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Hollywood screenwriter sees light in Bainbridge
(by Joan Demirjian - September 11, 2008)
Hollywood screenwriter sees light in Bainbridge
By JOAN DEMIRJIAN
For most of his life, author and screenwriter, Joe Eszterhas said he was what he calls "a control freak."
"Street smart and cynical," he said, his sense of control took root in his childhood. He was born in Hungary and lived in refuge camps during World War II. He moved later with his parents, Istvan, a Hungarian-language novelist, and Maria Eszterhas, to the United States and a poor immigrant neighborhood of Cleveland. He learned English, and "I translated this world to them. They listened to me," he said.
Mr. Eszterhas, a Bainbridge resident, pursued a career in writing. A former senior editor of Rolling Stone magazine, he has written six books, including "Charlie Simpson's Apocalypse," a nonfiction work that won the National Book Award.
He also penned 16 screenplays, including "Basic Instinct," "Jagged Edge," "Flashdance," "Showgirls" and "Telling Lies in America."
What he didn't have control over is what he calls his addiction to smoking and drinking. And he came face to face with that addiction after he was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2001.
He had been smoking since age 12 and was 14 when he started drinking, he said. At 56, he was a four-pack-a-day smoker and he was downing a bottle of gin every day, along with glasses of beer, he said.
It was shortly after he and his wife, Naomi, and their four boys moved from Malibu, Calif., to Geauga County that he was diagnosed with throat cancer, a result of smoking. He underwent surgery at Cleveland Clinic.
Surgeons cut out 80 percent of his larynx and pulled muscles around to hook it up with the larynx, he said. After the surgery, he was told the only chance he had to stay alive was to stop smoking and drinking.
Recuperating at home, he had taken to walking four to five miles around the subdivision where they live, not only for exercise, but to fight his cravings for cigarettes and alcohol.
He recalled how he was in pain, sweating, shaking, exhausted and in complete despair on a hot day in 2001. "I sat down on the curb and cried like a child," he said.
Then, incredibly, he said, he heard himself saying, "Please God, help me. I hadn't prayed since I was a boy," he said. "It was the first time I had ever turned to God for help," Mr. Eszterhas said. "I had always been in control."
As he describes it, he was "saved from the darkness I had been drawn to most of my life, and the evil I had spent so much time and effort studying and analyzing for years. "God saved me from me."
He vowed to tell how smoking kills and destroys and to tell the world about how through God, his life has changed, "Even if telling the world destroys my Hollywood career.
"Most of the movies that I was known for were dark, sexually graphic and violent," he said. He had scoffed at religion.
That experience on the curb led to his book, "Crossbearer -- A Memoir of Faith." That day, "God's presence opened a rusty old crusted heart," Mr. Eszterhas said.
With input from book editor Elizabeth Beier, at St. Martin's Press, his mother Maria, became a central character in the book. "She lurks behind the scenes," he said.
Mr. Eszterhas will read and discuss his book, dedicated to his wife and to his mother, at 7 p.m. Sept. 11 at the men's fellowship group at Church of the Holy Angels in Bainbridge.
He will sign whatever memorabilia people bring in, such as other books, he said.
After the "curb experience," he started attending Holy Angels, where the Rev. Robert Stec and the Rev. Daniel Schlegel have been strong influences in his new spiritual life, he said.
He recalled how he was wrestling with issues, including whether he could resist his addictions, whether his cancer would return and whether he could write again. The Rev. Stec had been watching him, he said. One day, walking down the aisle after Mass, he stopped and said, "Do you know what this means? This means that the best is yet to come. The best part of your life is still ahead of you."
"It was as though he looked into my heart and soul," Mr. Eszterhas said. "Father Dan also has a deep faith that inspires mine."
Mr. Eszterhas said he and his wife decided to move from Malibu, where he had to put a combination lock on the mailbox because people would steal items. Hypodermic needles were also found on playgrounds, he said.
"At a certain point, we said, 'How are we going to raise four boys here.'"
They decided to return to the Cleveland area, where he grew up on the west side. Mrs. Eszterhas grew up in Mansfield.
"We found Bainbridge accidentally. We looked all around on the east side, and we saw this house in Bainbridge," Mr. Eszterhas said. "Naomi loved it instantly because it reminded her of the house she grew up in.
"We wanted a low-profile lifestyle with no need for combination locks," he said. "It was ideal. It was close to Chagrin Falls, and Bainbridge is suburban, but with a rural feel."
Mr. Eszterhas credited his wife as an important element in his faith journey. "She always had a deep faith," he said. "I'm not sure it would have been possible to have that experience on the curb without Naomi.
"The book is about me carrying the cross, my relationship with God and how it evolved. It celebrates the heroism in ordinary people," he said. "On a day-to-day level, people are carrying their own crosses."
And giving up being "a control freak" is difficult, but worth it, he said. "Everyday, I get up and thank God for being in my life and in my heart."
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