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COPYRIGHT 2004 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.
How does an artist reach the people? Here are two views of the same quandary, drawn from opposing ends of the twentieth century. You can solve the problem like this:
Thus arose on behalf of my idea the lively interest of a possible suggestion and process of adumbration; the question of how best to convey that sense of the depths of the sinister without which my fable would so woefully limp. Portentous evil--how was I to save that, as an intention on the part of my demon-spirits, from the drop, the comparative vulgarity, inevitably attending, throughout the whole range of possible brief illustration, the offered example, the imputed vice, the cited act, the limited deplorable presentable instance?
Or like this:
"It's gonna have blood and hair on the walls," Marty said. Frank looked blank, the creative assistants nodded., "It's gonna have a fuck-'em-if-they-can't-take-a-joke ending," Marty said., Frank looked blank, the creative assistants nodded., "It's gonna have great word of mouth on it," Marty said. "Fuck the critics, it'll be an audience picture.", More blankness, more nods., Marty's litany went on: Nastier than In Cold Blood, lots of sex, scare-'em-pissless moments, forget Witness for the Prosecution, forget Anatomy of a Murder, forget that Perry Mason confess-at-the-end bullshit. We were gonna scare the living shit out of all those assholes out there., "What assholes?" I said., "The audience," Marty said.
One of these passages is by Joe Eszterhas, and the other is by Henry James; just to maintain the air of creeping suspense, I will refuse to reveal which is which. The works of art under discussion are "The Turn of the Screw" and "Jagged Edge," each of which strikes me as fairly unyielding in its will to terrorize. What, then, has happened in the eighty years or so between the two endeavors? In a word, film happened, and with it came a newfound devotion to what James, with lethal niceness, called "the drop." From the start, Hollywood got a rise out of the drop, and the "deplorable presentable instance"--a dagger in the dark, an ice pick under the bed--is now a prime source of strength, both visual and commercial. We assholes want our weekly platefuls of blood and hair, and Joe Eszterhas is one of the maitre d's.
Eszterhas is a screenwriter by trade, although, as he makes clear in his shy and blushing memoir, "Hollywood Animal" (Knopf; $26.95), he is hardly one among many, or even first among equals. In fact, he is the only damn dog in the kennel. "Compare myself to other screenwriters? On what basis?" he writes. "I became a famous screenwriter making millions,...
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