There was a time when Joe Eszterhas was money in the bank, but the man who has been persona non grata for more than a decade is back at work, with yet another erotic thriller.
Eszterhas has written a script called "Lust," that The Hollywood Reporter calls a "cross between 'Basic Instinct' and 'Fatal Attraction.'"
"Lust" tells the story of happily married woman who is seduced while on a business trip by a younger man, who has an assistant who's in love with him. The assistant folms the two having sex so she can show it to her competition's husband. Yeah, that's a Joe Eszterhas plot.
“There are a lot twists and turns that only Joe Eszterhas can do,” said Scott Steindorff, who's making the film through his Stone Village Productions. “There’s reason why he was the top writer for many years: the guy knows how to write. And there hasn’t been a great sexual thriller since 'Unfaithful.’”
From 1992 to 1995, Eszterhas cranked out "Basic Instinct," a film that more than anything made Sharon Stone's vagina famous; the brainless, rape-friendly "Sliver"; "Showgirls," a film so nakedly contemptuous of women as to not be believed; and "Jade," which was so bad it mercifully rid us briefly of David Carsuo, but sadly killed Linda Fiorentino's career in the process.
We hate nostalgia, but there's a part of us that's eager to see what the man's got in store for us now that he's found God.
