Even as he collected his martini, the burly stranger who introduced himself as “Joe” exuded an aura of belligerence. We were standing on the fringe of a post-screening reception, so, hand extended, I blurted, “Did the movie work for you?”
“It was blah,” he replied. “Given what they spent for the script, they should have made a powerful f*ckin’ movie.”
At the time I didn‘t realize I was talking with Joe Eszterhas, who had made $4 million from sale of his script — more an auction than a sale and hardly “blah.” Joe and several estimable writing colleagues were participants in what came to be known in the mid-‘80s as the “Writers Rebellion,” a moment when top screenwriters decided to reinvent what they considered a broken system for propagating their creative product.
The rebellion was not as momentous as, say, the French Revolution, but its drama and rhetoric for a time changed how Hollywood interacted with its creative community.
Eszterhas has long since retired to quieter pastures, but given the discontent pervasive today in Hollywood’s writing community, some writers for film and TV might do well to re-examine that period for clues in resolving the present malaise.
Film and TV writers historically are notorious complainers, to be sure, but their agita these days seems especially shrill. “The studios are withdrawing from their role in developing and marketing scripts,” observes Franklin Leonard, who, as CEO of the 20-year-old Black List, is positioned as a keen commentator.
His small but impactful platform showcases the work of writers and has helped advance movies ranging from Argo to The King’s Speech to (500) Days of Summer. Today, Leonard notes, the “majors” seem reluctant to nurture projects unless they connect to their existing IP.
While The Black List has many admirers, the industry’s entire nurturing apparatus has its sceptics. “The screenwriting industrial complex is dysfunctional,” asserts Bruce Feirstein, an accomplished writer and editor whose credits include James Bond pictures as well as video games.
Feirstein notes that a screenplay submission, embodying a writer’s hopes of fame and fortune, is treated like “a tenuous first novel” and must be accompanied by several components including a “script deck” – a sort of PowerPoint that discloses logline, potential budget, locations and cast.
The screenplay might say the lead “looks like Margot Robbie,” while the deck hints that Robbie already is interested. The submission process, Feirstein notes, has fostered a dizzying profusion of businesses and contests involving coverage, editing, marketing and prospective locations.
Eszterhas phrased it more pungently. “The time has come for creative people to kick ass,” he said. “I’m not an artist, I’m a f*cking artisan, so I’m not interested in humbly waiting for assignments. I’ll write the scripts, then auction them off like prize cattle.”
The timing for Joe’s rebellion was opportune. During the ‘80s, the top managements of most of the major entertainment conglomerates were radically changing strategies, with entities like Time Inc, HBO, Viacom and Warner Bros spinning in the wind.
Movie makers were discovering vast new resources in video and overseas markets, and new corporate entities were emerging to capture this venture capital. Virtually every filmmaker, from Coppola to Spielberg, was busily announcing a new venture, richly funded.
Top young writers were determined not to be left behind. A swaggering young USC graduate named Shane Black by age 22 propelled had himself into a $4 million bidding war on Lethal Weapon, followed by Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and The Last Boy Scout.
Eszterhas packaged his ware as a hot new brand – the erotic thriller. Tough and savvy, Joe began scoring $4 million-$8 million for such projects as Basic Instinct, F.I.S.T., Showgirls and, of course, Flashdance. Eszterhas projects were generating enough heat that when he dismissed CAA, its chief, Michael Ovitz, instructed his client list to spurn any roles in future Eszterhas projects (Ovitz has issued denials).
Behind his feisty exterior, the Hungarian-born Eszterhas was a thoughtful and sophisticated writer who yearned to do serious work — he wrote some fine books post-retirement.
This column, he would observe, clearly has not dealt with the literature of screenwriting, or depicted a creative renaissance. Joe and his colleagues were denizens of the Hollywood assembly line of pop culture – writers who caused movies to get made and helped colleagues gain a bigger slice of the pie.
Some of their movies were even far from blah.