordings.