I thanked them all and told them I needed their prayers.
While I got many phone calls from friends in L.A. concerned about my health, collective Hollywood met my proposal to ban smoking on-screen with resounding silence.
Naomi and I went out to L.A. for the first time since we’d left and I asked studio executives and producers why the studios kept showing smoking on-screen when statistics indicated, for example, that more and more young women were smoking while the cancer rate for women smokers was skyrocketing.
The big reason, I discovered, was movie stars. Many movie stars smoked. Many of them were so addicted that they wanted to smoke on-screen. They didn’t care about influencing kids to smoke. They cared about satisfying their cravings.
The studios all wanted to work with movie stars. They weren’t about to tell stars they couldn’t smoke on-screen for fear the stars would do other movies for other studios.
I saw Guy McElwaine on that trip. I asked him to forgive me for firing him. I told him it was the biggest mistake I’d made in Hollywood.
Guy said, “You know I’ll always love ya.”
Straight men in Hollywood who love each other always say it that way: “ya” … never “you.”
Guy was back in a big office at a big, successful production company called Morgan Creek, where he was the number two man. He looked sensational. He was nearing seventy and still a player, defying all the clichés about Hollywood being a young person’s town. Guy was reading scripts now with Brad and Leo and Cruise in mind … as he had once read them with Yul and Sellers and Burt in mind. He wore a gold ring emblazoned with the Sinatra family crest, given by the Sinatra family only to family members and their closest friends. Frank was dead, but inside Guy’s heart Frank (and a golden era in Hollywood) would never die.
I saw Irwin Winkler, too, and we agreed to work together on an idea he had: a movie based on the Mariah Carey–Tommy Mottola relationship based on the old classic movie written by Emeric Pressburger called The Red Shoes.
I loved seeing Irwin but when I got home I lost interest in writing the script. I was fighting cancer and cigarettes and alcohol … and I just couldn’t stay interested in Mariah Carey and Tommy Mottola.
Naomi and I saw Billy Friedkin and Sherry Lansing for dinner at a place where they bought us $150 plates of white truffle pasta.
I was telling Sherry what I’d been through … about hallucinating that Billy was in the step-down room at the clinic getting his throat suctioned … and Mike Myers was suddenly at our table and Sherry was introducing me to him not as a screenwriter but as a cancer survivor.
Mike went into his Austin Powers shtick and everybody laughed … except the cancer survivor, who was watching Billy Friedkin, the man who’d lied into his face and whose lies had cost Paramount millions of dollars.
Watching him, the cancer survivor suddenly imagined that Billy Friedkin was wearing a toupee. The cancer survivor laughed then, too, but not at Mike Myers as Austin Powers.
There were lots of hugs and kisses between Billy and Sherry and Naomi and me as we got into our cars.
Sherry said, “Call us when you come into town, honey. Let’s do it again!”
Billy looked at me and said, “You know, I’m not at all sure I like the new you.”
I said, “You never liked the old me, either,” and Billy Friedkin laughed.
I called Arnold Rifkin. I wanted to see him to tell him personally that I had treated him badly and that I regretted it.
His secretary, very friendly, said she’d put him right on. Then she came back after a long wait and said Arnold would have to call me back.
But Arnold never did.
Right back at me, even after he knew I had cancer.
We went to see Evans at his house. Maybe he looked a little more frail, but nothing else had changed. The same bimbos were there. Evans and Naomi and I laughed and hugged each other.
As we talked, Evans noted that he and I sounded alike now.
“You’re the only man in the world who sounds like me,” Evans said.
I think he meant it as a great compliment.
“Bob,” I said, “the cancer wards are filled with guys who sound like us.”
I could tell by the look on his face that he thought I was making a bad joke.
“Bob,” I said, “they had to cut my throat to get me to sound like you.”
Evans stared at me a moment and then he said, “Heh heh heh.”
Evans reenacted the strokes he’d suffered—he actually fell to the floor—literally fell—twice. He wanted me to write a book with him about improving vocabulary by using five new words each day.
We kept hugging before we left. We didn’t want to let each other go.
As we were getting into our car, Evans ran back into the house to get something. He handed me a bunch of bumper stickers.
We hugged again and then Evans and I kissed. Like devils. On the lips.
And then we cackled.
Naomi and I went back home to Bainbridge Township, happy to be home, happy to have been visiting L.A.
When we got home, the Writers Guild’s monthly magazine was waiting for me in the mail. On its cover was a screenwriter smoking a cigarette.
Not much later, the New York Times, in its coverage of the Sundance Film Festival, noted that what most of the films had in common was that many of the actors in them were smoking.
When we got home to Bainbridge Township, I took the bumper stickers Evans had given me and put them on our pickup and Suburban.
Each bumper sticker had a picture of Evans and each bumper sticker said something different:
“OMISSION ISN’T LYING.”
“ONCE BRANDED, ALWAYS BRANDED.”
BEWARE … I’M DANGEROUS.”
“PARTING IS SUCH GREAT JOY.”
“I BRAKE FOR ROBERT EVANS.”
I had another dream: Naomi and I were back in the house on Birdview Avenue in Malibu and I was drinking and smoking. We were listening to Renzo Arbore and his orchestra on our boom box.
I was enjoying myself and telling her about an awful nightmare I’d had. I dreamed that we’d moved to Cleveland and that I had cancer of the throat.
I got sixteen letters from people who’d read my New York Times piece and were writing to tell me they’d stopped smoking as a result.
My New York Times piece and my TV appearances didn’t appear to have achieved anything.
But I had made a promise to God. So, a month later, in Daily Variety, I wrote a piece attacking movie stars for their irresponsibility and hubris.
That didn’t achieve anything either. Maybe I was wasting my breath. But I knew I’d never stop. How can you renege on a promise to God?
· · ·
A producer flew from L.A. to talk to me about a script. I took him down to Jacobs Field. He sat there with his cellular ringing and his headset on, watching the Indians lose. He hurried back to L.A.
I wrote two anti-smoking public service messages I would appear in. We needed a director to film it.
Somebody mentioned Paul Verhoeven.
I laughed.
Sure: the perfect way for Paul and me to follow Basic Instinct and Showgirls: my croaky voice talking about cancer.
One public service message said:
“I used to think smoking was so cool, so hip, so rock and roll. Then I got throat cancer. Cancer isn’t cool, hip, or rock and roll. Cancer hurts. Cancer makes you cry. And then it kills you. Please—don’t smoke.”
The other public service message said:
“Hello. My name is Joe Eszterhas. I’m a screenwriter. I always glamorized smoking in my movies. I thought smoking was cool. Then I got throat cancer. Maybe that’s my punishment. Please—don’t let Hollywood sucker you into smoking. Please—don’t let people like me kill you. Don’t smoke.”
Looking at my throat during the next exam, Marshall Strome said: “Your tissue can’t possibly look better and be healthier than it is. Now I’ll say it officially. I
’ve never seen this in all my years of practice. This is a triumph of lifestyle … or something … over cancer. It’s miraculous!”
I was finally able to listen to my old favorite music again. It happened with Bruce Springsteen. As I stood listening to his new CD, I didn’t feel like having a drink or a cigarette. I felt like a jolt of oxygen was coursing through me.
I saw an old whistle at a flea market and bought it, polished it up, and put it around my neck.
Now I could yell at my kids again, yell not to go too close to the lake and the pond, not to go too fast on their bikes. My old whistle did the yelling for me.
I hardly took my old whistle off … just in case my whistle and I had to yell at one of the boys.
For some reason, I got a big kick out of driving to Bob Evans’s Restaurant for lunch in Solon, Ohio … in a pickup truck with a bumper sticker that said, “I BRAKE FOR ROBERT EVANS.”
· · ·
At a Little League game, another father stopped me and said, “Excuse me, aren’t you the famous writer?”
I heard Looey Bromfield saying “I used to be” and saw him walking away.
But I said, “I’m the writer all right.”
The other father grinned and said, “What are you writing?”
I told him I’d been sick.
“I heard that,” he said. “But you gotta keep writing, okay? Keep writing, cause … we like that stuff, you know?”
He winked at me and walked away.
I laughed.
Here in the heartland. At a Little League field, the tabernacle of family values.
And they … like that stuff, you know? Wink wink.
I made a button game for the boys like the one my father had made me.
And Joey and Nick and I played soccer with the buttons on the big green board every night.
Joey got good enough to beat me pretty soon, just like I’d gotten good enough to beat my father pretty soon after I’d started playing with him.
The boys liked the game so much that six months later they were still begging me to play it with them each night.
I realized that while I had kept them from meeting my father … my father had indirectly given them the best gift they’d ever gotten.
The hard rubber grip around my throat loosened to elastic.
Naomi and I were walking together one day and an airliner on its way to the airport flew low over us.
I stopped and waved at the plane.
“We have become my audience,” I told Naomi. “We are the fly-over people.”
Naomi and I started going to movies. I wasn’t consumed now with the cigarette I was going to have as soon as the movie ended. My Evian bottle wasn’t half full with gin. I ate popcorn and sometimes even Raisinettes and I drank pink lemonade.
And I realized that I was having fun going to the movies again.
Sometimes somebody from my Hollywood life would come to Cleveland for an appearance—Whoopi or Jon Bon Jovi or Richard Jeni or Spike Lee or Richard Dreyfuss or Jeff Daniels—and I’d think about calling them to say—“Hey, you’re here, let’s have lunch and catch up.”
But then I’d think—catch up on what? Traches? Feeding tubes? Antioxidants? Regenerating tissue?
Over drinks maybe at Johnny’s Downtown?
In the smoking section?
I woke up one night and something told me that I should say a prayer for Gerri. I included her after that night in my daily prayers.
I was reading a lot about the real, historical Jesus. I knew that Paul Verhoeven was a member of the biblical and historical study group called the Jesus Seminar and attended its meetings every year.
I knew that Paul was fascinated by Jesus.
And I had this thought: What if, with my new interest in Jesus, Paul and I collaborated on a film about the historical Jesus? What a way to follow Basic Instinct and Showgirls! I suddenly wondered what rating our Jesus movie would be.
Sometime in the future, I resolved, when I felt stronger, I’d talk to Paul about it.
Shortly after Showgirls, Gloria Steinem and I had had a meeting about doing a movie about the young Marilyn Monroe.
I took the idea to Paul and he’d turned it down.
The media had a lot of fun with it, though: Gloria Steinem producing a movie done by the Showgirls guys.
This, of course, would be even more sensational news: Jesus in the hands of the Showgirls guys.
I never went anywhere without a cross. I noticed, though, that Ozzy Osbourne wore a cross all the time, as did fellow Clevelander, boxing promoter, and former numbers king … Don King. Most gangsta rappers and Hollywood starlets wore crosses, too.
I remembered one of those bimbos in Vegas pointing out to me that Paul Verhoeven was wearing a watch with Jesus’ likeness on its face.
Now I was sometimes wearing a ring with a crucifix on it.
Although, at times, I wore a ring that was a black heart on my other hand.
I kept my black heart ring on my left hand. Underneath it was my wedding band, inscribed “Naomi.” Above it was my father’s wedding band, inscribed “Mária.”
Naomi had a matching black heart ring which I’d bought her.
The Ladies’ Auxiliary at Holy Angels Church made me a get-well prayer quilt which I framed and put up on the wall, not far from my Basic Instinct and Showgirls posters.
· · ·
Steve hadn’t had a cigarette in more than two years. He’d devised a system for himself that worked: he ate spicy food to ease his cravings and chewed ice gum a lot.
If my son didn’t smoke another cigarette for the rest of his life, then my entire travail had been worth it.
Even though I hadn’t smoked a cigarette or had a drink in nearly two years, I didn’t believe that I had beaten either addiction.
I was fully aware of the inestimable power of alcohol and nicotine and tobacco. I was a recovering smoker and a recovering alcoholic and prayed that I would be that until my dying day.
I had become obsessed by my five-mile walks. I needed the little buzzing high at the end of them. I needed to feel the rush of air through my maimed larynx and my lungs. I needed it as badly as I’d needed a cigarette or a drink in the past.
And I got it … I gave it to myself every day, without fail, when it was 97 degrees and when it was eight below zero.
I sucked that air in and breathed it as deeply as I could and experienced the profound joy of being alive.
I dreaded getting a cold. Phlegm piled up in my throat and bronchial area. I’d have to work until I was exhausted each morning to cough everything up so I could breathe normally.
With 80 percent of my larynx gone, coughing is heavy labor.
I was still as addicted as I was before, but to different things: to fresh air, freshly made carrot juice, ruby red grapefruit juice, organic cranberry juice, lime yogurt, fresh cauliflower and broccoflower, fresh corn, Roma tomatoes, watermelon, cantaloupe, pomegranate, and bananas … to life, no longer to death.
On the first day of spring, I watched Joey, Nick, and John Law burst barefoot out the front door to ride their bikes. The screen door didn’t slam until they were halfway down the driveway.
On the second anniversary of my surgery, I called Marshall Strome to tell him that I wanted to raise a tall glass of cranberry juice in his honor.
“Thank you,” he said, “but raise it in yours. I can tell you now that when you told us you’d stop smoking and drinking, none of us believed you.”
· · ·
I rubbed Naomi’s feet and sang “Volare” for her. I sounded like a punk rocker imitating a karaoke-bar drunk imitating Johnny Cash. I sounded like the Creature from the Black Lagoon. I sounded like Robert Evans!
To celebrate my second anniversary, we took the boys to an Amish restaurant where we ate country-fried chicken, drank lemonade, and watched the horse-and-buggies go by.
I watched an old Amish man in a straw hat walking to his buggy and when he got there he turned and looked right at
me and smiled.
He looked just like my father.
I froze and he got into the buggy.
I turned away and there was Luke smiling and looking at me with my father’s slate-blue eyes.
I smiled back at Luke, ruffled his hair, and kissed his eyes.
“Why is Dada crying?” Joey asked.
“Allergies,” Naomi said.
We all went to the cemetery a week later, stood at my father’s and mother’s graves, and said the Lord’s Prayer. Even Luke jibber-jabbered along.
Then we stood there quietly for a long moment and I said in Hungarian to my father: “I love you, Pop.”
And: “Thanks for everything, Pop.”
And: “I forgive you, Pop.”
And: “I think.”
Driving away from the cemetery, I thought: You don’t belong here anyway, Pop, in the America that I love. You belong in that Jew-hating old country that you loved so much.
The next day I called the consulate of Hungary and asked them what it took to disinter a body here and send it to Hungary for reburial.
The fact that I was going to send my father’s body back to Hungary and doing what he wanted me to do … didn’t mean that blood is thicker than spilled blood.
But maybe it meant that love is more powerful than hate.
In my head I heard Father John Mundweil say to me: “You’re doing it because you love him and because you finally forgave him. Enough already! Forget about ambiguity! This isn’t one of your unsatisfying movie endings!”
Wherever my father was, he’d be with us in Luke’s slate-blue eyes. At the age of two, Luke was squat—with a fleshy torso and a bowling ball head. Naomi called him “Steffen” sometimes and he loved hoadog.
· · ·
Good morning, God. Praise the Lord!
And hearing me say that, some will agree with Mark Twain that God is the last refuge of scoundrels.
My response is that many critics referred to Twain as “the devil’s apprentice” and “the devil’s disciple.”
And what can the devil possibly know about God?
Or was Twain, too, talking about himself?
Ke sera sera, vatever vill be vill be! my father sang to himself sometimes.
Life is strange! … our wedding invitation said … Life is amazing!
Hollywood Animal Page 89