Rating: 
Summary: A bucket of swill
Review: Joe Eszterhas' "Hollywood Animal" is another behind-the-scenes look at the notoriously artificial world of Hollywood. It's certainly no surprise that the people of La La Land are two-faced, double-talking parasites as shallow as 99% of the movies and TV shows they produce. Eszterhas merely pulls the ragged curtains from the window. The glass was shattered long ago. What makes "Hollywood Animal" worth a quick skim is Eszterhas' expose of the nightmare factory and the living dead who are its inhabitants. There's Sylvester Stallone hijacking the credit for "F.I.S.T," Eszterhas' first screenplay, then publicly apologizing and giving Eszterhas full credit AFTER the movie tanks. There's the wicked Sharon Stone, the thorougly ridiculous Robert Evans, and other freaks and losers whose "art" reduces our eyes, ears, and minds to garbage dumps.
On a brighter note, there's also Norman Jewison, the talented director ("In the Heat of the Night," "Fiddler on the Roof") who is one of the few people Eszterhas encounters to come off favorably, a model of integrity, in fact.
Of course, Eszterhas is as shallow as the biggest sleazebags he encounters. His most illustrious credits, after all, are "Basic Instict" and "Flashdance," pure garbage doomed to be forgotten when other garbage takes their place in the vast wasteland of popular culture. Yet throughout "Hollywood Animal" he maintains the superior pose of a "writer," and worst of all, a writer in the Hemingway mold with all that silly macho posturing that has nothing to do with writing and everything to do with insecurity and, perhaps, a lack of talent. Frankly, Joe, writing is more feminine than masculine. There's nothing remotely macho about sitting behind a typewriter making up stories, even ones about lesbians who kill men with icepicks. Yuck.
Eszterhas belongs with the con artists and phonies he writes about. He relates an experience in which a married nurse telephones her husband to profess her love at the same time she cuckolds him with Eszterhas, but he writes as if the woman is somehow more corrupt than he. Not so, Joe. It simply illustrates that people of low character attract each other the way manure attracts flies. It also explains why your only claim to fame is as the author of the worst kind of Hollywood trash.
"Hollywood Animal" is Hollywood trash itself, a bucket of swill that shows Eszterhas has yet to rise above his basic instincts. You'll need a shower after you read it, and don't forget the deodorant.
Rating:
Summary: A bucket of swill
Review: Joe Eszterhas' "Hollywood Animal" is another behind-the-scenes look at the sleazebag world of Hollywood. It's certainly no surprise that the people of La La Land are two-faced, double-talking parasites as shallow as 99% of the movies and TV shows they produce. Eszterhas merely pulls the ragged curtains from the window. The glass was shattered long ago. Of course, Eszterhas is as shallow as the biggest sleazebags he encounters. His most illustrious credits, after all, are "Basic Instict" and "Flashdance," pure garbage doomed to be forgotten when other garbage takes their place in the vast wasteland of popular culture. Yet he still maintains the superior pose of a "writer," and worst of all, a writer in the Hemingway mold with all that silly macho posturing that has nothing to do with writing and everything to do with insecurity and, perhaps, a lack of talent. Frankly, Joe, writing is more feminine than masculine. There's nothing remotely macho about sitting behind a typewriter making up stories, even ones about lesbians who kill men with icepicks. Yuck. What makes "Hollywood Animal" worth a quick skim is Eszterhas' expose of the nightmare factory and the living dead who are its inhabitants. There's Sylvester Stallone hijacking the credit for "F.I.S.T," Eszterhas' first screenplay, then publicly apologizing and giving Eszterhas full credit AFTER the movie tanks. There's the wicked Sharon Stone, the thorougly ridiculous Robert Evans, and other freaks and losers whose "art" reduces our eyes, ears, and minds to garbage dumps. On a brighter note, there's also Norman Jewison, the talented director ("In the Heat of the Night," "Fiddler on the Roof") who is one of the few people Eszterhas encounters to come off favorably, a model of integrity, in fact. Eszterhas himself belongs with the con artists and phonies he writes about. When he writes of a sexual encounter with a married nurse who telephones her husband to profess her love at the same time she cuckolds him with Eszterhas, he writes as if the woman is somehow more corrupt than he. Not so, Joe. It simply illustrates that people of low character attract each other the way manure attracts flies. It also explains why your only claim to fame is as the author of the worst kind of Hollywood trash. "Hollywood Animal" is Hollywood trash itself, a bucket of swill that shows Eszterhas has yet to rise above his basic instincts. You'll need a shower after you read it, and don't forget the deodorant.
Rating: 
Summary: lol
Review: This reads like a vanity-press book written by a talentless megalomaniac. Esztherhas doesn't have one even halfway decent movie to his credit: his films are lamebrain fare. The editors at Knopf have really lost their heads.
Rating:
Summary: Some Good Stuff But Tremendous Repetition
Review: While Mr. Eszterhas does give insight into behind-the-scenes goings on and the way Hollywood really works by telling the kind of stories we'll never hear on Leno or Letterman, much of the material here has appeared elsewhere, and much of the material has nothing to do with screenwriting. Joe talks at great length about his love for his wife and family, but it is apparent that they are a distant second for his true love -- himself. Mr. Eszterhas seems obsessed with every event in his entire life, down to, and including, the most trivial. The biggest problem, however, is that he talks about all his screenplays -- each and every one, as if each is a brilliant work of art. Mr. Eszterhas wrote or co-wrote three films that are considered noteworthy -- "Flashdance," "Basic Instinct," and "Jagged Edge" -- but he wrote dozens of others, including some that never became movies and some that did and are considered among the worst films ever made (always the director's fault, never Joe's)but nonetheless gives the impression that he genuinely believes each is on a Shakespearean level. Like a successful politician who eventually fails, Mr. Eszterhas is very much concerned about his legacy -- which is an odd thing for a screenwriter -- since screenwriters normally toil behind-the-scenes and mostly in quiet. Joe sounds unusually bitter when he describes most of his Hollywood colleagues as trash. The book could have been much better had Mr. Eszterhas kept his personal life out and talked more about how deals are put together and how most movies -- not just his -- get made.
Rating: 
Summary: Behind the scenes of the trash factory
Review: Eszterhas is as sleazy as they come, providing one can even believe most of what he writes. Some of his claims, especially about his sexual conquests, seem rather dubious when you look at his portrait on the back cover. With his caved-in mouth (does he have teeth?), and big, bushy beard, Eszterhas would look right at home on a street corner with all the other panhandlers. If he truly spent time between the sheets with Sharon Stone, it's more of an indictment against her complete lack of morals and taste, than it is a compliment to Eszterhas' personal appeal.
Rating: 
Summary: HOLLYWOOD EXPOSED
Review: On camera the sets in Hollywood look glamorous and ornate, but behind the camera they are just cardboard and plywood facades with nothing behind them. On camera the costumes glitter and sparkle, but behind the camera they are cheap sequins held together with safety pins. As it is with props and costumes, so is life itself in Hollywood. The celebrities flash their perfectly capped teeth smiles and flaunt their surgically enhanced bodies for the camera, but behind closed doors they are as diseased as the rest of the world. This seedy side of Hollywood is what is exposed in "HOLLYWOOD ANIMAL." Fans of Rikki Lee Travolta's "MY FRACTURED LIFE" will pounce on this book and devour it whole.
Rating:
Summary: Never Say Die
Review: I must admit, I'm not a big Eszterhas fan, but the book hype sucked me in. I almost feel guilty that I liked it. The Hollywood stuff was good, but I actually found his "never-say-die" attitude more interesting and inspirational. It's not always easy to stand up for what you believe. The love story tucked between the pages was also quite sizzling, although if I were his wife, I'd kill him for writing it!
Rating:
Summary: Not Worth the Time and Lies
Review: I've worked in the film industry for over a decade and have a masochistic tendency to read most of the Hollywood insider type books. This one takes the cake for self-aggrandizement and self-delusion, which is no mean feat considering the genre we're talking about. To me, Joe Eszterhas represents everything that is dysfuntional and perverse about the way movies get made. Ego trumps quality; money transcends talent; cliches trample ideas. After slogging through this unwieldly and dreadfully edited memoir (can you imagine being Joe's editor???), I noticed that not once did the author comment on his own passion for writing. Even though he reminds us every 20 or 30 pages that he is the greatest screenwriter in history, the only screenwriter to ever become a superstar (which is overstating it a bit), his only justification for assuming the title of "greatest ever" is because he was the highest paid. No mention of winning any awards (because he was never even nominated), no mention of pouring his heart and soul into a script (he proudly remembers that it only took him 4 hours to write a treatment for which he received $4 mil), no talk of his craft or how he approaches a new script. No mention of where he gets his ideas, or whether he ever drew on his own experiences for a movie, or if he has any sort of ethic that determines how a character will unfold. Odd that a screenwriter could write 700+ pages and barely mention writing. Of course, what he does write about is other people. And if you are mentioned in his book (and you're not Joe Eszterhas or his perfect, wonderful, sexy, smart second wife Naomi), then you are probably a lying, cheating, drug-addled, overpaid, incompetent, talent-free, nepotistic, stupid, sex-crazed, unfaithful sociopath. Doesn't matter if you were his studio exec, agent, director, best friend, producing partner, or ex-wife -- Joe Eszterhas never worked with anyone who didn't screw him over, screw up his project, or screw up their own career by disagreeing with him. Indeed, everyone in Hollywood EXCEPT Joe is a mendacious moron who wouldn't know a brillaint script if it bit them in the ass. He starts the book off by mentioning his own flaws, and offers the mea culpa that, well, he's moved away from Hollywood and moved back to the real world (represented by Cleveland, of all places). Yet you don't have to read very far to realize that his world-view is still as deluded and dishonest as ever. I wanted to take a shower after I finished reading his book.
Rating:
Summary: WHO CARES ANYWAY?
Review: It's dificult to really care whether Joe Eszterhas wrote good scripts that nobody made or made well (Joe it seems is never to blame for anything). The man lacks any sense of moral focus which makes the book particularly hard to read. And the stories he tells about Robert Evens and Sharon Stone are not new though probably true--I met Michael Ovits once or twice and though he was nice enough to me I'm sure he could have been an S-O-B if he had to be. It's all relative. In any case, the idea that somehow any of this will matter in ten years is nuts. The movies were terrrible and Eszterhas comes off as soul-less. The only truth here is that nobody in Hollywood knows what the hell they are doing.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting reading....
Review: It's amazing of what the machinations of getting a film made engenders. Especially since most of the films coming from Hollywood are total crap. It looks as if the "respected" mainstream film world isn't much different from the porn community.....Except,in the porn world,everything is in front of the camera eye. Whereas in the mainstream world,one must suffer cruel debasement, and be willing to suffer humiliation behind the scenes just to be involved with something that amounts to nothing more than ephemeral crap!No one in Hollywood has any redeeming value,or self respect. Good book!
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