Basic Assault

How an innocent writing assignment turned my life into a Joe Eszterhas movie

In the mid-90s, I became mildly obsessed with the screenwriter Joe Eszterhas. He had lived in the Bay Area for many years, writing journalism for Rolling Stone, before moving onto books and movies. He looked like a roadie-cocaine dealer from 1977, but he also cranked out the scripts, and in some ways perfected the “erotic thriller” genre, which infected American entertainment throughout the 80s and 90s. He famously was paid $3 million for Basic Instinct (1992), which today is about $6,750,000. One week, I decided to watch a whole bunch of his films, back to back, and then wrote this piece as a joke. Nearly all of the dialogue is verbatim from Eszterhas scripts. It first appeared on a website called Mr. Showbiz, in 1995.

It began slowly enough. I received a magazine assignment to cover the career of Joe Eszterhas, world’s highest-paid screenwriter, or as many critics will attest, a “schlockmeister.” Pull no punches, they said. Alright, I agreed. The guy’s a cheeseball, but it might be fun to follow his trail. Plus, he’s got more screenplays in development. I began my research by hitting the local video emporium to stock up on the mighty Eszterhas canon of work: Basic Instinct, Sliver, Jade, Showgirls, Music Box, Betrayed, Flashdance, F.I.S.T., and something in the Cult section called Hearts of Fire, a silly rock-and-roll fable starring Bob Dylan. It was a long weekend.

Police and ambulance lights filled my San Francisco neighborhood as I drove home from an errand. Cops and paramedics wandered around, talking on radios, carrying a body down my steps on a stretcher.

“Can’t go up there,” said a plainclothesman. “Crime scene.”

I showed him my driver’s license, which to my astonishment seemed to satisfy him, and brushed past. The action was on the third floor. Cops had sealed off my studio apartment, taking photos and dusting for prints. They were all overweight. I introduced myself to someone in a suit, a handsome assistant district attorney named Chase, who said grimly:

“Bank president. Stabbed. Kinky stuff. He was still alive when they cut off his dick.”

“No sign of sperm,” said a cop, peeling off a latex glove.

“Two-inch wounds,” reported another. “Happened about four hours ago.”

“What the hell’s going on here,” I asked. “This is my house. I’m just a writer.”

“And I’m just a D.A.,” said Chase. “Recently divorced, by the way. What kind of stuff you write?”

I told him mostly local color, Living section pieces, some travel stuff. Pretty harmless.

“Yeah, I saw your bookshelf,” he sniffed. “You better come down to the station.”

Two hours later the pieces began to fit more clearly. Acting on an anonymous tip, police had discovered the president of Wells Fargo Bank stabbed dead in my apartment, naked except for some S&M bondage gear, castrated and impaled on a wall hook. He was also editor of the daily newspaper, owner of a strip club, an attorney, a white supremacist farmer, and held a certificate to practice psychiatry. And recently divorced. I was glad I wasn’t a cop. It sounded like a mess.

I opened my apartment door and knew instantly something was wrong. I clicked on the light and—

She sat in a chair in the middle of the room, smiling and smoking a cigarette. Her blonde hair was well-coiffed, and her tight-fitting cocktail dress reeked of sexuality.

“How—how did you get in here?” I stammered.

“I understand you knew my ex-husband,” she purred in a cool voice. The diamonds looked real. “I’m recently divorced. He died in this room, didn’t he?”

“Look, lady,” I begged. “I’m just a writer and this is my apartment. I have no idea what’s going—”

“Is that so?” she smirked. “Maybe Mr. Chase knows what’s going on. Maybe I should ask him. Maybe you’d like to watch.” She crossed her legs, revealing a distinct lack of underwear. “Do I look bisexual to you?”

The bartender woke me up later that night. Apparently I’d dozed off in the men’s room. I stumbled back through the streets, brain reeling. Eszterhas…murder…a sleazy rich woman. I looked at myself in a storefront window and noticed I now had long scraggly hippie hair and beard.

It still felt like there was someone in the apartment. I turned on the light and—another blonde woman was sitting in a chair, smiling and smoking a cigarette.

“How—how did you get in here?” I stammered. Again.

“She nevah loved him,” said the woman. “Not like me. I knew all his tricks. It’s hot in heah. Do you mind if I take off my sweatah?”

From some hidden source kicked in the classic rock song “Bang A Gong” by T. Rex, a CD I don’t even own. I plopped into the sofa, helpless. The woman began dancing a slow strip-tease, undulating all the way down to pasties and black studded G-string, from which a small icepick fell to the floor. I buried my face in my hands.

“What’s the mattah, Hemingway?” she said. “Dontcha like my dancin’?”

She ground her hips into me like a deep-sea marlin fighting for its life. I shut my eyes, praying for the night to end.

The next morning, Chase and a pudgy cop knocked on my door. I told them about the two blondes. They’d heard of the stripper.

“She’s got a rap sheet as long as my dick,” said the fat cop. I asked him if he was divorced.

He shot me a look. “How’d you know?”

I turned to Chase, who was examining the icepick. “The ex-wife said she knows you.”

Chase grinned. “Yeah, ever since I’ve stopped seeing her, I’ve developed calluses. You better come with us.”

Within an hour we were inside a police helicopter, sweeping low over the choppy Pacific, along the San Francisco shoreline. Jesus, I thought, this is the big establishing shot from Basic Instinct. Or is it Jagged Edge? 

I tapped Chase on the shoulder and shouted over the roar of the chopper:

“Let me guess. Are we going to a beach house owned by the president of the bank, where there is another wealthy businessman friend of his, also recently divorced, dead of stab wounds, lots of S&M gear laying around, and is there nearby a black studded G-string?”

Chase stared at me. “You do your job, and I’ll do mine.”

“But I don’t know what my job is anymore,” I yelled back. “Last thing I knew, I was writing an article on this guy Joe Eszterhas, and—”

“HEY!” The fat cop shoved a gun under my nose. “Shit floats.”

We landed at the beach house, and it was exactly as I predicted: the body, the S&M equipment, the G-string. I felt satisfied, yet empty. Forensics did their thing, and the chopper took us back into the city.

I drove back to my apartment, thoroughly confused. I had inexplicably gotten thrown into some kind of Eszterhas murder plot. Maybe Joe himself had put some sort of occult curse on me, as if to prove he’s not cliché, that this world actually does exist. Was Joe Eszterhas somehow writing the script of my life?

I clicked on the light. There sat Chase, smiling and smoking a cigarette. “You just don’t get it, do you?”

“How—how did you get in here?” I stammered yet again.

“What’s the matter, you don’t believe in magic anymore?”

“I never did.” Man, this dialogue was sucking big-time.

The ex-wife and stripper came out of the bathroom, both wearing lingerie. “You have nice tits,” said the ex-wife. “I like nice tits.” The showgirl replied, “I like having nice tits.”

“I like your ass,” said Chase. “Call me.”

He stood up and I made my move. I grabbed his pistol and trained it on the three.

“There’s just one thing I don’t understand,” I said, fighting back the trite lines.

“Hey, evil and deceit is all there is.” Chase gave me that smirk again. “I’m evil, you’re evil, we’re all evil. It’s brilliant! Lighten up!”

I couldn’t take it anymore, and fired blindly at the soulless characters. The ex-wife flipped over the sofa. The stripper fell out the window, her body landing on the hood of a squad car, which for some reason happened to be on a high-speed pursuit chase through Chinatown.

Chase blinked at me, red foam gurgling from his mouth.

“What—what do you want?” he gasped weakly. “I’ll get you anything.”

I put the gun to his head and pulled the trigger. It clicked on the empty chamber. He fell back, dead. 

“Yeah,” I said. “Get me a beer, bitch.” 

Joe Eszterhas’ last Hollywood film was the 1997 flop Burn Hollywood Burn (which received “Best Picture” from the Golden Raspberry Awards), and he now writes books. He is 80 years old, lives in Cleveland, has rediscovered Catholicism, and is a supporter of Viktor Orbán.