• After the movie was released, screenwriter Joe Eszterhas‘s own father Istvan Eszterhas was accused of war crimes in Hungary by printing anti-Semitic editorials and even organizing a book burning.
• Both Kirk Douglas and Walter Matthau wanted to play the father….

“He spent his earliest years in post WWII–refugee camps. He came to America and grew up in Cleveland–stealing cars, rolling drunks, battling priests, nearly going to jail. He became the screenwriter of the worldwide hits Basic Instinct, Jagged Edge, and Flashdance. He also wrote the legendary disasters Showgirls and Jade. The rebellion never ended, even as his films went on to gross more than a billion dollars at the box office and he became the most famous–or infamous–screenwriter in Hollywood. Joe Eszterhas is a complex and paradoxical figure: part outlaw and outsider combined with equal parts romantic and moralist. More than one person has called him ‘the devil.’ He has been referred to as ‘the most reviled man in America.’ But Time asked, ‘If Shakespeare were alive today, would his name be Joe Eszterhas?'”

— Random House promotional material