Review: Have a cheese sandwich to go with this "whine" fest.
Rating: 1 out of 5
Date: 06 3, 2012
Wow, it's really true. Never p*ss off a writer for you can appear in the story and your name might rhyme with "rutabaga."Poor Joe got fired from the Judas Maccabee film project and decided to rant to anyone who would listen to him, releasing an audio clip of Mel Gibson on a rampage. Unfortunately, by that time, everyone knows Gibson has a temper and Eszterhas was largely ignored by the media. His way of getting back at that is to ride the digital wave and indie publish a book of said rant against Gibson.Joe says he fought strenuously to defend "The Passion of the Christ," but then says he found proof of the accusations. This is the man who also states in the novella that he refused to let his children visit their grandfather, who was dying, because of the man's earlier anti-Semitic articles and works. But he's going to turn around and do a movie with a man that he claims he knew was an anti-Semite? He rails against Gibson's publicist and agent for sticking with the actor, calling them "sellouts" because they seem to want to make a buck off the old Mel Gibson magic, but yet, Eszterhas has no problems selling out himself to write a script for Gibson -- one he couldn't even finish within by the deadline and spent more time arguing with the studio and Gibson about what he, the writer, wanted and they could be damned because it wasn't the story they wanted to tell.This entire book/novella is nothing more than a whining rant by a man who used to have a great deal of talent and pull in Hollywood but can't seem to string two words together to finish a script on time. His reputation in the industry has been of a has been. "Heaven and Mel" reads like a temper tantrum of a "lover" scorned and there's nothing new, nothing worth reading, and to be honest, nothing worth the price of this. Maybe if it gets offered for free, but otherwise, don't bother.