TMC
08-16-2002, 09:50 PM
http://forums.comicbookresources.com/showthread.php?threadid=23691
http://www.zap2it.com/movies/news/s...--13331,00.html
HOLLYWOOD (Zap2it.com) - In an amazing turn-about, screenwriter Joe Eszterhas, who's famous for penning cigarette-smoking vixens in "Basic Instinct," "Flashdance" and "Showgirls" has written an apology published in the editorial pages of The New York Times Friday (Aug. 9.)
Admitting he was a militant smoker, the often bombastic writer (who just published the book "American Rhapsody") suffers from throat cancer and has changed his ideas about cigarettes, writing that "Smoking, I once believed, was every person's right" and he confessed to writing his beliefs in his scripts.
Michael Douglas' character is trying to quit in "Basic Instinct" and that launched a cigarette brand Basic after the film.
"I have been an accomplice to the murders of untold numbers of human beings," the writer says. He is making a pact with God to undo his writing wrongdoings as he battles throat cancer and most of his larynx is gone.
He writes about seeing an 18-year-old who never smoked suffering from throat cancer even though he never smoked a single cigarette -- but his mother was a chain smoker. He talks about his wife helping him fit the trachea tube in his throat (which he no longer needs.)
As a changed man, he calls for Hollywood to be more responsible. "A cigarette in the hands of a Hollywood star onscreen is a gun aimed at a 12-or 14-yearold," he says, recalling that when he was a geeky immigrant kid from Hungary, he wanted to be cool and turned to smoking because of Hollywood images.
"The screenwriter writing smoking scenes for the smoking star is part of the vicious and deadly circle," says the screenwriter, also noted for "The Jagged Edge," "Sliver" and "Nowhere to Run." "I beg that Hollywood stop imposing it upon millions of others."
And the 57-year-old Eszterhas himself says he simply wants to see his four boys grow up.
http://groups.google.com/groups?dq=...rt.stop-smoking
http://www.zap2it.com/movies/news/s...--13331,00.html
HOLLYWOOD (Zap2it.com) - In an amazing turn-about, screenwriter Joe Eszterhas, who's famous for penning cigarette-smoking vixens in "Basic Instinct," "Flashdance" and "Showgirls" has written an apology published in the editorial pages of The New York Times Friday (Aug. 9.)
Admitting he was a militant smoker, the often bombastic writer (who just published the book "American Rhapsody") suffers from throat cancer and has changed his ideas about cigarettes, writing that "Smoking, I once believed, was every person's right" and he confessed to writing his beliefs in his scripts.
Michael Douglas' character is trying to quit in "Basic Instinct" and that launched a cigarette brand Basic after the film.
"I have been an accomplice to the murders of untold numbers of human beings," the writer says. He is making a pact with God to undo his writing wrongdoings as he battles throat cancer and most of his larynx is gone.
He writes about seeing an 18-year-old who never smoked suffering from throat cancer even though he never smoked a single cigarette -- but his mother was a chain smoker. He talks about his wife helping him fit the trachea tube in his throat (which he no longer needs.)
As a changed man, he calls for Hollywood to be more responsible. "A cigarette in the hands of a Hollywood star onscreen is a gun aimed at a 12-or 14-yearold," he says, recalling that when he was a geeky immigrant kid from Hungary, he wanted to be cool and turned to smoking because of Hollywood images.
"The screenwriter writing smoking scenes for the smoking star is part of the vicious and deadly circle," says the screenwriter, also noted for "The Jagged Edge," "Sliver" and "Nowhere to Run." "I beg that Hollywood stop imposing it upon millions of others."
And the 57-year-old Eszterhas himself says he simply wants to see his four boys grow up.
http://groups.google.com/groups?dq=...rt.stop-smoking