Cigarettes, cigarettes were much tougher. Booze was tough And I had a real drinking problem before as we discovered in the hospital really, but the cigarettes are much tougher and to tell you the truth. Joe Eszterhas More Quotes by Joe Eszterhas More Quotes From Joe Eszterhas A cigarette in the hands of a Hollywood star onscreen is a gun aimed at a 12- or 14-year-old. Joe Eszterhas gun stars hands Your characters get angry at you if you speak about them and stop you from giving birth to them on the page in revenge. Real writers sit down and write. Wannabe writers sit around and talk. Joe Eszterhas real revenge writing I was a militant smoker, and in my case, I think I particularly used smoking because what I felt was a kind of politically correct big brother assault on smoking. Joe Eszterhas marijuana brother thinking I worry that we are approaching a time when that which is shocking is squeezed out by the Stalinism of political correctness. Joe Eszterhas correctness political worry Meanwhile, politics is about getting a candidate in front of the public as a star, politics as rock'n'roll, politics as a movie. Joe Eszterhas rock-n-roll rocks stars From what I've been able to determine, many of our big stars are addicted to tobacco. They want to smoke in movies for the same reason I smoked as I wrote, which is that they think their performance is going to be better. Joe Eszterhas stars want thinking Every time I flicked channels, there I was, talking. I was talking too much and writing too little. So Naomi and I went to Hawaii. The phone was cut off and we lost touch. This gave me the chance to have a good think about my life. Joe Eszterhas cutting writing thinking Before I would view Rob Reiner as this really annoying pest. Every time he'd come on TV or talking about smoking, I found my blood pressure go up. I just met-really met Rob for the first time last week and told him how much I admire him. He's done more than anyone else in the industry. Joe Eszterhas views talking blood I have been an accomplice to the murders of untold numbers of human beings. I am admitting this only because I have made a deal with God. Spare me, I said, and I will try to stop others from committing the same crimes I did. Joe Eszterhas admitting numbers trying Let's make Joe Lieberman accountable for his rhetoric. Not a penny more until he 'clarifies' his position to the satisfaction of our creative freedom. Joe Eszterhas pennies creative satisfaction And the inner dynamics of Hollywood are like politics. Say you give a script to a group of executives - they all sit around, afraid to voice an opinion, saying nothing, waiting to know what the consensus is. Just like focus groups, opinion polls or a cabinet. Joe Eszterhas voice waiting giving No one is going to tell a movie star to smoke or not smoke because they can do whatever they want. Joe Eszterhas movie-star stars want There are some young women movie stars who are doing it everywhere, smoking in every movie, sometimes even with placements with a pack of cigarettes. Joe Eszterhas stars smoking sometimes I do want to make a special appeal to women movie stars to, I think, have a special responsibility these days to stop smoking, not to do it up on screen because the example that's being set is really an awful example. Joe Eszterhas stars responsibility thinking I started making a point earlier that women's cancer rates are skyrocketing, and we have some women movie stars, young women movie stars, who are smoking in many of their movies. Joe Eszterhas cancer stars smoking The-one of the odd things that's going on with smoking these days is that in the '90s, smoking at movies in the '90s, there were more movies showing smoking than there were in the '60s. Joe Eszterhas odd-things odd smoking I'm not suggesting at all that we take away all of the characters' vices. I am suggesting that this particular vice is so insidious, so nefarious, and so deadly that simply by glamorizing it or poisoning our young adults, and I think it's a very separate category, but in no way am I suggesting that we move on from banning smoking in movies to banning drinking, you know, or whatever else we want to do. Joe Eszterhas drinking character moving All has changed, thanks to Joe Eszterhas' life-threatening battle with throat cancer. He announced in "The New York Times" that he and Hollywood had blood on their hands and now Eszterhas is crusading to stop Hollywood's glamorization of smoking. Joe Eszterhas cancer new-york blood The charm of smoking a cigarette from the point of view of the people who smoked them, and I was one of those people for many, many years, is an amazing pleasure and a hit that some people say, and I've never done heroin, but some people say that it rivals the heroin hit, so there is that pleasure. The-it kills you the same way that heroin kills you. Joe Eszterhas views people years What Hollywood has done through the years is glamorized it even more, made it sexy, made it sensuous, and dwelled on those pleasure aspects, completing ignoring the fact that Hollywood as an industry, was pointing the gun at young people - pointing a gun at them when they were 12 to 14 years. Joe Eszterhas sexy gun years
