I read Eszterhas' Charlie Simpson's Apocalypse, an okay non-fiction work written in slangy high-voltage novelistic New Journalism style (it originated as a story he published in Rolling Stone) that focuses on the murder of three people in small town Harrisonville, Missouri, in the 1970s by a disaffected, alienated, unemployed, long-haired, politically radical twentysomething named Charlie Simpson who happened to own an M1 rifle. Eszterhaus says, in New Journalism style, that he "sucked on it like a popsicle" when he blew the top of his head off after having killed two police officers in their twenties and a random businessman in the dry cleaning business. Apparently the book was nominated for the National Book Award. Was it cinematic? Not particularly. In fact there are passages where one becomes buried in the minutiae of his research, the story coming to a complete standstill.
Screenplay is creeping forward.
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