The Devil’s Guide To Hollywood (81 page)

Liar, liar
!

A
reporter named Lenny Traube, writing for the
Western Queens Gazette
in Astoria, New York, described an interview he did with me at a place called Mary McGuire’s restaurant on Broadway.

He wrote: “Joe Eszterhas, the bearded millionaire screenwriter, turned up at Mary McGuire’s on Broadway following a script session at the Kaufman-Astoria studios and passed on the following to his eager interviewer, yours truly.”

Lenny Traube then quoted me at length about my past movies and future projects.

The only problem was that I’d never spoken to anyone named Lenny Traube or anyone else from the
Western Queens Gazette
. I had never been in Astoria, New York. I had never been at the Kaufman-Astoria studios. I had never been at Mary McGuire’s restaurant.

Lenny Traube had made the whole thing up and had plagiarized other interviews I had done during the previous six months.

When I threatened to sue, the
Western Queens Gazette
apologized and admitted that Lenny Traube had made it all up. They begged me not to sue. They even offered to do a lengthy (this time real) interview with me.

I didn’t do the interview.

I didn’t sue, either, although I should have.

Let’s make critics real people, not cinema geeks
.

H
ere’s how to clean up film criticism—how to take the corruptions out of it, how to stop the payoffs and the junket swag and strip critics of their power.

It’s easy, really. In the interest of fairness, newspapers should rotate their film critics every six months. Film critics should not be people who have seen ten movies a week for years and years.

Their expertise should not be in the technique of moviemaking. They shouldn’t be cinema geeks who spend most of their time in dark theaters.

They should be reporters from the newspaper’s other beats—sports, news, the style sections, the obituary pages—who, for six months, get to review movies—not from a technical viewpoint, but from a human point of view—and who aren’t afraid to tell us without mincing words (for fear of antagonizing studios) how they feel about the movie they’ve just seen.

Take their names away from ’em
.

I
said this to a studio executive: “If you think critics are supreme egotists who like to see their names displayed in full-page newspaper ads, why don’t you leave their names out of the ads? Just go with the publication they work for. If all the studios did that, maybe critics would write less grandstanding reviews.”

She said, “No, we need their names, even if nobody’s ever heard of them. Because if we get thrashed by all the major media outlets, we will still have reviews from John and Jane Doe from obscure radio stations around the country, who will give us the review we need to plaster on a full page.”

Be patient—once they kick the holy hell out of you, they just might praise you
.

W
hile, after its release, feminists bashed
Basic Instinct
unanimously (Tammy Bruce, the then president of the L.A. chapter of
NOW
, even stood in a picket line), months later feminist author Naomi Wolf wrote, “What was so cathartic about
Basic Instinct
was here was not a cartoon villainess like in
Fatal Attraction
—not a misogynist two-dimensional nightmare—but a complex, compelling Nietzschean
Uberfraulein
who owns everything about her own power. She’s rich. She’s not ashamed of being rich, which is transgressive in the ideology of femininity.”

Yale lecturer and revisionist feminist Camille Paglia wrote, “Woman is the bitch goddess of the universe. … Sharon Stone’s performance was one of the great performances by a woman in screen history.”

When my film
Jagged Edge
was released, it was panned by the critics, dismissed in a few paragraphs by
The New York Times
. Ten years later, in an article about modern classic thrillers, the
Times
included
Jagged Edge
.

Pauline was the worst
!

C
anonized as “the Divine Redeemer” of film critics, Pauline Kael viewed James Toback (
Fingers
) as a creative genius.

That’s all you really need to know about her.

Plus the fact that she stopped writing criticism when Warren Beatty hired her to become part of his production company. Then, when he fired her about a year later, Pauline started writing reviews once again.

A Feedable Critic

Screenwriter/director Buck Henry: “Everyone knew that Pauline Kael was feedable, that if you sat next to her, got her drunk, and fed her some lines, you could get them replayed in some other form.”

Pauline liked to hang out
.

T
o Pauline Kael, Altman was a cinematic god. She called
M*A*S*H
“the best American war comedy since sound came in.”

Screenwriter Joan Tewksbury, who worked with Altman, said, “Bob could cultivate Pauline. She would come to the sets, go out to dinner with him, hang around his office.”

How did Mailer know this
?

H
e called Pauline Kael “the first frigid of the film critics.”

A Paulette

Disciples of Pauline Kael.

Was he talking about Pauline or Roger Ebert
?

N
o, Raymond Chandler was referring to Edmund Wilson, the top literary critic of his day, when he called him “a fat bore … who made fornication as dull as a railroad time table.”

The next time you listen to Ebert
…

R
emember that he is a failed screenwriter, whose sole credit is
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls
.

Gene Shalit is a circus clown
.

P
addy Chayefsky called NBC’s Gene Shalit “a professional clown” and added that TV critics are “frustrated actors who try to be cute in ninety seconds.”

Charles Champlin was a good friend
.

W
hen
F.I.S.T
., my first movie, was released, Norman Jewison, the director, told me that the film critic of the
Los Angeles Times
had seen it and loved it.

“That doesn’t really mean a whole helluva lot, though,” Norman said.

“What do you mean?” I said. “It’s the
Los Angeles Times
. Who’s going to write the review it?”

“Charles Champlin,” Norman said.

“He’s a very respected guy,” I said.

“Sure he is,” Norman said. “But he’s a good friend of mine. I even blurbed his last book.”

“So what,” I said. “He liked it.”

“He certainly did,” Norman said, and grinned.

“But he’s a friend of yours,” I said.

“He certainly is,” Norman said, still grinning.

If Rex Reed gives you a bad review
…

B
en Hecht and his writing partner, Charles MacArthur, saw a critic in a restaurant who had trashed their latest film. Hecht encouraged MacArthur to go over and punch the critic out.

MacArthur said, “It’s not worth it—I’ll just send him a poison choirboy.”

They gave me my props
.

M
any critics said
Basic Instinct
was written “from the crotch … from his loins … by his penis.”

Those reviews obviously impressed many women who read them and then, after reading them, sought me out.

A Popcorn Movie

They are movies like
Flashdance
and
Jagged Edge
that overcome negative critics and wind up doing huge business. In other words, they are movies that people who’ve seen them tell other people about. Mike Medavoy: “Studio owners have been known to tell production people, ‘Make popcorn movies; that’s what people want.’ ”