Hollywood Animal

by Joe Eszterhas

  After dinner the plan was to go to a New Year’s Eve party at the home of Shep Gordon, a music producer who used to own a record company.

  It was raining but the party was a blast. Steve and Suzi got really drunk, as did Bill. Then, at midnight, we lit sparklers and blew noisemakers. The kids were smoking cigarettes (unbeknownst to Joe or Gerri).

  Woody Harrelson and his wife were there and he and Joe did some kind of elaborate high-five I’ve never seen.

  The ride home was one of the best adventures of my life. The kids, Joe, Bill, and I poured ourselves into the van. Bill and the kids all fell asleep. Gerri stayed with the lawyer and his wife in the limo.

  Joe and I talked. The tension I felt earlier was gone. It was like we were alone in the van. We were both a little high, not from booze but from the joint that we’d smoked at the party.

  I don’t remember everything we talked about, but I remember we talked a lot about Ohio, about growing up. His shoulder was touching mine and I remember being very conscious of his shoulder. The Pretenders were blasting.

  When we got back to Joe and Gerri’s suite, the kids promptly passed out on their beds. It was then that Joe suggested Gerri and Bill and I play the “question game.” Each person asks another person a question and that person has to answer truthfully.

  Joe said, “I’ll go first.” He said, “My question is for Naomi. What happened when Bill first tried to make love to you?”

  With that, Bill exploded from his drunken stupor and said, “Good Lord! You can’t be serious! She has to answer that?!”

  I answered, “Nothing happened the first time Bill tried to make love to me.” We all roared.

  Then I asked—“What is your greatest strength? What is your greatest weakness?” of everyone.

  Gerri: “My greatest strength is loyalty. My greatest weakness is lack of self-discipline.”

  Joe: “My greatest strength is my instinct. My greatest weakness is self-destructiveness.”

  Bill: “My greatest strength is that I like everyone I meet. That, however, is also my greatest weakness.”

  The game went on till six in the morning.

  Joe asked, “When did you have your first orgasm?”

  Gerri said, “On my honeymoon.”

  Kidding, I said, “On my honeymoon. Three months ago. After ten long fucking years!”

  The room exploded as Bill said, “That’s it. I’m leaving,” once again erupting from his almost comatose state.

  Joe asked: “What is your greatest fear?”

  Bill: “I’m afraid that it’s all not worth it. That you strive to get there and find that in the end, it’s just not worth it.”

  Gerri: “That my family will die.”

  Joe: “My own insanity.”

  Me: “I’m afraid to love someone too much. I’m afraid to care too much. Because it would be my own self-destruction if it were taken away.”

  January 5, 1993

  When Joe saw me writing in my journal on the plane back to California, he asked if he could make a guest entry.

  TO NAOMI, WISE AND BEAUTIFUL WOMAN, PARTY GIRL, BILL’S BETTER HALF—

  WHO MADE OUR TRIP TWICE AS FUN—

  I LOVE YOU.

  Joe

  January 20, 1993

  Joe’s wife, Gerri, has asked me to visit for the weekend. Joe is out of town somewhere. She sounded lonely. I can’t refuse. I like her a lot.

  January 23, 1993

  My trip to San Francisco to visit Gerri was wonderful. We shopped, had lunch, cooked, watched videos, and generally enjoyed our time together. Gerri wants to do a TV project with me. It would require lots of research but it could potentially work.

  January 27, 1993

  Sunday night Joe arrived and we proceeded to uncork a bottle of Cristal. Bill and Joe are both excited about the prospect of this coming week. They’re strategizing about announcing Renegade.

  Joe liked our condo and the new Jake, who instantly recognized a dog lover and cozied up to him for constant attention. Joe was quizzing me on what I did to Gerri during my visit to San Francisco.

  It seems that Gerri has a renewed sense of herself. She’s even exercising each day. I think Joe is pleased about my friendship with Gerri.

  February 10, 1993

  Bill had lunch with Joe, Sharon Stone, her manager, Chuck Binder, and some Italian guy from the Sliver set.

  Bill, who had been speaking Italian to the guy from the set, mentioned that he had lived in Europe for a while.

  Binder said, “What were you doing in Europe?”

  Bill said, “I was in the import-export business.”

  Joe said, “Why don’t you tell the story about the condoms?”

  And Bill said, “Well, the only reason Joe likes the story is that it reaffirms his conviction that Japanese technology is overrated.”

  So Bill proceeded to tell the story of how, when he was in Asia, he was making a deal to manufacture condoms in the U.S. and ship them to Asia. The only problem, they discovered, is that all of the machinery was too big … i.e. condoms designed for Americans were way too big for Asians.

  Then Sharon, following Joe’s lead at giving Bill a hard time, said, “How did you discover this?”

  Bill said, “You mean, did we market-research?” Joe and Sharon were laughing as Bill mumbled something about what an asshole Joe could be.

  February 11, 1993

  Yesterday Joe went to Maxfield’s to buy a Valentine’s Day present for Sharon—a silver Chrome Hearts hash pipe!

  While they were there, Bill saw an antique Rolex inside a silver case. It was priced at $7,000. He said to Joe, “Look at that, isn’t it gorgeous?” Bill told me he thought to himself—Maybe one day I’ll be able to come in here and buy something like that.

  Later in the limo, Joe leaned over and put a box from Maxfield’s into Bill’s pocket and said, “Hey, Happy Valentine’s Day.” Bill immediately knew what Joe had done and said, “I absolutely cannot accept this.”

  Joe said, “Please, don’t spoil it for me.”

  They argued about it, but when Bill came home in the wee hours of the morning, he said, “Turn on the light. You’ve got to see this.”

  It is so perfect for Bill and he is so moved by the gesture.

  February 12, 1993

  Bill had a meeting yesterday with a woman who owns the rights to Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. The woman said, “I’ve never had a meeting with anyone in Hollywood who understands the book like you do.”

  An hour after the meeting, there was a loud rap on Bill’s office window. It was Sharon Stone.

  Bill raised the window and said, “Hey, did you ever hear of Atlas Shrugged?”

  She said, “Yeah, it’s been done. Patricia Neal.”

  Bill said, “That’s The Fountainhead. I’ll get you the book.”

  She said, “I’ve got it at home. I’ll read it.”

  And Bill said to her, “Joe will write it, I’ll produce it, and you’ll win the Academy Award.”

  February 13, 1993

  Joe and Bill went up to Guy McElwaine’s house and Sharon dropped by to visit. It was her sister’s birthday and she couldn’t stay, but she did stay long enough to hear Bill say, “The day you win your first Academy Award, I’ll give you $10,000 if it isn’t a movie that Joe and I produced.” She laughed.

  Bill talked to her about Atlas Shrugged and she’s primed to do it.

  February 14, 1993

  I knew that later that evening was the wrap party for Sliver and though I would have loved to go, Bill hadn’t asked me yet.

  Finally I said, “Are you going to the wrap party tonight?” And he said yes.

  And I said, “But I’m not.”

  And he said, “Well, it’s just that Joe’s going to have Betsy, his girlfriend, there and it might compromise everyone if we all go together”—since I am a friend of Gerri’s, Joe’s wife, is what Bill meant.

  I said “Oh” and he said, “You’re disappointed.”

  It real
ly hurt my feelings. I felt that people would think that Bill didn’t want to bring me. So Bill started insisting I should go but it seemed like I had pressured him and it just didn’t feel right.

  Finally I agreed to go and look the other way if Joe and Betsy were overly affectionate.

  I got all dressed up and drove to the Four Seasons Hotel, where I was to meet Bill and Joe and we’d all ride to the party in a limo.

  When I arrived, Bill was standing out front.

  He said, “You’re not going to believe this, but we’re having a crisis. MGM-UA has heard we’re doing Renegade—in fact, it’s all over town. The problem is, Joe owes MGM three scripts and now they’re threatening to sue and destroy Renegade before it’s even off the ground. Joe’s on the phone now with Guy, who’s at his golf course. We’re not going to the party, we’re having an emergency meeting at Guy’s house instead.

  “So,” Bill said, “you can go to the party, but I don’t know when or if I’ll even get there and I don’t know if you want to go alone to an L.A. nightclub.”

  So I said—“Maybe I should just go back home.”

  I felt so bad. First I had to ask if I could go and then I got all dressed up and drove to Beverly Hills for nothing.

  He took a box from Maxfield’s out of his pocket and said, “Here. I got you this for Valentine’s Day.”

  It was a Kieselstein-Cord keychain. It had a little leather strap and on its end was a silver object. I looked at it closely in the darkness.

  It was a broken heart.

  [Freeze Frame]

  Every Breath You Take

  THE NEWEST ROYAL Young-and-Hip movie star couple, they were in L-U-V, hanging out together in their tank tops and razor-sliced jeans and incognito goofy shades on Venice Beach … Riding their refurbished antique Indian bikes in the Malibu Hills … Getting some sun, stripped down to the bone at Joshua Tree.

  They hit the Viper Room together wearing matching silver-studded Chrome Hearts leather jackets. They tattooed each other’s names into the small of their backs. They fed each other strips of albacore and eel at a patio table at Zuma Sushi.

  Wearing trucker hats and big kahuna Maui Jim shades, they held each other and watched the little kids play in the sand pit at Cross Creek, where they had come in his Lamborghini after listening to the violinist play Edith Piaf torch songs at Granita, just across the PCH.

  But the whole town knew exactly how very much in L-U-V they were when, on different locations shooting different movies, they told their friends they still slept together all night every night … by putting their phones on their pillows … calling each other and keeping the line open all night so they could hear each other breathing.

  CHAPTER 19

  It’s a Wrap!

  COLT

  We’re going to be zombies when we get to New York.

  ANNE

  Then you can do your zombie act. New York expects it of you.

  COLT

  All right, fuck me! Zombies we will be!

  Hearts of Fire

  SHARON STONE AND Bill Macdonald were sitting across from each other at the little restaurant around the corner from Paramount and I saw how their eyes sparkled and how they laughed.

  This was the first moment they’d spent any real time together—they’d seen each other on the set and said a few words … but even this lunch had happened almost accidentally.

  Bill had come to the set with me and Sharon said, “Do you want to eat?” I said “Sure” and she’d glanced at Bill and said, “He can come.”

  After lunch, back in his office, he said, “God is she incredible! She is awesome!”

  I said, “Do you want to pop her? She can probably be had.”

  He looked at me aghast. I knew Bill tended to prudery, still very much the good Catholic boy trained by the Jesuits at Bellarmine. He would run from the room when a tampon commercial came on TV and he had lectured me often about my extramarital flings and one-night stands.

  “Gerri is your anchor,” he would say.

  We’d been out together at night, both of us married now—he had recently, finally, married Naomi after ten years—and I’d never seen him make the slightest move toward another woman. He blanched when he saw me flirt with a girl in a bar or a club … and he was horrified and nearly evangelistic the morning after he’d pretended to sleep on the couch while that young woman and I were making love on the living room floor beneath him.

  I told him in his office that Sharon didn’t have much going on in her romantic life. She had an alleged “boyfriend,” Charlie Peters, producer Jon Peters’s wealthy young son, but Charlie didn’t look like any serious obstacle to me.

  Sharon had told me of the time she’d seen a red dress in a store window while driving by on Melrose, called Charlie on her cell phone, said, “I just drove by this red dress I’ve got to have,” and young Charlie had driven right down and bought it for her.

  Jon Peters, meanwhile, even as his son was seeing Sharon, was telling me about a wild weekend he’d spent with Sharon in a New York hotel many years ago … a sexual extravaganza which Sharon said was “a great big ugly lie” designed to one-up his own son.

  “So,” I said to Bill, “she’s popable.”

  “Will you please stop it?” he said.

  He came to see me the next day to say that he had just visited her on the set. He was glowing … flying.

  “I haven’t felt like this about a girl since I was thirteen years old,” he said. “I think I’m in love with her.”

  I laughed. “How can you be in love with her? You don’t know anything about her. You haven’t spent any time with her.”

  “I don’t know, but that’s what I feel.”

  I saw Sharon on the set and she said, “Tell me everything about him.”

  “Who?”

  “You know who.”

  “Well,” I said, grinning, “what do you want to know?”

  She seemed to be as cranked up as Bill was when I had seen him.

  “How long have you known him?”

  I told her and she said, “Tell me what you think of him. Don’t fuck around.”

  “You know what I think of him,” I said. “You’ve seen us together. He’s my friend.”

  “Are you going to start this Renegade company with him?”

  “We’re talking about it. I love the logo. We’ve got a dark screen—”

  “I love it, too. The bullet shatters the screen. He told me all about it.”

  She smiled to herself. She was thinking.

  When Sharon thinks, it is a dramatic think. You can see the wheels clanking on-screen.

  “Sharon,” I said, “he’s married. He just got married a few months ago.”

  “So are you,” she said, a knowing smile on her face.

  “He’s different. He takes his Catholic upbringing seriously.”

  She thought about that and she said, “Well, he’s not married to me, is he?”

  I said, “No he’s not, Catherine.”

  “What’s she like? What’s her name?”

  “Naomi. She’s smart as a whip and she’s beautiful.”

  “How beautiful?”

  “With a wife like that,” I said, “I wouldn’t give you a second look.”

  “You’re horrible.” She smiled. “Why did you have to create me? Why couldn’t someone nicer create me?”

  Guy called me that night and said, “What’s going on between Macdonald and Madam Stone?”

  “I’m not sure what the hell’s going on. What do you hear?”

  “True love,” Guy said.

  “He doesn’t even know her. He hasn’t even spent any time with her. You know how Bill is. I’m sure as hell he hasn’t slept with her.”

  “They were lovers in a past life,” Guy said.

  I said, “You’ve got to be shitting me!”

  “That’s what Madam Stone says.”

  I suddenly got the giggles. I knew where that “lovers in a past life” stuff was coming fro
m. Sharon had just read my script Original Sin, which was about two people who’d been lovers in a past life.

  Sharon was talking about starring in it for her next movie.

  She was, I thought, prematurely getting into the part.

  Evans called next—as always, direct.

  “Is Bill fucking Stone?”

  “Not a chance,” I said. “You know Bill.”

  “There are rumors all over the set. They’re goony over each other.”

  “That part of it’s possible.”

  “Did you introduce them?”

  “Yes.”

  “That was brilliant, my boy. Do you think he can talk to her for me about this dog collar stuff?”

  “Ask him, Bob. He works for you.”

  “If she’s goony over him, maybe she’ll listen.”

  Then Evans added, “Why would she be goony over the fuckin’ putz. I don’t get it.”

  Bill and I went shopping for Valentine’s Day at Maxfield’s on Melrose.

  I bought Sharon a silver Chrome Hearts hash pipe.

  Bill bought Sharon a silver signet ring.

  I bought Bill a silver Chrome Hearts watch which I was going to surprise him with later.

  Bill said that was all he was going to buy.

  I said, “You’ve gotta buy Naomi something.”

  He said he didn’t have any more money.

  I paid for Naomi’s gift from Bill. I even selected it: a silver broken heart on a leather cord.

  I bought Gerri Eszterhas nothing.

  The next day was the Sliver wrap party, to be held at the Roxbury, a Sunset Strip club. Bill met me at my hotel late in the afternoon. He was almost eating cigarettes and knocked down a triple vodka as soon as he came in.

  “I’m in love with her,” Bill said. He was upset, pacing the floor.

  “Jesus Christ, man,” I said, “you just married Naomi.”

  “I know it. She’s coming to the wrap party.”

  “Of course she’s coming to the wrap party. She’s the star of the movie.”

  “No,” he said, “Nomer.”

  “You’re bringing Naomi to the wrap party? With Sharon there? With everybody on the set talking about you and Sharon? Are you out of your mind? Do you want to humiliate your wife?”