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Joe Eszterhas

Joe Eszterhas Books

Writer

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“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.”

“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.’”

“Now the cigarette companies claim that they don't do that [ pay to have their product advertised in movies ] anymore, although it certainly makes you wonder a bit when an independent production like "In The Bedroom", you know, seems to focus constantly on Marlboros and almost it turns into a Marlboro ad, whether there was any money exchanged.”

“I'm not suggesting at all that we take away all of the characters' vices. I am suggesting that this particular vice is so insidious, so nefarious, and so deadly that simply by glamorizing it or poisoning our young adults, and I think it's a very separate category, but in no way am I suggesting that we move on from banning smoking in movies to banning drinking, you know, or whatever else we want to do.”

“I think one of the things that I was struck by was that Joe has the financial wherewithal to go check into some expensive clinic, go into rehab and beat these addictions but he didn't. He sort of designed his own, you know, sort of rehabilitation at home. And anybody could do what he did. When he felt like having a cigarette after he ate, he would get up and walk. At cocktail hour when he used to have a drink and watch the news, he stopped watching the news. He couldn't. He couldn't watch the news and not have a drink and a cigarette. He would walk.”

“I changed my diet completely. You know, I'm from Cleveland, so I've always loved sausage and red meat and all of that stuff, so now I find myself not eating any of that, no red meat, no sausage. It's basically a vegetarian diet with a little bit of fish. I drink quarts of carrot juice, quarts of cranberry juice, endless amounts of water and nothing else.”

“I was very skeptical when he began, and there have been moments where I think he's shown absolute leadership, and I think the jury is out, still out. I haven't made any final decisions on him, but I've been surprised at times. I agree with him about one thing absolutely - George W. Bush said recently that he believed in prayer and exercise. So do I.”