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Another Dispatch from TIFF: Nomadland Has Big Oscar Energy

By Patrik Sandberg

September 17, 2020

Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland is one of those films that dashes the festival circuit with a prewritten destiny attached. An official selection of Telluride, Venice, Toronto, and New York, this is the film the industry is pushing for Big Oscar Energy, and with good reason: it’s a classic American road movie with a moral sheen, a showcase for Zhao’s willingness to immerse herself into an off-the-grid culture as much as for her lucid, unblinking direction. But more than that, it’s a vehicle for the bulletproof Frances McDormand, one of the most compelling and amusing actors of her generation, who could probably read a Reddit thread out loud for two hours and millions of people would spectate without complaint. 

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.