Screenwriting and Fame
Eszterhas' first produced screenplay was F.I.S.T., directed by Norman Jewison. Eszterhas contributed to the script of 1983's highly successful Flashdance, and wrote the screenplays for Jagged Edge, Jade, Betrayed, and Sliver and Basic Instinct. In 1995, he wrote Showgirls, which won that year's Golden Raspberry Award for "Worst Screenplay". The film enjoyed cult success on the home video market, generating more than $100 million from video rentals and became one of MGM's top 20 all-time bestsellers.
He undertook producing following the success of Basic Instinct, making two films in 1997, both of which he wrote: Telling Lies in America, and An Alan Smithee Film Burn Hollywood Burn, the latter winning several Golden Raspberry awards, two of them awarded to Eszterhas for "Worst Screenplay" and "Worst Supporting Actor".
None of Eszterhas' screenplays written between 1997 and 2006 were produced. However, Children of Glory, a Hungarian language film based upon his screenplay, was released in 2006. The films focuses upon both the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and the Blood in the Water match at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. Children of Glory was entered by invitation in the official section of 2007 Berlin Film Festival. His most recent screenplay was a historical biopic on Judah and The Maccabees. Titled M.C.K.B.I., its last draft was dated February 20, 2012. The project was subsequently shelved.
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Famous quotes containing the word fame:
“To anybody who can hold the Present at its worth without being inappreciative of the Past, it may be forgiven, if to such an one the solitary old hulk at Portsmouth, Nelson’s Victory, seems to float there, not alone as the decaying monument of a fame incorruptible, but also as a poetic approach, softened by its picturesqueness, to the Monitors and yet mightier hulls of the European ironclads.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)