Free The Devil’s Guide To Hollywood by Joe Eszterhas Page A

wife, and the film’s producer told me that if I wanted to get it made at this studio, I’d have to change the ending: It would have to be an innocent man falsely accused of killing his wife.
    “Why won’t they make it the other way?” I asked.
    He told me why: The studio head was a venerable and truly respected former producer, now a very wealthy man. But he hadn’t always been wealthy. He’d come to Hollywood as a penniless wannabe screenwriter and met a wealthy, socially elite widow. He married her and some years later she committed suicide and he inherited all of her money.
    Then he met another wealthy, socially prominent widow and married her, too. And she, too, committed suicide some years later and he inherited all of her money, as well.
    Demand your payment on time .
    S creenwriter Dalton Trumbo to producer Sam Spiegel: “Listen, I have a gun and I will shoot you if I don’t get my money today.”

    To Spiegel

    To manipulate, flatter, seduce, cajole, con, like producer Sam.

    Spiegelese

    A line of BS that sounds terrific and is designed to take advantage of you, it was originated by Sam Spiegel, producer, but perfected by David Begelman, who spoke perfect Spiegelese and became a top-ranked agent and then a studio head and then (flat broke) a suicide. “How cheesy , wags said, to commit suicide at the Century Plaza, of all places, not at the Bel Air, the Chateau Marmont, or a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel.”

    Three’s Company, but Four Is an Orgy

    Old Hollywood rule, allegedly first said by Mae West, then later by Zsa Zsa Gabor.

    Learn to recognize bullshit when you hear it .
    A director called and told me he’d read my script and was interested in directing it. He said, “I don’t want to exploit your script. I want to pay homage to it.”
    I hung up on him.
    If you want to sell your script, be capable of anything .
    A ctress Sigourney Weaver was in the middle of her gynecological exam when the doctor said, “I have written a screenplay. Could you possibly read it?”
    Move to the Midwest .
    D iscussing a script, producer Sam Spiegel said to screenwriter Harold Pinter, “They won’t understand it in the Midwest.”
    Pinter said, “Fuck the Midwest!”
    Spiegel said, “Do you want to fuck the whole of the Midwest?”
    It’s okay to live in your car .
    M ichael Blake did before he sold Dances with Wolves .
    I was so poor before I sold my first script that I was working as a bartender and going through my pockets looking for forgotten change.
    L.A. has lots of places where you can work all day without paying too much—the Rose Café, the Farmers Market, in the company of other screenwriters.
    And many young screenwriters swear that the El Pollo Loco diet is healthy, too, besides being filling.
    Forget playing video games; watch Tracy and Hepburn instead .
    T he old Tracy and Hepburn movies are a dialogue treat, as are the films of Preston Sturges and Woody Allen. They’re fun to watch, and good dialogue exercise, too.
    It’s okay to have literary influences .
    S creenwriter William Faulkner referred to his penis as “Mr. Bolton,” a play on the name of a character from D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover .
    Don’t have an affair with a script girl .
    S creenwriter William Faulkner did; he had a lengthy affair with a script girl. After he died, she wrote a book about him. She wrote that for most of his life he was impotent. She even wrote that he ran the water in the bathroom so no one could hear his bodily functions and that he took a bath before they made love. He had the “prettiest little feet,” she wrote, and always kept a handkerchief around in case he coughed.
    Don’t have an affair with an actress, either (heh-heh-heh) .
    S ally Field did an interview for Playboy magazine in which she said “there were always” men around Burt Reynolds. It came at the same time that Reynolds had lost a lot of weight, thanks to a broken jaw. The Field interview led to rampant and