Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Joe Eszterhas was born in Hungary, spent his first six years in Austrian refugee camps, and came to the United States in 1950.  He lives in Point Dume, California, with his wife Naomi and their three children.  He has two grown children from his first marriage.  

He has been awarded the Emanuel Foundation's Lifetime Achievement Award for work dedicated to the memory of the holocaust in Hungary. He has also won awards for attending every one of his son's Little League games and for writing Showgirls (the Hollywood Women's Press Association's Sour Apple Award).

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If the Watergate scandal was a previous generation's National Nightmare, then maybe the Clinton scandal was our National Wet Dream, and who better to narrate it than the screenwriter Joe Eszterhas? In American Rhapsody, Eszterhas, whose credits include Basic Instinct and Showgirls, and Charlie Simpson's Apocalypse, for which he was nominated for a National Book Award, takes us through the events that threatened to topple a president and left most of the nation's citizens with, at the very least, a bad taste in their mouths.

Taking full advantage of his considerable journalistic and storytelling talents, Eszterhas gives us every fact, rumor, or innuendo surrounding the president's foibles in the context of late-century American politics and entertainment. Here Washington and Hollywood do more than just flirt with each other; they share the same bed. From scandalmongers Matt Drudge (who began as a Hollywood gossip) and Ken Starr, to would-be presidential paramours Sharon Stone and Barbra Streisand, to his final, unimpeachable witness, Willard -- none other than President Clinton's talking penis -- Eszterhas gives us the goods on the story that nobody could stop talking about and, thanks to American Rhapsody, will be impossible to think about the same way again.

Aus dem Klappentext

The setting . . .
Washington, Hollywood, and the landscape of the American Republic.
The writer . . .
Joe Eszterhas, ex-"Rolling Stone reporter, National Book Award nominee for "Charlie Simpson's Apocalypse, and screenwriter of such blockbusters as "Basic Instinct and "Jagged Edge.
The stars . . .
Bill and Hillary Clinton, George W. Bush, Al Gore, John McCain, Ken Starr, and Monica Lewinsky.
The supporting players . . .
Warren Beatty, James Carville, Sharon Stone, Larry Flynt, Vernon Jordan, Linda Tripp, Matt Drudge, and Bob Packwood (with cameos by Richard Nixon and Farrah Fawcett, Eleanor Roosevelt and David Geffen, Robert Evans and Richard Gere).
The story . . .
The most basic, and basest, in many years -- an up-close and personal look at the people who run our world. A tale filled with humor, tragedy and romance; suspense, absurdity and high drama; and, of course, lots and lots of sex.

In American Rhapsody, Eszterhas combines comprehensive research with insight, honesty, and astute observation to reveal ultimate truths. This is a book that flouts virtually every rule, yet joins a rich journalistic tradition distinguished by such writers as Norman Mailer and Tom Wolfe.
A brilliant, unnerving, hugely entertaining look at our political culture, our heroes and villains, American Rhapsody will delight some and outrage others, but it will not be ignored. What Joe Eszterhas has produced is a penetrating and devastating panorama of all of us, a fun-house mirror held up to our own morals, hypocrisies and desires.

"From the Hardcover edition.

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American Rhapsody

Vintage Books USA

Excerpt

The Whole World Is Watching

"We gotta get you laid," Monica said.
"Oh, God," Linda Tripp said, "wouldn't that be something different? New and different. I don't know. After seven years, do you really think that there's a possibility I'd remember how?"
"Of course you would."
"No," Linda Tripp said.

My friend Jann Wenner, the editor and publisher of Rolling Stone, therock and roll bible, called me excitedly the day after Bill Clinton wasnominated for the presidency. He had spent the previous night at a party,celebrating with Clinton. "He's one of us," Jann said. "He'll be the first rockand roll president in American history."

I had come to the same conclusion. He was one of us. Even if, on occasion, hetried to deny it. Of course he had dodged the draft, just another white RhodesScholar nigger who agreed with Muhammad Ali and had no quarrel with themVietcong. Of course he had smoked dope, inhaling deeply, holding it in,bogarting that joint.

Bill Clinton, Jann told me, had always read Rolling Stone, so I smiledwhen, shortly after the election, he was photographed jogging in a RollingStone T-shirt, the same T-shirt I had worn to my son's Little League games.Well, this really was a cosmic giggle: Good Lord, we had taken the White House!After all the locust years?after Bebe Rebozo's boyfriend, after thehearing-impaired Marlboro Man, after that uppity preppy always looking at hiswatch?America was ours! In the sixties, we'd been worried about staying out ofjail. Now the jails were ours to run as we saw fit.

Carter had given us false hope for a while, but Bill Clinton was the real deal:undiluted, uncut rock and roll. Carter, we had discovered, wasn't one of us. Oh,sure, Jimmah allowed his record-mogul pal Phil Walden and Willie Nelson to smokedope on the White House roof, and he had told Playboy he had "committedadultery in my heart many times," but the unfortunate, terminallywell-intentioned dip was such a cheesy rube, definitely not rock and roll, withhis beer-gutted Libyan-agent brother, his schoolmarm wife, and theBible-spouting sister who was secretly having sudsy, lederhosen romps withmarried German chancellor Willy Brandt. No, definitely not rock and roll, provenforever when he fell on his face jogging, claiming breathlessly that a bunnyrabbit had jumped in front of him, falling on his face while wearing blacksocks.

His Secret Service agents nicknamed Bill Clinton "Elvis," but we knew better.Elvis had been Sgt. Barry Sadler's ideological sidekick, a slobby puppet on acarny barker's strings, in love with his nark badges, informing on the Beatles,toadying up to Nixon, The Night Creature. Those wet panties hurled onstage athis concerts were size 16 and skid-marked. Bill Clinton wasn't Elvis. With hisshades on and his sax gleaming, Bill Clinton looked like a pouchier Bobby Keyesplaying backup for the Stones. No, that wasn't quite right, either. Not BobbyKeyes, but a pop-gutted Jumpin' Jack Flash and graying Street Fightin' Man . . .Bill Clinton was Mick on cheeseburgers and milk shakes, Taco Bell, and ChefBoyardee spaghetti.

Rolling Stone called his inauguration "the coming of a new age inAmerican politics." Fleetwood Mac was playing "Don't Stop." That was FleetwoodMac up there, not Pearl Bailey or Sammy Davis, Jr., or Sinatra or Guy Lombardoor Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians. That was rock and roll we were hearing,not the Sousa Muzak the big band-era pols in the smoky back rooms had forced onus for so long. Dylan, our messiah, was there. And that was Jack Nicholson atthe Lincoln Memorial, Abe's words brought to life by our lawyerly Easy Rider.Bill Clinton's White House was rock and roll, too, full of young people, full ofwomen, blacks, gays, Hispanics; a White House, as Newt Gingrich's guru, AlvinToffler, said, "more familiar with Madonna than with Metternich." That was justfine with us. It looked like Bill Clinton was continuing what he had begun inArkansas, where he'd been criticized for having a staff of "long-haired, beardedhippies" who came to the office in cutoffs and patched jeans. The boss himselfhad been seen in the governor's mansion barefoot, in jeans and a T-shirt.

He had a Yippie-like zaniness about him we could identify with. Out on the golfcourse in Arkansas, one of his partners noticed that he could see Bill Clinton'sunderwear through his pants. "They weren't bikinis he had on," the partner said,"but it was some kind of wild underwear." Bill Clinton's favorite joke was onehe had told over and over on the Arkansas campaign trail, a joke closer inspirit to Monty Python than to the Vegas lounge meisters favored by so manyother presidents: "There was a farmer who had a three-legged pig with a woodenleg. And he bragged on this pig to everybody who came to visit. The farmer wouldtell how this pig had saved him from a fire. People would be amazed! And he'dsay, 'Well, that's not all; this pig saved my farm from going bankrupt.' And thefolks would be amazed. And the farmer would say, 'That's not all; this pig savedthe entire town once when the dam broke.' Then somebody said to the farmer,'Well, gosh, it's pretty amazing that you have this pig, but you never didexplain why it only has three legs.' And the farmer said, 'Well, hell, youwouldn't want to eat a pig this special all in one sitting!' "

He certainly was a rock and roller. The light blue eyes, the lazy, sexy smile.The lips that were called "pussy lips" in Arkansas. Girls loved him. At agetwelve, a classmate said, "Little girls were screaming, 'Billy, Billy, Billy,throw me the football.' All the girls had crushes on him. He was the center oftheir attention." A reporter covering one of his Arkansas campaigns said, "Youcould see the effect that he had on people in the eyes of the teenage girls whocame to see him. Their eyes would light up. You would think that a rock star hadjust come into the Wal-Mart." He had rock and roll habits, too. Gennifer Flowersremembered the time he told her, "I really got fucked up on cocaine last night."There was even a Jagger-like androgyny he allowed some of his women friends tosee. He put on girlfriend Sally Perdue's dress one night, high on grass, andplayed Elvis on his sax. He asked Gennifer to meet him at a bar dressed as aman, and he liked her putting eyeliner, blush, and mascara on his face.Underneath it was a rock and roll restlessness, what Gennifer called his feelingthat he was "bullet-proof,"

There was no doubt he loved the music. Janis's "Pearl" . . . the Seekers' "I'llNever Find Another You" . . . Peter and Gordon's "A World Without Love" . . ."Here You Come Again" (which reminded him of Gennifer) . . . Steely Dan . . .Kenny Loggins . . . the Commodores' "Easy" and "Three Times a Lady" . . . JoeCocker . . . Jerry Lee Lewis . . . anything by Elvis. He had his own band whenhe was a kid, called The Three Kings, which the other kids called Three BlindMice because they all wore shades. A high school friend said, "I rememberdriving down this road and Bill singing Elvis songs at the top of his voice. Heloved to sing. He just liked music and he was always playing music. I think thatwas one of the reasons he went to church somuch as a kid. To hear the music."

One of the things that attracted him to Gennifer was that she was a rock singerwith her own band?Gennifer Flowers and Easy Living?at about the same time thathis little brother, Roger, had his band?Roger Clinton and Dealer's Choice.Roger was like Chris Jagger to Mick: He wanted to be a rock...