Joe Rogan Experience #2508 - Joe Eszterhas

Eszterhas traces his dark, sex-and-violence-soaked screenwriting to a teenage affair with an older woman and years on the police beat covering shootings, urban uprisings and crime scenes. He recounts writing Basic Instinct in 13 days in Hawaii on cocaine and the Rolling Stones, the record $3 million sale, and the critical turnaround on the film. A large stretch covers his late-life conversion to Christianity after stage-four throat cancer, his study of the historical Jesus, and a long riff on the Shroud of Turin. He shares vivid stories about his mentor and friend Hunter S. Thompson, a wild morning interviewing Jimi Hendrix, his admiration for Sam Kinison and Mark Twain, and his views on immigration, ICE and militarized policing. He closes on writing, addiction, alcohol's role in quieting the mind, and finally getting sober at 70.

• Wrote Basic Instinct in 13 days in Hawaii while snorting coke and listening only to the Rolling Stones.
  00:05:13
• Says Catherine Tramell came from a real affair he had at 18 with a 39-year-old faculty member's wife.
  00:05:45
• Originally titled the script 'Love Hurts' before renaming it Basic Instinct on his way out the door; it sold for a record $3 million.
  00:08:53
• Got stage-four throat cancer and credits a never-before-done-in-the-US surgery and his prayer life with saving him.
  00:51:35
• Says Hunter S. Thompson is the reason for his entire screenwriting career, championing him to Rolling Stone and getting his book published.
  01:02:34
• Tells how Thompson shot the tires out of the Rolling Stones' car after Mick and Keith left a visit early.
  01:10:38
• Michael Ovitz allegedly told him his 'foot soldiers' would 'put you under the ground' if he left CAA, sparking a major Hollywood scandal.
  01:36:13
• Joe Rogan confirms he stole 'The Joe Rogan Experience' name directly from the Jimi Hendrix Experience.
  01:44:09

• 18 of Eszterhas's films were made, with about 16 more scripts that never were.
  00:03:41
• Feminist critic Camille Paglia reversed her stance and called Basic Instinct a 'post-feminist classic.'
  00:09:25
• A Catholic study led under John Paul II carbon-dated the Shroud of Turin to roughly 1300-1320, though Eszterhas still prays to it.
  00:37:00
• Recounts Hunter Thompson taking acid before every trip to San Francisco strip bars and yelling for the dancers to come out.
  01:06:22
• Sam Kinison dedicated a CD ('Leader of the Banned') with special thanks to Eszterhas for his letter to Michael Ovitz.
  01:35:43
• Took Jimi Hendrix and his bandmates to a Hungarian restaurant in Cleveland where Hendrix ate three chicken paprikash and signed autographs for old ladies.
  01:46:44
• Notes Hendrix, Joplin, Morrison, Cobain and Amy Winehouse all died at 27.
  01:52:58
• Smoked from age 13 to 60, drank heavily until 70, and finally quit after his wife Naomi intervened.
  01:53:30
• His wife Naomi wrote her first novel, a Gothic thriller called 'Dark Church' set in Dracula's Transylvania, at 67.
  01:55:06
• Once called an ambulance thinking he was having a heart attack that turned out to be a caffeine reaction from too much coffee.
  02:05:02