Joe Eszterhas

He is best known for his vicious, sexy, highly literate crime and mystery scripts: Jagged Edge (1985), Betrayed (1988), and the Sharon Stone starmaker Basic Instinct (1989). At one point Eszterhas was the highest-paid writer in Hollywood, receiving $3 million up-front money for Basic Instinct alone. Never one to shirk from a fracas, Eszterhas has fought publicly with producers, directors, powerful agents and even crime bosses (especially after accepting the responsibility of penning the John Gotti biopic). Given his reputation for censor-baiting, it is surprising to learn that one of Eszterhas' biggest battles was aimed at convincing director Paul Verhoeven to tone down the sex-and-violence excesses that Verhoeven had added to Basic Instinct. Nonetheless, it was Eszterhas who in 1995 issued a sarcastic response to Senator Bob Dole's call for Hollywood to clean up its act; kidding on the square, Eszterhas argued that some of the political misdeeds of the Nixon, Reagan and Bush administrations were far more "obscene" than anything found in an R-rated movie. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide