Discussion of 90s erotic thrillers doesn't emphasize enough that a lot of them were written by one guy, who speedran his way from being the highest paid screenwriter in history to becoming Catholic & moving to Ohio
Joe Eszterhas really had this brief run of being absurdly ubiquitous. He was straight-up being paid millions for two page outlines. Everyone knew his name. All in a genre, uhhhhh, not famed for its writing. And in every case after Basic Instinct the movie was a bomb where they had to rewrite his script almost entirely! He was getting paid millions for the outlines of a genre where every movie's plot was the same, and then not writing the movie.
Then in 1997 he started producing his own dream projects. One of which was named An Alan Smithee Film, after the pseudonym used by directors who wanted their names taken off the project. It was directed by Alan Smithee, in a brilliant meta jok-no the director took his name off the project about directors taking their names off projects. A few years after he moved to Ohio for health reasons and never returned. He never did a Hollywood script again, and only one ever again (a Hungarian film in 2006)
Anyway he tried to make a comeback in the early 2010s with a "Jewish Braveheart" about Judah and the Maccabees. It was called the Jewish Braveheart bc it was going to be directed by Mel Gibson.
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We should be glad Joe Eszterhas is still safely contained in Ohio
