Is that Joe Eszterhas?


In the episode "Hip Hop to The Godfather", when the Kid gets tossed in the Beverly Hills slammer, he is recognized by a drunken bum in a Hawaiian shirt who "once had a 3 picture deal at Paramount". That bum looks suspiciously like Joe Eszterhas to me. Anybody know for sure?

reply

I noticed that too. It's definatly Joe. Read his book 'Hollywood Animal' sometime. Evans is one of his best friends and is mentioned in many parts of it, even though a lot of what's written about him is less than flattering.The best story in it was when Joe came over to talk to a broke and desperate Evans and found him screaming and yelling in a room full of whores all scratching off hundreds of lottery tickets.

reply

Well, I don't think they're likely great friends anymore, after what Eszterhas wrote in both his books. In showing how much he had sobered up, reformed and repented, Eszterhas painted a pretty black picture of all of his former friends, including Sharon Stone. With friends like Eszterhas, a person wouldn't need enemies.

I've since rewatched that ep and I was wrong about the Hawaiian shirt, but the rest of the bit (hairstyle, 3 picture deal at Paramount and drunken bum stuff) sounds accurate for Eszterhas.

As for the lottery ticket story, don't forget - the pool guy was there too, and the tennis pro as well, I think ;)

Cocaine yields strange thought processes and I would speculate it's absolutely the wrong drug for a man with manic depressive tendencies.

reply

I don't know, Evans seems like a guy who has no problem airing his dirty laundry, hell that's what most of his TKSITP book and movie was. I obviously don't know personally or ever met either guy, but they probably still call each other once in awhile.I found it interesting that in Hollywood Animal, Evans was apparently still doing coke even after Paramount took him back in the early '90s. I'd like to think he's clean now. He's too old to be snorting that crap.

reply

One thing I appreciated about TKSITP is that he did put a lot of stuff out there that most autobiographers would have hidden or denied. Nor does it seem that he had somebody rewrite his language to make it more literary or more correct or whatever. Doing the book that way was perhaps somewhat egotistical, but in a different way; he doesn't seem to want an image of perfection, he seems to want to be understood and appreciated as someone unique. Whichever, it sure was entertaining, and enlightening.

Evans's book has some angry passages in it about people he's not exactly fond of, but he didn't go into the level & detail of slime about them that Eszterhas did in his books. Evans was not Eszterhas's only target.

Could Evans and Eszterhas ever work together again? Oh, I'm sure they could, if it were to their mutual advantage. They're both professionals.

I hope Eszterhas has beaten his illness. He's written some good movies.

I too hope Evans is off any type of drugs that he doesn't need to stay alive. There may be a few people who genuinely can handle coke and not be harmed by it, but I haven't met one yet.

reply