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{"id":1615,"date":"2009-05-18T05:23:32","date_gmt":"2009-05-18T09:23:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tmatt.net\/?p=1615"},"modified":"2009-05-18T05:23:32","modified_gmt":"2009-05-18T09:23:32","slug":"finding-god-on-the-jagged-edge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2009\/05\/finding-god-on-the-jagged-edge\/","title":{"rendered":"Finding God on the jagged edge"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Screenwriter Joe Eszterhas knows all about strange plot twists and he is convinced that God often sends big messages in the final acts of people\u2019s lives.<\/p>\n

Once a scandalous Hollywood insider<\/a>, the author of twisted thrillers such as \u201cBasic Instinct\u201d and \u201cJagged Edge\u201d can quote chapter and verse about life and death in Tinseltown. Consider the ruthless movie mogul who died during a beach vacation when a metal bar fell from a construction crane and pieced his heart. Or how about the Casanova actor whose reputation made his testicular cancer a bit too ironic?<\/p>\n

Eszterhas will name names, when confessing his own sins. <\/p>\n

The screenwriter\u2019s egomaniacal tantrums were the stuff of legends, along with his appetite for alcohol, cocaine and first-person research for the lap-dancing scenes in \u201cShowgirls.\u201d Then there was his foul, blasphemous mouth.<\/p>\n

It was tempting to connect the dots when he was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2001, said Eszterhas, during his blunt and mildly profane testimony at Biola University\u2019s annual conference on faith and the entertainment industry<\/a>. The resulting surgery claimed 80 percent of his larynx.<\/p>\n

\u201cWas it possible,\u201d he mused, in his one-foot-in-the-grave voice, \u201cthat God had to cut my throat?\u201d Then he heard the harsh commandments for his new life.<\/p>\n

\u201cI adored my wife and children, so I tried,\u201d Eszterhas told the audience at CBS Studio Center. \u201cI stopped smoking. I stopped drinking. I was trying my best to stay alive. I was trying my best not to die, but I knew that I couldn\u2019t do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thus begins the wild conversion story he has shared many times, reading from his book, \u201c Crossbearer: A Memoir of Faith<\/a>.\u201d The turning point arrives with a weeping sinner on his knees, his heart skipping beats, his hands shaking, his voice moaning through his tracheotomy tube. Then Eszterhas hears his own voice mumbling strange words.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t know why I had said it. I had never said it before,\u201d he said. \u201cThen I listened to myself say it again and again and again. \u2018Please God, help me.\u2019 \u2018Please God, help me.\u2019 \u2018Please God, help me\u2019 \u2026 I thought to myself, \u2018Me, asking God, begging God? Me, praying?\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

Then his pain was gone and he was staring into a bright light. He decided that, with God\u2019s help, \u201cI could defeat myself and win, if I fought very hard and if I prayed. \u2026 God saved me from me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Condensed into the punchy talking points that sell screenplays, Eszterhas said his life has gone from \u201cMalibu to Ohio, from booze to diet Sprite, from Spago to McDonald\u2019s, from Sharon Stone to Jesus.\u201d Now he walks five miles and prays for an hour every day. With his second wife and their four sons, he worships at Holy Angels Catholic Church in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, where he volunteers to carry the cross in Sunday Mass.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe twisted little man\u201d who wrote his scripts still lives in his head, he said, but is no longer in charge. The big question was whether Eszterhas could write without the tobacco, alcohol and deadly darkness that fueled his 16 screenplays, which became movies that grossed more than $1 billion.<\/p>\n

Eszterhas said he sat frozen at his old typewriter, feeling \u201clike Jack Nicholson in \u2018The Shining.\u2019 \u201d He faced a complete mental block until he pounded out: \u201cThis is how I found God or how God found me.\u201d The memoir had to come first.<\/p>\n

Since then, Eszterhas has written two scripts, including a \u201cnarco-terrorism\u201d thriller he thinks would fit Nicholson. He also wants to write a small-budget movie about Our Lady of Guadalupe. In an age in which Hollywood keeps remaking old blockbusters, he wonders why no one has produced spectacular, digital versions of \u201cThe Silver Chalice,\u201d \u201cThe Robe\u201d or \u201cQuo Vadis.\u201d<\/p>\n

While he wants to keep working, what Eszterhas can\u2019t imagine is writing the kinds of scripts that made him rich and famous. <\/p>\n

\u201cMy head\u2019s not really in that place. I mean, the thing that I would like to do very much, in the time that I have left, in terms of my own screenwriting, is to \u2026 write some things that reflect my faith,\u201d he said. The goal would be to put \u201cthe same kind of energy, \u2026 into doing faith-based films that I think can really be commercially viable, that I put into other films of a different sort that became commercially successful.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"