There's nothing in this book that will help anyone make it in the industry. Instead, the author writes about a ton of gossip stories and other strange Hollywood happenings. Make no mistake, the odd events told in the book are the extreme of what really happens in the movie business. If things really ran this way, there would be no Hollywood because it would've imploded long ago.

Nonetheless, I had great fun reading all the bizarre stories, but they are all too brief. Nothing is written out. Instead stories are delivered like log lines. A good bathroom read.

This is the most self indulgent, useless piece of garbage I've ever read. Joe Eszterhas starts out by trashing screen writing teachers such as Robert McKee, and then makes no attempt to teach the craft screen writing himself. This book is chock full of quotes, a few inspiring, but mostly irrelevant as well as Joe's repeated egomania, "My screenplays made this much money, and all these girls wanted to sleep with me."....I'm so glad I borrowed this book and didn't spend any money on it.

I bought this book months ago and just now got around to reading it completely (I was too busy writing screenplays and reading other more interesting books). If you like reading irreverent gossip columns and enjoying a mindless chuckle while whoofing down your morning bowl of Frosted Flakes, then please, go ahead and check this book out at your local library. But I would advise against buying it. The author, crusty ol' Eszterhas, pretends to be an advocate for the screenwriter, but in acuality, despises them (along with 99.9% of humanity). He pawns off advice in his book, not actually expecting you to follow it, then when you do, he becomes sanctimonous and offended. For example, he states in his book that if you're a young screenwriter and not out hounding people, beating on windows `til you get arrested, then you're not doing your job. I did not take his advice literally, but I did venture to Bainbridge Township, Ohio to meet Eszterhas and ask him to look at my script. I met him in the parking lot of his church and politely introduced myself whereupon he called me disgusting! Now imagine my shock when the writer of Showgirls has the nerve to call me disgusting! The man who brags about his many affairs with married women calls me disgusting! Normally I would not tolerate being talked to in this manner but he had his young "grandson" with him.
Eszterhas writes a book, puts the name and location of his church in it, then doesn't expect writers like myself to show up. I find it ironic that a diseased-ridden old man who's lived his bitter booze-filled life treating people like dirt now finds religion, hoping to get into heaven. His life has become a cliché, much like the majority of the scripts he has written.

Don't buy this book. Don't give this old geezer your money. He does not need nor deserve it. Besides, he's out of touch with the film industry these days and hasn't written a successful script in over 15 years!!!

Joe Eszterhas is the most successful screenwriter in the history of Hollywood.

He didn't kiss @$$ and did it his way.

He is a screenWRITER. Not a hooker with a typewriter.

If every screenwriter in Hollywood read this book and took it to heart, the WGA wouldn't need to strike ever again because the minimum basic agreement would be moot and writers would rule the observable universe. We already rule the unobservable universe.