Genre: I think it is safe to say this is a Thriller, with a lot of long conversations designed to titillate the reader
Premise: A young socialite, TRINA, married to a lawyer, poses as a prostitute named JADE, sleeps with other socialites, and then murders him.
About: In 1992, Joe Eszterhas sold a two page outline of Jade for $2.5 million dollars. I mean, really? William Friedkin directed the film, which was released in 1995 and promptly tanked. Eszterhas said Friedkin had changed the entire story. Could it possibly be that Eszterhas had written a brilliant script that was butchered in the rewrites? Well, I went to the horse’s mouth and found an early 1994 draft of Jade. And as you can see by my review, this film was not going to be brilliant any way you cut it.
Writers: Joe “Apparently I’m Such A Good Writer Now I Don’t Even Have to Write An Actual Story to Make Millions” Eszterhas
In a lot of ways, Jade represents the downfall of Eszterhas’s career better than any other film. He got paid a ton for it, wrote it about his conventional blend of sex and murder, and the script was filmed not as a lavish big budget production but rather a smaller movie in terms of budget and tone. It tanked as the box office, as did most of Eszterhas’s working during the 1990’s, and was universally panned by critics. Someone on the crew famously said the film failed because Eszterhas wrote like a dirty old man. But, really, I think that’s more of an attempt to downplay the film’s sexual elements, and there are a lot of them, but unlike so many films, the sexuality in Jade does not feel gratuitous. The film really explores the thrust towards, and effect on this sort of sexual behavior.
The film opens with the sort of slow, lugubrious conversation that inevitably will lead to some shocking act of violence. Matt is a lawyer, David is a government agent, and Tina is a psychiatrist married to Matt. Matt loves Tina, and so kind of does Dan. Next thing we know, Dan is stumbling onto a murder scene where a very rich man was killed and then hung up like a scarecrow. Thanks to a video camera, the police learn the man was killed in the midst of sex with a prostitute named Jade. Needless to say, I had a feeling one of the people I’d already met was Jade and it was. The script spends the next 80 pages coming to this conclusion as well. I mean, really, the next 80. First we have to diagnose the video of Jade, then we have to interview the neighbor, then we hear from Tina about her decision to become Jade, the whole thing morphs into an easily solved police methodology story.
I think much more than the sex, it’s disturbing how Eszterhas went from writing stories about small town journalists and cops to psychiatrists and District Attorneys. This thing, particularly after just reading Dieshot, reads like something from the mind of a person washed up in a very rich world. And as a result, a lot of these people become much less sympathetic and pretty remote from anything I know. Not to mention, Tina becomes evil, and the two men have pretty weak backbones so there isn’t really anybody I can actively side with. It’s almost like, to a certain group of people at a certain time this film would be very effective, but for me the film failed as a sexual thriller.
Eszterhas has a way of writing very similar scripts over and over again across genres: a slow reveal, a disturbing act, a few twists and turns to clarify what we’ve just seen. Jade’s not exactly a film you’d want to see a thousand times, because once you’ve seen it basically that’s all there is. You don’t read Esterhzas for cool moments or dialogue. It’s all about the twists. So I can definitely see how he sold Jade, but I have no idea whatsoever how he sold this thing for so much money. Also, there’s an accusation that Friedkin (who directed it) changed the script so much Esterhaz threatened to remove his name from the credits. While this, I read a version prior to the Friedkin retool and let me tell you, it may not have been as bad as the movie (which I didn’t see) but it wasn’t exactly Hollywood gold either.
Scooby Doo (Complete Crap)
[X] - Atilla (Poor, Few Redeeming Qualities)
Wedding Crashers (Mediocre)
Hot Rod (Good)
Definitely Maybe (Pretty Darn Good)
Isla Prospects: There’s a young, redheaded socialite nymphette who murders her clients. Enough said. If there was ever an Eszterhas I’d like to see Isla in, this would be it.
What I Learned: If I can solve your Thriller within the first ten pages then it really isn’t that Thrilling. With no doubt as to who the murderer was, Jade became a very gimmicky film. And for something that wasn’t even too high concept to begin with, gimmicky is not an enjoyable or good vein to hit.
Premise: A young socialite, TRINA, married to a lawyer, poses as a prostitute named JADE, sleeps with other socialites, and then murders him.
About: In 1992, Joe Eszterhas sold a two page outline of Jade for $2.5 million dollars. I mean, really? William Friedkin directed the film, which was released in 1995 and promptly tanked. Eszterhas said Friedkin had changed the entire story. Could it possibly be that Eszterhas had written a brilliant script that was butchered in the rewrites? Well, I went to the horse’s mouth and found an early 1994 draft of Jade. And as you can see by my review, this film was not going to be brilliant any way you cut it.
Writers: Joe “Apparently I’m Such A Good Writer Now I Don’t Even Have to Write An Actual Story to Make Millions” Eszterhas
In a lot of ways, Jade represents the downfall of Eszterhas’s career better than any other film. He got paid a ton for it, wrote it about his conventional blend of sex and murder, and the script was filmed not as a lavish big budget production but rather a smaller movie in terms of budget and tone. It tanked as the box office, as did most of Eszterhas’s working during the 1990’s, and was universally panned by critics. Someone on the crew famously said the film failed because Eszterhas wrote like a dirty old man. But, really, I think that’s more of an attempt to downplay the film’s sexual elements, and there are a lot of them, but unlike so many films, the sexuality in Jade does not feel gratuitous. The film really explores the thrust towards, and effect on this sort of sexual behavior.
The film opens with the sort of slow, lugubrious conversation that inevitably will lead to some shocking act of violence. Matt is a lawyer, David is a government agent, and Tina is a psychiatrist married to Matt. Matt loves Tina, and so kind of does Dan. Next thing we know, Dan is stumbling onto a murder scene where a very rich man was killed and then hung up like a scarecrow. Thanks to a video camera, the police learn the man was killed in the midst of sex with a prostitute named Jade. Needless to say, I had a feeling one of the people I’d already met was Jade and it was. The script spends the next 80 pages coming to this conclusion as well. I mean, really, the next 80. First we have to diagnose the video of Jade, then we have to interview the neighbor, then we hear from Tina about her decision to become Jade, the whole thing morphs into an easily solved police methodology story.
I think much more than the sex, it’s disturbing how Eszterhas went from writing stories about small town journalists and cops to psychiatrists and District Attorneys. This thing, particularly after just reading Dieshot, reads like something from the mind of a person washed up in a very rich world. And as a result, a lot of these people become much less sympathetic and pretty remote from anything I know. Not to mention, Tina becomes evil, and the two men have pretty weak backbones so there isn’t really anybody I can actively side with. It’s almost like, to a certain group of people at a certain time this film would be very effective, but for me the film failed as a sexual thriller.
Eszterhas has a way of writing very similar scripts over and over again across genres: a slow reveal, a disturbing act, a few twists and turns to clarify what we’ve just seen. Jade’s not exactly a film you’d want to see a thousand times, because once you’ve seen it basically that’s all there is. You don’t read Esterhzas for cool moments or dialogue. It’s all about the twists. So I can definitely see how he sold Jade, but I have no idea whatsoever how he sold this thing for so much money. Also, there’s an accusation that Friedkin (who directed it) changed the script so much Esterhaz threatened to remove his name from the credits. While this, I read a version prior to the Friedkin retool and let me tell you, it may not have been as bad as the movie (which I didn’t see) but it wasn’t exactly Hollywood gold either.
Scooby Doo (Complete Crap)
[X] - Atilla (Poor, Few Redeeming Qualities)
Wedding Crashers (Mediocre)
Hot Rod (Good)
Definitely Maybe (Pretty Darn Good)
Isla Prospects: There’s a young, redheaded socialite nymphette who murders her clients. Enough said. If there was ever an Eszterhas I’d like to see Isla in, this would be it.
What I Learned: If I can solve your Thriller within the first ten pages then it really isn’t that Thrilling. With no doubt as to who the murderer was, Jade became a very gimmicky film. And for something that wasn’t even too high concept to begin with, gimmicky is not an enjoyable or good vein to hit.
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