Eszterhas Script Getting Big Yuks but No Bucks--Yet

Ed Wood was just the beginning. If screenwriter Joe Eszterhas gets his way, moviegoers will be treated to the misadventures of yet another legendary awful Hollywood director.

Hollywood has been laughing at itself all week as a spec script by one of the industry’s highest-paid writers has been making its way around town.

Eszterhas, known best for steamy screenplays like “Showgirls” and “Basic Instinct,” has changed course and written a satire on the movie industry starring some of Hollywood’s biggest names. The likes of Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger and producer Robert Evans are intermingled with fictitious characters in a sendup of movie-making and industry eccentricities.

“An Alan Smithee Film”--named for the pseudonym assigned to a film when a director wants his name taken off a troubled project--centers on a guaranteed “critic-proof” blockbuster, a movie-within-a-movie with the biggest budget of all time, $315 million.

There is no guarantee, of course, that Eszterhas’ script, which lacks financing and a distributor, will be made into a movie. And the cast has already changed: Failing to get a response from Schwarzenegger, Eszterhas said he is rewriting the part for Whoopi Goldberg, who has committed to star, as has Stallone (Willis is said to have been on vacation and unreachable); filmmaking twins Allen and Albert Hughes have also agreed to appear. (Eszterhas, Stallone, Goldberg and Willis are represented by William Morris’ Arnold Rifkin.)

The irreverent script--steeped in a world of pricey Armani suits, look-alike black Porsches and perfect Malibu tans--was initially circulated late last week to the couple of dozen movers and shakers featured therein for “reaction and opinion.”

This week it reached “a couple of hundred” others who have requested copies, said Ben Myron, who hopes to produce the film.

“People have been calling me to ask: (a) if they’re in it and (b) complain if they’re not in it,” said Myron, who is producing four other films written by Eszterhas set to go before the cameras this year.

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Myron, Eszterhas and Rifkin quickly point out that this process is a highly unorthodox way of shopping around a screenplay. Indeed, scripts by top-name writers are usually “auctioned” to studios, not passed around to industry insiders for a preliminary look-see.

“This is such an unconventional script, so we’ve given it an unconventional presentation,” Rifkin said.

So hot is Eszterhas’ latest property that a memorabilia store on Hollywood Boulevard is said to be hawking copies at $30 per script.

As originally written, the film within the film--called “Trio”--opens with Schwarzenegger, Willis and Stallone standing with their backs to the camera next to a black sports car. In turn, each of the superstars intones the same threatening, tough-guy phrase and fires a shotgun into the camera.

Then “Trio’s” producer--a womanizer with a penchant for violence, bungee jumping and eating pasta for every meal--and the president of the studio distributing it are seen choking back tears, speaking haltingly into the camera as if being interviewed by some unseen documentarian.

Says the studio chief: “We would have outgrossed ‘E.T.’ I’m saying that officially, 100% on the record!”

The plot unfolds as director Smithee--who prefers baloney sandwiches over the fare at trendy Hollywood eateries--grows increasingly dissatisfied with the way the film has turned out and resorts to a criminal act in an effort to salvage his film.

Eszterhas prefers comparisons to the mock documentary “This Is Spinal Tap” over that other inside Hollywood film, “The Player.”

Other celebrities in the script include Sharon Stone, attorney Robert Shapiro, television newsman Paul Moyers, interviewer Larry King and screenwriters David Mamet, William Goldman and Shane Black. There are passing references to Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, the late Don Simpson, Cher, Spike Lee and Quentin Tarantino.

“I didn’t mean it to be malicious. I meant it to be funny,” Eszterhas said. “I suppose a lot of the stuff I’ve seen over the years has gone into this. I’ve made 14 pictures and I think this is probably the humorous residual effect of all the movies I’ve worked on.”

Eszterhas not only pokes fun at the inner workings of Hollywood, but he also takes potshots at his own image, which has taken a beating since last year’s resounding flop, “Showgirls.”

In the screenplay, the film’s title character Smithee tells Eszterhas, “If you got ‘Showgirls’ made, you can get anything made.”

“I wrote this as a complete hoot,” the writer added. “I had no idea what the response was going to be, but I was having a lot of fun doing it. . . . Sometimes people in this town have a tendency to take themselves way too seriously. We’ve got to lighten up and that’s what this piece is about.”

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So far, Hollywood players seem to be laughing right along with Eszterhas.

“It was a shock to read this from Joe, but a good shock,” producer Robert Evans said. “Does paranoia in Hollywood exist? Yes. Is it exaggerated [in the script?] Yes, but that’s satire.”

Eszterhas is hoping this movie will inspire people to take him seriously again. His writing credits include “Music Box,” “Flashdance,” “Betrayed” and “Jagged Edge.” He recently sold to Universal “Blaze of Glory” about singer Otis Redding and “Reliable Sources,” a film about journalistic ethics to be directed by Spike Lee for Paramount Studios.

“I always felt that getting the rap for doing sexually oriented pictures was unfair, considering the body of my work,” Eszterhas said. “I resent being pigeonholed in that drawer and I’m going to prove to the world that it’s unfair to pigeonhole me.”

To that end, he proudly recounted a phone call from Universal honcho Ron Meyer, who read the script and congratulated him for “writing from your heart, instead of your groin.”