There is so much ground to cover with Sunset Boulevard I think I’ll focus on it a few days. And while we’re looking at a movie about a screenwriter who is thinking about moving back to Ohio I thought I’d find a quote from a real Hollywood screenwriter who actually did move back to his home state of Ohio.
“You don’t want to turn into Joe Gillis. In Sunset Boulevard, Joe Gillis, screenwriter (played by William Holden), wound up as a kept man of a broken-down movie star who hasn’t made a movie in decades. She spoiled him, belittled him, and finally killed him. In the last scene of the film , we see him floating facedown in her swimming pool.
Someone asks him in the film, ‘Don’t you sometimes hate yourself?’
Joe says, ‘Constantly.’”
Joe Eszterhas
The Devil’s Guide to Hollywood
page 353
I wonder how many times Eszterhas watched Sunset Boulevard as he rode the success of screenwriting more than a billion dollars of box office hits including Basic Instinct, Flashdance, and Jagged Edge. And did Sunset Boulevard play any part in him moving back to Bainbridge Township outside Cleveland?
[...] There is so much ground to cover with Sunset Boulevard I think I’ll focus on it a few days. And while we’re looking at a movie about a screenwriter who is thinking about moving back to Ohio I thought I’d find a quote from a real Hollywood screenwriter who actually did move back to his [...] Original Source… [...]