‘One Night Stand’: the writer who made history for a movie they took their name off

In the early 1990s, screenwriters were hot property in Hollywood. At that time, writers knew they had a good chance of convincing a studio to pay big money for their “spec scripts”—works they hadn’t been paid to write but instead together of their own accord. Soon, one of the biggest writers of the period made history when he sold four pages of rough notes for a film to New Line Cinema for millions of dollars. Amazingly, though, the movie was released with his name nowhere near the credits.

The crazy tale goes back to October 1994, when Basic Instinct scribe Joe Eszterhas jotted down some notes and ideas for a prospective script he titled One Night Stand. He was riding high in Hollywood then, having been paid $3million for the script for that Michael Douglas/Sharon Stone erotic classic. This is why New Line’s eyes lit up when they got wind of Eszterhas’ idea, which he wanted to shape into a movie with director Adrian Lyne of Fatal Attraction and Indecent Proposal fame.

New Line soon made their play for Eszterhas’ services, and Hollywood watched on in stunned disbelief. It agreed to pay the writer $2.5m for the rough outline he’d put together, with a further $1.5m to come when cameras actually rolled on the picture. Even more incredible, though, was the contractual obligation that Eszterhas would be paid 2.5% of the film’s revenue after it eclipsed the $20m mark.

Eszterhas’ agent at the time was International Creative Management’s Guy McElwaine, and he told the Los Angeles Times, “No one has ever paid this for a movie idea”. New Line head honcho Robert Shaye felt he was making a good investment, though, saying, “With Joe Eszterhas and Adrian Lyne, you’re more than investing in an idea; you’re investing in a film with a world-class screenwriter and director who can attract world-class talent”.

For the writer, the script was more than just a hastily cobbled-together idea that netted him an outrageous sum—it was a personal project based on his own experiences. He had recently split up with his wife of 24 years and married her best friend, and though he fictionalised the story, much of his life still wound up in One Night Stand.

Perhaps this is why Eszterhas wasn’t exactly best pleased when Lyne dropped out of the film and was replaced by Leaving Las Vegas helmer Mike Figgis. While Figgis told the LA Times, “Joe’s script had something that was a lot less formulaic than the other scripts I was seeing,” he still wanted to rework it extensively when he signed on to the project.

By the time Figgis was finished, Eszterhas’ personal script had been altered so much that he didn’t recognise it anymore. The characters were changed almost completely, and a subplot was added about one of their friends dying of AIDS. This was Figgis bringing his real life to the film, as he revealed, “A good friend of mine died of AIDS, and it had a powerful effect on me.”

In the end, Eszterhas was adamant that the final script wasn’t his work—it was Figgis’. He, therefore, asked New Line to remove his writing and producing credits, although he made sure to keep the $4m they’d paid him for his trouble.

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