Joe Eszterhas: Celebs Rumors

Even as he collected his martini, the burly stranger who introduced himself as “Joe” exuded an aura of belligerence. We were standing on the fringe of a post-screening reception, so, hand extended, I blurted, “Did the movie work for you?”

told her to have sex with Baldwin during filming of their 1993 movie “Sliver” to improve his lousy screen performance.But the ugly fight goes back more than 30 years.During the fraught production of the sexually charged thriller, the pair quickly developed an antipathy for one another.“Thin lips, OK breath,” Baldwin, Alec Baldwin’s brother, reportedly said after shooting a love scene with the “Basic Instinct” star, according to Entertainment Weekly.The hatred was mutual.“He’s a boy,” Stone complained, according to “Sliver” screenwriter Joe Eszterhas in his book “American Rhapsody.” “Give me a man. Give me Alec.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic What The Weeknd wants, The Weeknd gets in “The Idol,” a skintastic, dark-side-of-showbiz fable that perpetuates the myth that pop stars are corporate puppets with no say in their own image-making, even as it allows hit-maker The Weeknd to call the shots (and reshoots, apparently, since the five-part HBO series was overhauled late in production to suit him). Picture “Blonde” as Joe Eszterhas might have written it, but with better music. After making a toe-dip cameo as himself in A24’s “Uncut Gems,” the R&B phenom-turned-TV producer plunges head-first into acting here, teaming with “Euphoria” creator Sam Levinson to imagine a shady super-predator just looking to corrupt an unsuspecting young pop singer. The edgy, high-gloss HBO series, which premiered the first two of its five episodes at the Cannes Film Festival, demands a lot of star Lily-Rose Depp. She plays “rags-to-riches, trailers-to-mansions” Jocelyn, a mono-monikered Britney or Miley type who seems empowered one moment, impressionable the next.

The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, Ohio… and crazy in love with the music of Otis Redding. When I read that he was coming to a Black nightclub called Leo’s Casino on Cleveland’s East Side, I somehow convinced my white editors — Sinatra and Dean Martin and Tony Bennett fans — to let me interview him. I had never seen Otis in person before.The club, Cleveland’s hottest Black nightclub, was filled.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film CriticWhen “Showgirls” opened in the fall of 1995, it was mocked and damned with more derision than the usual movie debacle (“John Carter,” “Gigli”). That’s because, according to the conventional view, it was not just a bad movie but an unspeakably vulgar bad movie.

You Don’t Nomi (★★★☆☆) comes generously prepared to deconstruct the flop, the filth, the legend that is Showgirls. The scandalous 1995 film, spawned from the fevered ids of creators Paul Verhoeven and Joe Eszterhas — director and writer of Oscar-nominated hit Basic Instinct — might be one of the most compellingly trashy movies ever made.Taking its title from Showgirls vixen Nomi Malone, who stomps and shoves her way to Vegas stardom, You Don’t Nomi traces the notorious ’90s bomb through its pre-release buildup and ignominious box office run, critical pounding, and ultimate rise from the ashes as an enduring cult classic.