Hollywood Animal

by Joe Eszterhas

  October 5, 1991

  Poor Bob. Evidently his new nickname at the office is “El Cid.” This refers to the old story of the great Spanish warrior who crusaded against the Moors. In the final scene of the movie (with Charlton Heston I think), El Cid is dead and they strap him to a warhorse and send him into battle. Seems no one knows he’s actually dead.

  Bill and Gabrielle Kelly, the Evans Company’s head of creative affairs, say it’s like they’ve got this dead leader and they’re fooling everyone into thinking he’s still alive. Poor Bob. Poor El Cid.

  Christmas Day, 1991

  On Friday, the 13th of December, a fire caught behind the kitchen refrigerator while I was out Christmas shopping. Our house burned down and we lost our beloved golden retriever, Jake.

  I’m hurt beyond repair.

  Robert Evans offered us no support, not even words of consolation.

  January 19, 1992

  All of Evans’s bank accounts were frozen this week by the state of California due to the $33,000 he owes in state taxes. He spent the week running around planning his son Josh’s twenty-first birthday party, paying no heed to either his financial or business issues.

  January 27, 1992

  Evans is busy moving pieces of furniture from his home, just in case the IRS shows up.

  February 1, 1992

  Evans broke out in hives in the office today and felt very dizzy. Bill thought Bob was having a heart attack, but he wasn’t.

  February 18, 1992

  I heard today that Arthur, Bob’s Polish butler, is writing screenplays and trying to sell them to Paramount.

  February 19, 1992

  Evans got Stanley Jaffe, the Paramount head honcho, to agree to use Billy Friedkin to direct The Saint.

  Everyone’s furious because: A. Billy Friedkin hasn’t had a hit in years; B. They won’t be able to attract any big name actors if Friedkin directs.

  Goldwyn went into Evans’s office literally screaming. Evans hemmed and hawed and didn’t have much to say in his defense.

  Joe Eszterhas has been working on another script, Nowhere to Run, while he’s under contract to Paramount to do Sliver. Instead of handling it diplomatically, Evans called Eszterhas half stoned at 9:30 A.M. Evans provoked Joe to such a degree, Joe hung up on him and called Bill to say: “I’m sending back the half-million-dollar Sliver advance and burning what I’ve written so far!” Bill somehow calmed him down and Joe has agreed to stay on the project.

  February 20, 1992

  Joe Eszterhas called Bill, laughing about a letter of apology he got from Evans. Evans sent him some thirty scented candles with a letter that said something like “to light up your abode with prayer … to conquer the surrounding darkness.” And ending with “I’m sending prayers to whoever’s up there.”

  The IRS wants $250,000 from Evans in three days. So what does Evans do? He gets on a plane for Mexico. He says he’s going to work on his autobiography.

  February 24, 1992

  Evans was screaming at everyone in the office on Friday because he was trying to dictate a congratulatory letter to Jack Nicholson, who recently had another child. The letter made reference to the penis size of the baby.

  A sheriff’s deputy was at Bob’s house inquiring about an unpaid florist bill. Bob thinks it was really the IRS taking a peek around at the furniture.

  February 25, 1992

  Every few months at Evans’s house there appears a new “honeybee,” a term I use to describe a very young, pretty girl flitting around. Evans will soon start to talk about how “important” she is to him and how he couldn’t have imagined life before she came along, and she then becomes the “Queen Bee.” Sometimes Helmut Newton even takes nude pictures of her.

  She then is the “lady of the house” and attends all functions with Bob, helps with dinner parties, decorates the tree (depending on the time of year) and becomes a permanent fixture. Before long, a new honeybee appears.

  The Queen Bee accepts cohabitation with this new beauty, a little wary but still thinking her position is sound.

  Suddenly the Queen Bee is gone, the new honeybee assumes her role, and the cycle starts again. It never fails. Anytime I go up I can usually spot the new one.

  One time Margaux Hemingway became the Queen Bee (she never entered as a honeybee, she just swooped in as Queen). Bob even redecorated the guest bedroom for her. But then, alas, a honeybee buzzed in one day (I think her name was Brandy).

  Bob was frantic. He said to Bill “I just don’t know how to get rid of Margaux …” Then he had a brainstorm. He sent her to New York to have all her teeth done. He was very pleased with this bit of ingenuity.

  She left for New York happy and starry-eyed, her cozy guest room awaiting her return. I never saw Margaux again.

  February 28, 1992

  Evans spent the day yesterday writing a letter to the archbishop of New Orleans which was completely unintelligible.

  It seems that Bob has done such a superb job promoting and hyping his cocaine-conviction court-ordered documentary about Pope John Paul II that the Catholic Church now wants a piece of the action. (Because the Church believes, erroneously, that money was made.)

  March 2, 1992

  Our weekend with the Eszterhases in Marin was fabulous. Joe Eszterhas and his wife, Gerri, are great people. Both are from Ohio, she from a small steel town. While “the men” talked business, the “wives” went to Stinson Beach to view the latest Eszterhas purchase—a splendid old Victorian near the beach. Bill was his wonderful usual self and I think both Joe and Gerri liked me, too.

  March 4, 1992

  Ever since Bill asked Gabrielle Kelly to read the letter Bob had written to the archbishop of New Orleans out loud (Gabrielle has a lilting Irish brogue), Bob has been cornering her to read everything aloud to him. This galls Gabrielle horribly.

  Yesterday Evans had an author in his office and Bob’s brother, Charles, was there. Of course Bob had never read the visiting author’s book but called Gabrielle in to read a passage out loud which referred to him.

  As Gabrielle began to read, she became more and more appalled at the way the author (who was in the room!) described both Bob and Charles. Gabrielle refused to go on.

  Bob and Charles were both so out of it they didn’t even comprehend how bad the descriptions were.

  March 8, 1992

  Evans looked at his desk and said, “What I don’t understand is what everybody is doing? Look at my desk! There’s nothing on it but some pictures of some women, a letter to the archbishop, and Tootsie Rolls. I don’t understand it! I should have some important books and papers on this desk!”

  March 12, 1992

  Evans showed up at work Monday wearing worn flannel pants, his shoes from the movie he never played in, The Two Jakes, and a soiled white shirt with brown stains all over the front of it.

  He had his hair slicked back and he was wearing his Saint bolo tie. The staff now calls him “the Lizard King.”

  He is meeting every day with Charles Michener, the ghostwriter of his autobiography. Michener is a Princeton grad and a historian and Bob hadn’t read a word he’d written before he hired him. He hired him because he was told that Michener was “a hot ghostwriter.”

  When Bob read what Michener had written, he called Bill in and said, “What is it with this guy? He writes like some stuffy Harvard graduate.”

  Bill said, “Princeton, Bob.”

  Bob said, “Well, I told him that when I was sixteen, I used to hang out in bars in Harlem because the waitresses there could pick tips off the table with their cunts. He changed it! He uses the word ‘vagina’ all the time. I’ve never used that word in my life. Now I’ve got to go back and change all of Michener’s vaginas to my cunts.”

  March 18, 1992

  Evans is now calling Sigourney Weaver to try to get her into some old script Charles, his brother, had commissioned ten years ago.

  Charles recently bid against himself on a home he wants to buy. He forgot that he’d mad
e a bid, then he heard about another bid, forgot that that was his bid, and topped it with another bid.

  April 27, 1992

  Bill met for three hours with Joe Eszterhas in San Francisco—they discussed Bill’s next career stops. Joe says that Bill must establish relationships at other studios and set up projects there. He said that within the Industry a lot of people think he is a former CIA guy or a drug dealer.

  Why else would a bright, educated guy be this diligent in his efforts for Evans, a known drug addict? Bill’s import-export background reinforces these rumors. Joe said that if Evans is busted for drugs or drops dead, Bill should be prepared with other projects or he risks going down with Bob.

  May 1, 1992

  A smoky haze fills the air this morning. Four thousand National Guardsmen have been deployed in the city.

  Bill met with Brad Pitt, a potential candidate to play The Saint.

  On the way home, Bill was terrified as he drove through smoky streets, rioters, and screaming sirens.

  When someone was shot three blocks from the Paramount lot, all employees were ordered to go home.

  Evans insisted that his staff stay to write a memo to John Goldwyn.

  May 14, 1992

  Yesterday Evans was making a point by waving his hand around and in his hand he was unconsciously holding a vial of coke. In the office!

  He was dictating a letter to his secretary and he said, “Now let’s get this straight. I’m crossing my fingers and toes and balls for good luck.”

  Then he dictated a memo to the director Larry Kasdan and he said, “I’d give up a blow job to direct this picture myself.”

  May 18, 1992

  Evans has a new girlfriend named April. She came into the office in her underwear.

  Larry Kasdan was so offended by Evans’s memo that his agent called Bill to tell him Kasdan will never work with Evans.

  May 22, 1992

  When Bill got to work on Friday morning, everyone was in a frenzy. Rumors were floating about that Eszterhas was not going to deliver the Sliver script that day as planned—that he was going to miss the deadline. Bill told everyone to calm down and he called Joe. As it turned out, the script was being typed and did arrive as scheduled.

  June 6, 1992

  When Bill arrived in the morning to pick him up for work, Bob was meeting some “potential investors.” Apparently they are also very religious.

  They suggested that perhaps it would be good to pray for guidance. So there is Evans (in his slippers) kneeling with his head bowed in the living room with these holy rollers.

  As they pray, two bimbos come out of Bob’s bedroom and go tiptoeing past behind them. One is wearing only a pajama top, the other only the bottoms.

  They hold their fingers to their lips and stifle giggles as they pass by Bill. They get a glass of juice from the kitchen and go tiptoeing back, as God is invoked by the investors.

  June 11, 1992

  Evans called one of Sharon Stone’s agents and offered her the lead part in Sliver. The agent called Bill back and said, “Sharon says—‘I’ll never work for that slime Evans and I’m not showing my pussy for Joe Eszterhas anymore.’”

  July 8, 1992

  At his first meeting with a writer yesterday, Evans fell asleep and proceeded to snore. Bill, Gabrielle Kelly, Bobby Jaffe (Stanley’s son), and John Goldwyn were all there.

  Bill kept coughing and dropping things to try to wake Evans up. Gabrielle nervously tapped her pencil to try to rouse him—to no avail.

  The entire scene climaxed when the writer, courteously trying to ignore the snoring Evans, said, “Well, as Bob said earlier …”

  And all heads turned to look at Bob, who sat slumped and snoring in his chair.

  At the end of the meeting, John Goldwyn said, “If someone will please wake Mr. Evans, we will adjourn.”

  August 4, 1992

  The word around Paramount about why Sharon Stone agreed to star in Sliver is that Eszterhas “convinced” her. I hear they’re “close” but I don’t know what that means.

  [Dissolve]

  The Souvenir

  SHE WAS TWENTY-THREE years old and had just broken up with her boyfriend and, on the spur of the moment, she walked into the office of a travel agent and told him she had to get away from Harrisburg.

  She found herself days later in the Austrian Tyrol at a place called Igls in a hotel called the Sport sipping hot schnapps on the heated patio.

  She saw him there. He was the most famous movie star in the world and she was a gorgeous young woman from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, with a broken heart.

  He came over and offered to buy her a schnapps and she saw what a perfectly beautiful man he was. He was here, he told her, about to film a skiing movie. He asked her to dinner and she thought about it and refused, knowing she wasn’t ready for any new adventures of the heart. She knew, too, that he was very publicly married.

  He knocked on her door at midnight as she knew he would. He had a chilled bottle of Dom Pérignon in his hand and flashed the most famous smile in the world at her. She was wearing nothing but one of her ex-boyfriend’s blue Gant button-down shirts. She let him in.

  They made love three times, drank the Dom Pérignon, and hardly spoke. She drifted off to sleep and when she awoke, he was gone. The next day, she flew back to Harrisburg.

  She’s happily married now to the man who was temporarily her ex-boyfriend. She is the somewhat matronly mother of three grown children. She’s never told anyone about that night in Igls. She still sees him on the big screen sometimes.

  She kept that bottle of Dom Pérignon for a long time but it’s gone now. She doesn’t even know what happened to it. Tossed out or down in the basement in some box maybe.

  CHAPTER 16

  My Hollywood Mistress

  DR. PALME

  He likes games and danger, courts it. He’s sociopathic, a great danger to women. His defense system is extraordinarily developed, an acute schizophrenia, nonparanoid, classic Jekyll and Hyde syndrome.

  Sliver

  CLEVELAND WAS BACK in the news again. Even the Wall Street Journal was doing stories about “the Cleveland Resurgence.”

  It was all thanks to a Republican mayor named George Voinovich, who, among other things, had lighted up the Terminal Tower, Cleveland’s vest-pocket version of the Empire State Building.

  I read one day that George Voinovich’s little girl had run out into the street in front of her house and been dragged to her death by a passing car. The first on the scene was her older teenage sister, Betsy.

  I was at home in Tiburon in Marin County when an old friend called to say he was coming to town and would like to visit … with him would be a young woman who wanted to meet me and wanted to be a screenwriter, the governor of Ohio’s daughter, Betsy Voinovich.

  She was twenty-six now, a coltish blonde who had studied writing under John Barth and Joyce Carol Oates, wrote startling short stories set in the world of grunge rock, and was the world’s biggest John Lennon fan. She’d played in her older brother’s band around the Cleveland area and had barnstormed for her father, whom she adored, around the state of Ohio.

  She had dinner with my friend and me and Gerri and Steve and Suzi in Tiburon and the next day I took her, along with my friend, down to Stinson Beach, where the three of us checked out my old Victorian and walked on the beach.

  I told her I was scheduled to do a writing seminar at Ohio University in a couple of months and she suggested I visit her father at the Governor’s Mansion in Columbus on my way back to California.

  “Will you be there?” I asked her.

  “No,” she said, “I’ll be moving into my apartment in L.A.”

  “Why should I visit your father then?”

  “Because he’s an interesting man,” she said, “and so are you.”

  I looked at her; I was forty-seven years old, old enough to be her father.

  “Is your father a more interesting man than I am?” I smiled.

  “N
o,” she said, “you’re a much more interesting man than he is. But you’ll like him, I think, and he’ll like you and then you can call me in L.A. and tell me how much you liked him. Or you can come down and tell me in person and we can listen to my John Lennon collection.”

  Gerri saw me air-kiss her goodbye, but Gerri didn’t see the look in my eye as I did it.

  Betsy met my eye, smiled, and said, “See you in L.A.”

  At dinner in the Governor’s Mansion in Columbus, I liked George Voinovich immediately.

  I thought him a sensitive and caring man who viewed his stewardship of the state in the manner of a secular priest. He and his wife lived monastically at the mansion, using only a tiny apartment upstairs. We talked a lot about his Croatian background and my Hungarian one and I noticed a jangled, skittish quality about Betsy’s mother. It made me wonder whether anyone ever got over the loss of a child.

  They were both afraid for Betsy, away from home, out there in L.A., and afraid that her dreams of becoming a screenwriter would come to naught.

  “Maybe you can keep an eye on her out there for me,” George Voinovich said, looking me in the eye. “I would consider it a personal favor.”

  “I’ll do that,” I said.

  “I’ll be in your debt,” he responded.

  A lone butler served a simple pasta and vegetable dish and the portion was so small that on the way back to the hotel I stopped at McDonald’s and ate a quarter-pounder.

  I went from Columbus to Cleveland to see my father and ran into a barmaid at the Ritz-Carlton who recognized me and told me how much she’d loathed Basic Instinct. She said it was sexist and homophobic and she hadn’t seen a movie she’d disliked so much in years. She also showed me her nipple ring.

  She came up to my room when she got off work and we killed a bottle of Dom Pérignon and continued our discussion of Basic and fell happily into bed.

  When she left in the morning, I called Betsy and told her how much I’d liked her dad.