Joe Eszterhas > Quotes

“Don't break your own heart.”
― Joe Eszterhas, The Devil's Guide to Hollywood: The Screenwriter as God!

“They were liberating Harrisonville, showing the hypocrites and phonies and $$$-squirrelers and chokeragged Yesmen some puffed-up balls. They were widening the mental horizons of a town more narrow-minded than its streets; they were missionaries laboring amon their bloodkin: montheytheistic theocentric cousins and uncles who swore allegiance to Uncle Sam, Jim Crow, Oral Roberts, and Dale Carnegie; they were waging their impudent revolution against people they'd cowedly called "sir" all their teenage lives.”
― Joe Eszterhas, Charlie Simpson's Apocalypse

“Sirens wailed; the revolution had come to Harrisonville. Blood was flowing on Pearl Street.”
― Joe Eszterhas, Charlie Simpson's Apocalypse

“Where could you go in Harrisonville?-this smalltime place haunted by by homilies, platitudes, and booshwah.”
― Joe Eszterhas, Charlie Simpson's Apocalypse

“They were hometown hippies who primped in the cracked mirror of their egos and saw themselves as more intelligent, more humane, more real than their plastic deodorized elders. They were the victims of a freeze-dried generational racism which would not forgive their long loathsome hair and their scuzzy tramp-clothes. So now, cast in a psychodrama partly of their own design, they grew their hair even longer and let their jeans get grubbier. They asked for it: the audience reaction was confirmation of all their halfbaked theories. They screamed "Fuck You!" with every gesture and found applause in the cops' teeth-gnashings and housewives' cringings.”
― Joe Eszterhas, Charlie Simpson's Apocalypse

“He'd been down at the Cass County Library, reading...Win danced a jig he thought that was so funny...about this cat Henry David Thoreau, which he pronounced Toe-Row. He read about his life and read some of his writings and this cat really had his shit together...Toe-Row knew better than anybody that Life is a Big Fat Asshole with everybody trying to Stick It To You when they get half the chance.”
― Joe Eszterhas, Charlie Simpson's Apocalypse

“EGAD was a coffeehouse, built for the kids of Harrisonville by a middle-aged Jesus Freak. Its letters meant "Everybody Give A Damn!”
― Joe Eszterhas, Charlie Simpson's Apocalypse

“John Correli: Did you kill Mr Boz, Miss Tramell?

Catherine: I'd have to be pretty stupid to write a book about killing and then kill him the way I described in my book. I'd be announcing myself as the killer. I'm not stupid.”
― Joe Eszterhas

“

Don Simpson was right about Robert Altman.
Screenwriter, Ring Lardner wrote M*A*S*H (1970) and director Altman praised his script in early interviews.
After the movie was a hit, Altman said that he had tossed out Lardner’s script and written it himself.
The movie’s producer, George Litto, said, “Bob was never one to acknowledge a writer’s contribution. The movie was ninety percent Ring Lardner’s script, but Bob started saying he improvised the movie. I said,* ‘Bob, Ring Lardner gave you the best opportunity you had in your whole life. Ring was blacklisted for years. What you’re doing is very unfair to him and you ought to stop it.’

”
― Joe Eszterhas, The Devil's Guide to Hollywood: The Screenwriter as God!

“They were hometown hippies who primped in the cracked mirror of their egos and saw themselves as more intelligent, more humane, more real than their plastic deodorized elders. They were the victims of a freeze-dried generational racism which would not forgive their long loathsome hair and their scuzzy tramp-clothes. So now, cast in a psychodrama partly of their own design, they grew their hair even longer and let their jeans get grubbier. They asked for it: the audience reaction was confirmation of all their halfbaked theories. They screamed “Fuck You!” with every gesture and found applause in the cops’ teeth-gnashings and housewives’ cringings.”
― Joe Eszterhas, Charlie Simpson's Apocalypse

“As my good friend Don Simpson used to say, “It’s not how you play the game; it’s how you place the blame.”
― Joe Eszterhas, The Devil's Guide to Hollywood

“One man wrote War and Peace. Thirty-five screenwriters wrote The Flintstones.”
― Joe Eszterhas, The Devil's Guide to Hollywood: The Screenwriter as God!

“Robert Altman is an asshole.
That’s what producer Don Simpson, a friend of mine, thought:“We made Popeye (1980) and we hated Altman. He was a true fraud … he was full of gibberish and full of himself, a pompous, pretentious asshole.”
― Joe Eszterhas, The Devil's Guide to Hollywood: The Screenwriter as God!