“Please God, help me.”

It’s a desperate plea from an unlikely source, Hollywood screenwriter and “bad boy” legend Joe Eszterhas.  Widely known as “America’s king of sex and violence” and a “Machiavellian opportunist,” Esterhas’ monikers include: “the cocaine cowboy.  The weed eater.  The tequila king.”  He’s the “Hollywood animal” who wrote Basic Instinct, Jagged Edge, Jade, Showgirls, Flashdance, and screenplay for sixteen films that made more than a billion dollars at the box office. 

With a professional resumes that reads like a rap sheet of raunch, Eszterhas suddenly finds himself recovering from larynx surgery and facing down throat cancer.  He cries out to the God he shunned, mocked, and reviled all his life and begs for mercy.  Crossbearer: A Memoir of Faith is the startling, gritty, astonishing story of how God heard a “bad boy’s” prayer and rescued Eszterhas from himself.  He writes, “God saved me… from me.” (p. 8). 

“I was praying,” begins Eszterhas in this riveting first-person narrative.  “Asking.  Begging.  For help.  Begging God to help me.  And I thought to myself: Me?  Asking God?  Begging God?  Praying?  I hadn’t even thought about God since I was a boy, yet I was listening to myself begging him for help over and over again as I moan in pain.” 

Crossbearer is the story of one man's simple, childlike faith, and the ever-faithful Father who heard his plea and changed Eszterhas’ life.  Apparently repudiating his role in writing the kinds of movies and books that made him famous, Eszterhas’ new passion is telling “the world about You – about how You changed my life and saved me – even if telling the world destroys my Hollywood career.” (p. 21)  He writes, “… for the first time in my life, I gave up all control.  I put my life in God’s hands.  God was in control – my life was up to His will, not mine… I thanked God for freeing me, for loving me so much that He was willing to take over my life.”  This is the backdrop upon which this no-punches-pulled book is painted. 

Crossbearer is divided into two parts: Faith and Hope.  Both are prefaced with Scripture from Romans.  There are no chapters or chapter headings.  Topics and soliloquies are set off by paragraph breaks, skillfully woven into a seamless garment of masterful wordsmithing.  This technique maintains Crossbearer’s whooshing momentum, deftly weaving events, personalities, perceptions, observations and prayers from one page to the next into an inimitable, compelling work.

Tightly written with a crisp, gotta-know-what-happens-next, page turner appeal, the style is terse, almost brutal in its “take-no-prisoners, no-nonsense” tone.  No gilded lilies or satin and lace here.  No ornamental or ostentatious language.  Plain-spoken and direct, Eszterhas “tells it like it is” – the good, the bad, and the ugly.  Portions may be categorized as “earthy” or “R-rated” (caveat emptor) and may not be appropriate for gentle readers.  Some may find certain pages offensive.  But for those who’ve been believers for years or may be lulled or dulled into a safe, semi-somnambulant faith, Crossbearer is a dash of cold water in the face.  It reminds the reader of what it means to become a new creation in Christ, and chronicles the unfathomable riches of grace in terms that are sometimes startling, unconventional, maybe even eccentric - all “in living Technicolor.”

Eszterhas’ narrative runs the gamut from religious to socio-political.  He comments on Mel Gibson and The Passion of the Christ, “gender prejudice” in the Catholic church, clergy celibacy and sex scandals, abortion, gay marriage, “church neighbors,” his anti-smoking campaign (“Join Joe”), “baseball religion,” his early years as a Hungarian refugee, cancer, anti-Semitism, forgiveness, miracles, and God’s love.  That’s just for starters.

Eszterhas’ new-found faith causes many Hollywood insiders to consider him nuts.  “I am not born again…” he insists (p. 47), "I have a new relationship with God.” 

Hollywood’s guffawing, jaw-dropping response doesn’t bother – or slow down – Eszterhas in the least.  A self-described “captive Catholic,” Eszterhas says of a Catholic festival he participates in, “I’d often been stoned on booze in my life and on more substances than I cared to remember, but I’d never been this high before.  Stone sober.  High on God.” (p. 213).  Another example:

“I wasn’t raising hell anymore.  I was raising a cross instead of raising hell. … It was like I had always had a hole in my heart that was finally filled.  There was a joy in my heart that had never been there, a joy that contained an inner peace I had never known but had self-destructively always been seeking.” (p. 218)

Intermingled with the rough edges and occasional raw language is a surprising tenderness and vulnerability.  This is evident as Eszterhas describes his devotion to his wife, Naomi, and their four sons, his daughter Susie, and his grand children.  We see it again in his relationship with his priest at Holy Angels Roman Catholic Church, Father Dan, Deacon “Cheeze-us” Fred, his compassion toward a struggling screenplay writer, Vince, other cancer patients, and many others.  A regular parishioner at Holy Angels in Ohio, Eszterhas wears Rolling Stones T-shirts and Harley Davidson jeans to Mass.  He carries the cross from vestibule to altar each Sunday.  His childlike faith is boundless, joyful, astonishing, and somehow… refreshing.

From Hollywood animal to crossbearer.  Talk about “amazing grace.”

Crossbearer: A Memoir of Faith

By Joe Eszterhas

St. Martin’s Press, 2008