Giving thanks with Joe Eszterhas

A gritty screenwriter turns from Hollywood’s dark side and walks in the light | Marvin Olasky

Associated Press/ Photo by Chris Stephens/The Plain Dealer

Just as Christmas should center on Christ, so Thanksgiving should emphasize the recipient of thanks. God gives us amber waves of not only grain but grace, as He continues to transform the lives of those who formerly scorned His teaching.

Joe Eszterhas, born in Hungary, grew up too fast in 1940s refugee camps. He became a police reporter, Rolling Stone editor, and then Hollywood's highest-paid screenwriter. He wrote scripts filled with sex, violence, and hatred, and those scripts turned into films with evocative titles such as Basic Instinct, Jagged Edge, Betrayed, Sliver, and Showgirls.

Eszterhas in Hollywood saw and heard weirdness by the bucketful, everything from Marlon Brando asking every visitor to provide a stool sample for his private collection to John Candy downing 21 rum cokes and smoking two cigarettes at a time during a script meeting. Marriage 14 years ago had some effect on him—he and Naomi soon had four children—but not until he was recovering from a throat cancer operation did the major change occur.