Rating: 
Summary: Great Surprise
Review: I bought this book at the airport for a plane ride to Tokyo thinking it would just be a trashy Hollywood book I could read to make the 17 hour flight go fast. I had never heard of Joe Eszterhas. Wow! This book was incredible. The vivid descriptions of his childhood intertwined with the inside world of the movie industry. I found myself actually not caring at all about the dish on the actors, I was more captivated by the strange ways all the deals are made to get from idea, to script to movie. Eszterhas is such a brilliant writer, I could feel, taste, and smell the Lorain Ohio he grew up in. I was so engrossed in this book I passed up 3 of the 6 meals they served on the plane!!!
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Summary: This book gets 10 stars
Review: I don't believe I've ever read a more honest book.
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Summary: Finest Autobiography I've Read in Twenty Years
Review: Every life is intrinsically interesting; every life has its tremendous highs and abysmal lows. But very few people can tell their own story. First of all you need a photographic memory, and Joe Eszterhas has it. Next you need an ability not to write chronologically, because nothing is as deadly as "the next day I did something different." Eszterhas has the utterly brilliant ability to write in intellectual sequence: one idea comes up, it is dealt with fully, from all autobiographical angles, and then we segue into the next idea. Each idea is a topper. I thought by page 100 that I had already read a tremendous book; what could possibly be left? Well, each new 100 pages topped the previous ones. But the trick is not to get ahead of your autobiographical story. In other words, life's ordinary sequences must not skip around, in the sense that what you find out now can take away from any surprise in finding it out later. This is incredibly hard to mesh with intellectual sequencing. Thus, although Eszterhas skips around in periods through his life, nevertheless he preserves a rough chronological order that is more satisfying than real chronology because it is artistic. Finally, if you have all these attributes, you still have to write good prose. Eszterhas is no Nabokov, he is no Christopher Hitchens. In short, you don't see his words, you see through them. He is a master of the unobtrusive word, the unobtrusive sentence. It's like looking at a film; no one seems to be "explaining" it to you. Eszterhas uses performatives with ease. Of course, he's one of the most successful screenwriters of all time. Actually, the theatre lost a great playwright when he went to Hollywood. There isn't a word in his book about any desire to write for the living theatre, and yet that's the kind of writing he does. He gains his laughs by skillful echoing of previous remarks, the way that is so effective in live theatre and so unappreciated in film. As I read this amazing book, I paid the author what perhaps is a reader's best compliment: I went and replayed his films as he discussed them. What an amazing treat! "Jagged Edge" was better than when I first saw it, although now I knew with great regret that Jane Fonda had turned down the role eventually played by Glen Close; how much superior Fonda would have been! "Music Box" was the biggest revelation, given the eerie, creepy, and unintentional parallel to Joe Eszterhas' own life. I hadn't previously seen "Flashdance," but oh, how marvelous! And "Basic Instinct"? A movie that, if Hitchcock had directed it, would have been at the top of his oeuvre. I even liked "Showgirls," which I think will get an underground following as soon as people get over the idea that it's supposed to be sexy. As for all the reviewers who have "reviewed" this book without reading it, and who have nothing but contempt for a great author, I hope you spill coffee on your keyboards. I'm afraid Eszterhas hurt himself with his brutally self-deprecating title; he sort of invited the sleaziest reviewers to review his book just because they already knew what they were going to say before they skimmed it. Finally, if you're going to be a great autobiographer, you have to give the reader her money's worth. You can't skimp because the reader has paid good money to read about you. Eszterhas doesn't skimp; he has never skimped on his writing in his life. What you get is solid gold. If to some people it looks tawdry, it's their own fault.
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Summary: Not a Hero but he Makes No Excuses
Review: Nobody is going to call Joe Eszterhas a hero after reading "Hollywood Animal." But much like the honesty about the evils of Hollywood painted in Rikki Travolta's "My Fractured Life" is something you can't help but appreciate, so is the honesty Joe confesses about his own career in "the biz." It's a fairly good book in the same style as Travolta's and with the same no-excuses tone.
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Summary: If only we were all this courageous...
Review: Joe is the most hated screenwriter in Hollywood, if not the world, and against my better judgement I'm starting to like him. He has the courage to tell it like it is, no holds barred. I need him to send me a bottle of whatever it is he is drinking. If you are just starting out in Hollywood, and you don't want to know the truth about the sharks in the boardroom, this book is not for you. But if you can keep an open mind and are not afraid to take a risk, this man might help you sell a screenplay. You will learn more about the business of writing in this book than all of the other screenwriting books combined. Well worth the money.
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Summary: My Fractured Hollywood
Review: "HOLLYWOOD ANIMAL" by Joe Eszterhas provides a rare look inside the business of entertainment from the man who wrote .... Showgirls and the crotch flashing box office smash Basic Instinct.The look at Hollywood is unforgiving and stunningly vivid. In terms of stories about the nastiness of fame and power in the entertainment business, "HOLLYWOOD ANIMAL" is on the same level of brutal fascination as "MY FRACTURED LIFE" by RikkiLee Travolta. A+ Material
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Summary: Dear Joe Eszterhas
Review: Dear Joe Eszterhas, Thank you for writing this book. Thank you for being honest all the way through the book, and especially at the end, where you say, you now go to Church and pray. I know as far as Hollywood is concerned...all of what you put in your past films are OK; but saying you go to Church and you pray; implying that you now, might seriously believe in Jesus, -- well that could earn you some flack. Downright scorn. Hollywood just freaks out when you start talking like that. And I'm grateful you did talk like that. Those of us who write books about our Christian faith, applaud you for discovering there is power in prayer, there is hope when one reaches the end of their rope. Thank you Joe, for writing this book. Marsha Marks
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Summary: Enjoyable
Review: I liked it. It wasn't as entertaining as The Best Awful or My Fractured Life, but it was still enjoyable in a guilty-pleasure kind of way. If you like Hollywood stuff, you'll like it. If not, skip it.
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Summary: Fast Life to Flyover in 700 pages
Review: When writing reviews I try to focus on two criteria: "Did I learn something or did it entertain me." Too many reviewers seem to relay their moral or political views over the subject. Joe Eszterhas is an easy target to dislike for writing controversial movies like Basic Instinct and Showgirls. I'm doing him a favor by leaving out flops like Jade and Sliver. But this book accomplishes exactly what it sets out to do. It is an autobiography that highlights the three most compelling stories of his life, "his rise from Hungarian immigrant and the bizarre past of his father, his life in the fast lane of Hollywood, and his family life with two different wives. I was absolutely entertained by the Hollywood section and learned quite a bit in the other two. This book will appeal to lovers of the Hollywood lifestyle or business environment. It's all here. A novelist gets a call from an agent who believes he could write screenplays and a new career is born. In the next 15 years he has written a box office smash and arguably the most controversial movie of the 90s. But along the way he must learn the Hollywood dance of fighting for your life when many times it's predetermined that you will fail. For example, when Sly Stallone steals his screen credit on his first made movie. But more importantly, the controversial altercation with the then King of Hollywood, Mike Ovitz. This section is fascinating reading if you have interest in how the business side of Hollywood works! The Ovitz feud could be considered one of the top Hollywood stories of the last fifteen years as it started Ovitz's downfall. Of course, there is plenty of name-dropping and stories told of life in Hollywood. Particularly, Sharon Stone and her romance that breaks up a marriage. And Joe Eszterhas does get in the act of constant cheating, drinking and drugging while maintaining the facade of a happy home life in Northern California. Fascinating stuff! But for all the glamour of Hollywood, this is still an autobiography of a poor immigrant family that comes to America after World War II and lives in poverty in New York and later Cleveland. As Joe struggles to fit in the groundwork is laid for the heart wrenching family secret that is exposed when Joe is caring for his father. It is emotionally wrenching for Eszterhas and could easily have been left out of the book, as it doesn't enhance sales. But an autobiography correctly done is soul-cleansing so Eszterhas doesn't pull any punches and brings this compelling story to the book just as he had brought it to some of his lesser-known screenplays. Blessed to have had two good marriages, this book tells the emotionally draining tale of how one ended and another began and the effect on wives, husband and kids. It's always sad to see this as someone always ends up hurt. But as much as Eszterhas wants to disavow Hollywood, his break-up is done in typical "screenplay" fashion and is very intriguing to the reader. I typically like to read books that are 200 to 300 pages. This is a real commitment at over 700 pages. But it's worth the time commitment to get involved in the story. One of the best books I have read from a man that will always be vilified by a large percent of the population based upon the morals of his life. But as he now sits in suburban Cleveland, a survivor of cancer with a new young family, he is as much an American as a member of the Moral Majority. I applaud Eszterhas on this fascinating book and sharing both the good and bad parts with the readers.
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Summary: As Entertaining as Fiction
Review: Hollywood Animal tells one man's version of events in Hollywood. Is it impartial? Heck no. That's what makes it entertaining. The nastiness and venom with which Joe Eszterhas doesn't make you forgive "Showgirls" but it does make for an entertaining read. Sometimes his unique version of events was so entertaining it rivaled the best Hollywood fiction I've read (ie Carrie Fisher's The Best Awful or Rikki Lee Travolta's My Fractured Life) and is head an shoulders above anything Jackie Collins has put the word "Hollywood" in the title of.
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