The Devil’s Guide To Hollywood by Joe Eszterhas Read Free Book Online Page B

star he created, Marilyn Monroe.
    But it’s not enough to be Hungarian .
    I n the early days of the film business, there were so many Hungarian filmmakers in L.A. that there was a sign at the MGM commissary that read “ IT’S NOT ENOUGH TO BE HUNGARIAN. YOU STILL HAVE TO PAY FOR THE CHICKEN SOUP .”

    The Panic List

    Allegedly kept by the studios, it is a list of those who badly need money and will work cheap. The only time I heard direct mention of it was in a studio meeting with a Paramount executive, who suggested hiring a well-known director for one of my scripts and said, “He’s on the panic list. He just bought a house on Martha’s Vineyard and needs to go to work.”

    ALL HAIL
    Hail Paul Rudnick!
    He not only has put together a lengthy and successful career as a screenwriter but, as columnist Libby Gelman-Waxner in Premier magazine, he has also wickedly trashed most of the town’s heavyweights and gotten away with it.

    Don’t gamble .
    G ambling is part of ancient Hollywood tradition, going back to David O. Selznick losing much of what he made. David Begelman, agent/studio exec/embezzler/suicide was addicted to gambling.
    I saw producer Don Simpson lose thirty thousand dollars in fifteen minutes at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas.
    If you’re successful, you’ll be invited to industry poker games—some are legendary. Don’t do it.
    I was even introduced to a little man who was the industry’s bookie to the stars. He was very rich and knew the works of George Bernard Shaw inside out.
T AKE IT FROM ZSA ZSA
Don’t marry a writer.
Actress and famed Hungarian femme fatale Zsa Zsa Gabor: “Even though painters and sculptors and composers and writers have a romantic reputation all over the world, in my opinion they are worthless as ex-husbands, or as husbands, or as anything else you may have in your mind to do with them, except if you want to have a beautiful nude statue made of you. Honestly, no woman, even if she is the most alluring creature that ever existed, can win out when she is competing for a man’s attention with his precious muse. Artists spend all their time thinking about imaginary beauty . …
“Let’s face it, nine times out of ten intellectual men would rather go to bed with a good book. Which just goes to show how unintelligent an intelligent person can be.”

    If you get married, do it in Portofino .
    T his, too, is an old Hollywood tradition. David O. Selznick was married there … and I had an agent who was married there—at the Splendido Hotel—three times to three different women.
    I stayed there once, when I was already married to my first wife, Geraldine, and happened to arrive the first day that the Splendido opened for the season. In the dining room that night, Gerri and I found ourselves surrounded by German couples in their seventies and eighties.
    “All Nazis,” our American waiter told us. “They came here to hide after the war, and on the first day that the hotel is open each year, they flock here to celebrate surviving another year without capture.”
    Always let them pick up the check .
    O nly pick a check up if you’re out with another screenwriter … and if you’re doing better than he/she is.
    Agent Swifty Lazar, describing gossip columnist Walter Winchell: “He had a great way of not reaching for a check. He’d feign a move toward it, but if someone made the slightest protest, he’d redirect his hand and pick up his water glass. In all the years I knew him, I never saw him pay for a meal.”
    You’re dealing with horribly spoiled people .
    A ctress Hedy Lamarr: “If a man sends me flowers, I always look to see if a diamond bracelet is hidden among the blossoms. If there isn’t one, I don’t see the flowers.”
    I sent Sharon Stone a hundred red roses once. She sent me a card thanking me.
    I sent her a gold bracelet. She called and asked me to dinner.
    Everything you’ve ever heard about Hollywood parties is true .
    A ctress Hedy Lamarr: “At one