Hollywood Animal - Joe Eszterhas

The tell-all Hollywood memoir is is one of my favourite genres - the more lurid and self-serving the better. Robert Evans' uproarious The Kid Stays in the Picture is still the most scandalously entertaining example, but this nestles comfortably into the second tier alongside, say, You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again by Julia Phillips.

The good stuff: Eszterhas was at his peak in the 80s and wrote the scripts for Jagged Edge, Flashdance, Basic Instinct and - oh, yes - Showgirls. He was a true A-lister who enjoyed pissing people off, so there are plenty of great anecdotes. Some of the descriptions, particularly of Sharon Stone, are delectable. The payoff to all the backstory about his relationship with his father also packs a powerful punch.

The bad stuff: At over 700 pages it's ludicrously long, mainly thanks to overly detailed descriptions of his romantic life. More about the work would have been better, even if it is mostly screenplays like Jade rather than anything with actual merit. It is also disheartening that the ending sees this arch-libertine recover from cancer to become a practicing Catholic and anti-smoking-in-movies campaigner. Gah!