Genre: That Eszterhas patented genre hybrid of Drama that always seems to lean on the edge of Action but never quite crosses over.
Premise: Caldwell, a small town journalist, investigates a series of buildings that have been burnt down throughout the town. What he discovers after the course of his investigation is a large, evil conglomerate and the “dieshot” who runs it. It’s the sort of generic, corporations are bad thing from among many detective stories, Chinatown.
About: After F.I.S.T. (which is actually not a bad script, if a bit expansive) failed at the box office, Eszterhas entered into a strange period of several years where he wrote a lot of scripts but didn’t get anything produced until Flashdance became a big hit. Or least, I think that’s how it went according to his memoir Hollywood Animal.
Writers: Joe “F.I.S.T Failed But Wait Until Flash Dance” Esterzhas
Dieshot is … not bad. It’s a simple story. And it reads like an article Esterzhas might have written for the Cleveland Plain Dealer. There really isn’t much in the way of story: there’s a generic love interest for Caldwell, he is at first assigned to write an article about a series of buildings that have mysteriously burnt down, discovers the name of an insurance company who owned most of the buildings, people try to kill Caldwell but he escapes, and eventually uncovers corruption city wide and decides to leave. I mean, this is a story we’ve seen many times before, and like most of the Eszterhas scripts it reads like a hybrid of dime store crime novels. And the thing is, he makes it enjoyable.
For some reason, I don't know if it's because I used to be one, but I love watching reporters get assigned news stories in films and go about trying to get the opening leads on their story. This made the first act pretty exciting, and made sure I watched with rapt attention. But then, when we realize it's just burning buildings Dieshot becomes dull. I mean, derelict burning buildings. What's to spark my interest about that? Isn't that like Mafioso 101? I don't think it was any more original in the early 80's. It's not like the material hasn't aged, it's just not necessarily very original dramatic stuff. That being said, though, the third act is pretty awesome because Caldwell after watching the Earth come crashing down around him is left with very little solace in the world so he shows up at the door of his love interest, Cory, which I felt was the perfect tone to offset it. Caldwell ends, talking about California, which Esterzhas sets off with such a cheerily optimistic tone it can only be meant sarcastically.
The whole thing just feels like a TV movie. And it feels like Eszterhas is breaking his chops in as a screenwriter. I know Paramount bought this, but from everything I’ve read I have no idea how close Joe got to getting the thing made. I’d expect not terribly far because at this point he didn’t seem to have a large amount of star power at the time, and the whole set up is a little bit week. But Dieshot is one its way to something, and its tone is a pretty good one. So it's a decent spec but it's definitely not something I'd ever want to see as a film.
Scooby Doo (Complete Crap)
Atilla (Poor, Few Redeeming Qualities)
[X] - Wedding Crashers (Mediocre)
Hot Rod (Good)
Definitely Maybe (Pretty Darn Good
Isla Prospects: Once again, there’s a love interest. But Isla is in no way, shape, or form ever supposed to or going to play an Eszterhas character. Just doesn’t work for me. Even though she played a pretty good Midwestern girl in Wedding Daze and The Lookout.
What I Learned: Dieshot pretty much sets up everything it’s going to use within the first ten pages, and then throughout the rest of the script, it becomes clear just what we’ve been presented with. This is the set up of good detective story, but if you can make it work, and here Eszterhas does then you’ve got a neat little structure going on.
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