AI Summary
5 min readJoe Eszterhas wrote Basic Instinct in 13 days in Hawaii, fueled by the sun, the Rolling Stones, and cocaine. He was about to send the script to his agent with the title Love Hurts when, he says, “the twisted little man had another thought” and he raced back inside and wrote Basic Instinct. The script sold for a record $3 million. But the story of how that script came to be—and the life that produced it—is far stranger than any movie he wrote.
The Twisted Little Man and the Real-Life Origins of Basic Instinct
Eszterhas describes a “twisted little man” inside him, a presence he says is 29 years old and will die 29. This figure, he says, wrote everything with strong sexual content. The character is one of several invisible companions he carries—alongside Mark Twain and Jesus of Nazareth. The genesis of Basic Instinct came from two real people lodged in his memory. The first was a faculty member’s wife he had an affair with when he was 18 and she was 39. She was sophisticated, smart, and beautiful, and she had a profound effect on him. The second was a cop he knew while working as a police reporter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer—a buddy who had been involved in several shootings, and Eszterhas began to wonder if he actually enjoyed them. These two characters sat in his head for years before they came together in what he calls a love story. He wrote the script in 13
Continue reading the full summary in the app — free to try.
Read Full Summary →Free • No credit card required
Never miss an episode of The Joe Rogan Experience
Get every new episode summarized in your inbox — free, ~5 minutes to read.
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
What you'll learn
- 1 (00:24) **The Dogon Cane & Cosmic Origin Story** - Joe Eszterhas shows his carved cane from the Dogon people of Mali and discusses their mythology involving the Sirius star system.
- 2 (02:16) **Zelensky's "Basic Instinct" Obsession** - Eszterhas reveals that Volodymyr Zelensky and his wife have seen *Basic Instinct* at least 15 times, including on anniversaries.
- 3 (03:38) **The "Twisted Little Man" & Writing Process** - Eszterhas describes his creative alter ego, a 29-year-old "twisted little man" who writes the sexual content, and how *Basic Instinct* poured out of him in 13 days in Hawaii.
- 4 (10:10) **The Critics' Reversal on *Basic Instinct*** - Feminist critic Camille Paglia has reversed her stance, now calling the film a "post-feminist classic" about women who don't have to hide their sexuality.
- 5 (13:09) **Formative Experiences: The Cop & The Crime Scene** - The character of Nick Curran was influenced by a real cop buddy who may have enjoyed shootings, and Eszterhas's own harrowing police beat experiences.
- 6 (17:25) **Journalism as a Path to Novelism** - Eszterhas explains that he and Hunter S. Thompson both chose journalism as a way to make a living while aspiring to be novelists, which put them on top of an exploding American culture.
- 7 (19:50) **Personal Roots of the Scripts** - Eszterhas explains that almost every script comes from a personal experience, from witnessing a stabbing at age 12 to his son's friendship in *Big Shots*.
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Show Notes
Joe Eszterhas is an author, former journalist for “Rolling Stone,” and screenwriter known for films such as “Basic Instinct,” “Sliver,” “Showgirls,” and “Flashdance.”
www.imdb.com/name/nm0000390/
Perplexity: Download the app or ask Perplexity anything at https://pplx.ai/rogan.
Use code ROGAN at https://BlueChew.com to get 10% OFF + Free Overnight Shipping on your first order.
Open an account in minutes at https://Chime.com/Rogan
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
More from this podcast
The Joe Rogan Experience →